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The
Champ (1931) VHS
Starring: Wallace Beery, Jackie Cooper
Heartwarming tearjerker about a has-been and his adoring son, played
to perfection by Beery and Cooper (in the first of their several teamings).
Beery won an Oscar for his performance, as did Frances Marion for her original
story. |
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Bringing
Up Baby (1938) VHS
| A straight-laced paleontologist (Cary Grant) loses a dinosaur bone
to a dog belonging to free-spirited heiress Katharine Hepburn. In trying
to retrieve said bone, Grant is drawn into the vortex surrounding the delicious
Hepburn, which becomes a flirtatious pas de deux that will transform both
of them. Director Howard Hawks plays the complications as a breathless
escalation of their "love impulse," yet the movie is nonetheless romantic
for all its speed. |
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The
Proud Valley (1940) VHS
Starring: Paul Robeson, Edward Chapman, Simon Lack, Rachel Thomas
Paul Robeson is David Goliath, a stoker looking for work in a Welsh
coal-mining town. He is soon befriended by local choir master and miner
Dick Parry. But when Parry is killed in an explosion, the mine is shut
down, throwing most of the townspeople out of work. Goliath campaigns to
have the mine re-opened and later risks his own life to rescue men trapped
in a mine. |
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The
Philadelphia Story (1940) DVD
Starring: Cary Grant, Katharine Hepburn, James Stewart
Katharine Hepburn stars as the spoiled and snobby socialite Tracy Lord
in this sparkling 1940 screen adaptation of The Philadelphia Story, one
of the great romantic comedies from the golden age of MGM studios. Applying
her impossibly high ideals to everyone but herself, Tracy is about to marry
a stuffy executive when her congenial ex-husband (Cary Grant), arrives
to protect his former father-in-law from a potentially scandalous tabloid
exposé. In an Oscar-winning role, James Stewart is the scandal reporter
who falls for Tracy as her wedding day arrives, throwing her into a dizzying
state of premarital jitters. |
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VHS |
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The
Grapes of Wrath (1940) VHS
| Ranking No. 21 on the American Film Institute's list of the 100 greatest
American films, this 1940 classic is a bit dated in its noble sentimentality,
but it remains a luminous example of Hollywood classicism from the peerless
director of mythic Americana, John Ford. Adapted by Nunnally Johnson from
John Steinbeck's classic novel, the film tells a simple story about Oklahoma
farmers leaving the depression-era dustbowl for the promised land of California,
but it's the story's emotional resonance and theme of human perseverance
that makes the movie so richly and timelessly rewarding. It's all about
the humble Joad family's cross-country trek to escape the economic devastation
of their ruined farmland, beginning when Tom Joad (Henry Fonda) returns
from a four-year prison term to discover that his family home is empty. |
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Citizen
Kane (1941) VHS
| Orson Welles's 1941 masterpiece, made when he was only 26, still unfurls
like a dream and carries the viewer along the mysterious currents of time
and memory to reach a mature (if ambiguous) conclusion: people are the
sum of their contradictions, and can't be known easily. Welles plays newspaper
magnate Charles Foster Kane, taken from his mother as a boy and made the
ward of a rich industrialist. The result is that every well-meaning or
tyrannical or self-destructive move he makes for the rest of his life appears
in some way to be a reaction to that deeply wounding event. Written by
Welles and Herman J. Mankiewicz, and photographed by Gregg Toland, the
film is the sum of Welles's awesome ambitions as an artist in Hollywood. |
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Amazing
Adventure |
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Great
Expectations (1934) VHS |
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Fire
Over England (1937) VHS |
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Boys
Town (1938) VHS |
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The
House of the Seven Gables (1941) VHS |
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Woman
of the Year (1942) VHS |
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