1934--The Year in Review

One year after his masterful Zero for Conduct, Jean Vigo once again stands tall against all comers. His visionary, dreamlike romance completely overtook the flowering of the Hollywood screwball comedy with Twentieth Century, It Happened One Night (which would go on to win all the major awards), and W.C. Fields' It's A Gift (the funniest of these films). Vigo's early death deprived cinema of what might have been, but his one-of-a-kind feature still rings thoroughly ahead of its time. Still, the robust performances leading Hawks' comedy masterpiece ring even louder (there's nothing in film entire like seeing Barrymore imitating a camel). Meanwhile, in the shorts categories, the looming appeal of color transforms the very nature of attending the cinema. And, in cinematography, James Wong Howe makes great strides in converting black-and-white into realism with his creative work in service of a totally unrealistic, utterly charming crime-fighting couple, Nick and Nora Charles (the "thin man" refers to the villain they were chasing in the first film, though "The Thin Man" became shorthand for the couple themselves). As a result of his work and the efforts of smart screenwriters Hackett and Goodrich, the witty repartee between William Powell and Myrna Loy would forever transform the speedy character of the best movie (and television) dialogue. Also not to be forgotten: the extremely gorgeous images in Von Sternberg's The Scarlet Empress, Hitchcock's The Man Who Knew Too Much, and De Mille's Cleopatra. NOTE: These are MY choices for each category, and are in no way reflective of the choices made by the Oscars.

PICTURE: L'ATALANTE (France, Jean Vigo)
(2nd: Twentieth Century (US, Howard Hawks), followed by:
It Happened One Night (US, Frank Capra)
The Scarlet Empress (US, Josef von Sternberg)
It's A Gift (US, Norman Z. McLeod)
The Thin Man (US, W.S. Van Dyke)
Imitation of Life (US, John Stahl)
The Man Who Know Too Much (UK, Alfred Hitchcock)
Death Takes a Holiday (US, Mitchell Leisen)
The Merry Widow (US, Ernst Lubischt)
Of Human Bondage (US, John Cromwell)
Our Daily Bread (US, King Vidor)
Judge Priest (US, John Ford)
Babes in Toyland (US, Charles Rogers and Gus Meins)
Tarzan and His Mate (US, Cedric Gibbons and Jack Conway)
Cleopatra (US, Cecil B. DeMille)
The Barretts of Wimpole Street (US, Sidney Franklin)
The Black Cat (US, Edgar Ulmer))

ACTOR: John Barrymore, TWENTIETH CENTURY (2nd: W.C. Fields, It's a Gift; followed by: Clark Gable, It Happened One Night; William Powell, The Thin Man; Frederic March, Death Takes a Holiday; Will Rogers, Judge Priest)



ACTRESS: Carole Lombard, TWENTIETH CENTURY (2nd: Bette Davis, Of Human Bondage, followed by: Claudette Colbert, It Happened One Night; Myrna Loy, The Thin Man; Dita Parlo, L'Atalante; Claudette Colbert, Imitation of Life; Marlene Dietrich, The Scarlet Empress)

SUPPORTING ACTOR: Michel Simon, L'ATALANTE (2nd: Edward Everett Horton, The Gay Divorcee, followed by: Peter Lorre, The Man Who Knew Too Much; Charles Laughton, The Barretts of Wimpole Street; Sam Jaffe, The Scarlet Empress; Frank Morgan, The Affairs of Cellini)

SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Kathleen Howard, IT'S A GIFT (2nd: Louise Beavers, Imitation of Life, followed by: Louise Dresser, The Scarlet Empress; Alice Brady, The Gay Divorcee; Joan Blondell, Dames; Una Merkel, The Merry Widow)

DIRECTOR: Jean Vigo, L'ATALANTE (2nd: Howard Hawks, Twentieth Century, followed by: Josef von Sternberg, The Scarlet Empress; W.S. Van Dyke, The Thin Man; Frank Capra, It Happened One Night; Norman Z. McLeod, It's a Gift)



SCREENPLAY: Albert Hackett and Frances Goodrich, THE THIN MAN (2nd: Ben Hecht and Charles McArthur, Twentieth Century, followed by: Robert Riskin, It Happened One Night; Jean Vigo, Albert Riera, and Jean Guinee, L'Atalante; Jack Cunningham, It's A Gift; William Hurlbut, Imitation of Life)



LIVE ACTION SHORT FILM: LA CUCARACHA (Lloyd Corrigan; early Technicolor) (2nd: Men in Black (Ray McCarey (The Three Stooges)), followed by: Punch Drunks (Lou Breslow (The Three Stooges))



ANIMATED SHORT FILM:  THE TORTOISE AND THE HARE (Wilfred Jackson and Walt Disney) (2nd: The Big Bad Wolf (Burt Gillett and Walt Disney); The Grasshopper and the Ant (Wilfred Jackson and Walt Disney))

CINEMATOGRAPHY: James Wong Howe, THE THIN MAN (2nd: Louis Berger, Jean Paul Alphen, and Boris Kaufman, L'Atalante, followed by: Bert Glennon, The Scarlet Empress; Victor Milner, Cleopatra)

ART DIRECTION: THE SCARLET EMPRESS, The Thin Man, The Gay Divorcee, Cleopatra

COSTUME DESIGN: CLEOPATRA, The Scarlet Empress, The Thin Man, The Barretts of Wimpole Street

The Encylopedia of Cinematography (K-L)

Kagemusha (Takao Saito and Shoji Ueda, 80)
Wow--what a color pallette!  Spellbinding!  And I type that while trying to keep my shit together!!

The Killing (Lucien Ballard, 56)  
The beginnings of Stanley Kubrick's balanced, nuanced signature style, in collaboration with a master photographer who had no real respect for this young visionary (though old-guard Ballard did as he was told anyway).  
 

The Killing Fields (Chris Menges, 84)
A splendid melding of documentary and narrative photography stylings, in service of a brutal and moving tale of war, survival, and friendship.  

The King and I (Leon Shamroy, 56) 
The opulence of an unapproachable king, set against the giving heart of a lowly governess. Stupefyingly beautiful, all the way through--especially when they dance!  

King Solomon's Mines (Robert Surtees, 50) 
A proud progenitor of the action/adventure movie, in full and replete color.  

Kings of the Road (Robby Müller and Martin Schäfer, 76) 
A superb, expansive use of black and white.   

The King's Speech (Danny Cohen, 2010) 
Very unusual framing and color choices here, in a movie that could have been much less demanding in its success.  

Kiss Me, Deadly (Ernest Laszlo, 55)
For my money, the king of all noirs, with darkness, dutch angles, and wild, slashing shadows galore.  

Klute (Gordon Willis, 71) 
Willis adds his creepy command of darkness to Alan J. Pakula's thriller, with superb effect.  

The Knack, and How To Get It (David Watkin, 65)
Crazy oversaturated and often dreamy images dot this nutso comedy set in Swingin' London.  

Koyannisqatsi (Ron Fricke, 82)
Documentary photography like you've never seen it before.  Truly one-of-a-kind camera mastery here, with overexposures, slow motion and time lapse shots like you wouldn't believe.  
 

Kramer vs. Kramer (Nestor Alamendros, 79)
Warm and cozy NYC filmmaking of the highest order; incredible in that it seems so unassuming, and yet is so continually gorgeous. 
 

Kundun (Roger Deakins, 97)
Every shot here is astounding in its endlessly dazzling use of color instensity and composition.  
 

Kwaidan (Yoshio Miyagima, 64)
A nightmarish creep-out, this one, with always inventive widescreen work.  

L.A. Confidential (Dante Spinotti, 97)  
In its telling of a pulpy tale, it merges the real with the unreal, all while set in a land of dreams.  Completely energetic and ravishing. 

Lancelot du Lac (Pasqualino de Santis, 74) 
The brutality of King Arthur's court, shot with lush grit. 

Lassie Come Home (Leonard Smith, 43) 
Sumptuous, delicious Technicolor work, in service of our collective love of animals, and starring the most charismatic animal star of all time.
 

The Last Picture Show (Robert Surtees, 71)
The incredible B&W photography is so much like a film of the era in which it's set (the early 50s), it's impossible to believe it hails from the 70s. IMPOSSIBLE! 
 

Last Tango in Paris (Vittorio Storaro, 72)
Storaro furthers his collaboration with Bernardo Bertolucci, and amazes us with each shot of this groundbreaking classic.  

Last Year at Marienbad (Sacha Vierny, 61)
Dream photography nonpareil!  

The Last Emperor (Vittorio Storaro, 87)  
More work from Storaro and Bertolucci, this time capturing China's Forbidden City in all its tremendous opulence.

The Last Temptation of Christ (Michael Ballhaus, 88)  
A succession of stunning images that will sear themselves into your brain!  Jesus--a man of impeccable tastes--would have wanted it so. 
 

The Last Waltz (Michael Chapman, Laszlo Kovacs and Vilmos Zsigmond, 78) 
Possibly the most dynamically filmed concert performance ever to hit the screen.  

L’Atalante (Louis Berger, Boris Kaufman, and Jean-Paul Alphen, 34)
Absolutely mesmerizing in its invention and bravery, from director Jean Vigo, who left us way too early.  

Laura (Joseph La Shelle, 44)
A key noir in every way, and one of the most perverse!

Lawrence of Arabia (Freddie Young, 62)
Epic widescreen photography at its highest apex--huge in scope, yet also incredibly intimate and personal. Can you IMAGINE the human effort that went into making this movie, and in the middle of the desert, too? 

Leave Her to Heaven (Leon Shamroy, 45)
Stunning use of evocative shadows and rich colors in this odd noir from director John Stahl.  

The Leopard (Giuseppe Rotunno, 63)  
Another stunningly intimate and visually detailed epic, with a recognizably Italian ambiance!  
 

Lenny (Bruce Surtees, 74)
Rich black-and-white, from a photographer with a penchant for utter darkness.  

Life with Father (J. Peverell Marley and William V. Skall, 47)  
Stunning Technicolor work that's often forgotten!  All the red hair in this movie just pops!   

Life of Pi (Claudio Miranda, 2012) 
Digital and real world photography continue their first genuine meeting. 
 

A Little Princess (Emmanuel Lubezki, 95) 
Gorgeous work, both in the real and the extra unreal fantasy sequences, and the near beginning of the photographer's association with one of his most valued collaborators, director Alfonso Cuaron. 

Local Hero (Chris Menges, 83) 
The haunting Scottish beaches, and the impersonal Texas highrises clash wonderfully in this, perhaps one of the most terrifically shot comedies of all time.  
 

Lola Montes (Christian Matras, 55)  
A film in which each shot is just unspeakably tremendous.  A must for cinematography afficiandos.  

The Long Goodbye (Vilmos Zsigmond, 74)
Los Angeles has never looked more seedy and unusual than in this Altman-directed noir, with his trademarked constantly-in-motion camerawork.  
 

The Long Riders (Ric Waite, 80)
Only one non-Peckinpah film has done things so right, Peckinpah would be proud, and this is in large part due to the athletic cinematography (and editing).  
 

Looking for Mr. Goodbar (William A. Fraker, 77)
The 70s bar scene, shockingly real and scary.  The strobe light sequence at the climax might very well make you ill!   

The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Rings (Andrew Lesnie, 2001) 
The template for one of the most respecting movie series of all time.  Its understanding and completion of Middle Earth's look is beyond reproach.

The Lost Weekend (John F. Seitz, 45) 
Alcoholism at its despairing rock bottom, shot with disquieting contrasts.  

The Lover (Robert Fraisse, 92) 
Heated and sweaty eroticism.  

A Cinema Gallery: 200 Images, Part 3

Now, for part 3 of my six-part series following 200 landmark film images, we go all monochrome. Black-and-white is all the rage here with these 35 images (this makes 104 of the guaranteed 200, and no directors will be mentioned more than once):

Is this real??? Duck Soup (Leo McCarey, 33; PHOTOG: Henry Sharp)

Our man amongst his treasured swings in Ikiru (Akira Kurosawa, 52; PHOTOG: Asakazu Nakai)


The mail is thrust out of a moving train on a fateful Kansas day. In Cold Blood. (Richard Brooks, 67; PHOTOG: Conrad Hall)

Jackboots in line for the Oscar-winning short Hitler Lives (Don Siegel (uncredited); producer: Gordon Hollingshead, 45)

A child killer pleads his case, his strangling fingers straightened in the underrated remake of M (Joseph Losey, 51; PHOTOG: Ernest Laszlo)


"Eddie, I'm so sorry." Ed Wood. (Tim Burton, 94; PHOTOG: Stephan Czapsky)

For the very first time, a lawyer must make a choice between eastern justice and western survival in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (John Ford, 62; PHOTOG: William H. Clothier)


A newlywed understands her doom in The Honeymoon Killers (Leonard Kastle, 69; PHOTOG: Oliver Wood)

The getaway, and a culmination to a groundbreaking long shot filmed on location, in Gun Crazy (Joseph H. Lewis, 50; PHOTOG: Russell Harlan)


Dreamscape. Last Year at Marienbad. (Alain Renais, 61; PHOTOG: Sacha Vierny)

Bones rattle about in The Skeleton Dance (Walt Disney, 29)

The mad title image--a shock for me at an early age--for The Snake Pit (Anatole Litvak, 48; PHOTOG: Leo Tover)

Another title image, this time for Woman in the Dunes (Hiroshi Teshigahara, 64; PHOTOG: Hiroshi Segawa)

Waifs wait to be educated in the bedroom. The Knack …And How To Get It (Richard Lester, 65; PHOTOG: David Watkin)

The ladies' auxillary's talk on the cultivation of hydrangeas moves on in The Manchurian Candidate (John Frankenheimer, 62; PHOTOG: Lionel Lindon)

"Your future's all used up." Orson Welles in Touch of Evil. (Orson Welles, 58; PHOTOG: Russell Metty)

A sunset drive in Hud (Martin Ritt, 63; PHOTOG: James Wong Howe)

"I am, George. I am." Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (Mike Nichols, 66; PHOTOG Haskell Wexler)


Leon Theremin demonstrates his musical invention in Theremin: An Electronic Odyssey (Steven M. Martin, 94)


A sleepless night alone in L’Atalante (Jean Vigo, 34; PHOTOG: Louis Berger, Boris Kaufman, Jean-Paul Aphen)

A movie star's beloved is laid to rest in Sunset Blvd. (Billy Wilder, 50; PHOTOG: John F. Seitz)


Joe is so much more charismatic and sweet than that other big ape. Mighty Joe Young. (Ernest B. Schoedsack, 49; PHOTOG: J. Roy Hunt, Bert and Herb Willis)


A snowy rush to safety in The Tale of the Fox. (Wladyslaw and Irene Starewicz, 30; PHOTOG: Wladyslaw Starewicz)

The trial is afoot, with all of the afterlife's humanity as excited audience, in A Matter of Life and Death / Stairway to Heaven (Michael Powell and Emeric Pressberger, 46; PHOTOG: Jack Cardiff)

Humorist and Alcgonquin Round Table staple Robert Benchley details The Sex Life of the Polyp. (Thomas Chalmers, 28; PHOTOG: Thomas Chalmers)

A door breathes, and a house is alive, in The Haunting (Robert Wise, 63; PHOTOG: Davis Boulton )

What shall I sing to my lord from my window? What shall I sing for my lord will not stay? What shall I sing for my lord will not listen? Where shall I go when my lord is away? Whom shall I love when the moon is arisen? Gone is my lord and the grave is his prison. What shall I say when my lord comes a-calling? What shall I say when he knocks on my door? What shall I say when his feet enter softly? Leaving the marks of his grave on my floor. Enter my lord! Come from your prison! Come from your grave, for the moon is a-risen. Welcome, my lord... The Innocents. (Jack Clayton, 61; PHOTOG: Freddie Francis)

Two unforgettable faces: John Barrymore and Carole Lombard in Twentieth Century. (Howard Hawks, 34; PHOTOG: Joseph H. August)

"The little man who lives inside my brain." Crumb. (Terry Zwigoff, 94; PHOTOG: Maryse Alberti)

Scorpions entertwined at the outset of L'Age D'Or (Luis Buñuel, 30; PHOTOG: Albert Duvergier)

Not a storybook marriage in Tomorrow. (Joseph Anthony, 72; PHOTOG: Allan Green)

The gold's gone outta this town in Yellow Sky. (William A. Wellman, 48; PHOTOG: Joe McDonald)

One boulder makes hilarious contact in Seven Chances. (Buster Keaton, 25; PHOTOG: Byron Houck, Elgin Lessly (uncredited))

The sunny side of the street. Jammin’ The Blues. (Gjon Mili, 44; PHOTOG: Robert Burks)

Tomorrow: Color returns for 36 more times!

Part One of this six-part series is right here,
while Part Two is here.