1928 BEST PICTURE OF THE YEAR!

This is my choice for Best Picture for 1928. My criteria is that I can only use films that are on the 1001 list. To make it a little easier on myself, I am using the rules of the first Academy Award and name a winner for Best Picture (won by Wings for 1927-1928) and Best Unique and Artistic Picture (won by Sunrise from 1927-1928).

And the nominees for every entry from 1928 from every edition of 1001 Movie You Must See Before You Die are...

The Crowd
The Docks of New York
An Andalusian Dog
The Passion of Joan of Arc
Steamboat Bill, Jr.
Storm Over Asia

And the winner for Best Picture of 1928 is...The Crowd

The Crowd

As tempting as it is to give out these early awards to Buster Keaton movies, I'm going with King Vidor's The Crowd for this one. One of several excellent pictures of the last real year of silents, this film depicts a couple and their struggle to survive under tight circumstances in real and stark terms, and showed a technically adept filmmaking style that we didn't seem to see too much during the early talkies.

 The Crowd

And the Award for Unique and Artistic Picture of 1928 is...Joan of Arc

Joan of Arc

You can make a case for Luis Bunuel's influential An Andalusian Dog for this award for this year, but I'm going with Carl Theodor Dreyer's intense epic of the last days of Joan of Arc. It's a truly harrowing and draining piece, though you probably have to be in the right mood before sitting down to watch this one.

Joan of Arc

THE BIG PARADE (1925)

Tom O'Brien, John Gilbert and Karl Dane lead The Big Parade

New York Times critic Mordaunt Hall called The Big Parade the Best Movie "without doubt" of 1925 in his end of the year review from that year. The story features three American men who go off to fight in the first World War. They are spoiled rich kid Jim (John Gilbert) and working stiffs Bull (Tom O'Brien) and Sam (Karl Dane). Despite the differences in class of the three men, they bond and we see them train together, fight together and (in some cases) die together. The movie was directed by Kind Vidor, who gives much of the credit for the film's success to screenwriter Laurence Stallings.

The film has been cited in some sources (501 Movie Directors) as the most financially successful film of the silent era. I heard another source say it was second to Birth of a Nation, but either way The Big Parade was extremely popular.

So it was a popular film and a critical hit. The one thing that stopped it from being seen more over the years was, of course, that it was a silent and once talkies came around...well more people raved about All
Quiet on the Western Front just five years later...where you can hear the bombs...

King Vidor did make his mark in talkies as well, directing prominent pictures for over thirty years after The Big Parade. Leading man John Gilbert wasn't so lucky when the sound era came around. His star waned and he died of a heart attack in 1936.

But the reputation of The Big Parade stands. Most critics hail it as a masterpiece...though curmudgeonly critic David Thompson says The Big Parade is''often slack and clumsy." You can't please everyone, I guess. 

STELLA DALLAS (1937)

MORE 1001 MOVIES FROM THE 30's

(Post 7 of 20) 

 Miss Barbara Stanwyck as Stella Dallas

King Vidor's 1937 film version of Stella Dallas is the story of a poor girl from a factory town and her attempts to better herself. It's a bit of a soap opera and the main reason to see it today is Barbara Stanwyck in one on her defining roles. She does well in the part of the mother willing to make great sacrifices for her daughter and you could easily make the case that Stanwyck should have beat out Luise Rainer for Best Actress that year...but there you have it.

Other versions: The story of Stella Dallas was first published as a novel by Olive Higgins Prouty in 1923. A silent version was filmed in 1925 (And was an extra on the Stella Dallas DVD I watched) and does differ from the later version a great deal. The final dramatic scene in the silent is much like the Vidor version. Stella Dallas was also a stage play, long running radio series and and the basis for the 1990 movie Stella, with Bette Midler. My wife attests that the version with Bette Midler is a production of quality, though Midler's Razzie win for this film demonstrates an alternate opinion.

And the Elisha Cook Jr. supporting player award goes to...Alan Hale Sr.. Stanwyck is of course the central performance in this film, but we do get some needed light-hearted moments from Alan Hale as the Stella's  suitor. There is an itching powder gag with Hale that is the comic highlight of the film. I've given this imaginary award to Alan Hale so often now I will try to find someone else new to give it to if I come across Alan in any future films.

 

Itching powder is funny!
Hale and Stanwyck in Stella Dallas

Interesting Hale fact: Hale played Little John in three different Robin Hood films.

Hale as Little John with Douglas Fairbanks Sr.

in Robin Hood (1922)

 

Hale as Little John With Errol Flynn

in The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938)

 

Hale as Little John (his final screen appearance)

 with John Derek 

in Rogues of Sherwood Forest (1950)

PASSION OF JOAN OF ARC (1928, FRANCE), DOCKS OF NEW YORK (1928), THE CROWD (1928), STORM OVER ASIA (1928, RUSSIA)

1928

"It is a painful irony that silent movies were driven out of existence just as they were reaching a kind of glorious summit of creativity and imagination, so that some of the best silent movies were also some of the last ones."-Bill Bryson, One Summer: America, 1927

I was looking at some original film critiques from the  New York Times Film Reviews and thought I would share some of the original thoughts on some films from 1928 from that source.

The Passion of Joan of Arc

 "In The Passion of Joan of Arc, M. Carl Dreyer has produced a singularly arresting and original film, which will certainly be much discussed. He presents the heroine in the new realistic manner as an inspired peasant girl, without the gaudy trappings of legend, and the figure he makes of her is no unworthy companion to the stage picture drawn by Bernard Shaw."-W. L. Middleton, New York Times Film Reviews, August 12, 1928.

The Docks of New York

"Nine-tenths of the persons seeing the Paramount's offering this week will like it. Perhaps the most serious objections the other tenth will have are that The Docks of New York is a little too long and that it has an anti-climax. The picture as a whole is good, however, with able acting and occasional bits of exceptional directing."-Mordaunt Hall, New York Times Film Reviews, September 17, 1928.

Storm Over Asia

"Excellent photography and sterling work by the eminently suitable cast are the conspicuous assets of Vsevolod Pudovkin's silent cinematic contribution, Storm Over Asia...There is, however, much that is compelling in this production in the early scenes, but in the closing episodes it becomes hysterical and absurd events occur, including a man, who through injuries, is hardly able to move around, suddenly becoming a veritable Samson."-Mordaunt Hall, New York Times Film Reviews, September 28, 1930.

The Crowd

"The Crowd is on the whole, a powerful analysis of a young couple's struggle for existence in this city. Throughout this subject, Mr. Vidor shrewdly avoids the stereotyped conception of setting forth scenes and in more than one case he uses the camera in an inspired fashion."-Mordaunt Hall, New York Times Film Reviews, February 20, 1928.

 "The last full year of Hollywood's silent era, 1928, produced some of its greatest masterpieces,"-Martin Ruben, 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die

"I do wish silent films had endured as an art form alongside the "talkies." But let us enjoy the ones that still survive."-Chris Cox, 1001: A Film Odyssey