107. Stella Dallas (1937)

Running Time: 106 minutes
Directed By: King Vidor
Written By: Joe Bigelow, Harry Wagstaff Gribble, Sarah Y. Mason, Gertrude Purcell, Victor Heerman, from novel by Olive Higgins Prouty
Main Cast: Barbara Stanwyck, John Boles, Anne Shirley, Barbara O'Neil, Alan Hale

STELLA!!...OOPS, WRONG MOVIE

Well the "short wait" finally ended and "Stella Dallas" was shipped and arrived today, giving me a chance to finally watch it and finally get a review slapped in here. The movie was actually quite good, as most of the unfound movies, coincidentally seem to be, as King Vidor impresses me, yet again.

Stella Dallas (Stanwyck) lives in a Massachusetts factory town with her brother and parents. She lives a fairly simple life, cooking and cleaning and helping to tend the house. She also has quite a time swooning over Mr. Stephen Dallas (Boles), one of the managers at the factory, where her brother and father work. Stephen, at one time, was set to be engaged to Helen Morrison, but when his father committed suicide, Stephen disappeared and relocated, leaving Helen in the dust. One day, when Stella takes lunch to her brother at work, she makes a special point to swing by Stephen's office and strut her stuff. Stella, looking ever so radiant, accomplishes her mission and gets more than a head turn from the shy, considerate Stephen. They hit it off, a few weeks pass, with Stephen courting Stella, until finally one day Stella arrives back at the house with a ring on her finger and news that her and Stephen have been married.

A year passes and the Dallases welcome their first child, a baby girl, whom they name Laurel. When Stella is released from the hospital, after giving birth, she wants nothing more than to go out for a night on the town, despite her husbands urges for her to rest. They go out and Stella takes up dancing with a loud mouth, obnoxious fellow by the name of Ed Munn (Hale). Stephen, being the kind, gentle person that he is, never lacks at delivering politeness, even to the inconsiderate Munn. When a job opportunity arises in New York, Stephen jumps at the chance to take it and wants nothing more than to relocate with his entire family in tact. However, Stella doesn't wish to relocate and thus the Dallases separate, leaving Laurel in the care of her mother, and visiting her father on the weekends. Eventually Laurel grows up, Stephen reconnects with his old flame Helen and Laurel becomes the focal point of the picture, being forced to choose between a swanky lifestyle in New York with her father and Helen or her normal downtrodden lifestyle with her mother, who she's always been with.

King Vidor was excellent at turning everyday situations into brilliant, heartbreaking films. He had a knack for evoking emotions and really playing his characters to their fullest potential. In the span of this movie I went from hating Stella, to feeling sorry for her and all of the emotions in between. The scene at Christmas, when Stephen takes Laurel and Stella is left to spend the holidays by herself is so sad and the end is also heartbreaking. All of the principles turn in marvelous performances, and including Stanwyck, I also really enjoyed the innocent girl that Anne Shirley played, as she was spot on with her delivery and was just a very charming little actress. Boles and Hale were also great male leads, with Boles playing the cool, shy, gentle Stephen and Hale really turning it in as the fool, Ed Munn. All in all this was a great film and I had a very enjoyable time with it.

RATING: 7.5/10 What can I say, I'm a sucker for simple storytelling that is told to the fullest advantage and this is a prime example.

NEXT UP: The Life of Emile Zola...Paul Muni stars in the 1937 Best Picture winner and the review should be up sometime tomorrow.

February 17, 2010 2:30am
Revised: February 26, 2010 12:37am

38. The Crowd (1928)

Running Time: 104 minutes

Directed By: King Vidor

Written By: King Vidor, John V.A. Weaver

Main Cast: James Murray, Eleanor Boardman, Bert Roach, Estelle Clark, Daniel G. Tomlinson

"YOU'VE GOT TO BE GOOD IN THAT TOWN IF YOU WANT TO BEAT THE CROWD"

The above words are the first uttered by our protagonist as he enters New York City, ready to captivate The Big Apple and take it by storm. King Vidor directs and I finally caught this one on TCM exactly four months to the day after I should've watched it originally.

Johnny Sims is our main man in "The Crowd". The film starts with his birth and his father immediately has high hopes for him, hoping that he may even be the President of the U.S. someday, since Johnny was born on July 4, 1900. We flash forward to 1912 and Johnny is twelve years old as he sits out on the front stoop with his pals and they chat about what they want to be when they grow up. An ambulance buzzes by them and stops in front of Johnny's home, paramedics rushing inside. Johnny's father has suddenly passed away and we see the horrified look on John's face as the camera pans down the stairwell and onto our protagonist. We flash forward, yet again, and Johnny is all grown up and arriving in New York City, ready to get a job and make it big, like his father predicted. He doesn't have any trouble landing a job in a large office building, as an accountant and one day, when work ends, one of his co-workers asks him if he'll double with two gal pals of his. He accepts and that is when he meets his future wife, Mary.

John and Mary get married and get their own apartment, a tiny one, but a new home nonetheless for the happy new couple. Mary's mother and brothers don't think too highly of John, but Mary loves and understands him and that's all that matters. Despite a big quarrel early on in their marriage, Mary and John bury the hatch, when Mary announces that she's pregnant. Nine months later their baby boy is born and everything is as happy as it once was. Five years after that, John has received an eight dollar raise and a baby girl has been welcomed into the family. Everything looks just fine for the Sims family, that is, until tragedy strikes. One day, after John gets a $500 check for submitting an ad slogan for Magic Cleaner, he brings home presents for the entire family. He sticks his head out the apartment window to find his children across the street, with the other kids. Waving a new scooter in front of their eyes they come barreling across the road. The boy makes it just fine, but the girl is struck by an automobile and she eventually dies. From their things go from bad to worse for the Sims family, which makes "The Crowd" a truly emotional and later, inspiring tragedy.

I remember having a good feeling about this movie back in October, when I originally was forced to skip over it. This was a really great film, plain and simple, as it really hit you where you wanted to be hit and made you feel all of the emotions that the characters in the film were going through. I've always had a place in my heart for tragic films, where the characters must face many different hardships and downfalls, before finally learning the grand lesson in the end of everything, and this is just that kind of movie. Everything meshes together well and King Vidor's dream of making an average movie about an average man is pulled off excellently. This film depicts everyday life and not just everyday life in 1928, but everything that is presented here, still holds true today, as people still face the same types of troubles that these characters were facing back in the silent era. This film holds up really well and is still highly enjoyable, even as we enter the first few months of 2010.

RATING: 8.5/10 Great film and I'm really glad I finally got the chance to watch it. It makes me wonder about all those other films I've been forced to skip and how good they have the potential of being.

NEXT UP: The Docks of New York...Can't find this one either.

October 18, 2009 9:02pm

Revised: February 19, 2010 3:06am

29. The Big Parade (1925)

Running Time: 130 minutes

Directed By: King Vidor

Written By: Harry Behn, Joseph Farnham

Main Cast: John Gilbert, Renee Adoree, Tom O'Brien, Karl Dane

"THE FIRST WAR MOVIE ON OUR JOURNEY"

This one was getting ready to be entry #5 in our "Unfound Files" for a long time, before a post on IMDB, put me on the trail of the YouTube video and I found the entire film broken into thirteen parts there.

Jim, our movies' hero and played by John Gilbert, is a rich boy, who lives off the loot that his father brings in and is looked down upon by his suck up of a brother. When war is declared (World War I, to be exact) Jim's girlfriend and one true love Justyn, urges Jim to enlist and serve his country proud. So as not to look like a coward, Jim plays along with his girlfriend's ideas and enlists in the army. It is here he meets and befriends, Bull and Slim, two men from very different backgrounds.

While in France, smack dab in the middle of World War I, but not seeing much action, just from their commanding officers' mouths, Jim meets Melisande, a french woman who lives on a farm. When his buddies aren't badgering him, he sneaks off to meet with Melisande, and provides us with quite a hilarious little scene, where he teaches her to chew gum, because apparently she had never had it before. The two eventually fall in love, but unfortunately their love isn't given long to blossom.

One day, it is announced that Jim and his troop will be shipping out of the town where Melisande lives and moving to the front of the war. The most heartbreaking scene of the movie is inserted here, as a very emotional goodbye between the new found lovers transpires, leaving your bold journeyman nearly in tears.

Here, we the viewer, see the real "war movie" come out in The Big Parade, as we're treated to guns, explosions and all that good stuff that goes along with war. A very nice scene transpires, in which Jim's troop are making their way through a field, with some tree cover, and trying to dodge the snipers and machine gunners that await them. Eventually, Jim, Bull and Slim find themselves in the trenches, sharing a tin of corned beef and some cigarettes, and trying their best to keep their heads up and stay alive, in a very difficult time.

I must admit that one of my least favorite genre's of film is the war movie. I've just never been a big fan of any film that depicts war or shows the perils of combat. While there are a few that catch my eye, for the most part...not a fan. That being said, I can say that The Big Parade was not bad at all. Unlike other war movies, where all we're shown is the combat and the battle sequences, The Big Parade allows the viewer to get close to the characters, and get comfortable with them, before throwing them into battle. It provides us with comedy and tragedy and executes both very well. While The Big Parade, is definitely not my favorite movie so far, I think it'll be one that comes up in my next discussion of "Favorite War Films".

RATING: 6.5/10 Not bad at all, from me, for a war movie. I really couldn't go any higher right now, but maybe with a repeated viewing the 6.5 could rise.

NEXT UP: Metropolis...The director of the worst movie I've seen thus far, returns, with a movie that is lauded as the greatest silent picture ever made. We shall see.

October 11, 2009 10:48pm