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1935 - Demonic Macy's Parade
27 Plays2 years ago
Buckle up! This episode we are covering an infamous Nazi docu-ganda film, another iconic Frankenstein movie, a Rogers/Astaire tap dancing extravaganza, Marx Bros embracing their roles as birthday party clowns, Hitchcock leaning into comedy, and a swashbuckling pirate picture! Also, Micky Mouse in color, Porky Pig's first appearance, and a brief interlude about the Hays Code!
Article about the etymology of "Nazi"
You can watch along with our video version of the episode here on Youtube!
You can check out our Instagram, Twitter, and other social media crap here: http://linktr.ee/1w1y
And you can watch and form your own opinions from our 1935 Films Discussed playlist right here!
One Week, One Reel
The Band Concert
I Haven't Got a Hat
Our Feature Presentation
Triumph of the Will
Bride of Frankenstein
Top Hat
A Night at the Opera
The 39 Steps
Captain Blood
See you next year!
Recommended
Transcript
00:00:01
Speaker
I'm
Podcast Introduction & Hosts Background
00:00:02
Speaker
putting on the top hat, tying up my white tie, brushing off my tails. Hello and welcome to One Week One Year, a podcast where we watch and discuss every year of film history in order, starting in 1895, the dawn of cinema. And we've made it all the way up to 1935. That's this week. I am one of your hosts, Chris Elly. I'm a film projectionist and joining me as always is
00:00:31
Speaker
I'm Glenn Cobell. I'm a filmmaker. We're halfway through the 30s, baby. Yeah. We're what? This is the 40th year we've covered? Oh. Am I doing math correctly? Might be. I'm not a math guy. 1895 to 1935. I am so bad at math. That's really all that you could take away here.
Listener Engagement & Historical Context
00:00:50
Speaker
Yeah.
00:00:51
Speaker
Uh, well, so, um, yeah, we're a podcast about old movies. Uh, we listen, we, we watch them all. So you, so you don't know, you should also watch them because they're, well, some of them are good. Yeah. I mean, you know, we, uh, we watch a lot of movies and you definitely don't have to watch all of them because that would be, uh, crazy. But you don't have to do anything. You do whatever you want. Yes. Is what I say. But as long as it is legal and moral.
00:01:20
Speaker
Glenn, you do what I want and read the news now. Okay. Very good. The news of the year 1935. It's the best thing since bottled beer. The first canned beer sold. After stealing the concept from Lizzie Maggie and making a version with the opposite political message of the original, Parker Brothers begins selling the board game Monopoly.
00:01:45
Speaker
In violation of the Treaty of Versailles, Adolf Hitler rearms the German military and begins conscription to the Wehrmacht. Reza Shah renames Persia to Iran. 300,000 tons of dust-bowled topsoil are lifted into the air by a severe dust storm, Black Sunday. Japanese occupied Korea, Sun Myung Moon claims to be the next prophet after Jesus, and becomes the figurehead of the Mooney Christian sect.
00:02:10
Speaker
Joseph Stalin cuts the opening ribbons on the first subway line in the Soviet Union. As part of the New Deal fighting against the Great Depression, Franklin Delano Roosevelt signs the Social Security Act into law. Within ten days, new land and air speed records are set, at 301 and 352 miles per hour, respectively. The Nazis' evil plot move forward as they pass the Nuremberg Laws, which revoke Jewish citizenship.
00:02:36
Speaker
Berliner Regina Jonas becomes the first woman to be ordained as a rabbi. 20th Century Pictures and Fox Film Corporation merge into 20th Century Fox. For your consideration, the first advertisement for an Academy Award appears in trade magazines. And that is some of the news of 1935. Yeah. We cut out some of the darker stuff. As we do almost every time. Just
1935: A Year in Review
00:03:00
Speaker
like, ugh, too much of a bummer.
00:03:02
Speaker
Yeah, the person who was ordained as a rabbi in Berlin, not good things happened to her, actually. Well, we touch on that in the other news segments. Oh, just the Nazis?
00:03:16
Speaker
Yeah, and we're gonna talk more about them. Yeah, but first, we'll start with Nazis. We'll get the Nazis out of the way first, but let's do Mickey Mouse. We'll do a Mickey Mouse Nazis Frankenstein sandwich. A sentence that has never before been spoken. Break a new ground on one week, one year. Let's get into one week, one real.
00:03:45
Speaker
Yeah, do some shorts. More cartoons because those are kind of usually the most notable shorts that are happening. Yeah. And also I want to watch cartoons and I don't I don't want to watch cartoons. It feels very kind of classic old Hollywood to be like because I did a sort of like I'd watch a cartoon and then watch one of the movies and I didn't watch them both at once.
00:04:10
Speaker
I tried to pair them with different movies. Oh, what'd you pair them with? I don't remember. Well, let's start with Mickey Mouse, as we said, which is the band concert. It's the first Mickey Mouse cartoon that is in color. And not just any color, but three strip technical, three whole colors in this thing. Three whole strips, three whole colors. Yeah.
00:04:37
Speaker
And yeah, this is very bright and colorful and nice. We've seen earlier Disney three-strip joints with- The Talking Tree one. Yes. The Dancing Tree one. Flowers and Trees, the Disney short from a couple of years ago, that began an exclusive deal that they had to have access to three-strip Technicolor with animation.
00:05:03
Speaker
had only done it in their Silly Symphonies series originally, and this is the first Mickey Mouse. So we get to see those bright red shorts, the iconic bright red shorts that everybody's been talking about lately. Yeah. And are not yet in the public domain. They won't be until 2035.
00:05:23
Speaker
No, sooner than that. Yeah, sooner than that. Because it's a 95 year thing, right? Yeah. It's very vibrant.
Animation Discussion: Disney & Fleischer
00:05:30
Speaker
Like the colors in this are very striking, as I think most early technicolor things are. Yeah, it looks great. The restoration and new scan or whatever you would call it on Disney Plus looks beautiful. Yeah. 1935 was also the first, first, in quotes,
00:05:49
Speaker
three-strip Technicolor feature film but we did not watch it because it didn't seem that interesting other than that little factoid. Mickey Mouse is a conductor and Donald Duck tries to join the band and no one likes him so they have a fight and then there's a tornado.
00:06:07
Speaker
That's basically it. Yeah. Yeah. I didn't realize that this was in the great pantheon of conductor based humor in animation. Sort of more like Mickey Maestro. Oh, snubbed for the Golden Globe. Mickey Maestro. This is stacked here.
00:06:30
Speaker
We have Barbie, we have Oppenheimer. We have Barbie in the most outstanding achievement in the field of regular movie. In the field of making money? Yeah. What is this Barbie and Oppenheimer you speak of? We're in the year 1935, Glenn. Oppenheimer, isn't he that like Berkeley professor? All right, let's get back to the mouse. I have a friend named Barbara.
00:06:59
Speaker
Oh, Barbara and Oppenheimer go to Vista Del Mar. I'd watch that. Yeah, this is a la Tom from Tom and Jerry and Bugs from Bugs and Bunny. We have another Bugs and Bunny. That's that's that's his name, right? Bugs and Bunny. Yeah, the two characters, Bugs and Bunny.
00:07:22
Speaker
We have some conductor-based humor, which is basically like, you move the stick really fast because there's a bee in your way, and then everybody starts playing really fast.
00:07:33
Speaker
Melted ice cream in your jacket. That was good. That was a good joke. There was a yeah, that was a laugh out loud moment for me because I think Donald throws ice cream at Mickey and then it passes Mickey. It goes into somebody's like tuba and then the tuba player spits it back out of the tuba and it goes down Mickey Mouse's back. And it's this really good animation of him just being like, oh,
00:07:59
Speaker
at first I thought, is this the first Donald Duck appearance? It's not. But in like trying to read about early Donald Duck, it seems like a lot of early animated shorts kind of present the Donald Duck as almost like a foil to Mickey Mouse, like an antagonist almost, which he kind of is in this.
00:08:17
Speaker
Yeah. But I don't really understand why no one likes Donald, other than he has kind of a knowing voice. It's like he's very good at playing the flute. I don't know why everyone's just he's like, you're not part of the band. Get out of playing a different song than they're trying to play like over their song. And that's why Mickey's getting mad. I don't know. Maybe I'm yeah. Maybe I miss the point of the entire thing. But I was sort of like, let him in. He's good at it. Yeah. Let let off model Donald in. Yeah.
00:08:44
Speaker
thing I'd noticed about this is I feel like as animation is developing and getting more streamlined, it does feel like it's losing a little bit of that wacky cartoon reality from really early animation. From Steamboat Willie, where it's like anything is anything. Any object is also a person and can talk or
00:09:08
Speaker
Some of that, like, fluidity of reality, I feel like, is starting to go away a little bit. Maybe. I'd like to see how some Fleischer stuff from around now compares because, yeah, I think this Disney stuff is very smooth. It's less surreal. It's kind of finding its way into the Disney that we know. You know, we just saw Popeye and it seems like the Fleischer brothers are doing stuff that's a bit more
00:09:37
Speaker
a bit more zany right at least until they get to their rotoscoped superman era but i'm so excited i've seen some of those and they're so cool yeah there is some really impressive animation in this though in particular like
00:09:52
Speaker
I'm not an animator or an artist, but my understanding is that when you're doing 2D animation, making things rotate is one of the more difficult things to do. And the entire end of this is the band all spinning around in circles inside of a tornado that picks them up. Yeah. It looks it looks really nice.
00:10:15
Speaker
Cause I almost feel like I see more of that in this like early animation than in sort of like fifties cartoons, which is probably most of what I've seen is like fifties, sixties stuff. Like Disney and Wonder Brothers animation. And Hanna Barbera, which are known for their... Cheatness. Um, but it does kind of feel like a lot of these early, like
00:10:37
Speaker
Disney and Fleischer Brothers stuff is showing off a bit of like, look at what we can do, which is cool to see. This is an era of a lot of excess in terms of set design and scope of live action movies. And I think this is an era where the animation people are really just trying to push themselves to do really impressive stuff and go as hard as they can, basically.
00:11:03
Speaker
Yeah, there was a bit towards the end where the chairs they're sitting on start running. And that that made me happy. I was like, OK, there's still there's still some good silliness here of the chairs being alive. Yeah. Have we have we watched any Mickey Mouse since Steamboat Willie? I don't think so. And, you know, after Steamboat Willie, there was more or less like a Mickey fever. He was extremely popular. And I think this short that we're seeing, which is
00:11:30
Speaker
seven years later. We have missed seven years of Mickey Mouse, but he's already become somewhat of the more bland Mickey that we're used to. Right. He doesn't have quite that mean edge that he does in Steamboat Willie. Yeah. He still loves playing music though, just in he at least he's moved on from animals to actual instruments. So that's that's a nice change.
00:11:53
Speaker
So, so much of this early cartoon stuff is music based, right? It's all about the novelty of sound in many ways. And so it's like, look, we're going to play a song. We're going to conduct a song. We're going to sing a song. All that kind of thing. Yeah. Speaking of cartoon music. Yeah. We also watched a Warner Brothers short called I Haven't Got a Hat. This is the first Porky Pig appearance.
00:12:20
Speaker
Yes, this is Merry Melodies, I believe. Yes. Looney Tunes was black and white up until the 40s. But Merry Melodies was doing occasional color shorts. And this one is a two-strip Technicolor because Disney had exclusive license to three-strip. Those bastards. And so it's cool seeing this style in two-strip. Yeah. Yeah, it is.
00:12:50
Speaker
It's just that this did feel a little bit like the animation is maybe a little bit less like slick then The Disney one it's rougher certainly. Yeah, but still like very sort of like 1930s style of like rubber hose arms and that sort of thing the sort of very bare-bones plotted this one is there's a recital at the animal school and
00:13:18
Speaker
and Porky Pig, famously good at public speaking, has to recite a little speech. Yeah, this is kind of a not fully formed Porky here. Of course, he looks different than we're used to in his first short, but he also... his bit is just that he stutters and not that he stutters and then changes what he's saying. Right, which didn't...
00:13:48
Speaker
Am I thinking of something else or did that happen? That was in Broadway Melody, right. Yeah. That exact bit.
00:13:54
Speaker
Yes. It seems like maybe, you know, as with a lot of comedy things that seem to just exist in the air, maybe it's like a vaudeville type. It's almost definitely a vaudeville. That seems like such a vaudeville thing. Another funny thing about this is like Porky Pig is like, oh, Porky Pig, classic Warner Brothers character. But then there's a bunch of other anthropomorphic animals that I'm like, never heard of this guy. Oliver Owl, Beans the Cat.
00:14:19
Speaker
And like, what happened to all these people? I mean, around this era, Beans the Cat was their flagship guy. There you go. And I'd never heard of Beans the Cat. I do think it's funny that when they show Porky Pig sitting in class reading, he's reading Custer's Last Stand.
00:14:38
Speaker
It's a weird choice. I'm not really sure what the joke is there. Is that just a joke that it's like why would he be reading this or is that like some reference? I don't know. Overall, I think I actually found this one funnier than the Mickey Mouse one. Like the jokes were better. Yeah. There's a turtle playing his shell as drums, which is great. There's a very shy, I think,
00:15:06
Speaker
Cat or mouse he's trying to recite Mary had a little lamb and keeps looking over to the teacher to get hints and That leads to some really good good bits it's just yeah, I can't a dog you have a fight inside of a piano and it like that because they're fighting the piano starts playing a tune and it's like a better tune than the piano player was playing and
00:15:27
Speaker
That's Oliver Owl playing the piano. And Dean's put the non-anthropomorphic cat, the anthropomorphic cat picked up the non-anthropomorphic cat and put it inside of the piano to try and mess with Oliver Owl because they're rivals. But see then at the end,
00:15:48
Speaker
We're like, all right, the end of a Merry Melodies cartoon, Porky Pig's in here. And then a jester comes out and says, that's all folks. We get it, that's all folks, but it's not Porky. I mean, this is his first movie. He hadn't got the gig yet. I guess that comes later. You post the job of that jester. Yeah. I'm like, who is this jester now? The unsung jester of early Warner Brothers animation. Tomb of the unsung jester.
00:16:17
Speaker
as part of this petty rivalry between beans and Oliver Owl. So they end up like kind of throwing ink and paint on each other. And they are green ink and red paint, which are the only two bright colors that they can make really in this two strip world. It really emphasizes the two strip nature of it because like those are the two colors.
00:16:42
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's some good. It's some good gags. It's definitely more. It feels more amateurishly made than the Disney thing. The Disney thing is like polished. Yeah. Yeah. But at the same time, I yeah, I felt like kind of the the humor felt a little bit stronger in this one. Yeah. To me, this is not Mel Blanc playing porky.
00:17:06
Speaker
It's someone named Joe Daughtry, who they cast specifically because he had an actual stutter, and he had to stop playing Porky at some point because his stutter got unmanageable, and then he was recast with Melbeth. That's rough that it's like you're cast for your specific manner of speaking, and then they're like, never mind, it's too much.
00:17:34
Speaker
Yeah, I'm not sure exactly whether it was him or them that cut it off, but yeah. Yeah. Wow. But yeah, he's just doing his thing. I guess, God, he's just doing his thing instead of doing a bit the way that Mel Blanc does it. Yeah. Well, shall we get to our feature presentation? Let's get so excited. Let's get to our feature presentation. And now we're pleased to bring you our feature presentation.
00:18:05
Speaker
So we're jumping right in the deep end. Huh? Yeah, let's let's do it. Yeah, great. Let's let's let's jam with some some Nazi stuff over here. I mean, it's it's it's topical. It's timely. For I mean, for then, but I mean, it's kind of for now, too. This is trying for the will. Yeah, the famous the famous trying for the infamous.
00:18:33
Speaker
True. Propaganda slash documentary in quotes. Dacoganda. Yes. Dacoganda. I guess that is probably maybe the best word for it. Directed by Lenny Riefenstahl. Yeah. Who I think I mean she had directed movies before this but was mostly an actor.
00:18:54
Speaker
yeah previously i thought she'd also directed nazi movie like nazi propaganda movies before this as well but yeah she's big nazi lover certainly and you can see that on the screen oh how can you this is another one of those movies like birth of a nation that i've heard a lot of people say like
00:19:16
Speaker
It's horrible, but you have to, what it's doing is terrible, but you have to respect certain aspects of it.
00:19:26
Speaker
I will say, in comparison to The Birth of a Nation, which I thought is very notable for the effect it had on culture, but as a movie, and from its type of perspective, it wasn't that far off from other D.W. Griffith movies that he'd already made, or made around the same time. Yeah, it's a more excruciating D.W. Griffith movie than usual. Right, it's just more hateful than the rest of his movies.
00:19:53
Speaker
But this at least, this does have a sort of real kind of like technical, I don't know, panache to it. Like
Triumph of the Will: Art vs. Propaganda
00:20:01
Speaker
this is a well-made piece of propaganda. Yeah. Yeah. You know, I think I took in the 1915 episode, I took delight in knocking down Birth of a Nation as an actually bad movie. Not so good. This movie. This movie is not.
00:20:22
Speaker
It's not a bad movie. And like the shots are, well, yeah. It's a little long winded. I'll say that. You can kind of tune a lot of it out. The things that people say, you hate it, but you got to respect it for birth of a nation. That's like you don't actually have to respect it. Like it didn't actually do that stuff. That history says that it did. Other than the sort of like cultural impact that it had, which is real.
00:20:49
Speaker
all but also makes it worse like yeah it was a very negative cultural impact this movie i think the reasons why people bring it up as worth looking at influential as a valuable an important piece of cinema right they are i think they head they're onto something a bit more with this movie yeah it feels a bit more valid kind of
00:21:13
Speaker
Of course, it is still a Nazi film, and I think also a lot of what people take away from this movie is less the filmmaking and more the blocking of the parade, basically.
00:21:29
Speaker
Yeah, it's a movie that does a very good job of capturing very good architecture and blocking. It looks really good. Like it's it's very well shot and it's very well edited for the most part. I think it again, I think it is too long and is very like redundant at times where it's like we get it. It's a parade. I get a lot of Nazis marching like I don't need to see a thousand more marching shots.
00:21:58
Speaker
Yeah. But in terms of like, here's like a great shot of like big old flags. Great shot of flags. Yeah. Like I'll give you that much. But that's the thing, right? It's like these are giant flags specifically, you know, they made big flags and the big flags are impressive. And then they just shot them. Right. Right. I watched Dan Olson's video on on Triumph of the Will.
00:22:25
Speaker
Oh, I have not. Breaking down the editing and everything like that. And he said that he says it's less of a triumph of filmmaking and more of budget and scale.
00:22:38
Speaker
Right. Where this is a movie that was commissioned by the Nazis to make themselves look cool. And they spent hideous amounts of money on it to make themselves look really cool. So there are this movie is full of shots of enormous crowds of Nazi lovers. They love their crowd size obsessed with it. And it's trying to show, you know, how much support they have.
00:23:08
Speaker
Right, because they're only just seizing power now. And there's probably a lot of people who are not feeling so good about the Nazis. Yeah. So ostensibly, this movie is documenting a four day rally, basically in Nuremberg, which seems like a bunch of speeches and a bunch of parades. I think they call it Party Day, which is rich. Not that kind of party.
00:23:37
Speaker
It's I think it's like the party because that's that's what Nazis actually called themselves Nazi is inherently kind of a mocking and derogatory term
00:23:48
Speaker
Did you know about this? Maybe? Sounds kind of familiar? I read up on it again after watching this because I wanted to like fact check myself on that kind of. There is a Twitter thread and later a sub-stack article by an author, Rebecca Mackay, I hope I'm saying her name correctly, about how the word Nazi began as like an insult.
00:24:13
Speaker
against them. Like it was in Germany, it was kind of shortened nickname for Ignatz. And then that name was sort of like used as an insult for like calling someone like a country bumpkin or like a red, like the German equivalent of like a redneck. It's like calling someone Cletus.
00:24:36
Speaker
Crazy and Ignaz the comic strip characters. Yeah. That's the example that this article uses. It's like it's as if there was a political party that everyone called Cletuses in the United States. And that's just what everyone calls them now. Even like neo-Nazis call themselves that. And it's like, but it started as this like, you dumb idiots.
00:25:05
Speaker
Which I think is very funny that that's just what the word everyone uses now is this like kind of mean nickname. I mean, isn't that kind of just like the thing that they do, though? Fascists and Nazis in particular, they take other people's imagery and then claim it as their own. True. swastika. Great example. Yeah. The fascist way is to make it seem like all culture is about them. Yeah. Yeah.
00:25:33
Speaker
I think it's kind of interesting to go back to 1930s and 40s things and see how it's like. They don't call themselves Nazis. That's just what we do now. There's no real narrative to this. It's mostly just like, here's a bunch of speeches, here's a bunch of more flags.
00:25:54
Speaker
More, more parades. Yeah, it's it's showing a grueling four days of Nazis. Hang it, not even hanging out like Nazis standing in very ordered rows listening to Hitler give us very orderly rows.
00:26:11
Speaker
It does have this sort of obsession with orderliness, which maybe extends to the Nazis in general. It's showing them as imposing and having discipline and all this kind of stuff, where you've seen these shots of
00:26:27
Speaker
either soldiers or even just regular people all standing in like perfect rows, perfect distances from each other. And you're in the camera, you're seeing 40,000 people doing this, right? And I was thinking like, what if one of them has to go to the bathroom? You know, like they don't get you. No, they're Nazis. They don't they don't get to use the bathroom whenever. No hall pass for Nazis. Yeah. There is this kind of like
00:26:58
Speaker
The movie opens with Hitler flying in and the plane landing and the crowd going wild and him on a motorcade through Nuremberg. And there is this really playing up the celebrity of it.
00:27:13
Speaker
Which is, I don't know, it's odd to see, I'm just like, here's the worst person who ever lived. And kind of like the presumably genuine sort of like celebrity that he held in at least parts of Germany in 1934.
00:27:34
Speaker
It's like it's because the imagery is so celebratory and yet it's celebrating this thing that it's like I have to have such a like visceral gut reaction to it. Like, no, this is bad. It's weird. Well, the movie to see the movie does a lot to make it seem like the Nazis are
00:27:57
Speaker
not what they are right it's it's only very infrequently when they even mention race in this movie but when they mention it it's mentioned in a very pointed way yeah yeah but like i think this movie is trying to like sanitize nazis a little yes it does feel that way
00:28:20
Speaker
It's trying to present them as non-threatening. They're in a lot of the Hitler speeches in it. He talks about how they don't want war, they want peace. Right. I believe he says the guarantor of peace, to which I say my ass.
00:28:39
Speaker
Hitler. So, you know, along the lines of it being propaganda, it is lying to you actively. Yes. Not even just in its glorification of Nazis, but even in its portrayal of what a Nazi is. Yeah, there is, I believe, only two mentions of sort of race in the whole thing, but they are both in a very kind of like
00:29:05
Speaker
we gotta keep it pure kind of thing. Like it's mentioned in a very Nazi-ish way. And then throughout the whole thing, there's like lots of just like lovingly composed shots of blonde people. Little baby Nazis, there's a baby that hides it. So many kids in this, which is also like upsetting for many reasons. One just of the whole way that like Nazis were very like,
00:29:31
Speaker
focused on indoctrinating children and like they were very like children of the future kind of But in a in the worst possible way, right? I mean there's a whole section that shows the the hitler youth and it it almost evokes kino eye in a way as like here are the young people who are very Very on board for what the government is doing. There's there's a definite kind of like Soviet
00:29:58
Speaker
film school influence on this I think. But yeah just like watching all the the footage of like I don't know like 12 year old kids in this it's like how many of these kids died in World War II? That was 10 years after this. Like as soldiers. Right like they were all they all like got on board like hey there's a parade let's go join up.
00:30:20
Speaker
Yeah. And then it's like, and then they all, you know, froze to death in Russia. I mean, I'm less concerned about them than the people. Not true. Like, absolutely. But it is. It's like there's kind of this weird thing where you see all these kind of like, you know, fresh faced kids who are just kind of like. Yeah, obviously, I'm not. I don't have their being indoctrinated sympathy for them as the kids who were just murdered. But it is. Yeah, there's something kind of upsetting about that also.
00:30:48
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. You were speaking earlier about how they treat him like a celebrity. And to me, it almost seemed like they were treating him like a king. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Like I can't like I can't believe like his grace has touched me or I can I can see him or whatever. And like I think it may be
00:31:11
Speaker
While I was watching this movie a lot of what I was thinking about was like what is going on in the minds of these average Nazis who like these average Germans who are like, oh my god I like I'm so ready to welcome Hitler to my to my town and I'm so excited to see Hitler What like what what's the appeal to them? You know, right which is I mean I can
00:31:37
Speaker
I can relate that feeling to watching certain political rallies that are happening this year.
00:31:44
Speaker
in the year 2024. I've like, I don't get what the appeal is. Like why do you, why listen to this wind bag? There's a whole section in Triumph of the Will about where it's like he's speaking to the kind of like the farming communities and like the laborers and he's like, ah, the workers, we love you. You're gonna make this a great nation. And I'm like, why are the blue collar laborers like,
00:32:14
Speaker
into this. He's such a kind of antithetical to what you think their values would be. But hey, their flags are real big.
00:32:29
Speaker
I mean, they called themselves National Socialists because you could not... National Socialist Workers. Yeah. That's part of the name. Yeah. Because, like, you couldn't be elected in Germany. It was what I heard. What I understand is that, like, you couldn't be elected in Germany unless you signaled that you were socialist in some way.
00:32:46
Speaker
Right. And so they just lied. They just called themselves something that they weren't yet to get the support of farmers and whoever else. I think it's like they use the word national to appeal to like right wing and then socialist to appeal to left wing. And we're just like, let's let's just get everybody on board. A big tent party. Yeah. Very few tents. No shade in this movie. There's an indoor hall where there's a lot of people watching this, watching a speech.
00:33:15
Speaker
A lot of speeches in this movie, which I'm going to be honest, I kind of tuned out. A lot of them. Like I tried to pay attention because I wanted to engage with this as an actual like piece of filmmaking. Yeah. But at the same time, it's like on the like fifth Hitler speech, I'm like, I get it. Like he's he's talking his normal bullshit. I almost am just I'm used to just tuning out his voice whenever I hear it kind of.
00:33:40
Speaker
The same goes for all the other like Nazi leaders. They're all super sweaty. They all look. It's like every leader in this movie he gives a speech looks like he's about to have a heart attack. Yeah, there there are times in this movie I definitely lost focus of like watching it just because I'm like, all right, I I get it.
00:33:59
Speaker
I get it Lenny, you didn't need to use all the footage that you shot. There was a point I was gonna make earlier about camera stuff and the sort of the grandiosity of this movie and like how the speeches are being filmed and like the crowds and all these things and like how much of it is... there's a lot more long lens stuff in this movie than
00:34:23
Speaker
a lot of other movies for when the same time are doing, probably partially because it is a semi-documentary, right? Like it's filming actual events occurring. And so having a long lens makes that easier to do. But then I think the movie is using that in a way to sort of create this sense of like grandeur or drama to it of like the shot that like Michael Bay is kind of famous for of like long lens
00:34:50
Speaker
uh moving around the subject really low angle like looking up at them and so like the background is moving around like really fast and there's this like it just it creates this sense of like oh this feels enormous
00:35:04
Speaker
And that technique is not to the dramatic degree that Michael Bay uses it, but it's like that same sort of thing of like keeping the camera low whenever possible, shooting stuff in the longer lens and like doing enough camera movement to kind of give a sense of like parallax. And it kind of gives it even greater scale because you're seeing everything kind of in relation to each other a bit more.
00:35:28
Speaker
Well, yeah, the camera's always looking up at Hitler. He's either even when it's close to him, it's looking up at him and then a lot of the time he's on top of a really tall platform and it's looking up at him there. It's all of this stuff to make him seem grand, king-like, god-like, right? Like apart from the ways that
00:35:49
Speaker
I think the kind of cinematic legacy that this movie has is mostly to do with the way that the crowd shots are composed and how people have taken that like taken rift on that basically and Star Wars or other stuff. So much Star Wars in this. Yeah.
00:36:09
Speaker
I'm just, yeah, just like framing. I'm just like, I have seen this in Star Wars, like this exact shot. You know, I think Star Wars just suffers the typical kind of film school way of looking at this movie, which is apolitically because Lucas used what he uses the framing for both at least in the first movie for both the rebellion and the empire kind of like the whole medal ceremony at the end of Star Wars is like
00:36:38
Speaker
not shot for shot from this movie but is like very very it seems like an almost one-to-one kind of reference point for like how it's framed um which is a weird choice for star wars because star wars is kind of such an uh otherwise like right otherwise like very anti-fascist story but then like all other star wars movies are also definitely taking
00:37:02
Speaker
a lot of Imperial March stuff. Even the opening music in this movie, I'm like, this sounds like the Imperial March from Star Wars. And I'm sure that that's not an accident. That seems like a very natural reference point for John Williams to be like, sure, I'll take that. Yeah, I mean, speaking of the beginning of this movie, the other kind of filmic thing that I think is talked about
00:37:30
Speaker
The most with this is the beginning of the movie, which is from the point of view of the plane carrying Hitler down from down from the cloud from down from the serene clouds.
00:37:45
Speaker
Yeah, it starts with this very kind of, I don't know, very kind of relaxed, serene, placid, just like, let's look at clouds for a minute and a half, right? But it's this almost like, look at the realm of the gods, of the Valkyries or something like that, and then watch the great Hitler like come down from the clouds to you, right? Yeah.
00:38:11
Speaker
So it's doing all of this stuff with the angles and like and that scene of just making him seem like a god. You know, we're talking about the way that it's used a politically. And there are a lot of aspects of this movie that like we're talking about, like they're hiding what they're doing and truly saying. And a lot of it is
00:38:31
Speaker
sort of apolitical. He does kind of try to retcon the Night of Long Knives in one of the speeches, where he's talking to the current leader of the sort of sub-organization of Nazis that he had killed. And he's like, why? I don't disagree with them. We're friends now. Look, we're both up here on stage. It's all great. And I'm like, is it?
00:38:58
Speaker
like you just had a bunch of those dudes murdered so when i was paying attention to the speeches there was definitely like there's points where he hitler tries to kind of like frame himself as an underdog and i'm like fuck off get out of here
00:39:15
Speaker
Yeah, there is like definitely with the benefit of historical hindsight, you can see the scenes of like where they're kind of talking around certain things and like trying to like take emphasis away from certain things and put it onto like, no, this is about like German culture and heritage. And I'm just like, no, it isn't.
00:39:37
Speaker
It might have been less clear at the time. Right. And that's like, again, it's like I see a lot of that in contemporary America and it's like you'd think that people would have learned, but I guess not. People don't learn their lessons. No. The points where I was
00:39:58
Speaker
most you know you were falling asleep during the speeches but i think i was kind of getting lulled into a into a kind of chill sense during the marching because it's just more on and on and on marching right this movie is
00:40:14
Speaker
really only like 20 or 30% speeches and the rest of it is just giant crowds and marching people, right? And there are points where you can just go like, oh, that's a pretty shot. That's nice. Like that's, wow, that's impressive. And then you see like 50,000 people say, Sig Heil. And you're like, Jesus Christ.
00:40:36
Speaker
Yeah, there's like a really lovely like composed frame of early on of like window shutters being opened and like a nice potted plant in a windowsill and just two little Nazi flags stuck in the plant. And I'm like, this is such like a pretty shot of like a nice plant in a window. But it's like,
00:40:56
Speaker
being used in this way of like aren't aren't nazis grand and i'm like oh it's like i feel like that was my biggest takeaway is like kind of how pretty this movie is like it's like it's how it's framed and how it's lit and shot and all that stuff versus what it's actually filming is this thing that i find like deeply awful
00:41:17
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, like a lot of the beginning of the movie is it seems to be I'm not sure if it's technically Bavarian, but it seems like this this town, this Bavarian architecture in this town. And so a lot of the beginning of the movie is focusing on this like classic German architecture, trying to like create a link between German heritage and the Nazis. It does feel like a lot of
00:41:45
Speaker
pretty buildings you know a lot of the like that the editing is sort of like trying to create associations right between things like that of like we're gonna show something like a bunch of like old classic German architecture and like people in like traditional like German folk clothing and things like that and then like hard cut to those people like dancing with Nazi soldiers or like next to them or something like like to create this like association in someone's brain that like these are the same
00:42:15
Speaker
And it's, yeah, it's upsetting to see now. Yeah.
00:42:20
Speaker
Post-World War II, Lenny Riefenstahl tried to defend this movie as, like, it's purely a documentary, like, there's no political agenda. I was just trying to document what was happening at the time. Which, first of all, whenever someone says, like, this isn't political, I call bullshit because every piece of art is inherently political. Yeah. Doesn't matter if you're trying, if you're not trying to, it doesn't change it, like, that everything carries a certain political weight to it, despite
00:42:48
Speaker
Intention but even her defense doesn't hold up at all because one Hitler paid for this movie You can't say that it's like there's no agenda behind it because it's like the Nazis paid for it and then also like Lenny Riefenstahl was an active participant at all like at the rally, so it wasn't like She wasn't like some German filmmaker just happened to like I'm gonna bring a camera along and document this thing is happening and
00:43:15
Speaker
And she's been on board this whole time, right? In the Dan Olson video, he talks about the previous propaganda documentary that Lenny Riefenstahl made for the Nazis, which they did their best to scrub from existence because it portrayed them
00:43:38
Speaker
as being friends with the people they had assassinated during the night flight. Right, like that has a bunch of the people that got assassinated, right? Yeah, apparently, yeah, I haven't seen it. Yeah, and neither did I, but I also saw that, that it's like, in like a few months after that movie was released, like half the people in that movie were killed.
00:44:01
Speaker
And so, like, you know, she's continuing to participate. She's involved. Like, like, yeah, that's ridiculous. Something good to come out of this movie, I guess. Or a thing that I enjoy that came out of this movie, besides Star Wars, that is somewhat more positive.
00:44:18
Speaker
is in 1942 there was a movie tone newsreel editor named Charles Ridley took footage from Triumph of the Will and recut it with a German cover of a song called the Lambeth Walk which is from a musical and it's like this incredibly like cockney show tune thing
00:44:42
Speaker
And there was like a whole dance craze in the late 30s, which is why a German cover of it even existed. Was the dance craze goose stepping? No, but apparent unsubstantiated, it's possible slash likely that the Nazis hated the music. But so this newsreel editor in England
00:45:06
Speaker
took footage from this movie and recut it to that song as an anti-Nazi propaganda film. It's very silly because it's a bunch of goose-stepping but it's been re-edited to time with the music.
00:45:22
Speaker
That's very YouTube era. That's the thing is it's like a really early example of like a remix slash like shitpost. It's yeah, it's like the auto tune the news of 1942. That's what it feels like. And that will put will throw that up in the video version of this.
00:45:42
Speaker
Well, yeah, probably without audio. But we'll link it in like the show notes, which is like it's it's such a weird cultural artifact of because it the way that it's edited feels very contemporary. That's crazy. Well, yeah.
00:45:59
Speaker
Speaking of video of this, it is probably a good thing that it's not super easy to get your hands on this movie. It exists, but it's not like people are just advertising like, hey, buy our copy of Triumph of the Will. I mean, it's on DVD. Get it from the library, right? But the main people who are releasing it on Blu-ray and DVD are Synapse, which is
00:46:28
Speaker
an exploitation movie company, which is like I get that, you know, Kino has a release of Birth of a Nation, right? And it puts it in its context. And I'm sure there are a lot of racists who buy that Blu-ray, but like they're doing their best to avoid. Right. They're not marketing it to them. Yeah. Yeah. And like this movie is being sold next to Frank and Hooker. It's just like kind of a weird
00:46:57
Speaker
Yeah, it's a position. You know, it doesn't really feel like the right context for it. A lot of the places also that I'd seen this movie uploaded on the Internet a lot. Some of the comments are thank you for uploading this. This is a fascinating history. You know, oh, the Nazis were horrible or whatever. And then like one out of every 10 is they were right. Thank you for doing this and uploading this like this wonderful film. You know, it's like God.
00:47:26
Speaker
I mean, it's the it's the Internet. But it's like it's like how do you deal with media this way like this? Right. Yeah. And that's that's a good but also very big question. Yeah. Because like it definitely should be preserved. And I think it should be like people should see it. I mean, this is the second time I've seen this movie. I saw it when I was like.
00:47:50
Speaker
I don't know, 12 or 13 maybe? You thought when you were 12? Maybe it was like 14, 15, I don't know. But I saw it when I was like an adolescent because my mom was like, no, like you need to see this shit, kind of. Like it's, it was as part of my like history education, which I think it serves an important purpose in that because then also when I see like,
00:48:18
Speaker
certain right-wing political rallies that are like probably actively trying to ape this movie. I'm like, I see what you're doing. I mean, you know, say what you will about the Nazis, though, but they they are much more dedicated to aesthetics than modern day conservatives are. Like modern day conservatives have look like dog shit. Right. Right. Like like conservatives have very bad taste.
00:48:45
Speaker
in art, right? And so the stuff that they make looks like shit. And something that's interesting about this is that the right-wing people of 30s Germany had good aesthetic senses in some ways, you know? And so they were able to make probably more effective
00:49:07
Speaker
propaganda and more beautiful movies and not like, I don't know, the Christmas carol that has like somebody goofing around playing Michael, Mike, what's his name? Michael Moore and has Kelsey Grammer and all these other conservative John Voight and all these other people in it. And like conservatives these days, they make movies that look like garbage because they are garbage. And I'm wondering how much like
00:49:37
Speaker
Definitely a lot of the boom of good filmmaking that came out of Weimar Germany was mostly spearheaded by very left-wing intellectuals. Who left. Yeah, they were all Jewish and or gay, and they all left. But I'm curious how much of that very fertile
00:50:00
Speaker
space for artistic expression, kind of at least let someone like Lenny Riefenstahl kind of like learn better craft. Yeah, maybe. I don't know. I wrote a few adjectives here while I was watching it, like showing the kind of like, I don't know, two sides of this movie, just captivating, boring, elegant, horrifying, imposing and bland.
00:50:27
Speaker
Yeah, it is a film full of contradiction in that way for sure. Speaking of, oh boy, how to transition now. Do we need a segue? We could segue into something else that is dealing with sort of horror.
00:50:48
Speaker
okay yeah i don't know mostly because i don't know where else to place this other movie also because spoilers i think this was my favorite movie that we watched for this year not not the hitler one the one that we're about to talk about bride of frankenstein
00:51:06
Speaker
What a long wind up. Yes, it's hard to transition out of out of the Nazi movie into this, which is a pretty silly movie. Yes, but also like a lot of things. Well, we'll get into it. So, yeah, this is James Wales' reluctant return to Frankenstein. But oh, boy, what a what a picture this is. Mm hmm.
00:51:31
Speaker
This was a movie that I think I had... I had never seen it before watching it for this show, and it was always one of those things that it was like, oh, Bride of Frankenstein is like a masterpiece. Like, you gotta check it out. Like, it's way better than the original one. Yada, yada, yada. And I'm like, really? Like, I don't know. I've seen, like, the clips of it and things, and it seems kind of silly.
00:51:55
Speaker
And I was like, all right, whatever, like, sure, I'll check it out. And it was always the sort of thing where I was like, oh, that movie is like so good. And I'm like, we'll see. And then I watched it and I was like, no, this is, they were correct. This movie is great. This is maybe, it's unclear to me like how much of this movie was made with the production code in mind.
00:52:22
Speaker
There was a quote from James Whale being kind of like warned about all of the deaths in it. There were originally 21 deaths in the movie and they were cut down to 10.
00:52:37
Speaker
because James Whale said kill them all and let Breen sort it out. Breen being the guy who is enforcing the production code. So it's like I don't know how much of this movie was made with the code in mind, but it is much lighter of a film than the original Frankenstein. Like I think it's overwhelmingly campy and silly, right? Well, that brings up the question of like, can camp be intentional or does that ruin it?
00:53:07
Speaker
I don't think this movie is necessarily intentionally silly, but I do think you think so. I think it's intentionally like sort of melodramatic, I would say.
00:53:20
Speaker
and sort of like operatic maybe in a sense, whereas like it's very, I think it's leaning even more into kind of like expressionism and kind of like that kind of filmmaking than the first Frankenstein movie.
00:53:42
Speaker
Yeah, it definitely it has more of a control of imagery than the first Frankenstein movie. More more thoughtfully put together, I think. But I also think this movie is like weirdly kind of a better adaptation of the book Frankenstein than the first movie. Like a lot of a lot of the big kind of the big scenes in this movie are taken from and the entire concept of this movie is taken from the book.
00:54:10
Speaker
And it also has Mary Shelley herself in the movie, talking about Frankenstein. Should we just start at the beginning and kind of hit the beats? What better place to start than the beginning? I do think it's funny right at the start of this movie, it does the opening, you know, the cast credits and Boris Karloff is just credited as Karloff. Like he's reached such heights of fame that he's like, he's a single name person now, he's just Karloff.
00:54:38
Speaker
That's the one I need to put. And in the opening credits, it also does the same bit as they did in the original Frankenstein, where it said the monster is played by question mark. But then it also doesn't give it away. But then it's like because also Lancaster, Lancaster, Lancaster.
00:54:58
Speaker
What's the sure? Yeah. Also plays Mary Shelley. And she is credited in the opening credits as Mary Shelley. So then it's like, oh, well, right in this movie, it does like what says like something like the monster's bride. And then, yeah, dot, dot, dot question mark, which is it's a good bit. It's good. Yeah.
00:55:19
Speaker
But yeah, the movie opens on this great miniature shot of a castle. It feels very Batman Returns. And there's a little framing device of Mary and Percy Shelley in a castle during a thunderstorm talking to Byron.
00:55:34
Speaker
And then Byron has this sort of speech where he's like, oh, that book that you wrote, Frankenstein. So good. Kind of almost just like remind the audience like, hey, remember Frankenstein? Pretty great movie, huh? Then they're like, they're showing clips of the first movie.
00:55:50
Speaker
Which is extra funny because it's like... Last time on Frankenstein. Right. But Byron is recapping the movie version, which is like almost completely different from the book. So he's like, hey, remember that book that you wrote where like there was a big windmill that caught on fire? I was like, that doesn't happen in the book, dude.
00:56:06
Speaker
See, I haven't read the book, but this whole framing device of Mary Shelley talking about she's like, yes, but I had some other stuff that I wanted to say about Frankenstein, you know, and then justifying its own existence by inserting a fake Mary Shelley to say I wrote this. But it felt very like very just.
00:56:28
Speaker
truck like yeah, this is kind of like a naked trying to Justify its own existence, right? I'm just like look we know that like we did this like movie had a full ending But like just go with us here. Yeah, but yeah again like there's there's more Mary Shelley stuff in this Movie than the first ringenstein movie
00:56:48
Speaker
I think. I don't remember Mary Shelley in the first frame. No, but I mean just in terms of stuff that she wrote. Oh, I see. Okay. Almost right away we get Una O'Connor, who was the loud old lady from The Invisible Man. Doing the same bit here. Same bit. James Whale loves Una O'Connor and will just... On one hand, I kind of get it because it's like...
00:57:13
Speaker
Sure, but she's doing a lot, and I think this is part of what you're saying about, like, this movie almost immediately feels a lot sillier. Yeah. He wrote this part specifically for her, is what I heard. But it's like, I feel like everyone else is doing this sort of, like, more kind of controlled, like, ah, drama. This is very serious. And Uno O'Connor is playing this like it is a Monty Python sketch.
00:57:35
Speaker
is like playing it so big and so silly. Which isn't bad, but it doesn't feel like it's connected with the rest of the movie so much. There was a special feature on the Blu-ray of the original Frankenstein that had an interview with...
00:57:56
Speaker
Magneto, I don't know. Oh, Ian McKellen? Yes, Ian McKellen. I had an interview with Ian McKellen where... Magneto. Gandalf was there talking about the movie.
00:58:08
Speaker
Yeah. And then he was talking about because he played James Whale in the biopic Gods of Monsters, which is named after a line from this movie. Yeah. And he was referring to some of the work that James Whale did as camp. Right. He was thinking like James, you know, this.
00:58:26
Speaker
Ian McKellen is a gay man who was playing James Whale, who was a gay man in the 30s, right? And this feels very proto-camp, very proto-intentional 60s and 70s
00:58:42
Speaker
gay, like, silliness, you know? But at the same time, I also got that from it, but at the same time, it doesn't feel as kind of, like, intentionally silly, I guess, as what I think of as Camp tends to be. It's an older version, but it's like, this is a lighter movie. It's a lighter movie and less serious movie, I think, than the original Frankenstein. And, like,
00:59:11
Speaker
I mean, I think we're going to get to the scene later, but there's a part where like Frank, whether the monster is smoking a cigar and he goes, smoke good. Yes, it's like hilarious. It is very funny and very silly. It's true. There's a bunch of kind of weird like retconning of the first movie or like recasting a lot of actors like the the dad of the girl who gets drowned in the first movie.
00:59:39
Speaker
is named Ludwig in in that one and is renamed Hans in this movie and played by a different actor who is just playing a different character basically like no doesn't look the same not playing a similar personality type or anything and he like almost immediately gets murdered by the monster in a he falls into a wet cave thankfully there was a wet cave beneath the the burning windmill so
01:00:07
Speaker
the monster was able to escape. And someone yells, it's alive, because they were like, we know the line that you liked for the first one. It's it's very like Terminator 2. I'll be back kind of like that. That thing you like from the first movie, it's back. Very sequel. It is very sequel. Yeah, it's true. Also, Elizabeth Frankenstein is recast. She was played a May Clark in the 31 movie and is played by Valerie Hobson in this movie.
01:00:37
Speaker
One of the things that struck me about this movie right away like in the first couple scenes is the production design of it is
01:00:44
Speaker
gobsmackingly gorgeous. Yeah. More adventurous camera as well. Yeah. Yeah. Lots of like dolly moves, a lot of like a lot more kind of like camera movement and just like really great lighting and sort of like set design stuff like really lean into the like the really heightened like gothic stuff. There was definitely a fair bit of that in the 31 Frankenstein movie also, but it feels like it's kind of
01:01:11
Speaker
kicked up a notch here the sound movies looked like shittier back then right yeah and and i think they're they have in the years since figured out how to make the sound movies start looking as good as a as a silent movie yeah yeah there's the this movie kind of it feels like it has some of that kind of like silent grandeur
01:01:33
Speaker
that was missing in a lot of the early talkies. Pretty early on we're introduced to a new character, Dr. Pretorius, which is a hell of a name, who is Dr. Frankenstein's old professor, mentor,
01:01:50
Speaker
Yeah, who kind of like got him inspired to start in the dark arts. Right. And I feel like bodies pretty quickly. The movie is establishing like you thought Frankenstein was crazy. Check out this guy. He's even crazier.
01:02:05
Speaker
Well, right. Like I thought it was interesting how this movie starts with Frankenstein just being like at the end of the original Frankenstein movie, he realizes I have done something bad. This was not good. I should not do this anymore. He has a sort of redemption arc.
01:02:23
Speaker
And the movie keeps that, right? Where he resists the call to action. Where because Dr. Pretorius comes in, he's like, hey, you made a monster. Let's make another monster together. Yeah. And he and he spends a lot of time resisting Dr. Pretorius for all of the reasons that you have seen in the first movie until he's like kind of threatened into it.
01:02:47
Speaker
I think there was a really interesting thing in that where it's like he's resisting it and he's saying like, no, no, no, I can't. I can't. Like, that's bad. No more monsters. But you can kind of see behind his eyes. He's like, I do really love making monsters so much, though. Like, you like you can see how tempting it is. He's like, I love science. When Dr. Pretorius reveals his menagerie of Lilliputian people, he's like miniature people that he's grown from eggs.
01:03:16
Speaker
in little glass jars. Oh no, he said he grew them from seed. I mean, that's, I took that as, you know, he like had a little petri dish with like, you know, genetic material in it and grew them.
01:03:30
Speaker
yeah like this yes think about it there's there's a lot of talk about seed in this in this movie for sure this movie he was like and i don't and i don't think that it's unintentional i don't i don't think so either like it's very ridiculous like he's saying like you you know you made your monster out of bodies that already existed and i grew mine from seed and i'm like ew
01:04:01
Speaker
I mean, that's how all people get made. I guess that's true. But Dr. Pretorius can't seem to get past the three inch margin. All his people are like the size of action figures for some reason. And he's like, I haven't cracked it. I can't make them big yet. Yeah. And they have little high pitched voices and they're a little they're a little scamps inside of their glass jars. This scene is like one of the most amazing visual effects scenes.
01:04:29
Speaker
of any movie up until this point. It is so good. This is the same VFX guy from Invisible Man. Yeah, it looks really good. It's a combination of rotoscoping and black velvet background, quote unquote, green screen and double exposure. Right, but it's so well done.
01:04:52
Speaker
Nary a matte line to be seen. There's like reflections on the table of the glass jar. But then there's also reflections on the glass jar in front of the people in them. So it's like they've been. You can see Dr. Pretorius like morphing like through the back of the glass. Yeah. So it's the same people are in. They used a combination of full size jars to keep the full size actors in and then mixed them with the tiny jars on the set.
01:05:22
Speaker
the best visual effects are always a combination of like multiple things between every shot so you can't quite pin down how they're doing it i think i don't know if you watch the the corridor crew youtube channel yeah occasionally they just uploaded steamboat willy unedited oh really of course that's a bit i i assume but they they talked about the scene on one of their videos and they're always the people who like going in like into a pixel like oh that pixel's like the wrong shade of green like i know how this was done and this they're like i
01:05:52
Speaker
who knows like it's so because it's all also because it's all like optical effects you know it's like yeah if once you know after effects and like you know blender and things like once you understand how like computer generated effects work I think it's kind of easier to find the seams in those
01:06:09
Speaker
Whereas optical things are usually it's like such a weird combination of like we used a mirror here and then this is for perspective and that's a matte and that's a multiple exposure and we combined them all together. But there's there's so little here that is like, oh, I see where it's like that, like a different camera plate that they like cut out. It's all very seamless and very polished.
01:06:34
Speaker
There are a couple parts where you can see like slightly rough rotoscoping around the little people. But for the most part, it looks really good. Yeah. Like if this movie was released in like 1965, I would still be like, that's good effects. Yeah. Yeah.
01:06:48
Speaker
He makes his little people and talks about ushering in a new age of gods and monsters, which is where the line comes from. That's what Russell Crowe says in the Dark Universe mummy movie.
01:07:04
Speaker
Oh man. Which I don't understand why they didn't make Van Helsing the like Nick Fury character in that. We don't need to talk about the 2015 Mami movie for that long. Again? I'm gonna keep bringing it up. The Dark Universe is a very good punchline. It is. Also, I find that movie kind of fascinating for how terrible it is. But so Dr. Perturius is
01:07:27
Speaker
sort of mad scheme is that he wants to create like a whole, whole race of like man-made people. Dr. Frankenstein is not, he's like, I think that's probably a bad idea. C, exhibit A. Yeah. And Dr. Pretorius is like, you made, you made a man, I think we should make a woman and then see what happens. And I'm like, Pretorius is kind of a perv, huh?
01:07:52
Speaker
But so there's that plot that's happening of like, Praetorius and Frankenstein are sort of having their philosophical debates over
01:08:01
Speaker
the nature of science and creation. Meanwhile, the creature who should- Frankenstein the monster. Yeah, is on the run and there's a scene from the book where he saves a drowning woman who fell into a lake and then immediately gets shot because someone sees him and is like a monster. They catch
01:08:27
Speaker
monster and he gets chained up in a dungeon and then like immediately breaks out like they close the door and he like smashes out of the door and uh looking for a place to hide he he runs into a little shack where he meets a blind man who being blind doesn't see that he is like a creature and this is kind of like one of the big set pieces of this movie and like a huge part of the book is the creature like learning to speak and like learning
01:08:57
Speaker
Oh. Some of his humanity from like in the book it's like a whole family that he is like spying on for months and months and months and like learning to speak from and then eventually he talks to just the dad who's blind. This they make it just a blind hermit who lives alone and he's like I don't have any friends like come on in like sure sit by the fire have a cigar.
01:09:21
Speaker
Yeah, and like it's this kind of, you know, the blind man feels ostracized for his
01:09:29
Speaker
you know, for his disability. And he kind of surmises that that the monster is mute. And so he's trying to like, you know, build communication and trust between the two of them, because this like very innocent guy is not is not judging our monster like everyone else. This is like the first character to treat the monster with any modicum of like respect or humanity of like, like, come sit, you have food.
01:09:58
Speaker
Yeah. And it is it is fairly like it it tugs the heartstrings a little bit of just like how reluctant the monster is to be like he's like ready to smash this guy and it's like oh like I can sit and then he learns to say friend which feels like such a one of those things where I'm like that's such a like pop culture punchline almost of like someone going friend
01:10:25
Speaker
And I'm like, oh, I'm pretty sure that's like this movie is the origin of that.
01:10:30
Speaker
Right. And he soon, as we talked about earlier, he soon learns a couple other words, which are smoke, drink. Good. Good. Yeah, he offers him like whiskey or whatever. He's like, like whiskey. Yeah. I think Boris Karlov is very good in these scenes of playing the kind of the more lighthearted scenes in this.
01:10:58
Speaker
But it's kind of a victim of like it's been parodied so much in like young Frankenstein and cartoons and things that like having a guy who looks like Boris Karlov Frankenstein monster.
01:11:11
Speaker
smoking a cigar and saying, like, mmm, smoke good in that voice. It's like, it's it's it can't not be silly. Like, I think I think it always was. It must have been. I think it always was. But I think it's additionally extra silly now because we've had so many decades of like pop culture riffs on it.
01:11:31
Speaker
Like, in the original Frankenstein, he is scary. And in this, he's a cutie patootie. He's just going around being a nice, cute boy. He kills more people in this movie than in the first one, though.
01:11:45
Speaker
But it doesn't, like, it doesn't, you know, it's not unjustified. Well, this is another thing I think this movie is using the book as a good reference point is that in the book, the creature is both very sympathetic and is very tragic. And it is also terrifying because it's like,
01:12:07
Speaker
Initially, it's like, oh, it's it's everyone like everyone disowns everyone treats them like a like a monster because they're afraid of him and how he looks and then Basically what happens in this movie plays out where like he makes a single friend and learns to speak and then other people show up and also immediately reject him and that that one sort of like tether to humanity is severed and then he kind of goes off the deep end and
01:12:36
Speaker
And in the book he becomes a like super villain mastermind who is like framing Frankenstein for murder and things like that. And this he kind of is more of a kind of lumbering grunting sort of like, mmm, fire bad.
01:12:51
Speaker
He does say that also. He doesn't ever get to speak full sentences like he does in the book. I like how this movie is trying to both make him sweeter and nicer in some scenes and also kind of more threatening and scarier in others.
01:13:08
Speaker
But yeah, it is, they maybe lean a bit more into the funny stuff. And so he gets chased away from the old hermit's house by some hunters and goes to hide in a crypt where coincidentally, Dr. Pretorius is having a picnic, because he's looking for more sort of corpses for Dr. Frankenstein to experiment on.
01:13:36
Speaker
And then he's like, oh, it's you. Welcome. But before he's like there with his goons, right? And he's like, yeah, like dig up these bodies, take them away. And then like, are you coming also, sir? Like, no, I'm going to I'm going to stay down here and have a sandwich and like light some candles. I like to I like to chill in a crypt. And yeah, he's like having a full on like picnic with a bunch of bones and then.
01:13:59
Speaker
he sees the creature and is like, you want a cigar? You want some wine? And so then Pretorius is able to sell the creature on the idea of like making a making a bride for him, which is another thing from the book. I don't want to keep hashing on that, but that that is also like it's a pretty small section in the book where it's like the creature is like, make me a woman.
01:14:25
Speaker
In this, it's they give that idea to Pretorius. Pretorius is a good sort of like external villain that they're able to kind of put all of the... He probably drives the plot more than any other character in this, but it's like, he's the one who kind of comes up with all the bad ideas. He's like the most, he's the only character in this that is like straight up like overt villain kind of. And so then he gets the creature to kidnap Elizabeth Frankenstein
01:14:55
Speaker
and thus forcing the doctor's hand. There is, I like the scene where Pretorius and the creature both confront Dr. Frankenstein, and there's a bit of kind of like, I don't know, there's that tension of like, oh no, this guy's back. I don't wanna talk to him. And it's like, oh, he can talk now. And so then the kind of the whole like back third of this movie almost is like going back to the old castle lab
01:15:25
Speaker
Like going to the old set, like turn on all the old electrical equipment. Blow off the dust and make a lady this time. This section is very cool because there is a bit of that sequel thing of like, oh, it's the set from the first movie. Oh, cool.
01:15:40
Speaker
but then they're doing all like weird. And they're like the band's back together. Yeah. We're like Dr. Frankenstein is kind of getting into it again. Right. This is when he's actually cooking. Right. It's like you can see the excitement in his eyes of like he loves doing mad science. So he's in his element. I missed this. Yeah. And then Dwight Fry is in this again as a different like weirdo guy.
01:16:09
Speaker
He plays Fritz, the assistant, in the first one. And in this he plays Karl, who's just like a different henchman guy. Like, he's Praetorias' henchman, not Frankenstein's henchman. But I thought it was funny that they cast the same actor. And I was like, wait, is that Fritz? Or is that a different guy?
01:16:28
Speaker
Different guy. He's good at it. He's good at being a henchman. Yeah. There's like even more like weird electrical Tesla coil equipment in this and like things that spark. Yeah. Lots of dutch angles, which is fun. There's a whole section of like doing science experiments where they're using a heartbeat. They're like getting a heart to beat with electrical current. And that's kind of acting as the score to the scene.
01:16:53
Speaker
That was very cool and that's like feels very kind of ahead of its time to me of like using kind of a diegetic sound effect kind of as score for the scene and I think notable is that.
01:17:09
Speaker
maybe this is a kind of postcode concession was that they don't actually show the heart. Right. They kind of talk about it and it's just off frame. Yeah. Because like I don't know if it seems like they they felt like they would have a hard time getting away with showing like a beating human heart in on a film. Yeah. In thirty five.
01:17:34
Speaker
They use the corpses of recently deceased people, and by that I mean someone that Karl murders. They send Karl out to this murder woman to use the body of. But they grow the brain from scratch. Pretorius grows the brain, he handles that side of things. I guess he can grow a full-size brain. He's figured that much out.
01:17:57
Speaker
And then they make a bride. They make a woman Frankenstein creature with the big hair. The iconic shock of hair. And then the movie ends like two minutes later.
01:18:15
Speaker
Yeah, I was surprised how little Bride of Frankenstein. I had probably seen almost her entire screen time in just like clips from this movie that I'd already seen. She is in this movie shockingly for like a shockingly small amount of time. So they bring the Bride to life and then male monster
01:18:35
Speaker
is like, woman for me, friend. And she screams and is upset. And he's like, she hate me. I ugly. No. And so then he blows up the lab with the bride and with Praetorius in it after saying we belong dead, which is a good line. Like that is great. There's also a line he has earlier when he's in the crypt where he's like,
01:19:05
Speaker
He says something about it's it's like he preferred being dead, like being alive is is pain and agony constantly. And I was like, that's heavy like that. Yeah, I think Boris Karlov is very good in those moments where he's like really kind of showing pathos. And he he lets Frankenstein go. He kind of realize he realizes that like, you know, Frankenstein, you say I go no following.
01:19:34
Speaker
And then, it's right, the lab blows up, and Henry and Elizabeth Frankenstein get out, and then it's hard cut to credits. There is no, I feel like old movies do this a lot, where it's like, nope, that's the end. There is zero epilogue or falling action. I like that, honestly. There are a lot of modern movies where I'm like, okay, the story's over. I mean, also, this movie is 75 minutes long. This movie is very brisk.
01:20:02
Speaker
It gets in, it does its thing, it gets out. I do like that about it. I saw this at Alamo and I was getting my check before I even saw the bride. And I was like, oh, this movie is short. Yeah, it is pretty nuts how.
01:20:20
Speaker
how little bride there is in this movie because it is such an iconic image right like mm-hmm the Jack Pierce did the makeup again for this movie and designed the whole thing apparently the hair the iconic hair is based on Nefertiti like like an Egyptian like hair slash like headdress shape
01:20:42
Speaker
Which, looking at it, makes sense. But I'd never, I probably wouldn't have thought of, I see it as like, oh yeah, it's the Bratifangen sign here. Right. It's got the lightning bolts on it. It's a, it's a beehive. Yeah, she's got a big kind of like, uh, like xenomorph kind of, kind of thing going on with the shock of, of, of white hair going through it. It's less, it's less of a beehive than I thought it was. I feel like it's, in parodies, it's usually more of a beehive shape. And this, it is more of a kind of like Egyptian, like,
01:21:12
Speaker
It's more cylindrical, I guess, if that makes sense. Also, Lancaster doesn't get a lot to do, really. She gets, like, one very short scene where she, like, comes to life and then screams and then gets exploded. Yeah. As we all do, right? Yeah. What us is there to life? Become alive, scream, explode. I forget who read it, but one of my favorite letterboxed
01:21:41
Speaker
I checked the letterbox reviews of this after I watched it. One of them is, this is about a lesbian and a gay man who get set up on a blind date and date each other.
01:21:55
Speaker
I'm paraphrasing, but I like that read of this movie. Gay Frankenstein confirmed. I don't necessarily know if this movie has a huge clear thesis other than just like, don't make Frankenstein monsters. Don't do it. You did it once. It was a bad idea. Don't do it a second time.
01:22:15
Speaker
right yeah it's uh it's it's fun it's the this movie is it's fun but i i think the especially dr frankenstein henry frankenstein as is his name is in the movie and boris carloff are both they were like character stuff i thought was very good in this movie it was like it felt like a natural progression of what they did in the first one it didn't feel forced and it felt like they were enriching the characters that they had played already by having more things happen to them
01:22:45
Speaker
True. Yeah. I feel like this movie has a long, like, cultural shadow. And there's lots of things that I had previously associated with, like, Frankenstein stuff I didn't realize came from this movie and not some other things. Right. Yeah. Like him talking in broken English. Right. Yeah. Because, like, he doesn't do any of that in the first one. I thought that that was almost like sort of like the way that Igor, like,
01:23:13
Speaker
doesn't exist, like he's either Fritz, the hunchback, or he's Igor, the other guy who isn't a hunchback.
01:23:21
Speaker
Yeah. I thought the Frankenstein speech thing was more of that weird mishmash of different things. But no, it's just verbatim from this movie. Speaking of another silly movie. Okay, let's go do some comedy. You want to hop over to the comedy world? Sure. Well, let's talk about Top Hat.
01:23:46
Speaker
OK, because in Young Frankenstein, the lesser, the lesser silly in Young Frankenstein, they do a lot of top hat dancing. And so that's a good transition. Well, but Top Hat is a Fred Astaire Ginger Rogers dance joint. Yeah. Famous duo. I'd never seen any of their movies. I mean, I'd say Ginger Rogers is in Goldigres of 1933, but that that was it.
01:24:12
Speaker
Yeah, this is already their fourth movie together, and they did a third or fourth movie, and they did nine together.
Fred Astaire & Ginger Rogers Musicals
01:24:18
Speaker
I think it's their third. I think they did Flying Down to Rio, which they're like not top build in. And then they're also in the Gay Divorcee.
01:24:30
Speaker
which is the same director and a lot of the same cast, and that was marketed as a stare Rogers picture. And their chemistry is great. So I understand why they're doing that. Makes sense. Any scene where they're together is very good. I feel like both the larger dance set pieces and a lot of the comic plot hijinks stuff, I feel like I liked more in
01:24:59
Speaker
gold diggers and like like there and slobich movies that we've watched i think there there are this has a lot in common with those types of movies there's a lot of like comedy of manners and like mistaken identity and there's like clear sort of thirties comedy bits that they like to do
01:25:16
Speaker
This is another entry in what I'm realizing is my favorite thirties genre, which is people who are in love fuck with each other. Yeah. Yeah. They're just messing with each other the entire time and they don't realize that they love each other or I don't know. There's like a lot of this. Yeah. Like you're saying mistaken identity or like or or
01:25:39
Speaker
incorrect assumptions about things. And so they're just, they're just playfully mean to each other. And I love these thirties comedies where people are playfully mean to each other. Like it happened one night and designed for a living and. Thin man. Gold diggers. Thin man. Yeah. Like it's, it's great. I love it. It's so funny. Mean thirties comedies are a great, a great thing.
01:26:04
Speaker
So this like, yeah, this isn't, I think Design for Living is probably my favorite of this type, but I really enjoyed it in this movie. I thought it was really good. Yeah, I feel like kind of the last couple that we watched, like I probably like this less than Design for Living, Thin Man, or Gold Diggers of 33, but it's still a very fun movie and it still has some like really amazing dance stuff in it and some some kind of just like classic rom-com hijinks
01:26:33
Speaker
Yeah, like being mad at somebody and like as soon as they leave the room, they smile like, oh, there's also like a lot of kind of like returning like character actors. There's Edward Everett Horton is in this movie, who is also in Design for Living. And I feel like at least one other movie that we watched. Right. Playing playing. I think it might have just been Design for Living. I was looking at his filmography a bit. But yeah, he was playing.
01:27:00
Speaker
a similar character of just a kind of a fuddy duddy. He plays like a rich, like stuck up dude who kind of sucks, you know? Yeah. And he's very good at it. He's kind of the male Margaret Dumont a little bit like they both play like very like upper crust like, oh my, how could you? Like he has a little more dimensionality, a little more dimensionality than that, I think.
01:27:25
Speaker
I think so, especially in this movie. In this movie, his character is a lot more likable than in Design for Living. In Design for Living, it's very much like, oh, fuck this guy. I did out loud, I said, this fucker when he appeared on screen.
01:27:40
Speaker
Which is said only with love. I love Edward Everett Morton in stuff. I think the lane that he's found for himself in thirties comedies is very good. Speaking of Alamo Drafthouse, they often use the beginning of this movie as part of their don't talk pre-roll thing.
01:28:02
Speaker
Oh, that's where I've seen this before. Yeah. So the opening of this movie is Fred Astaire is in the factory club of London, where there's a big sign that says silence. You can't make any noise. And there's a bunch of old, old English gentlemen and tuxedos who were like, if you like hit a glass against a plate, it'll make too much of noise. And then everyone goes shh. And so Fred Astaire is trying to like fold a newspaper very quietly.
01:28:31
Speaker
But then at the end of the scene, when he's leaving, he does a little tap dancing and freaks everybody out. This that that has been an Alamo don't talk message for a long time, one of their more like family friendly ones. And the fact that like the giant kid that comes out of the. Yeah, well, that's the thing, right, is that
01:28:56
Speaker
Alamo don't talks used to be don't talk messages used to be a lot edgier mean and and meaner and They as they have gotten more corporate. They're like, okay, what could we can we can do the family friendly top hat clip? I like anymore it's good, but it's like oh we can't do the
01:29:18
Speaker
We can't do the, there's a sniper in the projection booth and he's going to explode you with his bullets anymore. I don't remember ever saying that one, but um...
01:29:29
Speaker
Speaking of the tap dancing, it's a lot of fun in this movie. Yeah. And it made me want to start trying to tap dance because I just want to like, I want to immerse myself in the 30s. And here's the thing. Watching this movie absolutely made me want to like be good at dancing, which I don't know if I'm like physically capable of. I'm sure if I like really dedicated the time to it.
01:29:52
Speaker
but I don't have a very natural talent or sense of rhythm. Let's try and learn to tap dance together. I think that would be fun. That would be fun. But watching this movie and movies like this, I'm like, people who are good at dancing look like they're having a grand old time and I'm jealous.
Romantic Comedy Elements & Dance
01:30:10
Speaker
Yeah.
01:30:11
Speaker
It seems like a nice way of sort of like, because it's a sort of minimal form of dancing, where the point is more the sound you're making, you're just kind of like, it's almost like an amplified version of just like tapping your hands on the table along to a beat, you know, but you're kind of amplifying
01:30:30
Speaker
the sound that's already there with the tapping. When I was watching this movie and ideating about buying tap shoes, I walked over to my partner after the movie was over and I was like, I have found a new way to make a racket.
01:30:48
Speaker
Well, very apt for this movie because the two romantic leads would never possibly have met if he wasn't making a racket with his tap dancing. This was some more like really charming stuff in the beginning of this movie where Edward Edward Everett Horton's character, Mr. Hardwick, tells Fred Astaire
01:31:08
Speaker
Uh, you should settle down and get a wife. And then he sings a whole song about how he's glad to be free and not have a wife. And the song ends with him. He's like, who's that? Future wife material. Also, Mr. Hardwick is saying like, you need to like settle down. And meanwhile, he's like, there's a woman downstairs and she wants to see me. Hello. And it was like putting on his hat.
01:31:32
Speaker
which is a kind of a recurring joke throughout the movie is that Mr. Hardwick is not is like married but kind of remains a ladies man a little bit while he's singing his I don't want a wife song he's half dancing and then and then the camera just
01:31:49
Speaker
goes down through the floor in one of those like classic like shots of kind of moving from one one floor to the other and showing like the in-between part and then it's just like it's just Ginger Rogers looking up like is this guy seriously tap dancing above me
01:32:10
Speaker
like classic upstairs neighbor yeah classic if you've ever lived in any apartment in new york city situation i i thankfully i've never lived below a tap dancer but you have people below you right i do but i don't tap dance you will soon maybe i don't yeah i don't think i would do it and i'd probably have to like go to a
01:32:33
Speaker
a dance gym. They have those, right? A studio? Yeah, it's where you lift weights with your feet. One thing that I like about the opening scene in the silent club.
01:32:47
Speaker
is that it, it's like a funny bit where he's trying to be quiet and like fold his newspaper, but it immediately establishes that Fred Astaire's character, Jerry Travers, he's a little bit of a, he's a little stinker, this guy. He's a scamp. Yeah, he's a scamp. He's a bit of a troublemaker. He's like, he's got a sense of humor and he's willing to mess with people, which will come back. There's another character that gets introduced early on, Bates, who is Mr. Hardwicke's butler.
01:33:17
Speaker
Valet, I think is what they call him. His all-purpose fixer in this movie. Right. And base refers to himself slash themselves in the plural, but it's very inconsistent. He's sort of like Venom. Like, we have your shoes for you, sir. But it's inconsistent because initially it was like, oh, they're like really sticking to this. And they are even other characters are only referring to him with like plural pronouns.
01:33:45
Speaker
But then it's like, even Bates is not consistent with it. Like within a sentence, he will refer to himself as I, or, yeah. I guess it's probably just going for like a, yeah, like almost like a royal wee sort of fanciness, maybe. Yeah, maybe. Bates is like, almost feels like kind of a grab bag of like character quirks.
01:34:09
Speaker
Um, cause it's like, at times he's like sassy. He's very sassy. At times he seems like kind of like bumbling and ineffectual. And other times he is like shockingly competent. Um, he reminded me a lot of spoilers for the end of the movie, I guess, but he reminded me a lot of Jean Parmesan from arrest development because in, in the, towards the end of the movie, he starts disguising himself as different people. So.
01:34:34
Speaker
Yeah, but he's yeah, he's he's fancy and British and he says stuff like wither or dither sir. Yeah. And so Ginger Rogers runs upstairs. They have a sort of tete tete. She goes back downstairs and he dances the dance of sleep.
01:34:53
Speaker
which is like a very quiet tap dance. He spreads some sand on the ground to make almost like a brush on a drum. It's like a very chiller tap dance. But then they have a nice, he kind of like not quite kidnaps her, but he like pretends to be the London cabbie on a horse-drawn carriage and goes to the park where she is doing equestrian stuff.
01:35:20
Speaker
Park a lot of a lot of horse jokes thrown in thrown in here Yes, like the one that I had to write down because I loved it. So You probably know Is she says what is the strange power you have over horses and he says horsepower Good joke good joke
01:35:43
Speaker
But then it starts raining and so they have to go to... If you're in the park and it starts to rain, where do you go? Gazebo, baby! The Gazebo! And so they have a nice little dance at the Gazebo and it is around this point in the movie where I was like, every movie should have a dance scene in it.
01:36:00
Speaker
I feel like even if it's like very brief even if it's like two people just like do an old boogie for like three seconds get some dancing in every movie because it I think it it can only enrich something this I mean and this is where they basically this scene is where they kind of go from
01:36:16
Speaker
like that was that annoying guy that lives above me to like actually falling in love and it's where like the movie uh i think really just kind of takes off and like the emotional stakes of the movie begin right because this is like okay clear these two people
01:36:31
Speaker
have have great chemistry with each other they both like each other a lot they're dancing in the park in the rain it's very romantic it it can only get better from here which is of course the perfect time for a movie to throw a wrench in the works so the whole sort of like main kind of plot of this movie is
01:36:52
Speaker
was genuinely kind of confusing. There's a lot of like misjudgment and mistaken identity and lies and because like so the main thing is that she she gets the impression that he is Mr. Hardwick and right and who is married
01:37:10
Speaker
who is married to a friend of hers. Right. And so she's like, how could you? And she slaps him or punches him right when he thinks that they've just fallen in love. Big old slap in the face. She is sort of staying in London with a this very silly Italian costume designer named Bedini. And as soon as he showed up, I was like, Chico Marx is in this movie?
01:37:39
Speaker
Doing doing broad Italian doing broad time a stereotypical accents was just a big thing in the 30s They've seemingly like broken apart like this this relationship is done. There is a good a good bit where Jerry Fred Astaire's characters is talking to Hardwick about it on the nerdest, right? Hardwick goes to goes to the valet
01:38:04
Speaker
Bates. Bates, yeah. He has a problem. And he goes, have you tried rubbing butter on it, sir? I guess you can't rub a girl with butter. And he goes, my sister got... Well, that's what he said. He goes like, oh, he's got... he stepped in a hornet's nest. Yes, right. It's like, my sister got into a hornet's nest and we rubbed her with butter.
01:38:27
Speaker
Great bit. There's a lot of jokes in this movie with both Bates and also Badini. Badini is a lot of things like he doesn't understand English figures of speech. He uses a lot of melapropisms and doesn't understand wordplay.
01:38:45
Speaker
And then, yeah, Bates seemingly takes everything very literally. A lot of good, like, good witty thirties comedy in this movie. And it would be kind of ridiculous to break down all of the plot because there's is too much because it's just a lot of machinations of like
01:39:05
Speaker
Yeah, it kind of just springs off from that mistaken identity. And it takes them the entire movie to solve it. And there's just like a lot of convoluted things that stop that make it more difficult for them to. Yeah, there's a lot of like jokes involving objects that are covering someone's face. And so the person seeing them thinks that someone else
01:39:25
Speaker
yeah there's like oh this person walked behind like a chandelier and so you can't see who it is and so they switched places and then um or like this person thinks they're dancing with one person they're actually dancing with a different person which are very fun uh there is a section where dale ginger rogers his character kind of thinks that like the hardwick couple are swingers because mag
01:39:50
Speaker
knows that she's not married to Fred Astaire. And so when they're interacting, she's like, no, go hang out with her. Yeah, you two kids go crazy. And so then they're dancing together, and Madge, who's Mrs. Hardwick, keeps winking at Ginger Rogers. She's like, what the hell are you doing? Yeah, and it's like, I thought I was dancing with your husband. What is happening? She thought that it was swing time.
01:40:22
Speaker
for the listening audience. And I guess anyone, because we might not be on screen right now, I just held up my laser disc of swing time, which we'll be watching for next week. Right. With Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire. Yes. Right. This whole section of the movie takes place in Venice, which is not shot in Venice, it is shot on a massive soundstage set that looks like The Wizard of Oz. Yeah. I was looking at this and I was like, this is like, did you go to Disneyland? Yes.
01:40:51
Speaker
yeah very clean it is it is like it is absolute you hit the nail on the head it is the disneyland version of venice it is like the most obvious film set ever built but i kind of like that about it it's very theatrical but in kind of a fun goofy way
01:41:06
Speaker
Yeah. And speaking of theatrical, Hardwick and Jerry are putting on a kind of dance review, as everybody is doing in every movie. They're all putting on Broadway shows. And it gives us an opportunity for another kind of showstopper tap dance performance and singing performance from Fred Astaire.
01:41:31
Speaker
the titular song top hat. Put on your top hats. Right. Yes. Which a lot of good tap dancing in it. I think during this one was when I decided that I wanted to start dancing. And the greatest part of it, though, is
01:41:48
Speaker
where he has like a row of other guys in tuxes tap dancing behind him. And he takes his cane and holds it up like it's a rifle and then uses his tap shoes to go and like and like make it look like make it sound like he was shooting one of them. So he's pretending to shoot all of these backup dancers with his cane and they fall down one at a time. And then there's a point where he does it and then like
01:42:18
Speaker
moves it around like a tommy gun, which is another, which is a great way of showing a tommy gun when you are not allowed to. Right, because at this point, that's one of the production code things that you're not allowed to show. Should we talk about the production code don'ts on this episode? Yeah, I think we should. I don't know if this is the spot to do it, but... While you look up that list, I'll just finish describing the scene.
01:42:45
Speaker
Yeah, it's it's fantastic. It's like it's a really kind of weird use of tap and dancing, but it is one of the kind of dips into fantasy slightly of the I mean, it all takes place diagetically, but it's it's like heightened in a way this this sequence unlike something like gold diggers. This is this doesn't have any kind of
01:43:11
Speaker
All the dancing and singing in this movie sort of like makes sense in the world and it's only like slightly heightened. We're not going to like another reality like we are in in some other musicals to our dancing scenes. I feel like this movie kind of goes back and forth almost like it is most of the dancing and it is diegetic but it almost like
01:43:34
Speaker
As a dance scene goes on, it almost kind of shifts into a more dreamlike reality and then kind of comes back to the kind of more naturalistic reality of the rest of the movie. But like only slightly because it's the same sets that they're in. Yeah. But like everyone else disappears. Like everyone else in the room kind of goes away and they kind of enter into this like little world all of their all of their own. And then once the dancing is over, they kind of return, which is a cool way of doing it, I think. Yeah.
01:44:03
Speaker
I don't know. I mean, is there much else to say about this movie? Should we just wrap it up and then talk about the production code? Cheek to cheek is a good song that I had heard before. I had also heard the top hat song. Those are kind of the two songs in this that are probably are the most famous. And I I definitely heard before many times.
01:44:21
Speaker
Yeah, there's a bunch of stuff where Badini is so quick to murder someone for Ginger Rogers. Oh yeah, dispensing sword. He has a sword and it's like, she's talking to him about, it's like, oh, I've had this problem with this guy. And he's like, I would murder him for you. And she's like, please don't.
01:44:38
Speaker
There's kind of an all is lost moment where Dale gets married to Bellini and we're like, oh no, what's going to happen? Like this isn't like this isn't like it happened one night where she walks away right at the end, you know, like she actually got married to him. How are we going to get out of this pickle?
01:44:58
Speaker
And then we find out that our Jean Parmesan globe-trotting master of disguise, Butler, actually pretended to be a priest and did not truly marry the two of them. And now they can all be happily ever after.
Hollywood Production Code: Impact & Critique
01:45:16
Speaker
Yeah. Fun movie. I enjoyed it. Before we get to our next movie, let's brief interlude about
01:45:22
Speaker
the haze code because I want to bring up this photo especially which is from 1940 so we're jumping the gun a little bit I guess but 1935 is the first year of like
01:45:37
Speaker
fully enforced Hollywood Hays Code stuff, right? Where Breen was kind of the guy who was like watching all the movies and like giving everyone notes and like being being real hard ass about it. Yeah, it's all it's always called the Hays Code and Hays had been involved since the early mid 20s. But
01:45:57
Speaker
he was more of a lobbyist for the film industry and didn't actually care that much about censoring it, where this guy was Joseph Breen, I think. I believe so. He was part of the Catholic League or something. Right. He was brought on and once he was brought on, he put the hammer down and started actually enforcing the production code. The League of Decency, is that what it was called?
01:46:24
Speaker
It's something like that. Yeah. The league of won't someone please think of the children. But so in 1940, someone made a photograph sort of mocking the Hays Code rules and that the Hays Code was broken down into certain like sections. There's like the don'ts, the like sometimes don'ts. I forgot how they. Be careful. Right. And so there's things like that you could kind of get away with in his code movies and there were some things like you could not show.
01:46:53
Speaker
They leave some stuff off of here that is like in tons of movies and TV now, but I assume that was also not allowed. But in 1940, someone made this photo where they tried to put as much of the thou shalt nots into the photo as possible. And it just leads to this super kick-ass awesome picture.
01:47:14
Speaker
forbidden under the haze code are law defeated you couldn't show like the law like police losing inside of a woman's thigh or male thigh i don't they don't specify lace lingerie a dead man narcotics drinking an exposed bosom gambling pointing a gun and then just a tommy gun which is very specific like they're like singing that as a specific like brand of gun that you can't show but i guess it was sort of like such a
01:47:44
Speaker
ubiquitous and kind of like romanticized atomic guns are very kind of iconic like distinctive looking object so yeah I guess there was some precedent for that but so this picture has all of these things in it and it's just a scantily clad woman standing over a dead cop
01:48:00
Speaker
with a gun and an empty glass and there's like a bottle behind her. We'll throw it up in the video. I think this picture rules. It goes hard. Yeah, I wanted to bring it up. Also, what an arbitrary list of things not to put in a movie and like very focused on like crime and like how crime is presented, I think. Yeah. That seems like a big sticking point.
01:48:26
Speaker
for the Hayes Code of like you can't show the law in a bad a bad light kind of pre-code gangster movies got in while the getting was good and we haven't yet watched any gangster movies from the postcode but I think they're gonna I'm guessing shift away from that style of movie and get into something a little bit more
01:48:47
Speaker
The movies that I'm thinking of that are like crime movies that are Hayscote are more like 1940s, so. Yeah. Although on my gangster's box set that I was working off of for Little Caesar and Public Enemy, the next one coming up was The Petrified Forest, which is 1936, starring Humphrey Bogart. Hey, we haven't talked about him yet.
01:49:12
Speaker
Maybe we could watch that one next week. Sounds good to me. But before we get to the Petrified Forests, let's talk about another comedy involving top hats. A link between both of these movies is using a conductor's stick as part of a scene transition, like a match cut. In both of these movies, we have like somebody tapping on something.
01:49:40
Speaker
And it cuts from that tapping to the tapping of a conductor of a conductor's stick. Oh, on their music. I didn't watch these movies back to back. So I did not pick up on that. Yeah. Weird thing that they did in both of these movies, like both times I was like, whoa, crazy match cut. It was like, wait, that's the same match cut.
01:50:03
Speaker
A Night at the Opera is the movie that we're talking about. Oh, yes, correct. Yes, The Night of the Opera. The Night of the Opera would be a great.
01:50:13
Speaker
a great title. Yet another Marx Brothers. But notably, the first MGM Marx Brothers movie. They were previously. And Stan's Zeppo. Yeah, they had previously done other movies under Paramount, I think. And this was kind of a shift. And I read afterwards on Wikipedia, so I take this with a grain of salt, that Irving Thalberg, who was the head of MGM at the time,
01:50:39
Speaker
kind of wanted uh this movie to be a bit more kind of like cohesive he kind of wanted to like sand the edges off of like the marx brothers thing like give them more structure and for there to be like characters that you like cared about and like follow through the story yeah and how successful that is is debatable how much that changes what this movie feels like whatever the thing that i found very funny about it was the way it was worded on wikipedia specifically was like
01:51:06
Speaker
Unlike previous Marx Brothers movies, scenes in Night at the Opera have a clear beginning, middle, and end. I mean, I did notice when I was watching the movie that it seems like they're trying a little bit harder to make it a story. But also I had the thought watching the movie of Marx Brothers movies are barely movies. They're just a bunch of stuff happening. They're a bunch of bits. And I almost feel like they might work better with less narrative.
01:51:36
Speaker
Yeah, I think that this and that was the last one we watched, duck soup, duck soup are like tend to be the ones that people think about the most often that are like the most famous, most respected. And this one's good. It's well put together. But I think that, you know, the narrative writing is not incredible. And so like that's the thing it lets the jokes take a back seat sometimes.
01:52:05
Speaker
And so duck soup is a lot more joke forward and I think it works better for it. I think duck soup is a lot better than this. I know that I am the Marx Brothers.
01:52:15
Speaker
uh you know unenjoyer or whatever yeah but um i like this movie but like i was also i was also just kind of like all right i'm done you know but i think i think that the intent behind sort of like stripping away some of the jokes and trying to make it more narrative forward was to kind of like make the jokes land better
01:52:36
Speaker
I think it kind of has the opposite. Making them more contextual. I think it, sure, and that I do approve of because a lot of Marx Brothers humor is like completely devoid of context and it's like this joke is just here because it's a joke and this movie at least tries to kind of put a little bit more context around stuff and also to kind of make
01:52:56
Speaker
all of the characters a little bit less anarchic, I think, too, a little bit. Take the anarchy away from Marx Brothers. But that is, like, it does feel like they're trying to make them nicer in this one. Like, literally Chico and Harpo aren't, like, assaulting people in this as much. Like, there's less sort of, like, outright kind of, like, antagonistic
01:53:22
Speaker
stuff happening outside of like a few characters. So I mean this is their first MGM movie, this is their first movie without Zeppo, and this is also their first post-Hays Code movie. True, also good point. This movie feels a bit more squeaky clean. It feels a bit more like it's like it feels like they're going for more of a like family friendly
01:53:45
Speaker
yeah vibe like kid friendly even yeah there there's a part in this movie which they didn't do in duck soup thankfully but harkens back to their earlier ones the whole movie just grinds to a halt while we watch them play harp but at least this it isn't like it's like oh they're on a ship that has a band they like go and play the instruments that are already there there's a little bit of there's a little bit of justification for it as opposed to in
01:54:12
Speaker
was Animal Crackers when it's just hard cut, now four minutes of Harpo playing the harp, and then hard cut, the movie continues. I mean, this still did that, but yeah, it had a bit of a narrative context. But I thought, crucially, during those scenes, it was the two of them acting like clowns and entertaining a bunch of children. It was all kids in the background of those scenes. And so it was them being silly on instruments
01:54:42
Speaker
And then the kids going, I did write Harpo has very big like magician slash clown at a birthday party energy in this in this movie.
01:54:52
Speaker
Yeah, especially in that scene where, like, yeah, he's like playing music and, you know, doing his his harpo bits to a bunch of laughing children. And it's like, oh, yeah, he's he's performing at a birthday party. That's what it is. And to me, it felt like this is like the movie carving out who its audience is. Right. Yeah. Like they are. You're seeing yourself on screen because you are a kid laughing at the silly the silly man. Yeah.
01:55:19
Speaker
And maybe that's part of why I don't feel strong, why I don't really enjoy Marx Brothers movies that much. I didn't watch them as a kid. I've started watching Marx Brothers in my 30s and I'm kind of like, I don't know, I don't know about these, I don't know about these spells. Which is like, I like Duck Soup for sure. Like Duck Soup I think is a fun, entertaining movie that I laughed at a bunch.
01:55:46
Speaker
But I think especially in comparison to a lot of the other 30s comedies that we're watching, I'm just like, I don't know, this sort of like throwing stuff at the wall type of comedy just doesn't... I feel like when it hits, it is very, very funny. But the amount of jokes that don't land, I'm just kind of like, I don't know, the hit rate is very low on these, I feel like.
01:56:09
Speaker
Yeah. And, you know, like some of the slapstick comedy stuff could feel a little random at times, but random. I think that I think that it kind of works better in that medium, the kind of out of nowhere nature of it. And now that we have like other 30s comedies to compare them to like the other comedies that are coming out of the 30s rather than being the sort of like talking
01:56:38
Speaker
continuation of the Silent Clown established status quo. We have these other 30s movies that are very dialoggy and very like situation comedies. Yeah. And and I think they work really well and they work better than the Marx Brothers stuff. Yeah. I don't even know if this format existed in 1935.
01:57:06
Speaker
But I feel like if the Marx Brothers are doing like sketch comedy, it would be great. So if like that's that's kind of what duck soup feels like. Yeah, it's it feels more like a sketch comedy where it's like there's like a very, very bare bones narrative to it. But it's like just enough to kind of carry you ahead of like
01:57:28
Speaker
And now a bunch of stuff happens. And now for something completely different. Sure. I mean, the Marx Brothers, right, in their narrative attempts are kind of failing at making a holy grail when they should be making meaning of life, right? Right, I guess. Right? You sure? Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah. Like, I think that Groucho does a lot, is he will sort of make asides as if he's speaking to an audience.
01:57:54
Speaker
But it's not, it's not to camera. He'll just kind of like lean over his shoulder and be like, they get a lot of this over here. I mean, sometimes it's the camera, but he's got a lazy eye, so it's hard to tell. And it almost feels like he should be doing like the full fleabag where he like stares right down the barrel and he's just like, get a lot of this. But it does it right. It's like it's not quite again, this is hindsight, but I feel like there are like more contemporary comedy things that are that are sort of like
01:58:20
Speaker
all bits without a lot of narrative to them that are like, we're just gonna do sketch comedy stuff, like Portlandia or something. I feel like if Marx Brothers were on Portlandia, they'd kill it. Right. And some are just Groucho and the other ones are just Harpo and Chico, right? Yeah. But I also think like if, because I feel like the Groucho making asides to an audience feels like a thing that came out of their stage stuff.
01:58:47
Speaker
where he would just like make jokes to the audience. And I'm sort of like, hey, audience, like check this out. And I feel like if they. Breaking the fourth wall is still pretty rare in movies, but it's, you know, there is a more visible fourth wall when you're on the stage. But it's like, I think they're not committing to it enough at this point where it's like if he's going to do that, he should be like staring at the camera and like directly addressing a movie audience. Right.
01:59:13
Speaker
and that because it's that thing where it's like it's not quite it's like stuck between two like mediums almost we haven't said a thing about what happens in this movie as for this movie it's like the standard thing where they're in an environment full of rich people and they are silly there's a couple of this one moves it goes from like an opera house to a boat to an opera house i guess it's it's no longer like a single room almost right
01:59:41
Speaker
Yeah, it feels higher budget than the other ones. There's bigger sets, more people. I don't think there's anything wrong with this movie. I like it. It's fun. It's just like another Marx Brothers movie. I was hoping for more. I think After Duck Soup, I was like, oh, OK, like now they're progressing, like they're getting better.
02:00:03
Speaker
And I feel like this one in some ways does feel like a progression from that one, but often in kind of the wrong direction in that it's like, let's do less jokes overall and kind of like put more emphasis on like the narrative and like the side, the side characters.
02:00:21
Speaker
and like the kind of romantic subplot and that kind of thing. And I'm like, no one watches Marx Brothers movies for that. Yeah, the role that usually goes to Zeppo, they had to cast, but they have their formula, right? There is still a Zeppo character in this. Exactly, yeah. There's a Zeppo character who is a pretty boy who does nothing. And that's Ricardo in the movie. The most boring movie character
02:00:49
Speaker
in anything and uh and yeah he's in love and he sings there's a part where it stops to listen to him sing he's pretty good at it uh and then uh he he ends up with the lady at the end
02:01:04
Speaker
the end of the story. But it's like the supporting cast in this movie are both not as funny as the Marx Brothers and also not as good actors as in like the supporting cast of like like other than Margaret Dumont who I think is very good at her shtick in Marx Brothers movies. She's done it a million times now. Right. I think that she has less to do in this movie though. Kind of. Yeah. They don't they don't get to play off of her as much in this one.
02:01:31
Speaker
There are some very good, there's like the scene where they're all like piling into a tiny cabin on the boat and there's this like absurd amount of people who are all inside this tiny room and they're all like climbing over each other. Good bit. There's a, where they're in a hotel room and there's a detective who's trying to like arrest them and they keep moving the beds around while he's looking and gaslighting him into thinking that he's going insane.
02:02:01
Speaker
And it's also another one of their bits where there are two rooms and they're going back and forth between them in a zany way. But it's sort of like there is a punchline to it. It isn't just them running between two rooms like it was in the coconuts. Yeah. And then there's a bunch of trapeze stuff with Harpo at the end where he's swinging around on ropes. I don't know how much of that is actually Harpo doing it.
02:02:29
Speaker
But he's like probably pushing 50 at this point, so maybe not. But it's very cool. And like all like the trapeze things and like lifting and lowering backdrops on an opera stage, the kind of third act like showcase set piece is very good.
02:02:48
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. They use the staging well in those late scenes. They have the classic bit. Somebody's got to get hit in the head with a sandbag, right? Oh, of course. It must happen. Yeah. And so it does. It happens pretty early, too. They get it out of the way. Don't worry. We know we're going to give you someone getting hit in the head with a sandbag.
02:03:18
Speaker
I think that they're like, as we've watched the formula of all of these Marx Brothers movies, I think there is a there's a reading of it of like speaking to the feelings of people who are living through the depression.
02:03:36
Speaker
where they're all about- Show us something silly, please. Well, no, but they're all set in high society. All these movies are about people
02:03:48
Speaker
about a bunch of people who are engaged in a bunch of fancy person shenanigans who have millions of dollars and they are still flaunting their wealth even during the Depression, right? They're still living as rich people during the Depression. And then the Marx Brothers come in to just ruin their jobs, right?
02:04:12
Speaker
It's this like cathartic thing for the poor people watching the movie to have the Marx Brothers come in and mess around with rich people and be this kind of annoying presence to all of them. Yeah. Yeah. Which I can get behind that for sure. And I do like how that is like so much of their formula is like, look at these snooty assholes. We're just going to like
02:04:38
Speaker
like drop buckets of water on their heads and steal their shoes.
02:04:43
Speaker
There is a bunch of the stuff on the boat, and it made me think, what was boat travel like in 1935? It's played for comedy, that there's a buffet full of spaghetti and full chickens that they're giving people. It's like a cruise ship, basically. Nowadays, Chico and Harpo would be gallivanting amongst the water slides and Mickey Mouse's on a Disney cruise. Someone make that movie.
02:05:12
Speaker
All right, shall we move on to our action double feature? Yeah, let's do it. Speaking of filmmakers that we have talked about previously, Alfred Hitchcock has got a new picture.
02:05:25
Speaker
the 39 steps. You're obsessed with these obsessed to an unhealthy degree with these unhealthy ways. I want the conversation to flow nicely. That's true. Yeah. Okay. When it works, all of them have been clumsy this episode, but when they're, when they work, they work very well. Maybe that's why I've been feeling it. I'm like, do we need to have a segue? If we take like a minute and a half to build up to the 39 steps. It's another kind of like spy thriller.
02:05:54
Speaker
sort of spy adventure movie, like Ordinary Man gets caught up in intrigue. I like this. I like this one a lot. Yeah, I've seen this one before, and I think I remember liking it more than I did this time. I feel like this time I was like, oh yeah, 39 Steps, that movie's great. And I was like, hmm, it's pretty good.
02:06:12
Speaker
I think it's better than The Man Who Knew Too Much. It feels like a more confidently made movie. There are aspects of The Man Who Knew Too Much that feel a little rough around the edges, and this one feels quite polished as a film. I don't know. I think it works really well. It's a different kind of story. It doesn't have the tonal weirdness of
02:06:36
Speaker
The man who knew too much? Yeah. Where it's like your main character is telling his daughter to buzz off and shut up all the time. Shut up, you. Yeah, the character in this is kind of more of a kind of a rakish gentleman. He's sort of, he's more of a- What's that mean? I don't know, like he's like, I don't know, he's a very typical like action movie protagonist, I feel like, which is like, he's an ordinary guy, but he can like, he can fight when he needs to. And he like,
02:07:06
Speaker
ladies like him and he drops a few one-liners here and there. He just feels like a very kind of Bruce Willis type. Yeah, if Bruce Willis was a Canadian and had an English accent and a pencil mustache. Wait, a pencil mustache? Did I just, was that mustache such a pencil that I didn't even notice? Yeah, a little mustache, didn't he? That's a little thirties mustache.
02:07:29
Speaker
oh yeah he does that's right it works for him i think it works for him so well that i didn't think about it i think i think that i probably like chafed against more rewatching this movie is like the whole man on the run with a woman that he's kidnapped stuff
02:07:47
Speaker
didn't play as charmingly as I remember it being. Like I feel like the movie like really it really plays up the fact that she is like does not want to be there and is afraid and it's very uncomfortable and he's like I'll be fine don't worry I might be a murderer you don't know and it's like I this is being played very comedically and I don't like it.
02:08:09
Speaker
I don't know, like, I guess, you know, I was saying that it was less tonally inconsistent than the other one, but maybe it's just because it worked for me because, like, I thought that it it's kind of 20, 30 minute delving into a romantic comedy kind of like worked pretty well for me. Maybe it's the fact that I just watched.
02:08:28
Speaker
uh it happened one night which is kind of a similar premise of like man and woman who were like on the run and like dodging the cops kind of yeah and and and falling for each other at the same time and it's like that movie is so charming and in this it's like it feels so much kind of like meaner i guess in a in a less fun way yeah in a more of a Hitchcock way where he's just like hmm this is creepy i mean i don't know if i've seen Hitchcock do comedy anywhere else
02:08:57
Speaker
No? I mean, I don't know. I feel like he doesn't really make like comedies, but I feel like his like spy movies tend to have this, are totally more like this. Maybe I'm just thinking of North by Northwest, which is like the, his sort of magnum opus of the like ordinary man gets involved in spy intrigue movies. Because that movie is like, I don't want to say that movie's perfect, but that movie is like
02:09:23
Speaker
Last couple times I've seen it, I'm just like, no notes, this movie's great. Incredible. But also it's like, you got Cary Grant exploding charm across the screen. So it's like, it's hard to go wrong. Nothing against the guy in this movie who I do think is pretty good.
02:09:37
Speaker
Yeah, I think it's a fun angle that they are handcuffed together the entire time. They get some good bits out of that. The setup is great. It is maybe just a tonal thing where there are some times where I'm like, this is being played in a very comedic way. And it's like, the situation is genuinely terrifying for one of these people. There are some really amazing Hitchcock
02:10:03
Speaker
like reveals and or just like filmmaking flourishy things in this like right away our lead guy didn't write his name down i should write that stuff but i don't i sometimes do but i didn't remember to this time our action man is that like a richard richard hane richard hane
02:10:25
Speaker
is that a sort of, he's at a music hall, which we see in giant, giant reveal of like letters across the screen. Music hall at a very rowdy like magic show, where a guy is reciting stuff from memory. Like a vaudeville variety kind of thing. Right. I wrote down, Mr. Memory is a terrible magician.
02:10:44
Speaker
because his whole thing is that he just remembers things and tells them to people. There's a guy in, I haven't experienced him yet, but there's a guy over in Boulder, Colorado, half an hour away from me. He's a busker who appears on the street in Boulder a lot of the time and he knows every zip code and he knows facts about every zip code. So you can tell him a zip code and he'll tell you about your hometown.
02:11:13
Speaker
Is he perhaps being used by foreign agents to steal state secrets in the form of zip codes? I mean, maybe. A modern day Mr. Memory. Yeah. But so Mr. Hanay runs afoul to this woman Annabella, who tells him this whole story of how she is trying to stop a spy plot from happening. And it sounds very much like a con.
02:11:38
Speaker
She's like, hey, like, give me money and, you know, I'll you can be involved in spy stuff. Well, he doesn't. He's like, I don't believe you, but but you can. He's like playing along, but he's like, fine, you can sleep on the couch. And then she busted the room in the middle of the night with a knife in her back, which is a really nice, nice reveal.
02:11:59
Speaker
Yeah. And forces him to go on the run, otherwise he will get blamed for murder. And she's told him that the head of the enemy spy ring is missing one of his fingers. That's how you'll be able to tell who he is. He's like running from the police and there's a guy who goes, what's all this?
02:12:18
Speaker
I love it. I love it when British guys say, what's all this? Yeah, right. Because it's like you think it's just they did it. They did it in the invisible man. They did it in invisible man, too. Yeah. But there's there's a thing where there's like there's spies following him and he has to get a guy to like let him go. And he's like, oh, there's those guys over there. There's spies are following me. And the guy's like, I don't believe you.
02:12:40
Speaker
He's like, all right, you know what the truth is, is that I slept with this lady and that's her husband across the street and he's trying to catch me. And he's like, oh, in that case, go right ahead. Carry on. He's staying in a hotel in this scene and he's kind of like leaving the hotel and.
02:12:57
Speaker
there's a really fun part also kind of getting it like a weird comedy of this movie where like a housekeeper walks into the apartment and finds the body and then she screams and the scream as soon as she screams it cuts to the train of him weaving and so she screams in the form of the train whistle as it transitions to the next scene and crutches like
02:13:24
Speaker
So good, so weird, so funny. Yeah. It's basically the opening scene from Jurassic from The Lost World. Right. But it's like I think I don't necessarily know if this is the first instance of like that being used as an editing trick. I mean, early sound, certainly. But I think this is a notable enough use of it that things like Spielberg and The Lost World or Ridley Scott in
02:13:50
Speaker
What's that movie? The House of Gucci, which I haven't seen, but I've seen just there's one little bit where Jared Leto screams and it's a car horn. I would not surprise me if either or both of those are sort of like direct kind of riffs on that bit from this movie. Oh yeah, must be.
02:14:12
Speaker
But it's great. Immediately after watching them, I'm like, I gotta put that in something. That's too good. It's too good. I gotta find some way of making money off of this. But while he's on the train, he's running from the police and he does the classic forcibly kiss a woman to hide from the police trick. Yeah. Which then hilariously, she immediately is like, hey, police over here. This guy is a criminal.
02:14:37
Speaker
That's a great thing. I think that whole dynamic works a little better for me rather than feeling like this kind of gross misogynistic thing because
02:14:50
Speaker
she doesn't play along. In a normal movie, in many movies, in many stories, she would get wrapped up and she would be like, you're charming. I'm going to help you out. I'll trust you for a second. But in this movie, she's just like, no, get out of here. Get away from me. He's like, please, please just don't give me up. It's life or death. You don't understand. There's spy stuff happening.
02:15:15
Speaker
She's like, whatever, man. Yeah. Bye. Hitchcock is very good at this sort of thing where it's like they're running through the train and they go through like the the the kitchen car and there's like a waiter with a bunch of dishes that they have to like push past and like get around and not spill the dishes. And then they run to a train car that's full of dogs and there's like dogs in their way. Every train is dog car.
02:15:36
Speaker
And it culminates in this really cool chase scene almost of him getting on the side of the train while it's moving and climbing along the side of the train while it crosses a bridge. Which is like, any movie with a chase on a train, people running around and on top of a train,
02:16:00
Speaker
Yeah, Snowpiercer. Snowpiercer, Mission Impossible, Dead Reckoning Part 1. Transporter 2. Transporter 3. Right, he got a map from Annabella leading to Scotland. So now he knows he has to go somewhere in Scotland to prevent these vague state secrets from getting out. Again, very classic Hitchcock thing of like, what are they after? State secrets. What are they? Who cares?
02:16:27
Speaker
Classic MacGuffin thing. I don't even know if Hitchcock had, I don't know if he came up with the term MacGuffin or not, but he's definitely the person I think I most associate that with of like a plot device that you don't actually need to know anything about. It doesn't matter. The bad guys want it. I thought a MacGuffin was like a guy that's really good at combining everyday objects. I know that's a MacGyver.
02:16:54
Speaker
Oh, so dumb. So he he arrives at he's kind of following this map, trying to figure out what his spy deal is. And he arrives at this small farmhouse and he pays the guy to the guy that lives there to stay the night.
02:17:10
Speaker
Mm-hmm a suspicious Scottish farmer and his horny wife And it becomes very clear also they're they're weird religious, you know He he he comes in they're like, okay join us for join us for supper and he's like we're saying grace right now and It's this this moment that
02:17:34
Speaker
I don't know, that scoffs at religion in a way that I would not have expected an older movie to do. It's very like the movie is very much like you, the audience are on the side that like this guy's being weird right now. Although it's probably worth pointing out since this is a British movie, it is not under the hair's code.
02:17:54
Speaker
Yes, but it has been approved by the British censors. Right. Yeah. The the horny wife lets him escape when the cops are. I did find that kind of funny that it's like the Scottish farmer is like a merely very suspicious that it's like this guy is like making eyes at my wife and it's like, oh, they're plotting something against me, whatever. And it's like, no, they're actually just like trying to, you know, she's like, here have some blankets and some soup or whatever.
02:18:20
Speaker
But then it's like, as it goes on, kind of because he's being such an asshole about it, the wife is like, you actually seem cool. I kind of like you more than my mean old husband. Here, take his coat and escape. My mean husband. Take me with you. He's six times older than me. Yeah. Yeah. She like very kind of longingly says goodbye to him when he when he escapes the house as the cops were closing in. I won't forget this. Right. Thank you.
02:18:45
Speaker
So he takes the farmer's coat, which looks like a really nice coat. I want that coat.
02:18:51
Speaker
Like great coats in this movie. That's a US coat. Yeah, it is. And he's running through the Scottish Highlands when an auto gyro shows up. When I saw this, I screamed out, auto gyro! The second 30s movie to feature an auto gyro that we've talked about, which is funny that I knew auto gyros were a thing in the 30s, but I didn't expect them to be so ubiquitous.
02:19:16
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I think the only movies that I've seen them in are This It Happened One Night and The Road Warrior. Right. Or The Rocketeer, which isn't the real one, I don't think, but he finally gets to the house he's looking for and they come in and they're like, oh, we know who you are. Like, come on in. And he's like, oh, finally, like people who understand the situation I'm in, like everything is cool. And he comes and like sits down in this nice library with this guy and he's like,
02:19:44
Speaker
guy clearly knows what's going on. And it's like, hey, like, hey, just sit down, like, have a, you take, take a load, like, we'll send the police away, don't worry about it, you're safe. And it's like, oh, and then it's like, oh, I met this lady, she's telling me about all the spy stuff, and to watch out for a guy with a missing finger on his, on his, on his left hand. And it's like, oh, you mean like this? And he holds up at his hand, he's missing the finger. And it's like, oh,
02:20:07
Speaker
That moment is so good. It's such an amazing like, oh shit moment. And it's a great example of Hitchcock being very good at that type of thing. Intense sort of like tension and suspense and all the things that he's famous for. So then he's got to, now he's got to like escape from this place too. In addition to the police, he gets shot, but in a classic movie moment, he's got a book in his pocket that stops the bullet.
02:20:37
Speaker
Yeah. A Bible, no less. Yeah. Well, what else? What else is thick enough to stop a bullet? And it's it's the Bible that he got from the jacket. Right. The weird religious. All it all connects. He like goes to the police and the police don't believe him. And he like runs into a room where there's like a political speech happening and he like.
02:21:00
Speaker
pretends to be involved in this, like, speech and goes up and it's like talking in front of a bunch of people. He gets in there and he's just, they're all just like, oh, you're finally here. Great. Yeah. They just shove him up on stage. And it's this really funny scene where he has to kind of like bullshit his way through a speech for as someone who he doesn't know. He doesn't know who he is. I had forgotten the scene was in here and it might be my favorite scene in the movie of like
02:21:27
Speaker
The thing where it's like he can see the people, people he's running away from like coming in the back of the room. Yeah, you can like his eyes are glancing around, but he has to keep just like improving, making up a speech or like sound like he's saying something without knowing anything about what he's supposed to be talking about. It's really good writing. It's like it's it's him. Yeah, trying to say like intentionally vague stuff.
02:21:52
Speaker
that gets the crowd on his side. Yeah, right. He gets kind of picked up by the spy people again and handcuffed to the woman that he tried to recruit to his cause earlier that immediately sold him out. There's a really cool camera transition here where they're in the back of a car and the camera's in the back of the car and it kind of moves to the window and there's a hidden cut
02:22:19
Speaker
So it looks like the camera's moving out of the back window of the car. Oh, I didn't notice that. It's so good. It's like very seamlessly done. It's like you can tell what they're doing. That's like they're kind of like hiding a cut in camera movement. But it's it's very slick.
02:22:35
Speaker
then sheep are on the street and they escape and now the rest of the movie is kind of like him and this woman are handcuffed and have to like are on the run together and have to like pretend to pretend to be married and like go to a hotel and she's like kind of trying to escape
02:22:54
Speaker
while they're doing that and like he's like pretending there's a gun in his pocket yeah it's actually a pipe but then it's like while they're asleep he uh she like slips out of the handcuffs and goes downstairs and overhears some of the like the the enemy agents talking
02:23:15
Speaker
looking for them. Yeah, she doesn't believe his story. She thinks that he's just making it up to try and justify whatever he's doing. Right. Which then he responds to be like, well, if I'm not on the run from spies, that means I'm a murderer. So it's like, if you prefer that. Yeah, I get what these this like romcom section of the movie is going for.
02:23:39
Speaker
But I think it's just not it's not quite charming enough to work for me entirely. It's like it's it's like too creepy by a hair. You know what I mean? Yeah, I get it. I think some of that might just be Hitchcock being a weird pervy creep, which like in some of his movies is like kind of enriches the movie because it adds this weird this like voyeurism and this like playful kind of like meanness to it.
02:24:06
Speaker
but I feel like this stuff, I don't know, it's a little too, I don't know. My partner was pointing out that like this like two people who are supposed to fall in love or hate each other or whatever get handcuffed to each other thing is like an extremely common trope in like fan fiction.
02:24:30
Speaker
Oh, really? And like, you know, if you're thinking about Hitchcock in that kind of pervy way, then it's like, oh, maybe like this. There is a reason why he's doing this. I mean, because there's a lot of there's a lot of bits.
02:24:47
Speaker
bits but just like scenes where it's like they're they're at the hotel and it's like she's trying to take her stockings off to dry them on the fire and he's like let me help you with that and it's like dude this like she's already handcuffed to you like
02:25:01
Speaker
It is kind of a funny scene of her struggling to get her stockings off while she has a handcuff on, and his hand is just kind of like limp next to hers while she's moving it up and down her leg. I think Hitchcock wants this stuff to be a little bit titillating, and I don't think it is, for me anyway. But it's just, yeah, it's slightly too creepy.
02:25:27
Speaker
Yeah. This movie ends with confrontation back at the next Mr. Memory show where they have finally like convinced.
02:25:38
Speaker
some sort of authority figures to go along with them. Is that what happens? And they're able to catch this transmission of information in the act. So the spy organization that's selling these state secrets is called the 39 Steps. And so Mr. Memory is being used to transmit this information. So
02:26:03
Speaker
When Mr. Memory goes up on stage, the guy, the Canadian guy, our main character, he starts like, tell me about the 39 steps. Like what are the 39 steps? And you see the villainous nine fingered man.
02:26:24
Speaker
who is a great villain let me point out like yeah i forget that actor's name but he's he's very good and he realizes that the jig is up he shoots mr memory and runs away and uh
02:26:38
Speaker
Hanay, like, gets up to Mr. Memory and is like, what are the secrets? What were you going to give them? And then he says, like, you're going to you're going to release me of my duties. It's OK. And then he says, yes. And so he starts to like, like kind of reading off like military airplane specs.
02:26:56
Speaker
Yeah, it's like airplane plans or something like that, right? It's like some kind of vague airplane technology that is kind of, he is memorized and is then going to transmit to the enemy. Yeah, part of the whole idea with
02:27:15
Speaker
the the spy intrigue is like they're trying to get these make sure these secrets don't get out of the country but like they haven't been written down anywhere and like there's there's no way that they can be taken away and like they have their hands on the secrets so like yeah how could they it's like we have the secret plans like locked away like no one's taken them uh yeah and it turns out that it was it was mr memory who was going to get all the information out of the out of the city
02:27:43
Speaker
I also think it's it's it's kind of interesting that this this takes the kind of top gun approach where like it never specifies who like the enemy agents are or like who they're working for it's just like some like foreign power is like after Britain's state secrets and I feel like it might be like
02:28:02
Speaker
I don't know how forward-thinking they were in 1935 about Nazis being warmongers. I think they had an idea, though. They're like, well, they're rearming. This seems bad. What other militarized nation would Britain have been afraid of in 1935?
02:28:22
Speaker
I think a lot of them were wary of the communists of the Soviet Union, but it's not like it was... It very easily could be a standard for them. But it's like, yeah, every character in this just has an English accent. Like they don't try to... They're very vague about it. Except the original spy who he meets at the beginning. She has a kind of foreign accent. Yeah, but I think specifically says that like she's like a mercenary, right? Like she...
02:28:50
Speaker
She works for Britain. No, she said she works for whoever pays her the most, if she pays her the most now. But I like that a bit. I like how it's sort of like... Kitchok knows to be... What are the state's secrets? Who cares? Like, who's the bad guys? They're the bad guys. Like, don't worry about it. Because I think at least in this movie, I think it works pretty well. No. Speaking of British people...
02:29:19
Speaker
Speaking of action pictures, or sort of like adventure movies, not really action movies, adventure movies. We're gonna talk about Captain Blood. Captain Blood. What a title. Which is our first Michael Curtiz picture. Yeah. He was a pretty notable director. Of Casablanca fame. Yeah. I was like reading up a little, I knew a little bit about my Curtiz. I didn't quite realize like how prolific he was.
02:29:48
Speaker
Back in the 1910s, he worked on the Danish movie Atlantis, which we watched. Oh, nice. Oh, yeah, I think I remember us mentioning that. I think we remember, because he's credited under his Hungarian name, which I have written down. I'm not going to try to say it, because I'm not going to do it justice. I'm just going to call it my expertise. He changed his name twice, once when he was very young, and then once when he immigrated to the States.
02:30:18
Speaker
and kind of Americanized his name. But yeah, he made like a bunch of movies throughout Europe in the 1910s and 20s in like in in Hungary and Denmark. And he did a couple for Oofa in Germany. And then the the Warner Brothers, the actual brothers kind of poached him. Yacko wacko.
02:30:38
Speaker
come make movies in Hollywood. And so I think at some point in the late 20s, he made the jump. This is also the first, I mean, the first Aeroflin vehicle.
02:30:52
Speaker
really. Yeah, he was a pretty new star at this point. And he was his first leading role. Yeah. And it definitely feels like he is the kind of the movie heir to Douglas Fairbanks in terms of like a charming rogue who does swashbuckling things. I think Fairbanks is more charismatic. I also do. But I do think Errol Flynn is good at
02:31:20
Speaker
his own version of it. I feel like Earl Flynn is such a classic old Hollywood figure almost. He's like, he's the guy with the mustache who does sword fight movies.
02:31:34
Speaker
Yeah, more or less. He's who the villain of The Rocket here is based on. Right. It's sort of like almost foppish, but in a roguish, tough way. Yeah, yeah. Debonair. This is, I mean, Douglas Fairbanks made a pirate movie, The Black Pirate, that we did not watch. But it's like, this feels like a Douglas Fairbanks movie in terms of like the tone of it, kind of what it's trying to, the type of movie that it's trying to be.
02:32:03
Speaker
But because it's made in the mid 30s. Yeah, it does definitely have a different sort of feel to it because it's a sound movie and it just has more of a kind of like classical Hollywood feeling than the kind of like silent movie
02:32:21
Speaker
wackiness. Yeah, it's a bit more plotty than a Fairbanks movie could be, being silent. Yeah. But yeah, it's about a smarmy doctor who- A very smug doctor. This is my favorite thing about the movie is that it's called Captain Blood. It's about a pirate captain. His name is Captain Blood. That is not his pirate name. That is just his actual name. He's just a man named Dr. Peter Blood.
02:32:49
Speaker
Well, hello, I'm Dr. Peter Blood. That just happens to then become a pirate, Captain. Like, with a name like that, he was, it was destined. Like, whether they're, you know, if your name is Peter Blood, you're gonna do some pirate stuff. And you live during pirate times. It's like, it's out of your hands at that point.
02:33:09
Speaker
this is this is farther ahead in the movie but like speaking of pirate times there's a lot of fun but kind of clunky pirate lingo in this where yeah Errol Flynn who is Australian is right he's Australian but speaking in an English accent and his character is supposed to be Irish
02:33:29
Speaker
yes right exactly and he says he says stuff like come on my hearties yeah come on my hearties let's go he i guess he's he's kind of going for like a mid-atlantic dialect i don't know he kind of just has like movie star speech
02:33:51
Speaker
Like that's kind of how I would describe Errol Flynn just as a presence is like a movie star guy like He's like he's very pretty like he's good at doing like stunt stuff and like he has a Kind of in it a certain sort of innate charm to him at the same time there is a kind of like he's much more
02:34:11
Speaker
It feels like he's putting on a performance more than I think like Douglas Fairbanks was. It feels a little bit more labored. Also like a movie star that he goes to William Randolph Hearst parties and has his own mansion with like secret peepholes in it.
02:34:33
Speaker
people's and two-way mirrors. Yeah. He can watch people in his guest bedroom. Errol Flynn, probably not the best guy in real life. Probably seemingly based on the fact that he has a mansion with people in it. A real creepy perv and kind of a bad dude. Maybe he takes the cake from Hitchcock.
02:34:53
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I feel like him and Hitchcock got along well. I feel like they had a little lot of giggling about the creepiness they were both involved in. You know, at least Hitchcock is self-aware. Hitchcock is horny on main. Yeah, Hitchcock isn't... Hitchcock likes to make movies about peepholes, but he'll just look right at you. And now for the peephole, yeah. He'll just like fully just open a door and stare at you.
02:35:25
Speaker
I mean, I think that Vertigo is Hitchcock calling himself out in many ways. And so I think maybe that awareness, it's the first step toward rectifying your shady behavior.
02:35:44
Speaker
Apparently, Errol Flynn, being a relatively unknown actor at the time he was cast in this, he got the part after Robert Donat, Donaut, who is the guy from the 39 Steps who plays the lead in that, Hannah Hay, turned it down. He had also done The Count of Monte Cristo, another swashbuckling sword movie. Both Errol Flynn and Olivia de Havilland, who's also in this
02:36:13
Speaker
This is like their first big movie and their first big movie together. They kind of went on to do a bunch more like, they were like a frequent on-screen pairing.
02:36:25
Speaker
And this is the second Captain Blood movie. There was an earlier 1920s silent Captain Blood also. Right off the bat, this movie, I was taken with how kind of like Brad Frankenstein, how like expressionistic the sets were, at least in the opening scene. They kind of lose that after this brief opening.
02:36:48
Speaker
but like early on there's a lot of like there's like a crazy like street sign that's like almost it looks like an arrow that's like pointing towards the house and things and it's very it's very moody and expressionistic early on and then it kind of loses that becomes like
02:37:04
Speaker
We're on a pirate ship with a very obvious painted sky behind it. Which, as fake as that stuff looks, I find it very charming because it looks like Hook. Or I should say Hook looks like this movie. Oh yeah, it's good. And also there are parts where they're blowing up real ships, too. Dude, the ship-to-ship combat movie in this movie rules. Yeah. All the ships fighting.
02:37:29
Speaker
amazing like there are like genuine like sailing scenes with humongous pirate ships i think and then they i think some of them are are like bigatures they're like not full scale oh interesting because looking at the water the water looks a little scaled down you know i see yeah
02:37:48
Speaker
Yeah, the like special effects in this movie, the like sort of in-camera stuff. I don't know if there's a lot of like optical things in this. There's a couple like rear projection things it looks like, but this movie looks great.
02:38:00
Speaker
Yeah. Looks expensive. Yes, it looks extremely expensive. The first half of this movie, I am not a huge fan of. It definitely picks up a lot more once he actually becomes a pirate. Right, because it's like Captain Blood. It's a pirate movie about this guy being a pirate. He doesn't become a pirate till halfway through, which is very late. Is it going to be a pirate movie yet? Yeah. The first half is him getting
02:38:26
Speaker
So he gets imprisoned by the wicked English king for providing aid as a doctor to a wounded rebel. And he's like, but I've taken a Hippocratic oath. I must save anyone who comes into my home. Captain Blood is a very...
02:38:43
Speaker
What's the right word? Not smug. There's a better one. He's self-righteous. Self-righteous, exactly. To the point where it's like a little silly. He's like this very honorable guy who, you know, he's he's among other kind of after he's taken in along with a bunch of other kind of rebels to, I don't know, whatever kind of civil conflict was happening in Britain at the time. During pirate times.
02:39:10
Speaker
The other people are genuine criminals, but he is the nice one. He's the one who has taken in for being too good of a guy. Right. They're all in court and everyone's like, oh yes, I guilty, I guilty. He's like, I am innocent, I. And he gives a whole big speech. Whenever he's remotely called out for being like,
02:39:30
Speaker
a criminal or a bad guy who gives a speech. He's a very morally superior character, I feel like, which I think the movie's intention is for him to be a very likeable protagonist that you can get behind. He does it so much that it's like, shut up, dude. Come on.
02:39:50
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Like let let this guy be a little bit of a rogue, like let him be. And he does like that's almost like that kind of his arc is he kind of learns to be a bit more of a a roguish hero as opposed to such a kind of morally righteous one. Right. And as he becomes a pirate and realizes that basically it's a story about people becoming so ostracized and marginalized by society that they have no choice but to become criminals.
02:40:20
Speaker
Yeah. But they do it in a cool way, which is being pirates. Yeah. Well, and then they save the day at the end and therefore justify themselves being pirates. And also, they're the cool pirates. All those other pirates are nasty. They have a code. They have the guidelines. They have their own little pirate constitution. Yeah. They have the, what is it called in Pirates of the Caribbean?
02:40:44
Speaker
I don't know. I think it's just called the pirate code, right? It wasn't called in one piece. Yeah, so the first half is like a lot of Dr. Blood, who I'll presume is that for the first half of the movie, is sold into slavery in Port Royal and he gets bought by Arabella Bishop, played by Olivia de Havilland.
02:41:11
Speaker
who's the niece of this awful slave owner, plantation owner guy, Arabella being related to him. It's the sort of thing where it's like, she is also technically a slave owner, and yet she's kind of like a supposed to be a heroic character, but whatever.
02:41:30
Speaker
Well, she's the good one. She buys Dr. Blood as, like, a sex slave, and then... And he, like... I mean, kind of, but he also just resents her for it, right? She's, like, trying to do a nice thing. She's, like... Right. She's like, this man is handsome. Let me buy him. Yeah. The start of any great romance.
02:41:52
Speaker
And yeah, so he has a beef with her for having bought him. I mean, understandably so. Yeah. And so he's not very grateful for her her kind of sparing him from the other buyer who would have brought him to toil away in the mines. Yeah. This movie does have a very kind of like classically old Hollywood like romantic streak through it. And part of that is I think like
02:42:18
Speaker
Peter Blood's like moral kind of righteousness and it also the kind of the romantic subplot with him and Arabella is like is so I don't want it's like it's melodramatic but it's also like every time they're together there's this like you know like
02:42:33
Speaker
Yeah, like a soft filter over everything. And it's like all of the dialogue is like so like flowery and he's like, I could never have thought that a devil could have an angel for a niece. It's all like so dramatic and like, you know, in that kind of but in a way that I found very entertaining.
02:42:54
Speaker
yeah it's fun i don't know if it's like good but well that i think the second half is good yeah like the second half rules the first half is like a bit of a drag because it's like this story about like slavery and and like escape and and and fixing uh the the governor's bad gout on his foot yeah a lot of like gout jokes right it's like it's a story about you know uh slavery in jamaica and yet there's like
02:43:23
Speaker
two actors of color in this whole movie were in the background. I know that that existed in like white people were sold into slavery in pirate times.
02:43:39
Speaker
But it does feel kind of pointed that it's like every character in this movie is like, why hello there, sir. I say. I don't know. It's weird because like she was trying to romance him. Right. And then he kind of reciprocates and she is like, oh, my God, you're of much lower status than me. I cannot. Yeah, it's very very hot and cold, those two.
02:44:05
Speaker
But it looks like their kind of escape plan is not gonna work out, but then there's a Spanish pirate attack. Some Spanish pirates attack Port Royal. Some pirates ex machita. Yes, and so they're able to use that as cover to like...
02:44:21
Speaker
escape through the port and steal one of the Spanish ships while it's empty. This whole scene feels very, very much feels like a predecessor to the Black Pearl attacking Port Royal in the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie. Would not surprise me at all if that was, if like this is a reference point for that because like some of it might just be, I thought about that a lot watching this of like newer pirate movies. I'm like, there's that thing.
02:44:48
Speaker
But part of that might just be like, it's pirate movie. They all have certain
02:44:53
Speaker
set pieces and things that happen in a pirate movie. It was making me think about how I just went on the Pirates of the Caribbean ride for the first time recently and thinking about how I didn't expect to get wet in that ride. You're in the splash zone. I just wasn't familiar with the Pirates of the Caribbean as a ride where you have to sit on a wet seat. Oh, okay.
02:45:23
Speaker
I have never been on the ride, which it feels like an oversight. It's cool. I've been to both Disney parks or both American Disney parks. Never been on Pirates of the Caribbean. This is my first time at an American Disney park and I had to do Pirates. Anyway, back to Captain Blood. They're originally trying to escape on a ship that like a
02:45:45
Speaker
they contact a debtor, get a hold of some money, and they're like, we're gonna buy a ship to all escape on together. That plan falls through when their ship gets blown up in the chaos. And then they're just like, let's just take a Spanish ship. Yeah, they say, the boat's been sunk, sunk to the bottom of the briny. And so yeah, then they steal a pirate ship and they're like, we're pirates now.
02:46:10
Speaker
We are going to write a pirate code and we are going to live as pirates. As a brotherhood of buccaneers, they say. Indeed. And then there's this like text on screen thing and it's like, and then they became the best pirates in the
Captain Blood: A Pirate's Journey
02:46:23
Speaker
world. And it's like, yeah, we could, it would have been nice to maybe see some of that. There was like a kind of a very brief montage of like sword fights in there. Right. But it cuts from them like deciding to be pirates to then being the best pirates.
02:46:38
Speaker
Well, clearly they would become the best pirates because they're all righteous, good guys who are suave and they buckle swatches. But I do think they spend so much time in the first half just in this sort of setting up why these people would be pushed so far to the margins of society that they would decide to be pirates to begin with.
02:47:02
Speaker
But I wish there was more of a second act of them actually becoming pirates, I guess. Because then it's like, all right, now that we're the best pirates, let's have a different movie start. Before it does the time jump, the colonel, Colonel Bishop, who's the person who had bought all of them at auction. The brutal ruler of the island, as appointed by the king,
02:47:26
Speaker
He climbs aboard the ship and are like, oh, you've saved us from those rascally Spanish pirates. And he's like, thank you for saving all of my money that they stole. And they're like, get out of here. And they throw them off the ship.
02:47:41
Speaker
they initially want to hang him and then he's like true yeah but that's too good for him throw him off the ship so that he can come back later in the movie yeah exactly they pretty much they almost say that like that's kind of the degree to which they're foreshadowing it oh yeah and then Errol Flynn says desperate men we go to seek a desperate fortune and then the text on screen says like off they went a ship a handful of men and a brain
02:48:08
Speaker
What do we do? What do we do, genius blood? I guess that is kind of the thing that seemingly like sets Captain Blood apart from the other pirates is that he's a smart pirate. Yeah, he got a doctorate. Yeah, exactly. Captain Blood PhD. That's the sequel. And so then it's like second half of the movie, they're already the best and coolest pirates around. Everyone loves Captain Blood for being such a good pirate. I mean, to be fair, they're pretty good and cool.
02:48:37
Speaker
Yeah, we pick back up in Tortuga, classic pirate location. Captain Blood is drinking with a French pirate named Lavassure, played by Basil Rathbone, famous for being Sherlock Holmes, amongst other things. He plays French very well, I think. I like whenever he says Captain Blood, it's like Captain Blood. I feel like this character Lavassure feels very, reminded me a lot of Belloc from Raiders.
02:49:06
Speaker
Which I think is probably not a coincidence. Like, it would not surprise me at all if, like, I think both Spielberg and Lawrence Kasdan have, like, cited Luka Cartiz as, like, a guy that inspired Raiders. Like, that was, like, kind of the vibe they were going for. It's like, oh, this is, like, a little bit of, like, a Marco Cartiz type of thing. And so it's like, oh, yeah, I'm sure that that was, like, and then who's the villain? I don't know, like a mean French guy.
02:49:32
Speaker
he's bothering blood to kind of join up as the two strongest pirates. He's kind of giving this sort of like we're not so very different you and I speech like imagine what we could do together classic villain speech and so blood is like sure let's team up and then like within the same sentence like regrets it he's like this was a mistake he almost like turns to the camera and was like shouldn't have done that
02:50:00
Speaker
But in a much more sort of like, oh, what have I done? Sort of sort of way. And then immediately, like, you know, it flashes forward, you know, maybe a couple of months into them being pirate buddies. And immediately this guy is too French to to stick to their code of don't don't take ladies as your property. Yeah. Right. Stop stealing ladies. Lavasir kidnaps Arabella.
02:50:30
Speaker
and keeps her on an island. He's like, let all the other prisoners go, but I'm gonna keep this one very attractive woman as my ransom. Cat in Blood is like not having that, so.
02:50:42
Speaker
Captain Blood has a whole confrontation with Lavasir over this where Captain Blood attacks him with logic first and then with the sword second. Which the pen should be mightier then. Right. He kind of in part of his logic attack, he's like, well, if I pay the ransom, then like she can come stay with me. And so he he like with a bunch of pearls, he buys buys Arabella from Lavasir. Lavasir is like, how dare you, sir. I'm going to sword fight you.
02:51:12
Speaker
And so they have a sword fight on the beach. He also, he takes an extreme glee in purchasing her. Oh yeah, for sure. After she owned him as a slave. Yeah, because at first he's like, pretend that you don't know her. And he like, she sees that he's shown up. He's like, a person that I know. Captain Blood is here.
02:51:36
Speaker
the the nice pirate and then he just like walks past her without looking at her and it's he's really kind of like digging the kind of uh his superiority at this moment he's he's just lavishing it but so they have a big sort him and lavasir have this big sword fight on the beach which is pretty fun love a good beach sword fight fencing i thought he was going to come back later nope
02:52:01
Speaker
Well, he stabs him, too. He kind of dies pretty quickly. I see. And there's some blood. I was assuming that he wasn't really dead. I'm like, oh, Lavasura is going to come back. And it's like, oh, no, no, he's just he's done. That's the end.
02:52:15
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, you know, I'd assume that if you get stabbed in the chest and then you're at like kind of lying down drowning heights in the water, then you're probably as good as done. I think it's maybe sort of a maybe my modern movie sensibilities. I'm like, unless someone has their like head chopped off, like they're going to come back in the third act, you know. Yeah.
02:52:39
Speaker
We've already seen that water doesn't kill people because of the dad of Olivia de Havilland.
02:52:48
Speaker
Right. Which we're going to see him again one second. So then Captain Blood wants to take Arabella back to Port Royal to like return her there. And the crew was like, we don't want to go back there like the entire British Navy is over there and the guy that hates us like and so they they try to mutiny. But then Captain Blood is like so agreeable about it. He's like, yeah, OK, I guess you guys can mutiny like you have a good point. And they're like, I think we take it back. We like we'll go to Port Royal.
02:53:20
Speaker
It was such a weird moment. He's like reverse psychology-ing them. Pretty much, yeah. Just doing like, oh, well, if I'm so bad, then go ahead, fine. They're like, no, you're not bad. We're sorry for mutiny-ing. Which is, yeah, very funny. And then once they get back to Port Royal, though, they see that it's under attack by the French Navy.
02:53:47
Speaker
and they find out that the old, mean English king is dead.
02:53:50
Speaker
And there's a new English king that is not as bad. And that England is now at war with the French, which is why this is happening. They find out that oceans are in our battlefields. And so they're like, two arms, we're gonna join up with the British again. We're gonna fight off the French Navy. And we get this long extended like battle scene between multiple ships, shooting cannons at each other and like swinging across on ropes and sword fights and grappling hooks.
02:54:17
Speaker
and exploding ships, it rules. All of the stuff that I wanted out of this movie is packed into the last 35 minutes of it, but it's so good in that section that I'm like, it's been worth this very belabored buildup, but it leaves off on the best stuff, kind of.
02:54:39
Speaker
And then because of this, Captain Blood gets elected mayor of Port Royal and gets to shove it in the bad guy's face. Yeah, immediately he's like, I'm going to mayor your niece and also I'm the mayor now. Deal with it. I put my feet on your desk.
02:54:56
Speaker
There's like an emissary from the king there and he's like, if you defeat the French, then you get to be king of town. And that's the rules. The guy, what's his name? The mean guy who's who owned them.
02:55:11
Speaker
Colonel Bishop. Colonel Bishop. He the reason why he's being deposed is because he was out hunting for Captain Blood on his vengeance quest. And then his his city was attacked while his squad was out trying to find his pirate white whale. And so he comes back and he's just like, hey, guess what? You found me. And now I I rule your your city.
02:55:40
Speaker
And then, yeah, the movie just ends as it began with Peter Blood being smug. Well, it ends with him and Olivia de Havilland both, like, cheek to cheek, like, making smug faces at the bad guy. Yeah. Which is, it's cathartic. It's fun. It's a really fun end. Yeah. Yeah. I do think the first half is, like, too long and I wish there was more time dedicated to them. Like, I wish there wasn't that, like, very stark, like, time jump where it's like they start being pirates and then they're the best.
02:56:09
Speaker
But I didn't like the second half has so much fun stuff in it that it like it's it's well worth watching for that. And I mean, there's it's it's there's fun stuff throughout. But yeah, it has a very I've said this before on this episode, but it's like a very like old timey Hollywood feeling to it. Yeah. And that's it. That's all the movies. Oh, great score on this, too. I forgot to mention by Corngold.
02:56:39
Speaker
a notable composer of film and music.
02:56:45
Speaker
I think that that score I think really helps that that sort of like old timey kind of romantic drama feeling. I'm glad we're getting scores now. That's. Yeah. Yeah. It's we're getting into some good territory and it's interesting. These are the early movies that didn't have non diegetic scores, but you want to have them for a movie. Yeah. Yeah. It helps a lot.
Favorite Films & Philosophical Reflections
02:57:10
Speaker
And that's it.
02:57:12
Speaker
Yeah, what was your favorite film that we watched? You know?
02:57:16
Speaker
It might have been Top Hat. I really, really had a fun time with Top Hat. And though it's not the best of its style, of people are playfully mean to each other. Thirties movie. I still love those movies so dearly that. Yeah. Number one spot. Mine was definitely Brad Frankenstein. I was really kind of very happily surprised at how good that was. Olivia de happily over here. Sure. Yeah.
02:57:45
Speaker
Yeah. Well, cool. That's about it. Thank you all for watching and listening to this, which is surely to be one of our longer episodes. But I think any time that we talk about, you know, we broke our record with Birth of a Nation and we had to say a lot about trying for the will also.
02:58:04
Speaker
yeah i guess it's it's true i mean that was our first movie so we probably were a little extra long-winded because we were like just getting into it but we gotta though i mean like you know yes it's there's complex and we need to talk about it right it's it's a movie that i think is
02:58:20
Speaker
Unlike the other stuff, I feel like that when we're talking about much bigger philosophical ideas almost of what is indoctrination and how does that work and how does the media play into that? I think we solved the Nazi crisis in this episode. And we can call it a wrap now. So give us a like on Facebook and YouTube for solving the Nazi crisis. And that'll be it for this episode.
02:58:49
Speaker
Uh, subscribe and all that jazz. And I wish it involved more punching. Oh, yeah, true. We need to edit people into triumph of the will. Just punching everything. We'll edit in a bunch of clips from Indiana Jones and Hellboy. Yeah, we'll edit in a bunch of like Street Fighter guys. Put them put them next to every single Nazi.
02:59:14
Speaker
So we have 50,000 Nazis and 50,000 little street animated street fighter guys. But see, now that you've said that, now I have to, for at least one shot, I have to try that now. Do it. All right. Again, send us a like for defeating the Nazis because that's something that we did. And thanks for listening. Appreciate you all for listening. Come back for 1936. And Glenn?
02:59:44
Speaker
Speaking of 1936, I'll see you next year. See you next year.