Monday, June 15, 2009

Movies Of The 30s


We're just about set to announce the next Metro Classics series, which will run through August and September. The theme this time around is Liars, Thieves and Cheats, and thus far we've booked L'Avventura, Charade, The Adventures Of Robin Hood, The Wild Bunch, The Sting and Crimes And Misdemeanors. Hopefully the last three will be set by the end of the week.

In the meantime, here's a list of my Top 50 films of the 1930s. And here are the lists for the 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s and 00s.

1. The Rules Of The Game
2. Duck Soup
3. Stagecoach
4. Bringing Up Baby
5. Young Mr. Lincoln
6. Mr. Smith Goes To Washington
7. City Lights
8. Tabu: A Story Of The South Seas
9. The Adventures Of Robin Hood
10. Swing Time
11. M
12. Morocco
13. L'Atalante
14. Vampyr
15. Only Angels Have Wings
16. The Awful Truth
17. Shanghai Express
18. Top Hat
19. Modern Times
20. The Dawn Patrol
21. Alexander Nevsky
22. The Grand Illusion
23. The Thin Man
24. Ruggles Of Red Gap
25. The Lady Vanishes


26. A Story OF Floating Weeds
27. The 39 Steps
28. City Girl
29. King Kong
30. Earth
31. Le Million
32. Scarface
33. Wee Willie Winkie
34. The Story Of The Late Chrysanthemums
35. Sisters Of the Gion
36. Ninotchka
37. Judge Priest
38. 42nd Street
39. Tokyo Chorus
40. Gunga Din
41. The Devil Is A Woman
42. Animal Crackers
43. Trouble In Paradise
44. I Was Born But. . .
45. Love Affair
46. Show Boat
47. The Wizard Of Oz
48. Baby Face
49. Fury
50. Destry Rides Again

7 comments:

  1. Surely the 39 Steps is better than The Lady Vanishes?

    ReplyDelete
  2. I really like The Lady Vanishes, it's my favorite of the British Hitchcocks.

    ReplyDelete
  3. On the strength of the characters, Lady Vanishes is superior. There's nobody really memorable in 39 Steps apart from the Scottish couple.

    What format(s) are these Metro Classics going to be in?

    ReplyDelete
  4. Looks like they'll all be digital, with Crimes on 35mm.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Sorry to get geeky, but what sort of digital source?

    Thanks.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Not at all, I'm a stickler for image quality myself.

    Robin Hood and The Wild Bunch will be Blu-Ray, the rest are DVD (unless we can find a Blu-Ray for them before they play, but I don't think any of the others are available or are slated to be anytime soon). With our top-of-the-line 4K projector and the relatively small size of our auditorium, the picture we get is pretty fantastic. Not the resolution of 35mm, obviously, but that's pretty well compensated for by the pristine restored images (most 35 prints in circulation seem to be pretty damaged, some of the ones we've gotten in the past have been un-runnable).

    ReplyDelete
  7. Great. Thanks for the info. Can't wait to see the schedule.

    ReplyDelete