Wait, what am I talking about? The Thirties were awesome if you weren't unemployed or starving! It was the Swing Age! Goodman, Charlie Christian, Glenn Miller, Django Reinhardt, Sir Duke, Billie; it must have been pretty grand. The music was happy and jumping and so were the movies. Movies rarely dealt with the Depression and with the exception of some subversive humor (The Great Dictator and Duck Soup), the only talk of dictators and fascism came from Disney cartoons and propaganda films, and they loved it. People wanted distractions from their bleak horizons, so to keep the morale high all around the world, movies tried their best to be simple sources of entertainment.
This is what historians who don't know anything about movies will tell you. Movies were just as deep and thought-provoking as they were back in the day and still are now. The Hollywood System was strong as ever but foreign and independent films were also keeping pace. The Thirties are often looked at as one of the greatest periods in film history (even after the Code was established) and we here at Bad Craziness want to give credit to all the different types of movies that came out in this wild, wild decade in cinema. Originally we were going to do 5 years, but our Screening & History Department needed to get quarantined due to an Ebola outbreak, so we were only able to screen 3 years in time for print. Sorry folks! But to start things off we've got
1932!
I. SCARFACE (APRIL 9th, 1932)
Directed by Howard Hawks and Richard Rosson
"Say hello - to my little friend!" That's from the Brian De Palma 1983 film Scarface. This Scarface inspired that one and is even more gritty and violent. This one makes the 1983 remake and many other gangster/crime films to come out after it look like a walk in the park with Barney the Dinosaur dressed as a unicorn in a tutu.
Scarface broke new grounds in terms of what you could show on screen. The main actors (Paul Muni and George Raft) built their performances off of real gangsters like Al Capone to make the film seem more realistic and dangerous. Their personas in Scarface became the archetypes that characters like Marsellus Wallace in Pulp Fiction, the MacManus Brothers in The Boondock Saints, and every Humphrey Bogart role would come to emulate and work off of. The brutal ending (which I won't give away because it's too brilliant to rob you of the experience, fair reader) shocked and appalled executives to the point that they ordered an alternative ending be filmed and used. Good thing they scrapped the alternative ending because it would make the movie lose some of its swagger.
Along with The Public Enemy and Little Caesar, Scarface made those evil animals in the Hayes Office decide to create the censorship codes that wouldn't be broken until 1968 by films like The Graduate and Bonnie & Clyde. More than that though, these Pre-Code crime films and especially Scarface blurred the line between judgement and glory, right and wrong, hakuna and matata (alright maybe not that last one) with gritty screenplays, grisly violence, and shadowy, almost horror-esque feel to them that would influence every film noir and neo-noir to come.
II. FREAKS! (FEBRUARY 20th, 1932
Directed by Tod Browning
If you think any of the Saw films or The Haunting in Connecticut are scary, you obviously haven't seen Tod Browning's Freaks. Using actual circus sideshow "freaks", Tod Browning's film is one of those subversive films we mentioned before that apparently didn't exist in the '30s.
Why do people forget about this movie? Perhaps because it was banned for 30 years due to its horrifying content. The original cut of the film featured graphic castration, mutilation, and even someone getting their arms and legs melted down to look like the wings and feet of a duck. The screenplay was lauded by most of MGM's executives and director Tod Browning wasn't allowed to use big name actors to help sell the film. Executives also cut over 30 minutes of footage so that audiences wouldn't run in fear every time they saw a dwarf. One woman even sued MGM for the movie because it apparently caused her to have a miscarriage.
Freaks is undoubtedly one of the most controversial films ever made and thus has become a midnight movie/counterculture icon. But perhaps instead of just being an interesting film to see while in the throes of an acid trip (which it is if you're into absolutely terrifying experiences), Freaks is one of the first films to preach of tolerance and the loosening of control by governing bodies because the freaks can always rise up and turn them into hideous duck people.
III. THE MUMMY (DECEMBER 22nd, 1932)
Directed by Karl Freund
The '30s were the heyday of the Universal Horrors. Frankenstein, Dracula, The Invisible Man, and of course, our feautre here: The Mummy. Before the Ebola outbreak in the Screening & History Department's multiplex claimed the life of our Horror expert, Bela Lugosi (of no relation to the famed actor, but of relation to The Mummy's star Boris Karloff), we were going to do a feature on all the big Universal Horror monsters. But alas, without a mind like that it would be a boring, ill-informed piece not worth your time, fair readers.
What separates The Mummy from the other Universal Horror pictures? Is it the advanced camera work and cinematography? Is it the in depth research that went into making the complicated storyline? Is it the intricate costuming and set design that made all the actual filming happen at night? The answer is yes. It is all these things. The slow, creeping camera put the film into Imhotep's point of view as opposed to the other Universal Horrors that spoke specifically from the protagonist's point of view. What about the themes of the film?
The Mummy is one of the first horror films that showed what a horror film is supposed to be: scary as hell and even more subversive. The dead Pharaoh; the specter of the past haunting the ever so curious archaeologist? SOUNDS LIKE A FIGURATIVE MEANING! There are a million ways to analyze The Mummy and that's what makes it the first "modern" horror film: every piece of the production contains layers, some that are just plain creepy and some that stay in your brain so you can think about them and wonder why they're there, like that weird 45 year old guy in the trench coat at the back of the bar.
It's not a coincidence that these highly subversive films came out during the year of a presidential election, folks. Cinema can be creepy and all conspiracy-theorist-y too. There's a lot more to 1930's cinema than happy little musicals and guys in Frankenstein masks. However, the movies we put here are nowhere NEAR the entirety of even 1932, they're just a couple of our favorites. For a better look at 1932, try these on for size:
Next time right here in Bad Craziness IT'S!
1933!
More to come from all of us here at Bad Craziness folks! Follow me on Twitter and like the Facebook Page for simply TOO MUCH about movies! Happy Tuesday hombres, go outside and get some sunlight (just kidding it's raining) and as always,
~Viva amigos,
~D. Merrick
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