After last week's easy breezy take on the movies of 1990 I was due for a tougher pick this week when Siri answered my "Pick a number between 1 and 100" query, and she set about a stumper -- she told me "28" and so we've got to choose our favorite Movies of 1928. Indeed after some scouring I could only make a proper list of 4 (it's a very good four, mind you) but there's a post-script to that and there are several movies I want to see but still haven't... all that said let's get to it...
My 4 Favorite Movies of 1928
(dir. Carl Theodor Dreyer)
-- released on October 25th 1928 --
(dir. King Vidor)
-- released on March 3rd 1928 --
(dir. Charles Reisner & Buster Keaton)
-- released on May 20th 1928 --
(dir. Jean Epstein)
-- released on October 5th 1928 --
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Runners-up: Okay so I am pretty certain that I seen all three of the silent films that Alfred Hitchcock directed in 1928 - Champagne, Easy Virtue, and The Farmer's Wife - at some point, but that point would've been back in college and I'll be damned if I recall much of anything about them. I've been meaning to go back and re-familiarize myself with his early stuff.
And Then there's The River starring the dreamy Charles Farrell - I've seen scenes from it (him swimming naked in the titular river is unmissable) but the majority of the film is lost.
It would've been a cheat to include any of these movies on my "Favorites" list just to get the number up to five when in truth the four films that I did choose I remember well, have seen more than once, and like very much.
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Never seen: The Man Who Laughs (dir. Paul Leni), The Wedding March (dir. Erich von Stroheim), Our Dancing Daughters (dir. Harry Beaumont), Beau Sabreur (dir. Waters), The Circus (dir. Chaplin )
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Two worth mentioning, both with a South Pacific theme:
ReplyDelete"Sadie Thompson" - starring Gloria Swanson and Lionel Barrymore, directed by Raoul Walsh (who also co-stars) - is pretty great. Remade a few years later as Rain with Joan Crawford.
"White Shadows on the South Seas" - a silent movie that was gussied up with sound effects, a score, and a single line of dialogue ("Hello!") in post production, and works like gangbusters.
• Beggars of Life with Louise Brooks
ReplyDelete• The Circus with Chaplin. I taught it once. Students didn’t like it.
• The Crowd, a masterpiece.
• Laugh, Clown, Laugh, with Lon Chaney, who could do anything!
• Our Dancing Daughters. Joan Crawford!!
• The Passion of Joan of Arc. Intense use of close-ups!
• Show People with Marion Davies is marvelous.
• Steamboat Bill, Jr. is Keaton’s best film and very popular with my students.
• Steamboat Willie is a gem.
• The Wedding March is incomplete. They ran out of money, but what’s there is exquisite.
• The Wind. Well, it’s Lillian Gish!
• I’ve always wanted to see Noah’s Ark.
Well this isn’t quite the challenge that 1922 was but it still presents something of a test to the memory. There’s several that sound fascinating like Four Walls with Joan Crawford and John Gilbert, The Divine Woman with Garbo, that Charles Farrell film, Fanny Brice’s My Man and many others that are lost or only fragments survive which is just sad.
ReplyDeleteTop 5 in order:
The Last Command
The Crowd
The Wind
Laugh, Clown, Laugh
Spies
Not quite top 5 but good films:
A Lady of Chance
The Mysterious Lady
Noah’s Ark
Our Dancing Daughters
The Passion of Joan of Arc
Sadie Thompson
Show People
Street Angel
The Wedding March
West of Zanzibar
A Woman of Affairs