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1938 - Jackass Presents: Quirky Grandpa
27 Plays1 year ago
Closing in on the end of the 1930s and Hollywood is firing off wacky comedies and technicolor extravaganzas! We also cover some Our Gang/Little Rascals shorts, Eisenstein's first talkie, and a very French proto-noir crime drama!
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 1938 Films Discussed playlist right here!
See you next year!
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Transcript
Introduction to the Podcast
00:00:03
Speaker
Robin Hood and Little John walking through the forest Laughing back and forth at what the other has to say
00:00:11
Speaker
Reminiscing this night and having such a good time. Ooh to lolly, ooh to lolly, golly, what a day. 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 this episode is 1938. I'm one of your hosts, Chris Elley. I'm a film projectionist and joining me as always is... Alright, I'm Glenn Corvell. I'm a filmmaker.
00:00:36
Speaker
That's right. And yeah, we're back again for closing in on the end of the 1930s. How's it feel, Glenn? You ready to put a bookmark in this chapter? I don't know if that's the right metaphor. Sure, yeah, why not? Yeah, I mean, 30s are a pretty fun and eventful decade of movies, but 40s.
00:01:04
Speaker
Got some big ones coming down the pipe.
Interest in Proto-Noir Films
00:01:09
Speaker
You're a big noir guy and I'm going to ask you some noir questions today. Today? Well, I guess we're getting into some proto-noir today. Proto-noir. But that's getting ahead of ourselves a little bit. Glenn, how's it going? What's up? What are you even up to?
00:01:27
Speaker
Well, as you can see, if you're watching this on YouTube, or that you, Chris, can see because you're on the webcam. That's me. I have a new camera set up, so my video is much crisper than it usually is. And I'm in a different room. I'm in my new home office, which is, you can probably tell by the audio, cavernously empty.
00:01:51
Speaker
Yeah. If you're not watching on YouTube, he's in the Batcave. He's in the actual Batcave right now. Yeah.
New Home Office Setup
00:02:00
Speaker
And if you are watching on YouTube, there's a blank wall and a Temple of Doom poster behind me. Which is apropos because we're talking about not Temple of Doom, but an Indiana Jones era for sure.
00:02:15
Speaker
Um, more of a Last Crusade era. A Last Crusade. That takes place in 38. Yeah. I should have put my Last Crusade poster behind me because I have one of those too. You should have done that. Let's start over. Let's do it again. It's hard cut and there's a Last Crusade poster behind me. I've been just kind of sitting around doing a whole lot of nothing. Been getting really dance, dance revolution lately. I've also mostly been sitting around doing nothing. So you're in good company there.
00:02:44
Speaker
Yeah, and we're about to go to a wedding soon. So we'll be seeing each other. Well, we will be seeing each other soon. Maybe we'll record an in-person podcast finally. Hey, yeah. I mean, we've done the one in Kansas. Oh, that's right. Yeah. Yeah. Not in New York or here. But now that we've gotten all that aside, not that, you know, you or I are unimportant, but what we're really here for is
00:03:12
Speaker
to immerse ourselves in that year, that special year of 1938.
1938 News Highlights
00:03:17
Speaker
And we like to do that by giving ourselves a little bit of newsworthy context. What was happening in the year? Glenn, take it away.
00:03:42
Speaker
Hitting the shelves today, action comics number one. Introducing a new character, Superman. Mightier than the sword, the ballpoint pen is patented in Britain. German boxing champ Max Schlemming is knocked out in the first round by American Joe Lewis. An unusually large media crash lands in Grover's Mill, New Jersey. The world speed record for steam is set by the locomotive Mallard. The synthetic yarn nylon is used for toothbrush bristles.
00:04:11
Speaker
Thousands of Jewish businesses are looted and burned by Nazi rioters across Germany during the Night of Broken Glass. The media in New Jersey appears to, in fact, be a huge metallic cylinder. The psychedelic LSD is first synthesized by Swiss chemist Albert Hoffman. Breaking news! Martians have invaded New Jersey. Oops, never mind. It was all a Mercury Theater radio production of The War of the Worlds by young upstart Orson Welles.
00:04:43
Speaker
Good bit, good bit, good bit. Orson Welles, making an A for himself. Maybe he'll make a movie one day. And pour one out for Papa Georges. Papa Georges, yeah. I just found that I had the Hugo book right behind me. Hey, there you go. Here's a picture of him with his head exploding. Our memorial to Papa Georges.
00:05:11
Speaker
Papa George made movies. Yes, he did. We stand Papa George. Oh, 100 percent. Except for when he was racist. Yeah, except for when and when he was like hating on suffragettes and everything. But I don't know. I think he was it felt like he was just bandwagon jumping, you know, kind of. Yeah.
00:05:38
Speaker
Anyway, he's dead now, so let's talk about something else. We're going to switch it over to our shorts, one week one real. Let's keep it light.
Cultural Impact of 'Our Gang' Shorts
00:05:51
Speaker
Yeah, let's keep it light after awkwardly moving past the horrific Nazi things to talk about something adorable, which is a couple of little rascal shorts or our gang shorts that we watched.
00:06:06
Speaker
Right, I guess like the collectively they are known as like the our gang it's used like present like presenting our gang in Whatever the titles are and I yeah the little rascals is like just I don't know the the our gang a little rascals names and
00:06:24
Speaker
I'm confused about, like... Yeah, Little Rascals I think was mostly something that was applied afterwards, like post-haste to these Our Gang shorts. I had never actually watched any Our Gang shorts. Oh, really? Before this, yeah. I knew of the Rascals.
00:06:53
Speaker
just through cultural osmosis. I remember growing up, I forget what movie it was on, but one of the VHS tapes I had had a preview for the 90s Little Rascals movie on it. But yeah, never saw that, never saw any of the original shorts. So this was my introduction to the Little Rascals as a piece of cinema history. Nice. Had you seen any before this?
00:07:21
Speaker
I definitely like, you know, in that era when you're like five and your dad is showing you things like Three Stooges, like I also saw a little rascals along with Three Stooges. I don't have any clear memories of it, but I definitely watched a number of shorts when I was a kid. Now that I think about it, I think I did actually see some shorts when I was
00:07:44
Speaker
like very young, but I don't remember them at all. So I might as well not have. I might have seen the 90s movie. I don't remember. But I also watched at the Denver Silent Film Festival last year. They played a silent our gang short with live accompaniment, which was a lot of fun. It was one called The Big Show that had them dressing up as different
00:08:13
Speaker
as different silent movie stars like Harold Lloyd. Hey. And I think there was like a, I don't know, there was like maybe a Mabel Normand in there too or something. That's cool. Yeah. I want to watch that now. But we're not talking about that one today. No. We were talking about two that we watched. One that was sort of from the kind of golden age of our gang shorts when they were being produced by Hal Roach.
00:08:39
Speaker
and then one from later 1938 when they switched over to MGM. The first one is called The Awful Tooth. Good pun title there. This is sort of a dentist comedy.
00:08:59
Speaker
Yes. Your classic dentist comedy. In fact, like maybe the most classic thing about it is that a kid wants to remove his tooth to get money, which is a classic bit. It could have originated here, probably not, but you know. Yeah, I mean, like with everything in all of film history, I'm like, that was probably a vaudeville thing. I don't know how many kids were on vaudeville, but I could imagine it being in the funnies.
00:09:29
Speaker
The gang of rascals. Our gang of little rascals is introduced in this short with their faces. Their faces smushed up on the front of a glass window looking at baseball mitts and balls. They want to buy some baseball stuff, but they got no money. Exactly what old timey children love, you know. Let's throw a ball around. Yeah. I mean, what else are you going to do in the Great Depression when you're a child? Yeah.
00:09:59
Speaker
And so they hatch a money-making scheme to sell their teeth to the dentist. Well, not to sell their teeth to the tooth fairy. Yeah. They heard that one of them got 10 cents for his tooth under his pillow. And they're like, let's go to the dentist and remove all of our teeth and buy lots of stuff. Yeah. And so they go to the dentist and the dentist decides to mess with them and freak them out a little bit.
00:10:26
Speaker
and just be really scary. Yeah, it's like it's like it starts as kind of a fun joke, but it also turns very quickly into dentist horror. Yeah, where one of them is literally strapped to the chair, unable to talk while he's making menacing noises and grinding and blades all around him, you know? Yeah, Alfalfa, the one with the weird hair.
00:10:55
Speaker
Yes. He's sort of the fancy one. He's got a bow tie and like a piece of hair that sticks up in the back. I get his character though is that he's sort of like, he's the fancy one.
00:11:10
Speaker
I honestly don't haven't watched enough little rascals to be able to tell you exactly what their characters are supposed to be. But I was kind of trying to get a sense of like each of their personas. Because it also seems like there is a lot of rascals that not all of them show up in every short. There's like a sort of a pool of many rascals that then each short will have like five in it.
00:11:35
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. I think that like there are some fan favorites, though, who are in more more than others. And then also they need to stay children. And this series has been going since the early 20s and it goes for another, I don't know, seven or eight, seven or eight years or something like that. Yeah. And so there it's a rotating cast that also it rotates in and out children. Mm hmm.
00:12:02
Speaker
I don't know, do we, how much do we want to go to the, there's not a lot of plot in these. They're like, the dentist is scary and then they get scared and they don't want to sell her teeth and the dentist buys them the baseball stuff because he's a nice guy. He's a nice guy who just wanted to take some time to traumatize children. Yeah, he was just one to troll some, some kids real quick.
00:12:22
Speaker
I was thinking at the beginning of this short like it's going to be uh you know it's gonna be like a light roasting you know he's gonna say ah these people they're these kids they're i gotta teach them a lesson uh they don't want to rip all their teeth out but he gets like real scary with it
00:12:40
Speaker
I mean, just think it's just it's psychological torture. He's not like he's not actually harming them in any way. He's just he's just making scary sounds like where they can't see. So they think that he's going to do something really painful. And that's why you don't sell your teeth to buy baseball gear. Exactly. There is a bit like there is the sort of
00:13:05
Speaker
Dentist nurse, what is that called? Dental hygienist. Dental assistant who's kind of laughing in the background during a lot of these scenes. And that seemed very genuine to me that like just the antics that were happening was making the actual actor laugh.
00:13:27
Speaker
Yeah, it's good. It's like a charming, cute short. It's like a solid, like one real, half real kind of situation. It's like nine minutes long. This is like the perfect kind of thing to just like ease you into whatever you're about to watch in that kind of old, you know, short before the movie kind of thing. This is, yeah. This and the other one, I think they're both great times. They're light and enjoyable.
00:13:53
Speaker
Yeah, they're both really genuinely sweet and charming and innocent in a way that I feel like a lot of entertainment just isn't. Yeah, yeah. Where it's like, kids doing silly stuff. And it's like, no, it's just that. I'm just going to enjoy nine minutes of kids. It gets in, it gets in, it gets out. Yeah. It's great. Yeah. There's a dog, there's a pet monkey.
00:14:22
Speaker
And it's not like saccharin, too. I think that's something that would ruin it. I would even say it has an edge to it, but it feels like proto-rugrats in a way. It's got this kind of like, you're watching kids get into shenanigans, but it's not like too sweet, you know? It's like a little bit, I don't know, child-friendly edgy. Well, right, it has the edge that I feel like
00:14:52
Speaker
children getting into antics actually have when they're doing antics. Like, yeah, like they get hurt or like, you know, things are a little scarier and a little, you know, it's. Yeah, I feel like it does capture, I think, a sense of childhood that is fairly elusive, I would say, in like children's entertainment.
00:15:18
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, because a lot of children's entertainment is a little too safe. It's a little safer than this. But I think that like there's nothing not kid friendly about this, but there's also nothing too kitty about this that an adult couldn't enjoy it. Yeah, I thought it was really good. It's really good. We can move on to the next one, I suppose, which is impractical joker. No, it's just practical jokers.
00:15:44
Speaker
The little rascals are not as impractical as the impractical jokers are. They're just practical jokers. Do we reveal your backstory here? My backstory that I work on the show, Impractical Jokers, I don't think that that's... I feel like I've said that on the show before. Well, that's part of why we picked this one because... Yeah, this one's sort of a prank comedy.
00:16:13
Speaker
When one of the one of the gang is doing pranks and the rest of the gang gets annoyed and tries to play a prank on him and it backfires and birthday cake cake. They try to put fireworks in his birthday cake. But then his mom is like, oh, you like you guys are his his favorite friends. Why don't you hold the cake? And they're like, but there's fireworks in there.
00:16:36
Speaker
Classic like, you know, turn of the century children's shenanigans, you know? Yeah, putting fireworks in a birthday cake. I think that like it actually has like a really good sense of tension like while he's holding the cake. I mean, it's it's it's the Hitchcock thing of like the bomb under the table. Like if you show the audience the bomber to the table. And so it's like. There's like a couple of the kids who know that the bomb is in the cake.
00:17:05
Speaker
as well as the audience does. So yeah, you're like waiting, you're watching the candle go down, waiting for it to happen. While Alfalfa again is doing, is singing a song very scaredly. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's some of the best part of the scene is how terrified you could tell he is while he's singing because he's being compelled to sing while he's holding a cake with a firecracker inside of it. But it's also, it is, that's the same,
00:17:34
Speaker
It feels very authentically childlike in that it's... You could also imagine he's just scared because he doesn't want to sing.
00:17:44
Speaker
because he's like in like the he's too much attentions on him so he's like and he's tense well and also like they're in there because they're children who adults don't listen to they're in this situation where they have to like they have to hold this cake that they don't want to you know they can't say no when an adult told him hold this cake you know and sing you have no say in it yeah
00:18:11
Speaker
You got anything else on that gang? Two things that stuck out to me that I was reading up on a little bit are how these were being made during the Depression and were pretty, did not shy away from being like, oh yeah, these are all children who are living in poverty. They're all dressed in raggedy clothes, or some of them are dressed in, there's a raggedy-ness to some of them.
00:18:41
Speaker
And they're, you know, running around empty lots and stuff as kids do in the depression. And then also that this is like one of the only like positive depictions of like racial harmony in 1930s film. That's right. Yeah. And it's like a more diverse set of kids than a lot of just other movie casts tended to be.
00:19:08
Speaker
during this time period? Yeah. And it had been that way since the early 20s. I know that, like, that had been, like, a kind of controversial element of it for a long time. And it's very respectable. It helps these age better, too, I think. Oh, yeah. I think a lot of 1930s entertainment sometimes is like, ooh. I don't know. Less than I kind of worried it would be.
00:19:33
Speaker
I think it was intended to be worse in the 20s, but there's a lot that we haven't seen also. So I don't want to make broad sweeping statements. Yeah, I know that there are a handful of our gang shorts that like, you know, on the Blu-rays and such come with full warning before them that this one has some kind of thing or whatever. But it's like, you know, they have.
00:19:55
Speaker
over 150, if not like a couple hundred shorts. And it's like only a small handful of them that are like that. I mean, I think that also is like a really good point in the favor of this for something that can be shown to audiences today and kids today is just like it would be uncomfortable to show this to a kid now to have to explain all of the, you know, all if there were racism in it. Yeah. Yeah.
00:20:26
Speaker
So, yeah. Evergreen. Evergreen. Yeah. Our gang. Our gang good. Official one week, one year position. And now that we've knocked out those two little one realers, let's get to our feature presentation. And now we're pleased to bring you our feature presentation.
00:20:54
Speaker
We could start with a comedy film that also features a gang of children.
Film Analysis: 'You Can't Take It With You'
00:21:05
Speaker
Right. Yeah. I assume you're talking about you can't take it with you. Yes. The Frank Capra film. You can't take it with you.
00:21:14
Speaker
This is not my favorite Capra. I think it's like some of his worst tendencies maybe. It's funny how it feels very Capra-esque in the sort of obvious ways of it's like it's about the working man. It's like feel good and it has this really kind of like uplifting life affirming kind of bent to it.
00:21:38
Speaker
but it also is like, it definitely feels like lesser Capra compared to like his classics. This is not really one of his classics and you can see why, because it's not as good.
00:21:50
Speaker
Yeah, I it's not terrible, but it's like it's fine. Yeah, it's it it works. I think it's got this like really strange political situation going on where it is. I don't know. It's like it's like this kind of rugged individualist like I don't you know, I don't like paying income tax, so I won't situation. Right.
00:22:15
Speaker
But then also, you know, oh, we should all get along and and the working man is better than the businessman and all that. Like he definitely in all of his movies, he's very America America, but then he doesn't like the kind of end consequences of where America America thinking goes.
00:22:36
Speaker
Yeah well I mean Frank Capra was fairly like conservative for for the time I guess maybe not for the time but like yeah I can definitely see maybe some some libertarian worldview sneaking into this one.
00:22:53
Speaker
Yeah. Cause it's funny cause it's like, it starts out and it's like, don't you hate your dumb office job that no one likes to do? Like wouldn't you rather just go live in a big house and like make the stuff that you want to make and like, and I'm like, yeah, yeah, this is great. And then it's like, also don't you hate income tax? And I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa, movie.
00:23:15
Speaker
Yeah, it's definitely like putting together this sort of bohemian collective of artists and weirdos that are kind of a family, but also a handful of people who just end up hanging out there for free. It does feel almost like a libertarian commune, like Rapture. Sure, yeah. I think it's maybe less of a
00:23:44
Speaker
kind of a meritocracy than Rapture is. No, it does. I'm just saying things. If we're going to compare the two. Yeah, I also feel like there's that kind of stuff like seated in this movie, but overall it does feel like it's mostly going for just kind of feel good comedy. Yes. Everyone should just hug kind of stuff.
00:24:10
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. The kind of like a patriarch, the kind of main axis of this movie is the grandpa. What's his name? And his name in the film is grandpa. Like, I think his character does have a name, but everyone refers to him as grandpa.
00:24:32
Speaker
Yeah, who's played by Lionel Barrymore, who usually plays bad guys. But in this, he plays a very convincing, whimsical, quirky, good guy. Yeah, I feel like Lionel Barrymore is probably most famous for playing a shitty bank owner in It's a Wonderful Life, another Frank Cameron movie.
00:24:56
Speaker
And so it's funny to see him in this playing the opposite of that character. Yeah, a guy who absolutely detests shitty bank owners. Yeah, exactly. And it's just like, just come on, just hang out, we're all friends. And then, but it also, I feel like the movie is aware that having that mindset and living that way requires a certain degree of
00:25:23
Speaker
wealth and also then the tax man will come knocking and be like, hey, you haven't paid income tax in 10 years. We're going to need that from you. And I mean, with a movie that we'll be seeing, we'll be talking about later, it's another one where
00:25:41
Speaker
uh immense privilege amount allows you to be immensely uh quirky and just be unbridled in your uh in your insanity um yeah this movie also has our first appearance we've seen of james stewart
00:25:59
Speaker
little babyface James Stewart. Yeah, I guess right for the show. This isn't the earliest movie of his that I've seen, I don't think, but it is. I think it's the first one that we're talking about on the show. Yeah, yeah. And he's very young here. I think if I remember correctly, he's in his like early 20s.
00:26:16
Speaker
Yeah. James Stewart, Gangly King is my letterbox. Gangly King. And he's already kind of, I mean, I guess it's just his voice and his mannerisms, but he's already like pretty full James Stewart mode in this movie. Yeah.
00:26:33
Speaker
Yeah, no, like he had that going right off the bat, I feel like that the Jimmy Stewart persona is definitely alive in this movie. And so Jimmy Stewart is playing the son of this kind of real estate developer who is trying to buy up the entire neighborhood that quirky grandpa and his band of merry men live in.
00:27:00
Speaker
And then, but unbeknownst to anybody involved, he and the daughter of the family fall in love with each other. And then you got a sort of like Romeo and Juliet thing going on.
00:27:15
Speaker
But then you also kind of have the birdcage thing going on where it's like the weird people are having to pretend to be normals to appease the parents of the friend, you know, the boyfriend. Yeah, those two movies have a very similar premise. I hadn't thought of that. And I think they both kind of have a similar ending to where like,
00:27:45
Speaker
the like crusty old. The conservative, really, in this movie and end in a birdcage. Kind of learn to loosen up a little bit and appreciate humanity a little bit more as opposed to money. Take a deep breath and appreciate life. Yeah, because Jimmy Stewart's character's parents are, they're upset that he's dating
00:28:14
Speaker
Jean Arthur's character, not because of any other reason that she is a stenographer and that they think that that's below him. There's definitely a lot of class commentary going on in this movie. It goes in a typical Frank Capra e-way where
00:28:36
Speaker
In the 11th hour, the evil businessman goes, never mind, everybody be fun and have a Merry Christmas to all. Well, the power of music, they have a harmonica duet. That's right. It melts his icy heart.
00:28:56
Speaker
Yeah, grandpa hands him a harmonica and then like, you know, there's all these shots. There's all these parts in like boardrooms where the developer is like, you know, making plans to seize control and take everyone's homes away. And then there are these like conspicuous shots of the harmonica to symbolize his his lost innocence. You know,
00:29:22
Speaker
Another sort of very Frank Capra thing is that grandpa gets arrested and he's got all these, you know, back income taxes and fines and things. And then the whole community comes together and puts pools all their money together to pay his fines. Yeah. Everyone loves grandpa.
00:29:44
Speaker
Another connection with this and the last thing that we talked about is that there are just random fireworks going off at all points during this movie. Because one of the, you know, there's like a dozen or so people in this mansion all doing their own strange thing. All these different kooky characters.
00:30:03
Speaker
Yeah, and one of the kooky characters, or two of the kooky characters are working on fireworks in the basement, which leads to a confrontation with the police, but then also just explosions in the background of a bunch of different shots. But, I don't know, I don't know if I have a lot to say about this movie other than it's, it has a lot of these like very kind of typical Frank Capra, like story beats in it, but it is,
00:30:32
Speaker
It doesn't really come together the way that I think a lot of his more well-known movies do. Yeah. But this did win Best Picture, I believe. True. It did win the Oscar for 1938, which is
00:30:49
Speaker
I had heard of it before for that reason, but I had never taken the time to watch it. And now I'm like, OK. You Can't Take It With You is kind of a strange title. And it refers to money after you die. You can't take it with you. So why quest after it so much and just have fun instead? Yeah, which I like that message of like, come on, do something fun. Make fireworks in your basement. Yeah, what's worse going to happen?
00:31:19
Speaker
I guess I feel like this movie also does...
00:31:22
Speaker
present the, like, what's the worst gonna happen? Like, I don't know, you could get arrested, your house could burn down, like, those are possibilities. Ah. But we've got privilege. Shall we move on to... Another comedy where people get arrested? Another comedy where rich people get thrown in jail. And act insane with impunity. Yeah. Yeah, it's bringing up baby.
00:31:50
Speaker
another movie that I like I had heard of but wasn't really familiar with yeah I didn't know that baby didn't refer to a baby right the Howard Hawks directed this which I think I've seen some other Howard Hawks stuff this is a pretty kind of
00:32:07
Speaker
similar to it can take you with you it's pretty like classical Howard Hawks like screwball comedy a lot of a lot of fast talking there's a lot of fast talking and the premise of this movie is insane I feel like I do not really know what the premise of this movie was going into it and then about halfway through once it's kind of clear what
00:32:27
Speaker
The premise of this movie is, I was like, wait, this is insane. This can't be what this movie is about. I mean, really, this movie is just like extreme chaos. It's less plot and more just like what can happen next that will cause the most chaos in everyone's life.
00:32:48
Speaker
Yes, but it holds together very well, I think, compared to some other movies with similar zaniness to them. This one is is very well written, just in terms of like having things that will like show up in the beginning, they'll come back at the end and
Comedic Chaos in 'Bringing Up Baby'
00:33:06
Speaker
just it's it's a it's a well built screenplay. I guess that's true. It is like like as far as. Yeah, it's like a tight script as far as like
00:33:17
Speaker
Yeah, everything kind of being relevant and tying into itself. While still being pretty wacky. It's expansive in a lot of ways too. Yeah, I guess the premise of this movie is that their Cary Grant plays a zoologist or a paleontologist or something like that. Paleontologist, yeah.
00:33:36
Speaker
He's working on some dinosaur bones. He's very buttoned up and kind of tight. Yeah, he's got glasses. He's always worried about stuff.
00:33:50
Speaker
And the thing that he's most worried about, even though his wedding is tomorrow, is securing a million dollar grant from a rich benefactor to the museum that he works at and helping and trying to finish his dinosaur skeleton that he's been working on for four years. Yeah. And and so to that end, his wife who says or his his fiancee who says
00:34:18
Speaker
don't worry about our wedding like this our wedding is purely about about your career it has nothing to do with anything domestic and at her urging he goes golfing with the lawyer of the rich benefactor and so the story kind of
00:34:38
Speaker
just launches off from that golf course when he runs into Katherine Hepburn playing a character named Susan who is just chaos incarnate as a person. She is just like
00:34:56
Speaker
you know, taking other people's golf balls and playing with them. She hops into into his car and doesn't realize that it's his and just starts driving away. But while she's driving away, she smashes into a tree and other cars and doesn't have a care in the world. And yeah, this is, in my mind, the first appearance of the manic pixie dream girl with the emphasis on manic.
00:35:20
Speaker
I don't think that you're alone in that because I was reading up on this movie and it has been cited elsewhere as like if not the first example like a very early example of that trope kind of like I think the the manic aspect
00:35:36
Speaker
has kind of got lost more recently. When that kind of character archetype shows up, I feel like the manic is usually downplayed. Whereas in this, it is like manic and then in tiny letters, pixie dream girl. It's mostly that she's manic. Cary Grant and Kevin Hepburn are both, especially Cary Grant, they were both so good at just the physicality, physical comedy.
00:36:03
Speaker
like he does so much of just like sleeping on banana peels and like getting flustered and and nervous and angry and running around and yelling at people and you can just you can feel his like
00:36:18
Speaker
his anxiety just building and building through every single scene. He starts off the movie pretty anxious and then it gets progressively worse over the course of the movie. I think you experienced that too. This movie is towing a very strange line of being a comedy movie, but you are so stressed the entire time. Well, because it's that thing of he has to get home
00:36:43
Speaker
because he has a wedding tomorrow and he also has all these like important business things he has to do and Catherine Hepburn just does not give a shit whatsoever and keeps pulling him further and further like steals a car and like drives off with him in it and he's like what what are we doing it's like I just took this guy's car and he's like no I need to go home
00:37:04
Speaker
Oh, and we haven't mentioned the titular baby who is maybe the most kind of on paper
00:37:16
Speaker
insane wild thing that she brings into his life, which is a leopard. It is a leopard named Baby who is a kind of constant thorn in their side because he keeps doing leopard things. Well, because this movie already had this setup of like a good scribble comedy of like these two mismatched people who like meet by happenstance and there's all this chaos that results from that. But it's like they clearly have so much like chemistry
00:37:44
Speaker
Like the scene at the beginning when you're introduced to Kira Grant and his fiancé is like the most obvious immediate like, oh, this marriage is not going to happen. Like a thousand percent. This is the most doomed marriage in history. And so it already has this like pretty compelling solid comedy set up. And then it's like also there's a leopard.
00:38:07
Speaker
And you'd think it'd be like too much of an extra step, but somehow it works. It's sort of a leopard on a hat. Yeah. But yeah, it does, it works. It just, it heightens all these other plot threads so much just by like, also there's a leopard there.
00:38:26
Speaker
Right. And you don't like sometimes they've put the leopard away and so you can they can focus on other things. I was kind of imagining when I, you know, got, you know, heard what this movie was actually about a leopard. I kind of imagined that it would be very leopard focused. But really, it's just focused on.
00:38:45
Speaker
Chaos and a leopard is is one of the zany or things that occasionally pops up But they do take time to like, you know, the leopards in a cage for now. Let's have some other flavors of chaos It's I mean it's a real leopard in this movie
00:39:02
Speaker
which is both on set with the actors sometimes, but a lot of the time is very cleverly composited in or done through re-projection or split screen. Yeah. There are some scenes, leopard scenes, where they use a double exposure. You can see some slight translucencies in them, but it's very well done only when you just see in the corners.
00:39:30
Speaker
Yeah, I think that one of the only things that's really noticeable is there's a bit where Katherine Eppern is holding a leash for the leopard. And you can see that the leash that she's holding does not line up with the leash that's attached to the leopard.
00:39:46
Speaker
But it's like, otherwise it's pretty seamless. And there's also just scenes in this where I'm like, that's a leopard. Like this, I'm like afraid for the actors. Yeah, it adds to the tension a lot that they're just like casually sitting there while a wild animal is behind them. Yeah. And there are two leopards in here. Baby is a very friendly looking leopard. And then there's another one who is a very angry, mean looking leopard. Yeah.
00:40:14
Speaker
There's also a scene where I believe it's Baby, the leopard, gets into a fight with George the dog, who's Catherine Hepburn's character's dog, who's played by Skippy, who was the dog in the Thin Man movies. Great, great dog acting from Skippy. We're always, we keep running into Skippy. Yeah. There's a scene where Baby and George get into a fight and it's like, that's just a leopard and a dog fighting.
00:40:45
Speaker
And I'm like, I don't, this is like, I feel the tension of that just because it's like, that's just a dog and a leopard that they like putting a room together. And it's scary.
00:40:58
Speaker
Yeah, they see that thing earlier in the movie too when she receives baby in the mail and there's a letter that comes with them. And the letter says, baby loves dogs. And then she says, they mean in a friendly way or in an eating way?
00:41:22
Speaker
Yeah, it's definitely kind of like, I feel like it probably was not like a safe set for either of those animals to be on, but I guess it's funny. Yeah, I guess it was worth it.
00:41:39
Speaker
I think they're okay. They were just playing. I mean, it kind of looked like they were playing. Skippy went on to be in more Thin Man movies after this, so clearly Skippy was okay. There's a bit in this movie that I enjoy in pretty much any movie when Cary Grant has to take a shower and
00:42:02
Speaker
Catherine Hepburn steals his clothes and so he has to wear a very frilly robe for a couple of scenes. It's the only thing that he has that is available. I just find that bit always very funny when someone is forced to wear silly clothing or something incongruous.
00:42:24
Speaker
Like it's funny in Pulp Fiction when they have to wear like goofy t-shirts. It's funny in any movie when someone is like, because I feel like that's just a thing in life where it's like you've been at someone's house or you're like at a theme park or something. You're like, ah, my shirt is ruined. I have to buy a goofy shirt that I don't like. I don't want to wear, but it's all that's all that's here.
00:42:46
Speaker
And he doesn't like it, but he's more stressed about other things. But then he's confronted about his frilly robe that he's wearing. And he shouts, maybe I've just gone gay all of a sudden. Whilst jumping in the air.
00:43:04
Speaker
Yeah. Yes. And looking a little fruity. Well, as far as I can tell, that's at least for the things that we've watched the show, the first time I think that gay has been used in this context of not just like light hearted and happy. Yeah.
00:43:21
Speaker
I don't know, but even that is the sort of like, I don't know how much that was in common usage at the time. I think it was by the 1930s. From Wikipedia, which, you know, is a source. Suspect source, yeah. It's saying that it was it was known, but not super common to super known to the general public until the late 60s. But, you know, it's, you know, he was in Hollywood. Right. And also people in Hollywood now.
00:43:51
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, and also there were kind of like rumors at the time that like Cary Grant might have been gay or bi.
00:44:04
Speaker
So at least he had close relationships with men. What is the thing in biographies? It's like, oh man, Cary Grant and his very close male friend that he lives with and goes to the pool with every day. They're such good friends.
00:44:27
Speaker
So, you know, and it was an ad lib too. So I think, you know, he probably knew what he was doing. At a certain point, the chaos reached his head and every character was arrested and thrown in jail. And Catherine Hepburn kind of tries to get out of it by kind of playing a femme fatale kind of character. I'm pretending that she's like a smooth criminal.
00:44:54
Speaker
And she gives a couple of people aliases and they are Mickey the Mouse and Donald the Duck. Which it's kind of funny because that it's like a contemporary reference to Disney cartoons, despite this being an RKO picture. They had to pay Disney for the rights. Maybe Disney wasn't doing that yet. It's a joke. It's a joke. Yeah, it's parody, so it's OK.
00:45:21
Speaker
Yeah, fun movie. We'd, I think Cara Grant had popped up in another movie before that we watched. I think he was in, Merrily We Go to Hell for like one scene. This is the first like lead that we've seen him do. And see him at Clapford and Hepburn. Three big classical Hollywood actors popping up this episode. Oh yeah. And all I think in fairly kind of typical roles for them.
00:45:50
Speaker
I think the good kind of showcases for each of their kind of most well-known types, I guess. Although I think that Catherine Hepburn kind of didn't really do many like screwball comedies after this. I think like because this movie did pretty poorly at the box office, she ended up kind of finding other types of roles afterwards.
00:46:18
Speaker
Yeah, I know that there's at least a few other like big comedies that she did though. So I'm like Philadelphia story I've seen, which is her with Cary Grant and Jimmy Stewart. I think that's like 40 or 41. We'll get to it. We'll get to it. And yeah, very good example of like the Howard Hawks thing of like a lot of overlapping dialogue, a lot of like fast talking.
Vibrant Technicolor of 'The Adventures of Robin Hood'
00:46:42
Speaker
stuff yeah uh i another thing we'll have to prepare for is um 30 30 slang getting thrown at the screen with abandon yeah uh so i watched this movie twice uh and both times that i watched it it was a little hard to take in what i just watched because i was so exhausted but
00:47:05
Speaker
by the end of it. I felt like both times I felt like I needed to just take a breath afterward, you know? And I was talking to Jack Vernick of our Irma Vep episode about it, and he says that
00:47:23
Speaker
the 1940 Howard Hawks movie, His Girl Friday, is about three times as dense and fast talking. He was saying that the first time he watched it, he hated it because of just like how overwhelming it was. So I'm interested to see how that goes. Because I guess what I'm saying is that Howard Hawks even starts to go even further with this. I'm excited.
00:47:50
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, it should be fun. Another movie that is about people talking very quickly, or it's not about that, but it has some of the fastest line deliveries I've ever seen in any movie, is The Adventures of Robin Hood, directed by Michael Cortese and William Keeley.
00:48:11
Speaker
Another critiques picture. This is sort of like The spiritual sequel I guess to Captain Blood. It's like a lot of the same cast So blood energy swashbuckling adventure picture
00:48:25
Speaker
but in Technicolor this time. Yes, and this is beautiful Technicolor. This is like the most Technicolory movie that ever Technicolored. It is like so bright and vivid and colorful. Yeah, it's kind of hyper real. I mean, I think this is a fun movie in a lot of ways, but like I had me thinking about the color itself a lot, right?
00:48:51
Speaker
especially in comparison to A Star Is Born, which had this kind of like muddy, proto, technicolor, proto three strip kind of situation that didn't quite work all the time. And this is like, it's not real, but it's definitely like realistic colors. It's extremely saturated, which I think is really cool and stylish, honestly. Yeah, yeah. It looks like Snow White, like the cartoon, like it's like,
00:49:21
Speaker
approaching levels of cartoonishness just by how bright the colors are.
00:49:26
Speaker
Honestly, the colors are brighter than in Snow White. It is an extremely bright movie. You can tell that it's designed to look that. Every costume is bright green, bright red, bright yellow. Every single color, there are no subtle colors in the costumes or the sets or anything. Everything is clearly designed to be as bright as possible.
00:49:54
Speaker
Yeah. And like, I mean, which, you know, honestly go off, right? Like, I guess, you know, it's kind of funny because people thought of color as a gimmick at the time. And when I see a 3D movie that's just constantly going, whoa, whoa, in your face all the time, I say, that's corny. Why are you doing that? But for this movie, that was a gimmick that was in color and it's just the most color. So on board. Yeah, let's do it.
00:50:24
Speaker
Because it's not really distracting. It's just like, whoa, this movie is colorful. Yeah, a lot of like sparkly clothes and yeah, saturated cloths. And something that I noticed, which might have to do with the three strip process and probably got hammered out a little bit as they, you know, continue to work on Technicolor, is the most saturated colors in this movie are reds, greens and blues. And so.
00:50:54
Speaker
Like it is basically, I think they're kind of needing to just dial those down a little bit to get more realistic colors in the mixing of those three. But the colors that just hit the red, green and blue technicolor strips directly are just like red, green, blue. Well, and it also works great because then it's like the Robin Hood typically wearing lots of green.
00:51:19
Speaker
Yeah, in the forest, which is made of green. Right. And there's blue skies. I mean, like Castle, a lot of like red tapestries and stuff. Right. Like like the Prince and and Guy of Gisborne are wearing a lot of red because they're bad guys. Like it. This movie even feels kind of like color coded in that thing, too, or it's like.
00:51:44
Speaker
Robin Hood is from the forest. He wears green. In the castle, things are red. It's very... Yeah. But I like that about it. It's like, if you're gonna have a movie that's in color, have some colors in there. Yeah. I think the only downside to the hypersaturation was a scene when they were showing some red wine that looked like radioactive. Yeah, and it makes everyone look like they're in a Ren fair, but in a good way.
00:52:14
Speaker
Yes. Yeah. This is definitely a movie that is a lot of... It's a bunch of people having a lot of fun dressing up in costumes and running around in the forest and on these giant sets. It's a fun time. Yeah. The word I kept thinking of watching this movie is jaunty. Yeah. It's very light. It's very...
00:52:36
Speaker
quick on its feet, and it never really takes itself that seriously. Like, even when things are getting serious, it's like, they're not getting that serious. Like, oh no, like Robin Hood got like thrown in the dungeon or whatever. And it's like, he's fine.
00:52:51
Speaker
The stakes never get so high that you're actually worried about the outcome, I feel like. Yeah, and it's just like the way that he plays stuff too, like as Robin Hood. Like in Captain Blood, he's extremely... Okay, he's smarmy in this movie, and I think this might just be like Errol Flynn's way. I think that's just Errol Flynn's way, yeah.
00:53:16
Speaker
But at least like, like compared to Captain Blood, it's dialed back a little bit. I think it's like it's instead of just I'm sitting here being smug in front of everyone. It is like, yes, I'm the best archer and I'm a little nimble Peter Pan type on my feet. And I'm going to I'm going to joke around while I'm
00:53:37
Speaker
while I'm besting you in single combat. Right, I mean Robin Hood's kind of whole thing is that he's kind of an asshole, right? Like he's playing tricks on people, he's stealing stuff, he's being a little stinker. I'm glad you can say that from knowledge because as I started watching this I realized that most of my Robin Hood knowledge comes from the Disney movie.
00:53:59
Speaker
Well, even like the Disney movie, I feel like it's pulling a lot from this movie. For sure, yeah. I would say that this movie is probably like maybe the most iconic version of Robin Hood in popular culture. This is like the quintessential image of Robin Hood in like with the green hat and a bow and arrow and a mustache.
00:54:20
Speaker
Telling jokes, doing sword fights, like falling off logs into rivers. I think why the Disney movie is maybe a close second or like tied with this in terms of just like the thing that people think of when they think of Robin Hood or the Kevin Costner movie. But I feel like even that is like a little bit more. It feels a little bit more like that's like a take on Robin Hood as opposed to like, oh, no, that's just what Robin Hood is.
00:54:46
Speaker
I mean, I would hazard to say that more people who are alive right now have seen the Disney version than have seen this version. Oh, for sure. Yeah. And so my guess would be that when most people think of Robin Hood, they think of the fox but a person.
00:55:06
Speaker
Right, but it's like that's basically what this movie is, right? Yeah. That is funny, though. Yeah. Also, Errol Flynn, unlike some other Robin Hoods, can do an English accent. Are you putting anyone on blast right now? Yeah, Kevin Costner. I haven't seen the Kevin Costner. Well, that's in Men in Tights. There's that joke where Kerry L was. I see. Says that he can do an English accent because he's English.
00:55:32
Speaker
This movie also takes a lot of inspiration, and some of the cast, from the 1922 Douglas Fairbanks Robin Hood, which we did not watch for the show, but I want to go back and watch now. Yeah, wow. There's a good amount of Fairbanks energy in his performance, and that checks out. He's not quite as acrobatic as Fairbanks is, but he's leaning into a lot of the same kind of tendencies, I think.
00:55:58
Speaker
But even like especially the kind of especially the the kind of sitting there with his arms at his side and going Yeah, a lot of a lot of hardy laughter Yeah, like the the sets in this movie are like some of them are like direct copies I don't think they use the same sets but it's like they're clearly Designed in the same way as the Douglas Fairbanks one. I know it does all the Robin Hood stuff that I feel like you'd expect from Robin Hood movie
00:56:27
Speaker
They establish the king is away, and so they want to raise taxes on everybody. And Robin Hood is like, no, no, no, no, I'm going to go live in the woods and let people live without undue taxation. There's a lot of stuff in this movie with taxes. And like 1200s politics. Yeah, like Normans versus Saxons, which was sort of like
00:56:58
Speaker
you know, different like social groups in England in the medieval times, which is like mostly breaks down to just like a class thing of like Norman's high class Saxon's lower class, like working class. It is funny how like lighthearted this movie is when it's like they kind of brush over people are getting like their hands chopped off or like getting put to death because like they can't pay their taxes. Right. And then Robin Hood becomes an out Robin Hood is declared an outlaw.
00:57:28
Speaker
as certain other Prince John's say in other Robin Hood movies. Robin Hood scowl. I got to put a little clip of Oscar Isaac yelling in there for the YouTube show. Typically, by the way, the YouTube version is the best way to
00:57:48
Speaker
to listen to our podcast, because we've got little bonus things on here. But for the podcast people, we have little musical jokes that would get us struck on YouTube. Yeah, exactly. We try to give all audience members something special. But there's the kind of classic, I think very like classic Robin Hood scene of him walking in with the deer on his shoulders, where like they try to kill a guy for hunting a deer. And Robin Hood is like, no, no, no, no.
00:58:16
Speaker
That's mean. I'm gonna bring a deer to the castle and be smug about it. And they call Robin Hood a bold rascal and a saucy fellow.
00:58:32
Speaker
We got little rascals grow up to be bold rascals. Yeah. And saucy fellows. So the big sort of addition to the cast, right? This is sort of the three like lead principal actors from Captain Blood. Errol Flynn, Levi de Havilland, and Basil Rathbone. And sort of almost the same characters from Captain Blood, like
00:58:52
Speaker
right like smug swashbuckler woman and villain right why come only one girl well i think made marion and also
00:59:05
Speaker
to have one's character in Captain Blood are these sort of like, they come from a sort of like wealthy families. They're involved in no good. And she sort of has a similar arc in both where she sort of joins the outlaws a bit. But the big addition here is we get Claude Rains as Prince John doing a very sort of like preening royal guy who's like, oh, dear, bring me a goblet.
00:59:34
Speaker
Whereas Basil Rathbun is sort of the meaner, harder-edged villain. Although he doesn't play the Sheriff of Nottingham. I always thought that he did in this movie. He plays Guy of Gisborne. And then the Sheriff of Nottingham is a different character who's sort of, like, just very lazy. He's sort of the lazy villain. You definitely are more familiar with this lore than me. Robin Hood lore.
01:00:01
Speaker
Yeah, which is on brand for you. I like Robin Hood. Robin Hood is fun. But I feel like every version of Robin Hood has the same like couple of beats, right? It's like the thing with the deer. There's like the the bo staff fight on the log with with Little John where he gets knocked off.
01:00:20
Speaker
which in this movie is just such a like a nonchal pass moment, you know? Yeah. Well, I mean, where do you think they got that from, you know? Yeah. Yeah, exactly. He just literally sits on that log to challenge anybody who comes by. It's kind of an amazing thing. That's his deal. That's what people did in medieval times. Right. You didn't have anything better to do. There's the whole archery contest in which Robin Hood has disguised himself by wearing a different hat.
01:00:50
Speaker
And it's like, oh, don't worry, no one will recognize me. I'll wear a different hat. Robin Hood's the green guy. That guy's not green. Yeah, that guy's wearing brown earth tones. That can't be him. Look at his hat. This is a Technicolor movie. Yeah. That scene also is probably the most famous shot from this movie. The most famous thing from this movie is just the shot of the arrow being split in that archery contest. And yes, it's very cool. Yeah. And yeah, Robin Hood kidnaps
01:01:23
Speaker
Like, Guy of Gisborne and Maid Marian brings them out to his hideout in Sherwood Forest to show off, basically. He's like, hey, we get up, you don't want to come to the woods and party with us. I feel like you have less patience for Errol Flynn's, like, smarminess than I do.
01:01:45
Speaker
I was fine with it in this movie. I think the point in this movie that I was the most like, oh, God, come on with this dude, is in that scene when he takes Mid-Marian to show her how he's feeding all of the people that were driven out of Nottingham or whatever. And he's going around, it's like, I just care so much, you know?
01:02:11
Speaker
And it's like, come on. He's like, he's like trying so hard to come across. Like, I also just, you know, I just, I just really care about my community, I guess, like whatever. And Maid Marin is like, oh.
01:02:23
Speaker
You're such a... you're so good in addition to being such a... a smarmy... A heartthrob. A smarmy heartthrob. A smarmy heartthrob. Classic Robin Hood type. But yeah, so then they arrest Robin Hood at the arrow at the archery contest.
01:02:43
Speaker
and they're like listening off all his crimes and at their point where I was like this guy's leaning into it a little too much is when they're listening all of his crimes and he's like oh I think you forgot a crime forgot that I guess living my country is a crime now 200 I guess and then he breaks out and there's a big assault on the castle and sword fights and stunts happen and it's very fun
01:03:09
Speaker
Yeah, fun fights. And then the king comes back, and he's disguised, and he's trying to get everyone to talk shit about him while he's disguised. He's like, hey, what do you think about that king, huh? And everyone's like, hmm, I don't know. I'm not so sure about him. Or everyone's like, oh, yeah, king. He's great, I guess. And then Robin Hood is one of the few people who's like, king's pretty good, but I have some thoughts on the king. And the king is like, oh, he's honest.
01:03:33
Speaker
He speaks his mind. He's respectable. He's a scoundrel, but you got to love him. Yeah, yeah. There's some cool stunts in this. There's climbing up a rope on a drawbridge. It's really cool. There's a kind of classic Michael Kertie's thing, I guess. Having watched a couple of Michael Kertie's movies now, I guess that's one of his trademarks is silhouettes and shadows projected on walls, which is cool.
01:04:03
Speaker
There's the big sword fight between Robin Hood and Guy of Gisborne that is I think a very cool fun sword fight that is referenced very directly in the movie The Rocketeer when the sort of Errol Flynn-esque character is shooting a movie and it's like the set looks the same. It's like even the dialogue I think is like almost the same.
01:04:25
Speaker
Yeah, it's been a long time since I've watched The Rocketeer, but I felt like I knew that castle set because I've seen The Rocketeer. Something felt familiar about it to me from another movie. The spiral staircase with no handrail. Is that mandatory in spiral staircases? It's just like you could easily fall off that thing and people do.
01:04:49
Speaker
It's olden times. People die all the time. It is olden times. People did die all the time. Castles always need a good spiral staircase because it's hard to sword fight on them. Because if you're on the top of the stairs, you can sword fight more easily than you've heard the bottom of the stairs. It's a whole castle thing that I learned.
01:05:04
Speaker
Yeah, this is very, very much castle trivia from, I don't know if this is literally the case, but the kid who owned that Playmobil set, you know? Yeah, or had the cross-section book, the castle cross-section book. Yeah, the DK book, yeah. The best. Shout out to the DK castle cross-section book. Honestly, any cross-section, I go nuts for a cross-section. Yeah. Always have, always will. Una O'Connor is in this.
01:05:32
Speaker
bringing her trademark. That is her. Oh, that's right. Her trademark screechiness. She's a lot less abrasive than she is in Bride of Frankenstein. Or probably Invisible Man also, but sort of a fun recurring. It's fun to see actors recurring, I guess. Yeah. I was trying to figure out because
01:05:59
Speaker
Matt Cartese is credited along with William Keeley as director. And the impression I got, I couldn't find a lot of information about this, but it seems like William Keeley was initially the director and then got replaced either right before or like during production by Matt Cartese, which is strange because it seems like this is such a like Cartese production where it's like the cast that he knows, it's like a similar kind of movie that he's done before.
01:06:29
Speaker
Yeah. So I'm curious like what the story is there and I couldn't really find a lot of good information on it. We'll have to get the Blu-ray. Yeah. Yeah, fun, cool Robin Hood movie. This is probably like the big 1938 movie, I feel like. Yeah, this or bringing up baby, I would say.
01:06:54
Speaker
Yeah, definitely bodes well for the future of color in movies. We're going to be seeing a lot more of that soon. Yeah, and like a cartoony color reality, right? Kind of something that I think the Wizard of Oz leans into as well. Yeah, something that I think I'm glad that movies have started to really embrace
01:07:19
Speaker
shooting on color film because I think it brings something to talkies that are kind of, it brings a certain visual interest to talkies that I think a lot of them have been lacking since the transition happened. Can you say more about that? How do you mean that?
01:07:37
Speaker
I feel like once movies started having sound in them, they lost a lot of their visual style. I feel like they started to be a lot more kind of like, all right, we're on a set. It's people talking. And they became a lot more kind of like stagey.
01:07:56
Speaker
right they lost like experimentation they lost any like like a kind of sense of visual experimentation i don't know i think that like in the transition to talkies it to me i expected the cinematography to get like way more boring and it only got like a little more boring you know it's not becoming out of it and like movies are back to looking interesting but the first like like 1929 1930 i feel like a lot of those oh yeah
01:08:21
Speaker
A lot of those movies did not look great or were not interesting to watch. But I thought this was. Yeah, that's interesting. I mean, I feel like, you know, colors. I would imagine that the purpose of going from the complete fabrication of reality that black and white is to color is like a sort of
01:08:47
Speaker
gesture toward verisimilitude. But these early colors are undeniably fake in a way that feels stylistic and cool. But it's kind of a weird thing to make this move toward reality, but then pivot toward fantasy again. I think that I feel like I keep
01:09:16
Speaker
A thought that I keep having while watching any movie is naturalism is kind of overrated. Or at least it definitely has its place for sure. I don't have anything against naturalism, but I think there's so much emphasis put on making things naturalistic and realistic. You're making a movie. I feel like there's a little more wiggle room
01:09:45
Speaker
than a lot of people tend to give themselves. I like when things get a little surreal. I like when things are a little bit heightened. Maybe just because I've been watching a lot of David Lynch lately. I just watched Wild Things a couple days ago, which feels like a Twin Peaks movie.
01:10:08
Speaker
Yes, it does have a bit of it doesn't really have like the surrealism of David Lynch, but it has that kind of like no goofiness, I guess, especially of Twin Peaks. It's like it feels like like the insane plots and like insane, like hyper like soap opera things where it's like everything is the most dramatic thing. Yeah, I liked Wild Things a lot. I know this is not a fun movie, not a 1998 podcast, but I thought it was an incredible fun movie.
01:10:36
Speaker
Do you have any other thoughts on the adventures of Robin Hood? None. All right. Well, we watched another movie about medieval times. Yes, yeah. Covering a pretty similar time period. Yes, yeah.
01:10:50
Speaker
Like within a hundred years of each other. Right. Or maybe 50. Yeah. That is Alexander Nevsky by Sergei Eisenstein. Haven't seen him in a while. Yeah. I believe as far as I can tell his first proper talkie that was released anyway. I think he'd like shot some other stuff before this or whatever. But in terms of like it was feature length.
01:11:15
Speaker
Talking films, this is like his first one of those. It was the first movie, like feature film that he'd made in a year, in 10 years. Yeah. He co-directed it with Dmitry Vasilyev, who I'm not familiar with, but he has co-directing credit on this. And this movie is entirely based on a single battle from the 13th century in Russia.
01:11:41
Speaker
And the whole movie is about Germany invading Russia, which in 1938 was very pointed and was not accidental whatsoever. This is like kind of a propaganda movie, I think. I don't think it is. It's a propaganda movie. It's propaganda in that it's using historical figures to comment on current day political issues. But I think you'd kind of be doing that
01:12:11
Speaker
Regardless if you made a historical movie, you know, but it also is like I think that really stuck out to me about this movie is like there's never really any like moment of doubt or sort of like Self-reflection or even like criticism of our like heroic characters like Alexander Nevsky who is a a heroic prince Who like rallies the troops and and fans off the terrible German invaders is like
01:12:41
Speaker
portrayed as like, he is always correct, he is always morally certain, like he never has doubts about his role in any of this, he's just like, nope, he is here to do a good thing for the people.
01:12:56
Speaker
Yeah, I found this movie quite simplistic. It's, I mean, I guess, yeah, it is a propaganda movie, but like, you know, Man with a Movie Camera is a propaganda movie. And so is, I mean, maybe a better example is Bowser Potemkin. And I think those are both much more interesting movies than this one. Well, it's like, Man with a Movie Camera is propaganda, and it's like, look at all this cool shit we can do with cameras in Russia.
01:13:26
Speaker
Well, it's also like, look at how cool Russia is, you know, and it also like has an anti. Yeah, it has like an anti Nazi scene as well. True, true. I mean, I can get behind that. And then, uh, Balochia Potemkin, I feel like just has a little and I think it just has a little bit more kind of narrative complexity to it than this.
01:13:45
Speaker
Um, yeah, I think something that's interesting that's shared between those two movies is that neither of them really have a main character. Honestly, Bowser Potemkin even less so, but like, you know, I think part of the kind of.
01:14:01
Speaker
Soviet sort of thing that it's trying to do is a sort of like collective thing. It's like everyone's working together to to fight this battle. Yeah. And there's like, yes, it's about the kind of cool and good leader, Alexander Nevsky. But he kind of, you know, he isn't in a lot of scenes. Yeah, he he is a bit of a backseat in this movie.
01:14:26
Speaker
Right. There's a bit of an ensemble in the characters of this. There's sort of a medieval challenger situation going on to keep things topical and current. I think
01:14:42
Speaker
Makes sense for Eisenstein's first talkie. I think this movie looks great and doesn't sound particularly great. It doesn't really use sound in interesting ways. Hardly ever. The sound design, I think, is probably pretty bad. It's pretty lacking. There's a lot of scenes that there's things happening. There's just no sound, really. There's like a little bit of score here and there, maybe. But like, it seems of dialogue aren't really that, you know, they're not like,
01:15:11
Speaker
Interesting dialogue scenes the way that I feel like That the next movie we'll talk about is or the way I think like bringing up baby is where it's like this is like good dialogue This is just people kind of like stating things a Lot of the time. Yeah, it reminded me a lot of like Terja vegan
01:15:32
Speaker
Hmm in terms of just these like, you know mythic historical figures who are just kind of saying vague things I Don't like this movie. I I like things about this movie. I think this movie is like really I think it is really well directed in its when it is more or less a silent movie like I think you can tell were Eisenstein's like interests were making this
01:16:01
Speaker
Because I think when there's long stretches without dialogue, I think those are the best parts of the movie. I mean, the big battle scene is the best part. Disagree. Because it's just the big battles. I found myself so bored during that battle scene. It's an hour long. It's like an hour long. It is a bit long. It's true.
01:16:28
Speaker
You know, it's big in scale, but to me, I just never felt like it. I never felt like I cared about what was happening. It didn't. I think it didn't very effectively do this kind of thing with a lot. I had me thinking about big battle scenes and how the way to make them work is to kind of be zooming in and out between like like linking small
01:16:51
Speaker
character-based things with the larger battle, because a large battle is just a bunch of swords hitting each other. And this was where I was really getting annoyed with the sound design, where it's just a straight hour of this very- Wind chimes.
01:17:09
Speaker
Yeah, it's like this very like dinky clicking together of hundreds of swords for like an hour and it does not feel impactful, you know? Right. Yeah. That's the thing. It's like I feel like
01:17:24
Speaker
There is definitely like some big wide shots that are just filled with extras that are like, wow, look at the size of this battle. And then there's some like kind of medium or close up shots where you can really tell how like bad the fight choreography is where like they're not even really hitting each other with the swords. Like they're just kind of waving them around. They're just kind of bonking each other a little bit. And there's like a couple of times where they use handheld camera shots to really kind of like sell the chaos.
01:17:52
Speaker
And I was like, could have used more of those. But I like things about this movie more than I like this movie itself, I guess. Well, what did you like about the battle scene? I like the lead up to it. I like the kind of like seeing the troops amassing on the ice. It feels very Battle of Hoth, which I think this might have even been a direct inspiration on a little bit of like seeing like kind of coming out of the horizon, like the
01:18:21
Speaker
enemy armies approaching. That was a good shot, yeah. I like how there are little character beats interspersed throughout it. I like a lot of the design of the, particularly the sort of Teutonic German knights.
01:18:40
Speaker
that are in these like absurd over design, not over design, but these are the very elaborate costumes that are like. They're all very like crusades kind of looking things. I don't know how like historically accurate they are, but like all of their helmets are like super crazy looking and elaborate. There's the kind of like rank and file soldiers all have these helmets with like a cross in them, like, which I think is pretty much based on a real kind of crusader knight design. But I think it might be a little exaggerated here.
01:19:09
Speaker
But then there's the kind of like boss knights that have these like animal carving helmets and things. They're the ones with the, what is it, the revenge system from Shadow of Mordor, you know? Right, yes, exactly. Much like how the kind of heroic characters are kind of presented as just like, they are heroic, they are correct, they are right.
01:19:35
Speaker
The villains in this are like the most villainous, like awful, inhuman...
01:19:41
Speaker
like they throw toddlers into fire, which I mean, looking at Russia, looking at Germany, it's like, I guess it hadn't really happened. Well, there was some stuff in World War One that was bad, but like, it does feel kind of spookily prophetic at certain points where like the villains are like, burn everything. And it's like, I mean, the Nazis were already doing bad stuff. Also true. Before they officially declared war. As far as being a propaganda movie, this kind of historically, like,
01:20:09
Speaker
I don't know, historically infused propaganda movie or propaganda infused history movie, you know, it's basically like Russia's Russia's good and cool. And Germany is religious and evil. Yes.
01:20:27
Speaker
Yeah, a lot of Christian iconography with the villains, a lot of crosses. There's the villainous bishop whose hat has barely disguised swastikas on it. They're adding an extra little thing onto it, but you can tell that they just drew an extra part over it almost.
01:20:53
Speaker
And there's some good kind of John Ford framing with the horizon at the bottom. I just feel like a lot of the kind of like compositions of, yeah, around the battle are really, I mean, throughout the whole movie, look, look really nice.
01:21:13
Speaker
I really like the opening shots of the movie that are showing like the kind of remains of a battlefield with skulls and that kind of thing lying around. Those shots were very cool. But also combined with like pastoral like beauty too.
01:21:30
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, it was really neat. And, you know, I just have a really hard time with these historical epics, especially the kind of ones with big battles. Like, I just like have a really hard time caring. But when this started and I was seeing those shots, I was like, OK, all right, let's let's get going here. And then it quickly got boring. I think I was this movie held my interest more than I thought it might.
01:21:58
Speaker
I was definitely going to, I was like, oh, in this historical war movie or whatever, we'll see. Maybe it was just the fact that it's technically very accomplished that I was like, oh, it's cool. There's a lot of stuff happening in the foreground and the background in this movie that I thought was cool and interesting that I feel like we don't see that much of.
01:22:21
Speaker
I think this movie is at its best when it kind of lets the imagery speak for itself and it's just like presenting you with things and isn't really trying to, when it shows and doesn't tell, I guess. Yeah. There's a cool bit at the end of the battle where all the bad guys fall through the ice about that kind of rules.
01:22:38
Speaker
That was fun, yeah. Having just watched Last Crusade, very similar. Hey, there you go. The ground cracking and the Nazis falling through. Yeah, Nazis falling through the ground, always fun. I do think it's kind of funny that it almost feels like the message of this movie is like, fuck around and find out. This movie ends with just like, hey, you thought you could invade Russia? Nice try, buddy.
01:23:05
Speaker
Not today. I mean, they're not wrong, though. Historically speaking, they are correct. Historically speaking, both before and immediately after this movie, they were proven very correct. It's like, do not invade Russia. It is a bad idea. Another thing that stuck out to me is there's a bit where someone yells, avenge us. I think it's like when the Teutonic Knights are burning down the village, which reminded me of the scene in Red Dawn.
01:23:34
Speaker
when the guy's like, avenge me. And I looked into it, and that is an explicit reference to this movie in Red Dawn. Oh, wow. Because Red Dawn, a movie about Soviets invading the United States, also weirdly similar in tone and structure and theme to this movie, even though it's flipped and Russians are the bad guys in that. After the Soviets have occupied the picturesque American town in that movie,
01:24:04
Speaker
on the movie theater marquee it says Alexander Nevsky so like the Soviets are playing this movie in the movie theater and then also there's a scene where someone's like avenge me so it's like
01:24:16
Speaker
Clearly, John Milius had seen this movie when he made that. I thought the the inclusion of the Mongols was interesting, like right in the beginning of the movie, they were kind of fresh off of fighting off the the Mongol invasion of Russia. And then he kind of, you know, Alexander is
01:24:43
Speaker
you know, kind of living his pastoral life in his fishing town and some Mongols come up and everybody wants to fight them and he's like, there's bigger fish to fry right now. We gotta fight the Germans instead. Yeah, it's like the Germans are amassing troops. Maybe we should worry about that before the Mongols. There's a bit where Alexander Nevsky says, get my princely attire ready, which might just be a weird translation because all the dialogue is in Russian, but I thought that line was funny.
01:25:13
Speaker
Well, I mean, he does get his princely attire. He does come back and he looks a little more princely. That he does, that he does. So yeah, I didn't love this movie, but I thought it was, I thought it had some cool stuff in it. And also just like is interesting historically for like a Soviet movie that is like, hey, Germans, we don't like them.
01:25:33
Speaker
They're trying to start shit, and they shouldn't. Basically, for the last decade, we've been seeing movies just nervous about the Germans, which I think is pretty interesting. They just had a war, not that long ago. I think this lines up more with the existence of the Nazis than anything else.
01:25:53
Speaker
probably only a decade or so after the end of World War I, when movies were going like, the Germans are about to do it again. We got to be worried about this. I mean, yeah, it was between 1919 and 1929, which that is the Weimar era when it was like Germany had kind of had its shit together a little bit. And then, yeah, starting around 1929, 1930 is when it started to get real, real bad.
01:26:23
Speaker
Yeah. Shall we move on to our, is this our final picture of the episode? It is. Doesn't it feel kind of weird? I know. Like we're doing five instead of six. Yeah, another European film. This one is... Thickies up, everybody. Yeah. This one is Port of Shadows by Marcel Carnet. Yeah. Which is, if you couldn't tell, a French film.
01:26:45
Speaker
And it is... Wait, what's the... Tell me the French title then. Oh, Port of Shadows? I don't know what off stopped my head. Port... Port B. I'm just gonna look it up. Duolingo hasn't taught me Port or Shadows yet. I mean, Duolingo doesn't really teach me anything, but it helps me practice.
French Essence in 'La Croix des Brooms'
01:27:08
Speaker
La Croix des Brooms. La Croix des Brooms. Yeah. The Dock of Mists is, I guess, a more direct translation of the French title. But anyway, this movie is very French, I thought. Yes. It's starring Jean Gabine, who we saw in The Grand Illusion. Yeah, he's back playing a soldier again. Playing almost the same character, it feels like.
01:27:34
Speaker
a sort of jaded soldier home from war. This is sort of a proto-noir movie. It's a crime picture about people living on the edge of society in the ports of shadows. Those shadowy ports. This movie, it feels like
01:28:04
Speaker
Oh God, I was thinking this earlier. It feels a lot like The Petrified Forest. Yeah. And with like a little bit of... Ah, see, I was gonna write this down. It was like The Petrified Forest with the energy of another movie that we've seen, but I can't remember. But like, there's something about it that feels a bit play-like. There's a lot of characters kind of sitting in rooms saying stuff.
01:28:31
Speaker
Uh, but I think the stuff they're saying is extremely compelling. Like I, I think that like, um, a lot of the things that people just spout out, uh, they're just this French on we loaded like, like phrases, like, you know, Oh, I, I only paint.
01:28:50
Speaker
Well, there's so there's a painter that we get introduced early early who just says the most like French Depressing shit and it's the best. I love it. It's so good because it's all it's all so evocative Yeah, I'd see crime and a rose he says and then we talked about his paintings He says on my canvas. I find only hate jealousy murder a cemetery
01:29:15
Speaker
He says he paints what he sees and to me a swimmer has already drowned. It's the best. That's this whole movie. It's like that vibe.
01:29:25
Speaker
Yeah, it's so moody. I love this movie. I think it's great. It's just got a lot of fun stuff in it, cool vibes, people saying interesting enigmatic stuff. Oh, that's what I was thinking. It is petrified forest mixed with sunrise. Mixed with sunrise. Yes, sir.
01:29:48
Speaker
Yeah. Oh, interesting. It's about a night, a night of two people falling in love, going around, going to the carnival. Uh, one of them is kind of scummy, you know? Yeah, yeah. Um, a little bit of like, a lot of lunt.
01:30:05
Speaker
Also, like kind of like French, just Frenchness. Outside of its Frenchness, I guess. But also just, I feel like Lavalin has that scene where there's like the annoying guy who's like trying to sell stuff, who tries to like worm his way out of the boat. And this feels like it has a lot of just like, this has, there's a lot of like scummy characters in it, I guess. As befitting a sort of noir-ish crime movie.
01:30:31
Speaker
Yeah. And so, you know, you said the magic word. This movie is kind of positioned as one of the early noir films. I don't really know what qualifies in noir film, but I did see I did see the the shadows of of slatted window shades on people. But I mean, like they had those in, you know, Fonserohain movies and you know, there's there's old news. Yeah, I think like the sort of
01:31:02
Speaker
Most, I guess, like established sort of ground rules for film noir as a genre, as like the film noir period is post World War II American films influenced by European filmmakers that are about crime.
01:31:22
Speaker
Okay, well, so this is the stuff that influenced them, I guess. Right, yeah. Does noir have to be American?
Exploring Film Noir Elements
01:31:29
Speaker
I mean, noir is like literally a French word in this context. That's sort of how noir started is like the post-war crime, like melodramas.
01:31:38
Speaker
But then it is like people can still make movies that are film noir. I view film noir more as like a vibe than anything else. Right. I mean, aren't there a lot of classic noir movies that are from during the war? Yeah, there's that too. So that's why it's sort of like the rules of sort of like the classic noir period is like, all right, sure. But there were movies before that that did stuff and there were movies after that, maybe some other countries and all of that.
01:32:08
Speaker
I tend to view film noir as a pretty loose definition, in which case I think this movie absolutely qualifies.
01:32:15
Speaker
I mean, this movie has people saying dames, you're all alike. Right. Which you can't get more noir than somebody saying dames or broads are all the same.
Memorable Canines in 1938 Films
01:32:28
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. It's got murder in it. It's got, you know, bodies are discovered. It's got a cute dog that follows the main character wherever he goes. This has been a good, 1930 has been a good year for dogs in film. Between Little Rassles, Bring Up Baby and Port of Shadows.
01:32:46
Speaker
Oh, I was going to mention the cat in the little rascals, practical jokers thing is called baby. You're right. Babies is what people call cats have any size, I guess. Or maybe it was a reference. I don't know. Oh, wow. I mean, I didn't check the dates to find out. It could easily be. Yeah.
01:33:05
Speaker
But yeah, the dog in this movie is like, you know, this movie starts with Jean Gabin's character like hitching a ride on a dark road with a guy driving a truck. And, you know, the guy tries to make conversation with him and he's too full of ennui and solitude to answer many questions. But what he does do is grab the steering wheel to swerve the car out of the way so he doesn't hit a dog. Yeah.
01:33:34
Speaker
And then the two of them are about to fight over it and just like, yeah, let's not fight. Have some cigarettes. C'est la vie.
Compelling Characters and Plot in 'La Croix des Brooms'
01:33:41
Speaker
Probably the next main character after Jean is Nellie, who is, I wouldn't necessarily really call her like a femme petal. She seems kind of too...
01:33:53
Speaker
There's nothing really fatal about her. Right, she's not actually that dangerous. She's just caught up in dangerous happenings. But she's introduced wearing this like transparent raincoat that absolutely rules. It's the coolest shit.
01:34:11
Speaker
I couldn't tell if it was shiny or if it was transparent based on the way the black and white was. Yeah, it's a like translucent shiny like trench coat. It's great. It is. It was cool. It was kind of Blade Runner-y. Right. And so this moves in 1938. I didn't think that people had like transparent coats. Yeah. So that's very cool. And she has this like what Godfather
01:34:37
Speaker
A guy who's like kind of a creep and also a murderer. And that's sort of a thread throughout the movie. Once again, this movie is not super plotty. It is, like you said, a lot of characters either standing or sitting in rooms and smoking and discussing how hard life is.
01:35:02
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I wouldn't call it like, you know, that that description makes it sound like a bit more nebulous of a movie than it is because there's always something happening. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I feel like some like this movie could very easily like dip into just this kind of aimlessness. But I don't like and it's just people sitting around talking. And I think the people sitting around talking is a great part of this movie. But I never felt like
01:35:30
Speaker
I just felt like I was getting to know the cast of characters around this kind of seedy area. There are characters that you familiarize yourself that where they don't necessarily even go anywhere, like the guy who keeps trying to get a hotel room or whatever. But you're just kind of soaking in a vibe. I think it works very well. I love it. Yeah. There's the gang of kind of local tough guys.
01:36:00
Speaker
Led by Lucian. Tough in quotes. Yeah. Yeah, right. Because as soon as they are confronted by anyone or anything, they fold immediately. They're the most cowardly criminals. And they get laughed at. Yeah. But then he's doing stuff like he's cutting the lines at bumper cars, which is like, who does that, you know? That's not nice. As per a sort of French noir-ish crime movie, does not have a happy ending.
01:36:31
Speaker
has quite a tragic ending. But I feel like if this movie ended any other way, I would feel wrong. Like this movie needs to end on this note of just like, ah, that is life. There is no life without death.
01:36:49
Speaker
Yeah. The person who was the painter who was, speaking of death, the painter who was spouting off the most ennui-soaked lines, he doesn't see the point in living. And so the main character, he needs some civvies, some civilian clothes. The painter goes, that guy's the same shoe size as me. I guess I'll kill myself now.
01:37:16
Speaker
Well, because you get the impression he's probably going to do that anyway. And he does it by just swimming out into the ocean. Like, yeah. And he's just never heard of again, but he leaves by all his clothes and his belongings. So then John, who's sort of implied, I think, to have like he's a deserter, like he ran away from the army. So he needs to ditch his uniform and like he needs a new identity. So yeah, he takes the painter's identity
01:37:45
Speaker
And he's going to hop another ship out of there. But Lucian, the not very tough, tough guy, ends up shooting him in the back out of jealousy and revenge because he made him look a fool at the bumper cars.
01:38:06
Speaker
You gotta look very serious and professional while you're doing bumper cars. But then there's like there's the whole thing where Nelly's been like searching for her her ex this whole time and she finds out that he was murdered by her godfather out of jealousy.
01:38:22
Speaker
And so then Jean shows up and kills the godfather, Zeben with a brick while choir music plays on the radio, which is a very evocative scene. That scene also is presaged by a Chekhov's box cutter. Yeah. Just another more conspicuous shots of meaningful items. Yeah.
01:38:51
Speaker
Yeah, I think I mentioned Ludelant briefly before. This movie reminded me of that movie a bit in kind of its style and vibes, I guess, but it definitely held my attention a lot more. I think it's definitely less abstract and a kind of more focused narrative movie as opposed to just like, oh, you know, life in a boat, what's that like? Whereas this is like, no, this is characters that do things and have relationships with each other.
01:39:20
Speaker
Yeah, I love the grit in this movie. Yeah, it's all like real locations out there and on, you know, like industrial ports and cranes and foggy boats and stuff. I dug it.
01:39:38
Speaker
Yeah, I saw that I saw on letterboxed that you gave this three and a half stars. I gave it four and a half. Oh, I liked it a lot. And I guess we can get into favorites then. That was my favorite of this year. That was your favorite. I think my favorite was bring a baby.
01:39:54
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. I think bringing a baby would be my favorite if I wasn't so stressed out. Thing is like, I don't think it is, the characters in it are always very stressed out, but I was always kind of delighted by how stressed out they were becoming as opposed to getting stressed myself. Right. But it's definitely, yeah, it's a very manic film for sure.
01:40:17
Speaker
But I'm excited to see more like manic Howard Hawks stuff, and I'm excited to see more sort of dark, moody, French crime stuff.
European Films and the Hays Code Era
01:40:27
Speaker
I know. We're definitely going to have to make sure to put some emphasis on European film as, you know, we get into the Hayes era further, you know. I think Hollywood is blowing up so much that, yeah, we got to
01:40:45
Speaker
Keep our keep ourselves balanced a little bit, you know, I you know, I think my position on the Hays Code is that it is a bit Overblown exactly like how much it destroyed cinema, you know because I think and once we get to some like American noir movies well, I'm get to talk about this more too of how like I
01:41:09
Speaker
Yeah, they weren't allowed to be as like explicit about certain things, but it just it made people come up with more creative workarounds for stuff. And so there's just these like incredibly innuendo drenched dialogue scenes.
01:41:23
Speaker
in some nor movies that are great because they're like just well written. And, you know, if they weren't forced to do that by the Hays Code, those might not have existed, you know. But regardless, it's nice to have a contrast with some European movies. Yeah, yeah.
Looking Forward to 1939 and Beyond
01:41:40
Speaker
Well, I guess that about does it for 1938. Thanks for sticking with us while we took a while to get to this one. A lot of life garbage got in the way. But we're going to swiftly move on to 39, I think, which is going to be a banger year, a banner year. 39 is going to be a big old episode, I'm sure.
01:42:07
Speaker
Yes. 39 is going to be another 27. Yeah.
01:42:12
Speaker
And it's the end of the decades. They're just pulling out all the stops. It's like, yeah, they're like, dang, we're about to change a 10s place. We got to really we got to really do some big, big stopper showstopper movies. It does kind of feel like that's just a thing that happens, though, because I mean, nine to nine, also one of the best years for movies ever. I think 82. It does not count. Eighty two is one of the big years. Eighty nine is a fairly big year for movies also.
01:42:39
Speaker
69 certainly is. Yeah, I don't know. Even though I think easy rider is boring. I don't know if there's it. I mean, I'm kind of with you there, but we'll get to it. I don't know if that theory holds that much water, but it's something to keep in mind, I guess.
01:42:59
Speaker
Well, keep it in mind when we get to 1949, which I don't, I can't think of anything that was released yet. Yeah, me neither. All right. Well, that'll do it. Thanks for joining us on this sub two hour episode. How do we do it? And yeah, check out our YouTube, our Instagram, our podcasts, you know. Yeah. Did you know that we have a podcast that you're listening to right now? Check it out.
01:43:50
Speaker
Uh, with all that being said...