Which is your favorite Hollywood movie of the early sound era? (Vote in the poll at the top right hand side of the page.)All Quiet On The Western Front
City Lights
Duck Soup
Frankenstein
Grand Hotel
The Jazz Singer
King Kong
Scarface
Trouble In Paradise
Other
Wait! First aren't you supposed to find & post free versions of each of these movies for my viewing & judging convenience? I know there's a rule about this somewhere ...
ReplyDeleteMy favorites were Grand Hotel, City Lights and King Kong...I finally decided to vote for Grand Hotel, thinking that the other two would have a lot a votes...I was wrong. Interesting poll, interesting results so far.
ReplyDeleteIt's a tricky question, because you asked favorite. I went with King Kong, but I definitely think All Quiet is the best film of the era.
ReplyDeleteBeck, you read well, and you follow through.
ReplyDeleteI always like to distinguish what I like from what I know is better -- and figure out why.
I fail miserably.
Why, for instance, is Kelly's heroes my favourite flick o' all times?
It's indefensible.
Like most of the women I've slept with over the years.
My faves were . . . all kindsa wrong.
btw, enjoying King Kong amd appreciating All Quiet makes a lot o' sense to me. . . .
I ended up landing the pointer on King Kong, but it's up there sharing an amorphous, sparkly love-cloud with Duck Soup and City Lights, while I simultaneously fondly salute the others as rewatchable faves. You got me itchin' to stack up up all those DVDs now for the weekend.
ReplyDeleteI love all of these movies -- well, okay, I respect The Jazz Singer, I love the others. I could have made the list twenty movies long or even longer. Once Hollywood figured out what to do with sound, they really made some great movies.
ReplyDeleteOoh, I had so much trouble with this.
ReplyDeleteLike the commenter above, I admire All Quiet - and Scarface - without actually wanting to hug them... ditto The Jazz Singer.
My most loved films of all from the thirties are the Universal horrors and the Marx Brothers, but I couldn't join the Frankenstein (over Dracula) or Duck Soup (over the other four Paramounts) camps no matter how much I wanted to.
I love Lubitsch, Hopkins and Francis, but Trouble In Paradise never quite conveys to me what it does to others; I'm always aware as I watch it that I'm not enjoying it as much as I should be.
Fay Wray is my favourite star of all - your banner, sir, is a masterpiece - but King Kong is another admire-only: Wray is so gorgeous in it I could eat her with a spoon, but I find the film depressingly cruel in its attitudes.
My wife would say Grand Hotel without any of this soul-searching... but I went for City Lights in the end, mainly for the last scene. The rest of the film is just the set-up for this transcendent moment which is, I think, my favourite in all cinema. So Charlie gets the gong.
Course, I could have gone for 'other', but that would have meant many more hours of deliberation!
I cheated -- I voted thrice
ReplyDeleteword verification: falings
I cheated -- I voted thrice
ReplyDeleteVote early, vote often, I always say!
Why didn't I think of that?
ReplyDeleteI went for City Lights in the end, mainly for the last scene. The rest of the film is just the set-up for this transcendent moment which is, I think, my favourite in all cinema.
ReplyDeleteI couldn't agree with you more -- the final scene of City Lights is the most exquisite in all of film.
Actually, I wrote about it here last year. Love that movie.