Tweet Talkies Peaked in '32?

the very popularity (i.e. audience acceptance) of films they objected to finally spurred them into action.

No market, no product. Every theater ticket booth was in effect a voting booth. Like Prohibition, Breen's ascension to power is a dramatic example of the power of well-organized & funded fanaticism.

Joe Breen was a foaming at the mouth anti-Semite whose rise to power came with the backing of the Legion of Decency and with the tacit approval of the incoming FDR administration. I have read that when Breen appeared on screen in PSA to announce that the tawdry was out, people in the movie audience hooted him. Breen was supposed to blunt the activities of the various censorship boards at the state and local level but he was apparently no good at that. While Breen, the "Hitler of Hollywood," was neutering the political content of studio movies, the real Hitler in Nazi Germany was railing against degenerate art (Entartete Kunst). Hitler even had an exhibition of the "degenerate art," first in a 1937 Munich showing. Then the degenerate art show went on a four year tour through Germany and Austria. Of the 112 artists the Nazis classified as degenerate, only 6 were Jewish.

The subject matter of the avante garde art was what upset the Nazis, not the artist's religion. The banned artwork included grim portraits of life. The Nazis did not want anyone questioning authority, one reason they pushed hard to get Universal not to make "The Road Back," with its negative views of militarism. Breen was cut from the same mold as the Nazis, and he did not have to do much to pressure the Hollywood moguls to let him be the gatekeeper for Hollywood movies. Tough as they were with studio employees, the Hollywood moguls were easily intimidated by outsiders like Breen and organized crime types like mob emissaries William Bioff and George Brown in the early thirties.

In my opinion, Hollywood never recovered from the effects of Breen's rigid censorship from 1934 to about 1958. Breen left his job as Production Code Administrator in 1954 as the major Hollywood studios were in a state of chaos from competition from television. But anyone thinking that Hollywood is not practicing censorship should look at the ending of the 2006 movie "The Departed." This movie is an American version of the 2002 Hong Kong movie "Infernal Affairs." That movie had versions with two different endings, one for mainland China where the crooked cop gets punished and one version for Hong Kong distribution where the crooked cop continues to play both sides of the street. In "The Departed," the American movie has a cop-out ending similar to the mainland Chinese version, crime cannot pay.

Unless you are J.P. Morgan, of course, then anything goes.

I presume you mean "early talkies"

You are so right, when silents peaked is a whole different question, probably some time after the train entered the station! Must pay more attention.

It's an interesting argument, Everson had a way of condensing an issue in order to illuminate it....I think he was making a very specific point, but his larger argument was the same that almost anyone on this list would agree with - that films from 31 to 34 were overall more interesting than films that followed.

The larger point is that the studios had a brief window of personal creativity that ended July 1934. The window started to reopen around 1939 and by the end of the war, there was a struggle for creative control that produced interesting films for the next decade.

I would argue that other than 1932-1933, the greatest period of Hollywood films was around 1972 to 1985. Then the studios were all bought out, and the studios were never the same. Hollywood films are now cheeseburgers. TV is where the creative things are happening in Hollywood now.

I fear some folks here are confusing the term "peaked" with "best."

As others have noted, 1932 is the year the transition to sound was complete and, for the most part, the language of sound film was firmly in place. i.e.:

background scoring
fully mobile camera
little reliance on title cards
no ... take ... him ... for ... a ... ride diction

The exception of later film gimics (3D, cinerama, CGI) and the end of the studio system to one side, the mechanics of film making circa 1932 is essentially the mechanics of film making today (well, yesterday, when film was still employed.)

The same can not be said about most talkies prior to 1932.

As others have noted here and elsewhere, there were, arguably, more banner years for film quality than 1932 (1934 and the 39-40 season, most famously) but it can be argued that, from a technical standpoint, those banner years may have matched 1932, but never exceeded it.

Now if y'all want to chastise Everson for poor word choice, have at it.

As others have noted here and elsewhere, there were, arguably, more banner years for film quality than 1932 (1934 and the 39-40 season, most famously) but it can be argued that, from a technical standpoint, those banner years may have matched 1932, but never exceeded it.

I agree with your entire note except one word, 'technical.' I think Everson was referring to aesthetics, so for him, 1932 really was the year more great films were made than any other.

But this gets murkier in that the reason such great films were made WAS because some technical problems - in particular the wedding of sound and image - were more or less solved.

But if I could speak for Everson, it was more than that. They had solved the sound issues, so now the filmmakers could make complex scripts, AND here's the important part, they also had command of the silent language of film. That's what was lost in about ten years, and in combination of the code, produced an inferior product (from Emerson's silent movie prejudiced eyes).

I would argue that this is all true but is spoken by a man whose heart was in the first half of the last century. Lots of people would say Hollywood film peaked in the late 70s, both creatively and technically.

The original posting misnamed Everson's book. The title is American Silent Film. In addition, the quotation left out the penultimate line of the book: The silent cinema, progressing steadily, peaked late; the sound cinema, learning from the silent, peaked early.(page 347, 1998 Da Capo Press edition). I disagree with Everson's description of sound films as "peaking early" in 1932. The rigid censorship imposed by the Production Code derailed Hollywood. When Darryl Zanuck ran the Warner Bros. studio, he was the one who gave the go ahead for scripts to go into production. When the Breen office got the right to approve scripts before the movie could go into production, you had a situation where a bunch of censors could slow down the production of Hollywood movies.

Not that much has changed in Hollywood. The film rating board that now gives U.S. movie releases a letter rating sometimes delays a movie's release for months while the movie maker tries to make the cuts in the film to ensure a PG-13 rating. The move Taken was supposed to get a 2008 summer release in the USA. But the rating board gave the movie an "R" for violence, and after an edited version finally got a "PG" rating, the delay meant the movie could only get a January 2009 release. By that time, there was already a legitimate DVD version of the movie out in the UK, an international version complete with the few seconds of edited violence from several scenes that did not make it to the "PG" version shown in American movie theaters.

[Christopher Jacobs]

As far a silents peaking late (as in 1927-29, about 35 years after they began) and talkies peaking early (1932-1940, only 5 to 10+ years after they took root), Everson like many classic film fans has a personal preferance for the late silents and pre-WWII talkies. It could be argued that silents had already peaked by around 1916 or so, but the difference in styles and culture is too different for many modern viewers to get past.

Despite the laxer production code, many pre-1935 films still have a style (especially dialogue, art design, and acting -- e.g., why are they always shouting and talking so fast?) that strikes many modern non-classic film fans as odd or dated enough to be distracting if they've never seen it before. The so-called "magic" year of 1939 on the other hand, only a dozen years after THE JAZZ SINGER so still relatively early in sound technology compared with 1906 silents vs. 1894 silents, produced numerous films that positively astound modern viewers who have never seen any films made before the 1980s or 90s, because they could never comprehend that movies so "old" could look so modern and be so dramatically involving (and how could they have such good picture quality, and even color, so long ago?!). It's amazing how so many teenagers, forced to watch GONE WITH THE WIND, become instant fans of Clark Gable and/or Vivien Leigh, and those who profess to hate westerns somehow decide that STAGECOACH is different.

I'm one of those people who think things were better after "the code". Not that I have any disapproval of the very slight naughtiness of pre-code films but I feel like films got more sly and clever after the code.

A lot of early talkies don't have much "there" there except for some titillation value. I think of all those awful "Flip the Frog" cartoon Ub Iwerks was doing pre-code.

It may not even be directly related to the code. It may just be that the writers were getting better then and began figuring out the potential of talkies about the same time.

Talkies peaked in '32? No, I don't see it. Too many great movies got made after that.

Many arts peak soon after the technical issues that make them possible become available and then it's decades or even centuries of more or less competent execution. Photography is perfected, more or less and by the end of the 19th century people have it down pat. Aniline dyes are invented and van Gogh shows up.

Silent movie makers were in the habit of experimenting visually. Sound came in and, despite a few people who worked hard, it was three years before the camera began moving again,. Technically that was a big set back and once people had gotten back to where they were before, they had gotten out fo the habit of trying new stuff. A lot of editing techniques began to die out.... moving wipes seem to vanish. Innovation in art depends on more than changes in society, it depends on changes in technical ability and the habit of experimentation.

Bob

Regarding the 'magical' year of 1939, a theme that I come across time and time again in the original sources: it came after two or three years of deep concern within the industry about cinema's future. There was a run of 'big' films - expensive but forgettable - and a perceived lack of good story material and new talent. The situation was similar in Britain, where several over-ambitious companies wiped themselves out with productions that could never have made back their budget. To read the trade magazines of 1938 is certainly not to expect a golden year in the offing.

But back to Everson: I can see his point. Certainly, I feel the Code robbed cinema of a certain honesty. It's not until forty or so years later that films aren't coated in this unreal veneer. That veneer can be delightful - it's what gives the shine to screwball comedy, for example - but ultimately it's still unreal. It's the honesty in a lot of those earlier talkies that still has the power to knock my socks off.

they could never comprehend that movies so "old" could look so modern and be so dramatically involving (and how could they have such good picture quality, and even color, so long ago?!). It's amazing how so many teenagers, forced to watch GONE WITH THE WIND, become instant fans of Clark Gable and/or Vivien Leigh, and those who profess to hate westerns somehow decide that STAGECOACH is different.

The pictorial quality that you mention was not a product of 1939 technology. There were no techniques used in GWTW (glass matte painting, rear screen projection, technicolor, etc.) that had not been used before and by the same people (e.g. William Cameron Menzies). The problem with earlier films that seem not to be as technically advanced when viewing today is because GWTW was carefully preserved, and recently carefully restored to pristine condition. If you've ever seen Rouben Mammoulian's Becky Sharp, America's first three strip technicolor feature, after it had been restored, you would realize color had not improved that much by 1939. Those other apparently inferior movies would look much better if they had the same care lavished on them.

I used to be in awe of GWTW myself, but as time has passed I have come to recognize plenty of problems with the production. Much of it was shot without a working script, with constant revisions, making the the pacing of the final third of the movie very rushed. And the special effects at the Wilkes' ball in the beginning of the movie were not well executed (e.g. you can see through some of the horsemen at the beginning of the scene). When Ashley returns from the war the rear screen projection as Melanie runs to meet him is fairly awkward and, to me, a serious distraction. I also did not like the self consciously arty scene in which Scarlett and Melanie comfort a dying soldier. Too obviously what were supposed to be their shadows are the shadows of other actors miming their movements, projected on the wall behind them.

I am much more impressed today by the stylized art direction and B&W cinematography of The Thief of Bagdad (1924) and The Beloved Rogue (1927), both of which benefited from the skill of William Cameron Menzies more than a decade before GWTW.

The original posting misnamed Everson's book. The title is American Silent Film. In addition, the quotation left out the penultimate line of the book: The silent cinema, progressing steadily, peaked late; the sound cinema, learning from the silent, peaked early.(page 347, 1998 Da Capo Press edition).

Yep, I did misname the book, even though it was right there in front of me. I'm sorry and I hope it didn't upset anybody too much.
I "left out" that line because it wasn't necessary to my query. Still isn't. It's a different issue, though it could be linked with mine. I was interested purely in the fact that a specific year was mentioned.

So, in addition to the wonderful information you all have provided in this thread, would any of you like to name your list of your favourite titles from '32.

[quote="momsne"]Joe Breen was a foaming at the mouth anti-Semite whose rise to power came with the backing of the Legion of Decency and with the tacit approval of the incoming FDR administration. If you haven't read the book "Joseph Breen, Hollywood's Censor" I suggest you do. And one of his favorite films was THE GREAT DICTATOR.

The original posting misnamed Everson's book. The title is American Silent Film. In addition, the quotation left out the penultimate line of the book: The silent cinema, progressing steadily, peaked late; the sound cinema, learning from the silent, peaked early.(page 347, 1998 Da Capo Press edition).

Yep, I did misname the book, even though it was right there in front of me. I'm sorry and I hope it didn't upset anybody too much.
I "left out" that line because it wasn't necessary to my query. Still isn't. It's a different issue, though it could be linked with mine. I was interested purely in the fact that a specific year was mentioned.

So, in addition to the wonderful information you all have provided in this thread, would any of you like to name your list of your favourite titles from '32.

I looked at my lists of recorded and purchased 1932 films, and my list of favorites would be too long to include here. It would go from A Bill Of Divorcement to Blessed Event to Call Her Savage to Grand Hotel to Horse Feathers to Man's Castle to Me And My Gal to Love Me Tonight to Peach-O-Reno to The Mask Of Fu Manchu to The Old Dark House to Trouble In Paradise and dozens of others besides (I tried to put at least one from each major studio). The densest portion of my collection is films from 1931-33. I've had plenty of disappointments, but also twisted delights like Guilty As Hell (or as I put it, Quirt And Flagg Turned Up To 11). For those who want their rounded and polished 1939, you are welcome to it, I'll take the freewheeling 1932 any day.

For those who want their rounded and polished 1939, you are welcome to it, I'll take the freewheeling 1932 any day.

Hehee ... I guess that is kind of how I feel, too. To that list, I would add 'Red Dust' and 'Three On A Match'.

At the start of the 1934 movie "One More River," you have the bit of dialogue below between the lead characters as they return to Depression-era England from Ceylon. That line "anything except selling things on commission" almost certainly refers to a job with no salary or guaranteed draw, a job where if you sell nothing, your pay is zero. A passing comment that is real and to the point. You can bet Andy Hardy never had to support himself with a commission only sales job.

29
00:03:21,066 --> 00:03:23,567
WHAT ARE YOU GONNA DO
WITH YOURSELF IN ENGLAND, TONY?

30
00:03:23,636 --> 00:03:24,702
OH, LOOK FOR A JOB --

31
00:03:24,770 --> 00:03:26,738
ANYTHING EXCEPT SELLING THINGS
ON COMMISSION.

32
00:03:26,805 --> 00:03:29,373
DOES ANYBODY DO ANYTHING ELSE
NOWADAYS?
[ CHUCKLES ]

[Danny Burk]

Many of those listed, plus:

SHANGHAI EXPRESS
BLONDE VENUS
SKYSCRAPER SOULS
THE MUMMY
RED-HEADED WOMAN
JEWEL ROBBERY
THIS IS THE NIGHT

Many of those listed, plus:

SHANGHAI EXPRESS
BLONDE VENUS
SKYSCRAPER SOULS
THE MUMMY
RED-HEADED WOMAN
JEWEL ROBBERY
THIS IS THE NIGHT

In the severest terms, my analyst warned me to eschew list-making, but I’ll risk a comment on Frank Tuttle’s This is the Night. It’s an illustration of the generally acknowledged fact that, once in a while, an artist of only average talent can “rise above himself” to produce a masterpiece—an accolade I think it entirely just to bestow upon this rather obscure, or at least, un-acclaimed, picture. I don’t know how Lubitsch could have improved upon it, & the title song…captivating. All this I assert disliking Charlie Ruggles, & not being exceptionally fond of Lili Damita! (Thelma compensates.)

Add only this picture to Trouble in Paradise & Jewel Robbery, and “the winner by a length is…1932.” (Oh no, did I just make a list?)

Though I have not seen the original context of the quote suggesting that talkies "peaked" in '32, I'm certainly not sure if I agree. For one thing, the claim that talkies peaked that early because they "learned" from silents is debatable, to say the least. Although I do like (in some cases love) a lot of films from this period, visually speaking early talkies often strike me as considerably more "old-fashioned" than do late silents. I think that many producers and directors after the talkies became standard, whether intentionally or not, became too obsessed with the new technological "advantage" of synchronized sound. Focus on visual depiction in order to establish atmosphere and characters was, to a large degree, neglected as a result; I simply do not recall an early talkie being so beautiful and complex in its visual qualities as "Sunrise" or "The Crowd." I'm sure there are expections, but this is my overall impression.

Joseph Breen's attitude toward the Jews did an about-face after 1934, and he actually joined a Catholic group founded to combat anti-semitism. But you're not supposed to know that, because after all, Breen and all censors are evil!

The Forward article by Thomas Doherty and the other article with a link below both confirm that Joe Breen used very insulting language describing Jewish people. Breen put in writing some of these anti-Semitic statements. Breen's change of heart after a few years as Production Code Administrator (PCA) may have been sincere, but his salary came from the major Hollywood studios, many of which then were run by executives who were Jewish. Had he continued with his anti-Semitic screeds as PCA, Breen could have lost his job. Breen's turnaround, his joining up with others to fight anti-Semitism, may have been motivated by the Vatican issuing a new policy criticizing anti-Semitism. More likely, Breen wanted to keep his job as the well-paid "boss" who functioned as the "Hitler of Hollywood" ensuring that "degenerate art" was out in Hollywood.

http://theibtaurisblog.com/2012/02/27/w ... -semitism/

http://forward.com/articles/12234/was-h ... tisemite-/

Considering I've read items that Will Hays was meeting with Breen well before Breen got the job, it may have been to tell him to lay off the overt antisemitism to be acceptable. There have been many "changes of heart" through history when it meant money and power.

Similarly formalist critic Noel Burch in "To The Distant Observer"(1979) argues the Golden Age of European film was the 5 years between 1927 and 1932, after which "the stultifying spread of canned theatre."
" A relatively large number of film-makers were able to extend their experiments with images and graphic signs to the
sound-stage."The creative use of sound in this period would be the crucial argument here

But, judging from the Dohrety article, there is no empirical evidence that Breen's conversion from anti-semitism was anything but genuine. There's more evidence that Breen was not an anti-semite after 1934 than there is that Pres. Kennedy was going to withdraw from Vietnam.

Many of those listed, plus:

SHANGHAI EXPRESS
BLONDE VENUS
SKYSCRAPER SOULS
THE MUMMY
RED-HEADED WOMAN
JEWEL ROBBERY
THIS IS THE NIGHT

In the severest terms, my analyst warned me to eschew list-making, but I’ll risk a comment on Frank Tuttle’s This is the Night. It’s an illustration of the generally acknowledged fact that, once in a while, an artist of only average talent can “rise above himself” to produce a masterpiece—an accolade I think it entirely just to bestow upon this rather obscure, or at least, un-acclaimed, picture. I don’t know how Lubitsch could have improved upon it, & the title song…captivating. All this I assert disliking Charlie Ruggles, & not being exceptionally fond of Lili Damita! (Thelma compensates.)

Add only this picture to Trouble in Paradise & Jewel Robbery, and “the winner by a length is…1932.” (Oh no, did I just make a list?)

Tuttle also made The Big Broadcast in 1932, which is freewheeling and fun. And weird: The attempted double suicide scene with Bing Crosby and Stu Erwin, complete with a ghostly hallucination (voiced by Arthur Tracy) singing "Here Lies Love," is funny and creepy; the way the bit is resolved manages to get the film back on its farcical track.

Many of those listed, plus:

SHANGHAI EXPRESS
BLONDE VENUS
SKYSCRAPER SOULS
THE MUMMY
RED-HEADED WOMAN
JEWEL ROBBERY
THIS IS THE NIGHT

In the severest terms, my analyst warned me to eschew list-making, but I’ll risk a comment on Frank Tuttle’s This is the Night. It’s an illustration of the generally acknowledged fact that, once in a while, an artist of only average talent can “rise above himself” to produce a masterpiece—an accolade I think it entirely just to bestow upon this rather obscure, or at least, un-acclaimed, picture. I don’t know how Lubitsch could have improved upon it, & the title song…captivating. All this I assert disliking Charlie Ruggles, & not being exceptionally fond of Lili Damita! (Thelma compensates.)

Add only this picture to Trouble in Paradise & Jewel Robbery, and “the winner by a length is…1932.” (Oh no, did I just make a list?)

Tuttle also made The Big Broadcast in 1932, which is freewheeling and fun. And weird: The attempted double suicide scene with Bing Crosby and Stu Erwin, complete with a ghostly hallucination (voiced by Arthur Tracy) singing "Here Lies Love," is funny and creepy; the way the bit is resolved manages to get the film back on its farcical track.

This is the film where I coined the nickname "Tilt-Mad" Tuttle, as nearly every shot in the opening few minutes is a tilt. Tuttle was using them (at least) as far back as ONLY THE BRAVE, but he really went wild with the tilts here. There's also animation included. THE BIG BROADCAST is awfully fun for what it is. Even the radio acts are top shelf, and includes the most drugged-up song Cab Calloway managed to get on film - he even mimes an addict's behavior during the number.

This is the film where I coined the nickname "Tilt-Mad" Tuttle, as nearly every shot in the opening few minutes is a tilt. Tuttle was using them (at least) as far back as ONLY THE BRAVE, but he really went wild with the tilts here. There's also animation included. THE BIG BROADCAST is awfully fun for what it is. Even the radio acts are top shelf, and includes the most drugged-up song Cab Calloway managed to get on film - he even mimes an addict's behavior during the number.

The director of Melody Cruise (1933), Mark Sandrich, must have been as impressed as I was with This Is the Night, because his opening scenes mimic unmistakably those of Tuttle. The resemblance, unfortunately, stops there. (Except that this picture also stars Ruggles--his popularity confounds me.)

I thought that Cab's famous "dope number" was the one included in another bizarre hodgepodge, International House. (Which I like less for Field's part, than for Peggy Joyce.) Somehow I've missed seeing Big Broadcast, but I'm going to correct that deficiency right away.

This is the film where I coined the nickname "Tilt-Mad" Tuttle, as nearly every shot in the opening few minutes is a tilt. Tuttle was using them (at least) as far back as ONLY THE BRAVE, but he really went wild with the tilts here. There's also animation included. THE BIG BROADCAST is awfully fun for what it is. Even the radio acts are top shelf, and includes the most drugged-up song Cab Calloway managed to get on film - he even mimes an addict's behavior during the number.

The director of Melody Cruise (1933), Mark Sandrich, must have been as impressed as I was with This Is the Night, because his opening scenes mimic unmistakably those of Tuttle. The resemblance, unfortunately, stops there. (Except that this picture also stars Ruggles--his popularity confounds me.)

I thought that Cab's famous "dope number" was the one included in another bizarre hodgepodge, International House. (Which I like less for Field's part, than for Peggy Joyce.) Somehow I've missed seeing Big Broadcast, but I'm going to correct that deficiency right away.

Two different dope numbers, really. Reefer Man is a in a lighter vein (no pun intended), but the song in THE BIG BROADCAST is a follow-up of sorts to Minnie The Moocher called Kicking The Gong Around. You have to see it to believe it, it's very explicit. The intro from Jimmy Wallington (he appears here) was stolen from this film for the v/o intro to Cab in INTERNATIONAL HOUSE.

Now if someone could explain what "kicking the gong around" means. The way it's used in the song it could be either drugs or sex.

Like a lot of terms in the field (cf. "jazz" and "juke"), "gong" is a word that carries a lot of freight. Partridge shows "gong girl" as a "prostitute picked up for dalliance in a remote spot". "Gonga" is from the Hindi word for "anus" and refers to what are called rent boys these days. However, in the drug sense, bear in mind that "ganja" (also spelled "ganga" is Anglo-Indian slang for marijuana -- and it's the general name for the weed in Jamaica.

Interestingly, Partridge does not seem to list "kick the gong."

Bob