LA CHIENNE
****
France
An accountant and part-time painter falls for a prostitute, who sells his paintings to finance herself and her abusive boyfriend.
   A tragi-comedy dark and sordid enough to have been remade as a film noir by Fritz Lang as "Scarlet Street" (1945). It doesn't entirely avoid the pacing problems present in a lot of early-sound-era French-comedy, but it dates better than most. Arguably it's the best of Renoir's early films.
   In its prologue it announces the absence of a moral, all of the personalities presented are inherently flawed and the dialogue is certainly very frank for its time. It's almost understandable that it was never shown in England and America until 1975. It was also never deemed necessary to translate the title.
wr/dir: Jean Renoir
ph: Theodor Sparkuhl
cast: Michel Simon, Janie Marese, Georges Flamant, Magdeleine Bérubet, Roger Gaillard, Romain Bouquet

CIMARRON
**
USA
This overripe Best-Picture-winning dinosaur opens with a spectacular - and, visually, even quite sophisticated - land rush sequence, then quickly runs out of air with just under two hours worth of soap opera to go. It's a tough sit, leavened only by Richard Dix's mutant-like approach to emoting.
dir: Wesley Ruggles
ph: Edward Cronjagger
cast: Richard Dix, Irene Dunne, Estelle Taylor, Estelle Taylor, Nance O'Neil, William Collier Jr., Roscoe Oates, George E. Stone, Edna May Oliver, Robert McWade, Frank Darien

CITY LIGHTS
*****
USA
dir: Charles Chaplin
cast: Charles Chaplin, Virginia Cherrill, Florence Lee, Harry Myers 

DISHONORED
****
USA
Logically this picture, about an Austrian given the chance to become an international spy, shouldn't work - particularly when it half-assedly aspires to prestige, or when it tries to set up the clown-faced McLaglen as an object of irrational, irresistible desire. But the allure of the star and cinematography overwhelms all else. There's a great scene where Dietrich appears to be breathing for the first time on-screen when given the chance to meow and masquerade as a Polish chambermaid.
dir: Josef von Sternberg
ph: Lee Garmes
cast: Marlene Dietrich, Victor McLaglen, Lew Cody, Gustav von Seyffertitz, Warner Oland, Barry Norton

DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE
****½
USA
The most highly regarded and very likely best movie version of Stevenson's much filmed novella, this one has the commanding, patently horny Fredric March morphing from handsome matinee idol into a jagged-toothed mutant. Some of his transitions are startlingly seamless, since he is wearing several layers of make-up sensitive to specific types of lighting - as the lights shift imperceptibly so does his face.
   The London that forms the backdrop never existed beyond the Paramount backlot - the few and petrifying attempts at Cockney (including that of the otherwise lovely Miriam Hopkins) serve to emphasise this. But as designed by Hans Dreier and lensed by the great Karl Sturss, it's a ghostly elegant setting to match that of any great gothic horror of the period. Directed by Rouben Mamoulian with typical verve and imagination, the picture is striking on many levels: for its clever transitions and framing devices; for its unusually intense action scenes; and above all for the rampant, barely disguised pre-Code sexuality that pervades it. 
dir: Rouben Mamoulian
ph: Karl Struss
ed: William Shea
ad: Hans Dreier
makeup: Wally Westmore
cast: Fredric March, Miriam Hopkins, Rose Hobart, Holmes Herbert, Edgar Norton, Halliwell Hobbes, Arnold Lucy, Tempe Pigott

DRACULA
****½
USA
dir: Tod Browning
cast: Bela Lugosi, Helen Chandler, David Manners, Dwight Frye, Edward Van Sloan

ENTHUSIASM
****
USSR
A feature-length thematic montage that initially appears to tackle issues of religion versus progress, then moves on to progress versus progress, then settles for celebrating the spirit of rural mine workers. Had it not classified as propaganda, it wouldn't have gone past the censor, and yet a lot of the time running through the propaganda is an ominous undercurrent that opens the piece up to multiple interpretations. It might be questioning the conformist attitudes it seems to be promoting - or vice versa, it might be a celebration of humanity above machinery, or it might just mean nothing at all. Sounds pretentious, I'm sure - and, well, it is. But the crafting is very near immaculate.
dir/ed: Dziga Vertov
ph: Boris Zeitlin
m: Nikolai Timofeyev

FIVE STAR FINAL
***½
USA
A trashy magazine revisits a sensational 20-year-old murder case and destroys the life of an innocent woman involved.
   A tight and compelling newspaper melodrama that does however show its age through heavy-handed sensationalism and crude supporting performances.
dir: Mervyn Le Roy
cast: Edward G. Robinson, Marian Marsh, H.B. Warner, Frances Starr, Anthony Bushell, Boris Karloff, Aline MacMahon, George E. Stone, Ona Munson

FRANKENSTEIN
****½
USA
Mad scientist Frankenstein tries to create a human from dead body parts but it doesn't quite work out for him.
   A creaky, landmark classic, with famous setpieces involving things like Gothic castles, Tesla coils and peasants with pitchforks. These alternate awkwardly with bland scenes of things like poor Elizabeth pining for her crazed lover in soft focus and high key lighting.
   Not to worry though - by the time it's over, you inevitably forget there is an Elizabeth or any kind of normality involved and you only remember the monster's iconic make-up, the young girl's drowning, the castle, the lightning, the pitchforks. And there's even emotional impact thanks to Karloff's astonishing, improbably moving portrayal of the Monster.
   In the meantime, similarities to Mary Shelley's novel are practically incidental.
dir: James Whale
ph: Arthur Edeson, Paul Ivano
ad: Charles D. Hall
cast: Boris Karloff, Colin Clive, Mae Clarke, John Boles, Edward Van Sloan, Frederick Kerr, Dwight Frye

LOVE AND DUTY
**½
China
A soapy, interminable vehicle for the iconic Ruan Lingyu, where she plays - not always convincingly - a woman from adolescence to old age, as well as said woman's teenage daughter.
   Believed lost for a long time, the film's pristine print was rediscovered in Uruguay in 1994 - two years after Stanley Kwan reconstructed snippets of it in his elegant biopic of Lingyu, The Actress (1992).
dir: Richard Poh Bu Wancang
cast: Ruan Lingyu, Jin Yan, Chen Yanyan, Li Ying

M
*****
Germany
A city is plagued by a serial child-killer and both crooks and cops set out to stop him.
   Lang's early, unfortunate tendency towards earnestness, leadenness and crude sentimentality is kept firmly in check here. On the contrary, in this, his indisputable masterpiece, he allows for cool observation, subtlety and even ambiguity.
   An extraordinary portrait of a bitter, desperate post-war Germany, it angrily condemns institutions ranging from the law to the unruly, emotion-driven mob, sympathising above all with a ratty, pathetic, psychopathic child-killer and rapist. Needless to add: it feels decades ahead of its time - not least for its striking, imaginative use of sound.
dir: Fritz Lang
cast: Peter Lorre, Otto Wernicke, Gustav Gründgens

MATA HARI
**½
USA
As the notorious WWI part-time exotic dancer and full-time spy, Greta Garbo walks around exuding a perpetual glow. It's not her famed aura though. It's mostly just backlighting.
   Her Russian lover gushes at her with a Spanish accent (he's meant to be a R-Rosanoff! but at heart he's a R-Ramon!). The hussy that she is, Mata Hari makes him blaspheme against the Madonna as she smirks and sprawls suggestively before him. You just know that in less than an hour, she'll have to repent and die.
   If you want to see this kind of thing done with style, watch von Sternberg's "Dishonored".
dir: George Fitzmaurice
cast: Greta Garbo, Ramon Novarro, Lionel Barrymore, Lewis Stone, C. Henry Gordon, Karen Morley, Mischa Auer

MAEDCHEN IN UNIFORM
***½
Germany
A fragile young girl at an all girls' school becomes infatuated with a female teacher.
   The earliest and most notorious lesbian feature, it also bitterly attacks totalitarian regimes, so it's really quite baffling that the print survived at all. Maybe it's because it intrinsically sets up a high psychological standard for itself through tackling this subject matter that the characters and situations seem exaggerated, but it's absorbing viewing throughout, and well paced.
dir: Leontine Sagan
ed: Oswald Hafenrichter
cast: Emilia Unda, Dorothea Wieck, Hertha Thiele, Ellen Schwanneke, Hedwig Schlichter

MARIUS
***½
France
The son of a Marseilles waterfront bar owner is torn between his love for his childhood sweetheart and his desire to sail the seas.
   The first part of the justly celebrated Fanny trilogy, it's quite an uncinematic adaptation of Pagnol's play - a triumph of the writer's art over the director's lack thereof. Korda, a producer at heart, doesn't bring much visual flair to it.
   But Pagnol's characters are the core of the film and all of them are vivid, eccentric, full-bodied and hot-blooded. They carry the film successfully to its affecting temporary resolution.
dir: Alexander Korda
wr: Marcel Pagnol
cast: Raimu, Pierre Fresnay, Orane Demazis, Fernand Charpin, Alida Rouffe, Paul Dullac, Albert Brun

LE MILLION
***½
France
A lottery winner misplaces his winning ticket.
   A celebrated French musical in the Lubitsch mould. It lacks the latter's polish and the actors aren't terribly charismatic, but it's energetic enough in its own right and contains several memorable setpieces, including an opera sequence that anticipates the Marx Brothers' antics of four years later.
wr/dir: René Clair
cast: René Lefèvre, Annabella, Paul Olivier, Louis Allibert, Vanda Gréville, Raymond Cordy

MONKEY BUSINESS
*****
USA
dir: Norman Z. McLeod
cast: Groucho Marx, Chico Marx, Harpo Marx, Zeppo Marx, Thelma Todd, Tom Kennedy

POSSESSED
**½
USA
A small town factory girl moves to New York and becomes the mistress to a Park Avenue lawyer.
   The opening scene is marked by a striking naturalism that leads you to expect the opposite to Joan Crawford's signature suffering in mink. But that is all you get.
dir: Clarence Brown
cast: Joan Crawford, Clark Gable Wallace Ford, Richard 'Skeets' Gallagher

THE PUBLIC ENEMY
****
USA
dir: William Wellman
cast: James Cagney, Edward Woods, Jean Harlow, Joan Blondell, Beryl Mercer, Donald Cook, Mae Clarke 

ROAD TO LIFE
****
USSR
An influential and once-exalted early Russian sound film (the first, in fact) celebrating a commune's effort to reform a rabble of teen hooligans into productive citizens. On a formal level at least, it's consistently startling.
dir: Nikolai Ekk
ph: Vasili Pronin
cast: Nikolai Batalov, Yvan Kyrlya, Mikhail Dzhagofarov, Mikhail Zharov, Aleksandr Novikov, Mariya Andropova, Vladimir Vesnovsky, Mariya Gonfa

TABU
***½
USA
Among the last silent films to come out of Hollywood, and one of the strangest. The story is the familiar tripe about forbidden young love, except it’s set against the exotic, Eden-like island of Bora Bora, where people have lovely physiques, a relaxed dress code and a party-hard attitude. But then they also carry age-old superstitions, which causes problems when the young maiden is pronounced untouchable and breaking this taboo becomes punishable by death. The first half of the picture is subtitled “Paradise”. Then the lovers flee the island, and the second half is branded “Paradise Lost”.
   Although theoretically a collaboration between F.W. Murnau and Robert J. Flaherty, all reports indicate that Murnau very quickly and stubbornly assumed full control over the project. This is a mixed blessing. Murnau is skilled at bringing off the islanders’ sensuality and dabbing the screen with little flickers of ethereal-looking light. But Flaherty excelled at man-versus-nature doco-narratives and showcasing untamed landscapes, which is something this particular picture needs more of.
dir: F.W. Murnau
wr: F.W. Murnau, Robert J. Flaherty, Edgar G. Ulmer
ph: Floyd Crosby, Robert J. Flaherty
cast: Matahi, Reri, Hitu, Jean, Jules, Ah Fong

THE THREEPENNY OPERA
***
France/Germany
A notorious Cockney criminal secretly marries the daughter of 'the king of the beggars'.
   A spectacularly lit and designed but otherwise leaden Brecht adaptation, filmed simultaneously in French and German versions.
dir: G.W. Pabst
ph: Fritz Arno Wagner
pd: Andre Andrejew
cast: Rudolf Forster, Carola Neher, Reinhold Schünzel, Fritz Rasp, Valeska Gert, Lotte Lenya, Ernst Busch, Vladimir Sokoloff

YET TO SEE:

AMERICAN TRAGEDY, AN (von Sternberg);
ARIANE (Cziner);
CHAMP, THE (Vidor);
CITY STREETS (Mamoulian);
FRONT PAGE, THE (Milestone);
GIRLS ABOUT TOWN (Cukor);
KAMERADSCHAFT (Pabst);
LAST FLIGHT, THE (Dieterle);
LIMITE (Peixoto);
MALTESE FALCON, THE (Del Ruth);
MIRACLE WOMAN, THE (Capra);
NIGHT NURSE (Wellman);
ONE HEAVENLY NIGHT (Fitzmaurice);
PLATINUM BLONDE (Capra);
SMILING LIEUTENANT, THE (Lubitsch);
STOLEN HEAVEN (Abbott);
TOKYO CHORUS (Ozu);
UNHOLY GARDEN, THE (Fitzmaurice);
WATERLOO BRIDGE (Whale);
YELLOW TICKET (Walsh)

TOP 1O TO SEE:
THE FRONT PAGE
KAMERADSCHAFT*
THE LAST FLIGHT
LIMITE
TOKYO CHORUS
PLATINUM BLONDE
STOLEN HEAVEN
THE MALTESE FALCON*
NIGHT NURSE
THE SMILING LIEUTENANT