Best Films – 1934

Norma Shearer in The Barretts of Wimpole Street
FILM
The Barretts of Wimpole Street
d: Sidney Franklin; scr: Ernest Vajda, Claudine West, Donald Ogden Stewart
The Count of Monte Cristo
d: Rowland V. Lee; scr: Philip Dunne, Dan Totheroh, Rowland V. Lee
The Gay Divorcee
d: Mark Sandrich; scr: George Marion Jr., Dorothy Yost, Edward Kaufman
Hide-out
d: W. S. Van Dyke; scr: Albert Hackett, Frances Goodrich
The Merry Widow
d: Ernst Lubitsch; scr: Samson Raphaelson, Ernest Vajda
 

Fredric March, Evelyn Venable in Death Takes a Holiday
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Broadway Bill
d: Frank Capra; scr: Robert Riskin
Death Takes a Holiday
d: Mitchell Leisen; scr: Maxwell Anderson, Gladys Lehman
Gold
d: Karl Hartl; scr: Rolf E. Vanloo
Here Comes the Navy
d: Lloyd Bacon; scr: Earl Baldwin, Ben Markson
Maskerade / Masquerade in Vienna
d: Willi Forst; scr: [...]

Anna May Wong at the San Francisco Asian American Film Festival

Anna May Wong in Pavement Butterfly. Photo: Elaine Mae Woo

As part of the San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival, on March 18 the Castro Theatre will screen the 1929 silent Anglo-German drama Grossstadtschmetterling / Pavement Butterfly, directed by Richard Eichberg, and starring Anna May Wong as Princess Butterfly, an exotic Parisian fan dancer who flees her show after a serious accident. She later becomes a society darling, but as to be expected, her past catches up with her in the form of a blackmailer.
According to Frako Loden’s write-up, "the collaboration between Chinese American legend Anna May Wong and German director Richard Eichberg, consisting of five films between 1928 and 1930, brought many firsts for the actress: her first [...]