Ernst Lubitsch brings continental elegance and American wit to a sexy love triangle with Miriam Hopkins, Herbert Marshall, and Kay Francis.
Tag: 1932
Paul Muni is ‘Scarface’ in the original gangster masterpiece on Criterion Channel
The original Scarface (1932), loosely but boldly based on the notorious life and legend of Al Capone, didn’t invent the modern American gangster film. It blew it up. Films like The Public Enemy and Little Caesar had whetted the American moviegoing appetite for crime movies that reveled in vicarious thrills before delivering a sentence of […]
Gary Cooper bids ‘A Farewell to Arms’ on Amazon Prime
A Farewell to Arms (1932), the first screen version of Ernest Hemingway’s novel, is not the most faithful adaptation—at 90 minutes, it was greatly reduced and Hemingway himself was quite vocal with his displeasure at the adaptation of his semi-autobiographical story—but almost a century later it is still the most passionate and moving version. Gary […]
‘What Price Hollywood?’ – the pre-code ‘A Star is Born’ on The Criterion Channel
What Price Hollywood? (1932) is one of the wittiest and most interesting Hollywood movies about Hollywood culture ever made. It’s a shame it’s not better known. This pre-code comedy stars Constance Bennett as an aspiring actress waiting tables at The Brown Derby who gets her big break when a drunken film director (Lowell Sherman) invites […]