She (1935, USA) – The Indiana Jones of the 1930′s. Fantastic effects and an intelligent story – and now available in a fine colorized version. This is better than the well-known fantasy movies of that time. Why haven’t I heard of it before? The only thing wrong with She is the title, and maybe that’s the answer.
Top Hat (1935, USA) – Enter Fred Astaire (somewhat younger than I’m used to), and Ginger Rogers, dance on air. Lovely farce. This is the old Hollywood I love. Also featuring a funny offensive Italian stereotype, (yay!)
The Call of the Wild (1935, USA) – I like how we know who’s the villain here: He’s the one who carries a portable bathtub when he’s prospecting in Alaska. That, and he’s mean to dogs and Clark Gable. Fine movie, though the ending feels like they just ran out of story. (Not Jack London’s story, though – they ran out of that after the title.)
The Thin Man (1934, USA) – Retired from police work to focus on his drinking, Nick Charles tries his best not to have to solve a series of murders, but that’s difficult when everybody insists on dropping clues in his lap. Works well as both comedy and crime. Favourite scene: A room full of drunken people singing christmas songs.
The Black Room (1935, USA) – Prophecies of doom, hidden rooms with terrible secrets, and Boris Karloff as the evil twin, the good twin, and the evil twin pretending to be the good twin. Unexpectedly unpredictable.
So you glocked on to Thin Man? And glommed to the fact that he’s almost permanently juiced? Can’t remember which Thin Man film it was where he wakes up in the middle of the night and makes himself a martini but have to suspect that even back in the Thirties there was product placement.
Yup, that was funny, I’ll check out the rest. I think there was a point in Hollywood when alcoholims stopped being considered funny, but that was much later.
I think the first Hollywood film to address the misery of alcoholism was The Lost Weekend, starring Ray Milland (1945). Then there was the 1962 film Days of Wine and Roses with Jack Lemmon and Lee Remick. Those are the only two I can recall whose themes were alcoholism and they sure weren’t comedies.ObBook: the Pursuit of Oblivion