The Year in Movies: 1931 - Comedy, Drama, and Adventure

Monkey Business (1931)



As we get into the '30s, there are going to be enough movies to talk about from each year that I'm going to split them into genre groups. This week I'll talk about comedies, dramas, and adventure movies from 1931, then next week I'll cover mysteries and horror.

In Monkey Business, the Marx Brothers play a group of stowaways on an ocean liner. The twist is that there are also warring gangsters on board, so one of them hires half of the Brothers to assassinate the other, who's in turn hired the other Brothers as bodyguards. And all this is going on while all four Brothers are being hunted and chased by the ship's crew.

The Marx Brothers' movies are having diminishing returns for me as the same recurring gags continue from film to film, but they're still clever and a lot of fun.

Windy Riley Goes Hollywood (1931)



This is a goofy, not-that-funny comedy about a wise guy from New York who gets mixed up in the movie biz and almost ruins the career of a young actress. Louise Brooks plays the actress and this short talkie is mostly memorable for giving her a chance to be heard. Sadly, her delivery isn't great, but then neither is anyone else's. Like many early sound films, Windy Riley was made by people who are clearly struggling to figure out the best way to use the new technology. I get the feeling that this was meant to launch a series of Windy Riley shorts, but it apparently didn't catch on. I can see why.

The Front Page (1931)



It was tough for me to figure out how to take this one. It's got some dark elements, but is clearly meant to be funny. The problem is that the humor isn't derived from the dark subject matter; it's in spite of it. That makes for a tonally inconsistent movie that also fits with Adolphe Menjou's character, who's absolutely despicable for most of the movie until suddenly he's supposed to be rather charming. I hated him in The Front Page, but for truly charming Menjou, check out Morocco.

I'm curious to see the Jack Lemmon/Walter Matthau remake of The Front Page to see if it fixes anything. I love both those guys, so at the very least I expect I'll be more forgiving.

Mata Hari (1931)



I thought that the fictionalized story of Mata Hari was at least going to be a spy movie, but it's just a horrible, unbelievable, melodramatic romance. Greta Garbo plays the title character who inexplicably decides to give up spycraft out of her unconvincing love of a Russian pilot. There are plenty of opportunities for Garbo to ham it up with overboard drama, but I'm not in.

The Skin Game (1931)



I have a hard time with Hitchcock's early, non-thriller movies, but that's all on me for wanting them to be more like North by Northwest instead of accepting them on their own terms. The Skin Game is a pretty great movie on its own, showing the tragedy when two families go to war against each other.

It's a lot like Romeo and Juliet in that way (and is even based on a play). In fact, the first characters we meet from the two families are a son and daughter who like each other, even if they don't like each others' relatives. Unlike Romeo and Juliet though, the story doesn't focus on the kids. It's all about the parents and the depths of nastiness that they'll sink to in order to gain power over their enemies.

I actually kind of hate Romeo and Juliet and The Skin Game fixes my biggest problems with it. To begin with, it very clearly defines the source of animosity between the two families. The Hillcrists are old money and the Hornblowers are new, but the real clash is over their visions for the rural community in which they both live. The conservative Hillcrists want to preserve the country while the self-described "progressive" Hornblowers want to develop it with factories.

I get the sense that the story isn't really choosing sides; enough characters comment on how nasty both families are being. But it's tough for me not to side with the Hillcrists. That's a surprising place to find myself in because they're so conservative and entitled, but their conservation extends to preserving the land and protecting the tenants who live on it; people whom Hornblower is perfectly happy to evict in order to have cottages for his workers.

In fact, the simmering feud is brought to a sloppy, overflowing boil exactly because Hornblower is tossing out an old couple that he'd promised could keep their home. Hillcrist had sold some land to Hornblower under those conditions, but Hornblower reneges with the explanation that he'd made that promise under the assumption that he'd be able to get some other land that he hasn't been able to acquire. Since those plans fell through, he doesn't feel bound by any assurances he made based on them.

As far as I'm concerned, Hornblower fires the first shot, so it's tough for me to feel badly for his clan, no matter how ruthless the Hilcrists get in fighting him. The script tries to increase the Hilcrists' culpability by having Mr. Hilcrest say at the end that he'd forgotten all about the old tenants. The implication is that he got caught up in hatred for its own sake. But even if he forgot his reasons for going to war, I never did.

It's not that I feel that the justness of the Hillcrests' cause also justifies all their actions. But it does put me on a particular side early in the movie and nothing happens to pull me off of it. The Hillcrests' ruthlessness takes the form of their learning a nasty secret about a member of the Hornblower family and being willing to use it to extort good behavior from the Hornblowers. There's some debate to be had here, but my feeling in the movie is that the Hornblowers are acting so dishonorably that if they're going to have nasty secrets, then those can be used against them to make them do what they should have been doing in the first place. The movie doesn't think so though, and I imagine that there are viewers who agree with it. It's a great topic for discussion.

I also love that the film ends as it begins, on the son and daughter who like each other. The story doesn't focus on them as it unfolds, but it does check in on them a couple of times and their friendship has been tested through these events. The final shot is of their reaction to the tragedy that's been done: they grab each other's hand.

In Romeo and Juliet the tragedy happens to the young people and makes the old folks put aside their differences in response. In The Skin Game the old people more directly suffer the consequences of their deeds while the young people promise that things are going to change in their generation. I much prefer the strength and hope of the latter message.

Sea Devils (1931)



Super low budget movie about an escaped convict who stows aboard a ship with mutinous treasure-hunters in order to find the ones who framed him for murder. It's complicated a little by the presence of the captain's daughter, but mostly it's a straightforward plot and told simply. It's short though and I enjoyed it.

Corsair (1931)



Great concept about a disgruntled stock broker who takes to piracy to hurt his former boss' extra-curricular bootlegging operation. But it ends up in this weird place where our "hero" - having taken down his enemy - rejoins him in business and renews a romantic relationship with the boss' awful, manipulative daughter. Instead of giving them their comeuppance, he validates that they were just fine all along. Ugh.

Rich and Strange (1931)



I'm always nervous when adultery plays a major role in a movie, because I hate when it's glamorized. That's not the case here though in this early Hitchcock story about a couple who take a long, ocean voyage and are both tempted to be unfaithful. Both spouses make mistakes - one way more than the other - but the movie is honest and serious about exploring the consequences of those actions.

It reminds me some of the theme of Gone Girl, about the masks that we wear, even in marriage. But unlike Gone Girl, Rich and Strange deals with the unmasking in a real, human way and I love it for that. Joan Barry is especially powerful in her role and I'm sad that she retired from filmmaking a few years after this.

Not an easy movie to watch, but worth it in the end. I'll probably enjoy it even more next time.

Law of the Sea (1931)



This made a cool double-feature with Rich and Strange since both are about infidelity and life at sea. Rich and Strange more closely connects the two by testing the commitment of a married couple on a long, ocean voyage. In Law of the Sea, a young sailor is tempted by the cousin of his fiancée.

This happens on shore, but sea life is very much part of the movie, especially since the young sailor still struggles with a tragic incident that occurred at sea 20 years earlier. Unfortunately, it's just as he's trying to come to terms with his feelings about the two women that he's also forced to confront the instigator of his childhood tragedy. That's a lot to deal with and the movie handles it well, up to a point. That point is the last scene, which wraps things up more quickly and neatly than I'd like, but Law of the Sea is still an interesting movie.

The Year in Movies: 1930

Anna Christie (1930)



My first Garbo film and she's very good in it. But as rough a life as her character has, the hardest thing for me to watch was her falling for a big bohunk as dumb and childish as Charles Bickford's Matt. She's committing herself to literally the first guy who's even vaguely nice to her.

Free and Easy (1930)



Buster Keaton's first talkie and that is not the voice I was expecting. It's better, actually, with a bit of a Southern accent and a tinge of Jimmy Stewart.

It's a fascinating movie just for getting to hear him talk. And it's fun for all the appearances by other MGM directors and stars (the movie takes place at MGM Studios as Keaton's trying to help a young woman break into the movie business). Robert Montgomery is always likable and recovers quickly from a caddish moment involving Keaton's protege. Keaton, on the other hand, is especially clumsy and even dumb, so I actually found myself hoping that the girl (Anita Page) would end up with Montgomery instead of our star.

I'll have more to say about the stupidity of Keaton's talking characters when I cover Allez Oop, one of his short talkies, but as much as I enjoy Keaton's voice, I don't think the sound format did his schtick any favors.

The Blue Angel (1930)



About halfway through The Blue Angel I wondered if Marlene Dietrich's Lola Lola was the original Manic Pixie Dream Girl. She seems to exist mainly to draw stuffy Professor Immanuel Rath (Emil Jannings) out of his shell.

But if that's the case, the film does something very different from the way the trope is commonly used today. It takes a super dark turn (unfortunately, as the result of some crazy bad decision-making by both Lola and Rath) and becomes a cautionary tale about marrying people you don't really know. It ends in a heartbreaking way that's also oddly lovely, so while I'll probably never watch it again, I'm glad to have seen it this once.

Murder! (1930)



Hitchcock moves closer to the genre he'd eventually settle into with this murder mystery, but it's not a good story. It's sort of like an episode of Law & Order that becomes 12 Angry Men before morphing into Murder Most Foul. It opens with a murder, shows a brief police investigation, then a woman is put on trial and quickly convicted. A member of her jury is a respected thespian who intuits that the defendant is not guilty, but lets himself be pressured into a guilty verdict. After the sentence is passed though, he reconsiders the case and sets out to prove the woman's innocence.

There are some great twists, including some very Hitchcockian moments, but the mystery is too easily pieced together once the woman's guilt is questioned. It's also a problem that the true murderer's motive is nothing that can be figured out based on any of the clues.

Animal Crackers (1930)



Not quite as memorable as The Cocoanuts, but still very funny. I have no idea what the title refers to, though, since the plot is (loosely) about shenanigans around a famous painting and a couple of copies. David noticed some similarities to What's Up, Doc? and he's right.

Madame Satan (1930)



This was pitched to me as a pulp story, so I was disappointed to learn it's actually a morality play that just happens to have some fun elements. There's a huge set piece with a zeppelin and a masked, mystery woman, but the focus of the movie is entirely on the woman's troubled marriage.

It tries hard to offer believable motives for the husband's cheating and the wife's methods in bringing him back, but those motives are ultimately trite and I ended up not really caring if they got back together or not. Some amusing bits throughout, though.

The Big Trail (1930)



Has a lot in common with The Covered Wagon in that it's about dissension in the leadership of a massive wagon train headed to Oregon. Both movies also have a plot about two men - one "civilized" and one a frontier scout - who are interested in the same woman who's a settler.

The Big Trail has young John Wayne as its frontiersman though and that's a big bonus. He's laid-back, charming, and easy to root for. He also has a cool side-plot in that he suspects a couple of the trail-bosses to have murdered one of his friends.

But while there's plenty to drive the story, the film gets sidetracked with long sequences that explain how difficult wagon train life was. Whether it's crossing a river, getting down a cliff, or navigating snowy mountains, the scenes are all educational and powerfully harrowing, but also extended and I began to resent their distraction from the characters' stories.

Morocco (1930)



I was all geared up to like this. I loved Gary Cooper in The Virginian and was encouraged about Marlene Dietrich's wounded-but-strong character early in the movie. Even when she inexplicably falls in love with Cooper's cad, I reminded myself that love often is inexplicable. And I even relished the complications around her feelings for Cooper and the millionaire played by Adolphe Menjou. The latter guy is debonair and much more stable, but sadly just doesn't do it for Dietrich like Cooper does.

Her having to choose between these two men (and the geographical location the movie takes place in) could make Morocco a spiritual companion to Casablanca, except that unlike Casablanca, I hate the ending. Dietrich and Cooper's characters are both so damaged that the only way they're going to get together is for one of them to drop their guard and trust the other. That's a great message and I applaud it, but I really wanted it to be Cooper who gives in first.

Dietrich's doing it makes sense with what the movie reveals about her, but it also shows that neither she nor Cooper have really learned anything. He's still a cowardly cad and she's still putting her trust in a man who doesn't deserve it. Fingers crossed that it works out for them, but there's not much in the movie to suggest that it will.

The Year in Movies: 1929

The Mysterious Island (1929)



About the only thing this movie has in common with Jules Verne's novel is the title, but that's a-okay. There is a reclusive scientist (Lionel Barrymore) with a submarine on an island; it's just that everyone knows he's there. Which is too bad for him when a former friend (character actor Montagu Love, who's probably best known as Zorro's dad in the Tyrone Power version) wants to steal his technology in order to power a military coup.

The new plot is pretty great though. There's a romance between Barrymore's sister (Jacqueline Gadsdon, who has a small role in It) and one of the lead workers on the submarine project (Lloyd Hughes, who was Ed Malone in the 1925 Lost World movie). Better than that is how things spin out of control once Love's character invades the island. Barrymore's two subs fall into hands on opposite sides of the conflict, leading to an undersea battle and ultimately to the discovery of an undersea city, merpeople, and a giant octopus. Totally fun.

The Manxman (1929)



It's hard for me to like this early Hitchcock melodrama about two friends in love with the same girl. Mostly that's because Anny Ondra and Malcolm Keen's characters have to make ridiculous decisions in order to drive the plot. But once I'm past that, I do enjoy the drama of the position they put Carl Brisson's character in. And the Isle of Man is a great setting for the story.

Pandora’s Box (1929)



It's rough to watch the characters in Pandora's Box - especially Louise Brooks' - go through the ringer the way they do. Some of it's their own doing, but not all of it. Some of it they do to each other and it becomes a depressing spiral into despair. And yet there's a glimmer of hope at the very end for one of the characters, even though it's made possible by something horrible that happens to one of the others. Thoroughly sad, but capped with just a hint of catharsis.

The Canary Murder Case (1929)



I had high hopes for William Powell and Louise Brooks together in a murder mystery, but sadly, this is no Thin Man. I've seen a couple of other Philo Vance movies (at least one other one with Powell and the one with Basil Rathbone, for sure) and I'm not crazy about the detective. Powell and Rathbone are both too cool for the dandy that I feel like Vance is supposed to be, and neither is as awesome as Vance as they are as Nick Charles and Sherlock Holmes. Vance comes off as an also-ran kind of character and The Canary Murder Case is about that level of story.

Brooks plays an evil nightclub performer with a long line of jilted and/or blackmailed men who would benefit from her death. After A Girl in Every Port and Pandora's Box I'm tired of seeing Brooks play snotty, entitled characters, so already we're off to a bad start. The mystery is also pretty easy to figure out, even though the way the killer covered their tracks is ludicrously unbelievable. I still like seeing two of my favorite actors onscreen, but I kept wishing I was watching them in something else.

The Iron Mask (1929)



Speaking of wishing I was watching something else, I'll never complain about Douglas Fairbanks, but for spoilery story reasons, I prefer other versions of The Man in the Iron Mask to this. I've never read the novel, so maybe this one is totally faithful, but I still don't care for how it ends. It also takes a crazy long time to set up the Iron Mask scenario.

I'm not thrilled either with the device of turning the movie into a talkie by having Fairbanks simply narrate over silent movie footage. Fairbanks has a great voice and I don't particularly miss intertitles, so it's fine from a creative standpoint. It just feels like a cheap way of making a sound version when other productions were doing things like having actors dub their voices onto an audio track.

Ultimately, if I want to see Fairbanks playing D'Artagnan, I'll re-watch his version of The Three Musketeers.

Blackmail (1929)



Hitchcock gets more into thriller territory with this story about a woman who kills in self-defense, but wants to cover it up. And as the title suggests, someone makes that difficult for her. Complicating matters is the case's getting assigned to her police detective boyfriend. It's a great setup with some tense moments, but sadly it doesn't wrap up very well. The ending is rushed and its unclear how events have affected the characters.

The Cocoanuts (1929)



Probably my favorite Marx Bros movie. I never know what Zeppo contributed to the group, but it has strong bits by Groucho, Harpo, and Chico. Especially great are the two-rooms scene, the auction, "Why a duck?," and Harpo's reaction to boring speeches.

Diary of a Lost Girl (1929)



After the thoroughly depressing Pandora's Box, I wasn't sure I was ready for another Louise Brooks/GW Pabst collaboration, but Diary of a Lost Girl is beautiful and lovely. It's the antithesis of Pandora's Box, which was about a woman whose own flaws were largely responsible for her downfall. In Diary, Brooks plays a woman whose fall is no fault of her own, but because of the cruelty and heartlessness of people who are supposed to be looking out for her. She makes the most of it though and finds first a modicum of joy, and then finally a new family and purpose. It's uplifting and challenging at the same time. Loved it.

The Virginian (1929)



It's surprising how many parallels there are between this and High Noon, starting with their lead actor. Both sort of end up being about a lawman who has to face an enemy over the objections of his new wife. But where Will Kane is frustratingly inscrutable in High Noon, making him seem selfish and proud, I know exactly what drives the original Man With No Name.

The Virginian spends plenty of time setting up the conflict between its anonymous title character and Trampas, the villain. It's because of Trampas (in part, anyway) that the very sweet friendship between the Virginian and his best pal goes horribly wrong. That's not enough to force the showdown though and Trampas continues needling Cooper's character until he feels he has no choice but to throw down in the town's streets. When the Virginian explains this to his fiancée (Mary Brian, who was Wendy in 1924's excellent Peter Pan) she doesn't understand, but I do. And the film's spent enough time on her that I also understand why she doesn't.

Tarzan the Tiger (1929)



Tarzan the Tiger has some of the problems that many serials do with the same groups of characters being captured by, escaping from, and getting recaptured by the same groups of other characters. But not to the extent of, say, Son of Tarzan. For the most part, Tarzan the Tiger stays fresh and moves quickly. Some of that's because it mixes up the scenery between Tarzan's jungle mansion, the jungle itself, an Arab slave camp, and the hidden temple-city of Opar. Villains are defeated through the course of the story and new ones come along to take their place, though there are a couple of consistent ones, too. Allegiances shift. It's an above-average serial.

Frank Merrill is an impressive Tarzan, physically. He wears a goofy wig and headband - and I'm never excited about the look of over-the-shoulder furs - but he's ripped and handsome. Natalie Kingston is a great Jane, too. She needs saving a couple of times, but she saves Tarzan too and there's a way of watching the serial in which she's the hero and he's the MacGuffin. When he goes missing in the jungle, she throws on her own junglewear and heads out in search of him. By the end, they're a team, with neither overshadowing the other.