Best Films – 1930

Made at the dawn of the sound era, All Quiet on the Western Front remains the best war film ever made. Despite some brave (and not so brave) attempts by other filmmakers ever since, no other motion picture I’ve seen has captured the horrors of war with the honesty and the poignancy of Lewis Milestone’s rendition of Erich Maria Remarque’s pacifist novel. Lew Ayres plays the young, idealistic soldier who soon discovers that war has nothing to do with either honor or glory.
 
FILM
All Quiet on the Western Front
d: Lewis Milestone; scr: Maxwell Anderson, Del Andrews, George Abbott
The Bishop Murder Case
d: Nick Grindé, David Burton; scr: Lenore J. Coffee
Going Wild
d: William [...]

Marie Dressler

Marie Dressler in Dinner at 8

It’s Oscar time. What better way to celebrate the 2008 Academy Awards than by having a q&a about the best actress Oscar winner … of 1931?
(Or rather, for the period 1930-31, as the Oscars in those days covered films released in the Los Angeles area from August 1 to July 31.)
And who was the best actress winner that year?
Well, none other than — according to US film exhibitors’ polls — the biggest box-office attraction in the United States of the early 1930s.
That’s Joan Crawford, right?
Wrong.
Norma Shearer? Greta Garbo? Barbara Stanwyck? Jean Harlow?
Nope.
Betty Grable!
Go get yourself a film history book. Grable was the biggest female box-office attraction of the 1940s.
Who then?
Marie Dressler.
Who??
Marie [...]