I’ve never cared much for Design for Living, and I’m not quite sure why. It doesn’t seem to be a favorite of many other critics, either. It’s respected, but not loved. James Harvey, whose Romantic Comedy in Hollywood from Lubitsch to Sturges is like Scripture for me, makes an interesting claim about this. He arguesContinue reading “Design for Living (1933)”
Category Archives: 1933
Lady for a Day (1933)
I haven’t written much about Capra’s comedies so far because so much has been written about them already that it’s hard to screen out the noise and to say something new. For the record, Mr. Deeds Goes to Town was revelatory for me when I first saw it some fifty years ago. It was theContinue reading “Lady for a Day (1933)”
Bed of Roses (1933)
Gregory La Cava’s Bed of Roses was one of the films that inspired me to blog about Hollywood comedies of the ’30s and ’40s. I stumbled on it on TCM. I’d never heard of it before then. I admired My Man Godfrey, so I was interested in La Cava’s other films. Bed of Roses surprisedContinue reading “Bed of Roses (1933)”
Duck Soup (1933)
I confess that I never cared much for the Marx Brothers. I was always aware that this was a minority opinion. I just didn’t find them funny. As a teenager, I thought they were basically just cut-ups, forcing laughs and trying to take control of every situation — uncomfortably, now that I look back, likeContinue reading “Duck Soup (1933)”
Gold Diggers of 1933 (1933)
Gold Diggers of 1933 — directed by Mervyn LeRoy and spectacularized by Busby Berkeley — has been more thoroughly watched, interpreted, contextualized, explained, poked, prodded, and dissected over the years than any other comedy of the era. It has been glossed in terms the male gaze, the commodification of women, the reduction of female bodiesContinue reading “Gold Diggers of 1933 (1933)”
42nd Street (1933)
42nd Street was the first of the four monumental musicals associated with Busby Berkeley in the miracle years of 1933 and 1934. (The others were Gold Diggers of 1933, Footlight Parade, and Dames.) For a long time they were lumped together, as if they were parts of single artifact, the revolutionary Busby Berkeley spectacle-film. ContemporaryContinue reading “42nd Street (1933)”
College Coach (1933)
William “Wild Bill” Wellman’s College Coach is a bona fide piece of work — and not in a good way. It’s an exceedingly strange comedy about a college whose trustees decide that they can save the school from financial ruin only by perking up its loser football program by hiring a notoriously shady, publicity-hound coach-to-the-highest-bidder,Continue reading “College Coach (1933)”
Bombshell (1933)
If you’ve never seen Jean Harlow’s Bombshell before, you have to prepare yourself. It’s generally considered one of the great comedies of the 1930s, a surefire member of the Great Comic Canon. But it’s one of the oddest films in there. Imagine screwball marrying a nervous breakdown and having a meta-baby. It’s very funny, butContinue reading “Bombshell (1933)”
Footlight Parade (1933)
It’s standard practice among film historians to set up an opposition between the musicals of Busby Berkeley and Fred Astaire & Ginger Rogers. Until recently the preference was for the more intimate and individually graceful style of Astaire and Rogers. Their art was more personal than the monumental spectacles of Berkeley, and — so theContinue reading “Footlight Parade (1933)”