Moviediva Film Series - January - June, 2019

i e d v ivA o M

wed, jun 19

GOLD DIGGERS OF 1933 (1933, 98 min)

DIRECTED BY MERVYN LEROY / STARRING DICK POWELL, RUBY KEELER, JOAN BLONDELL, ALINE MACMAHON, GINGER ROGERS, WARREN WILLIAM

Three broke chorus girls are desperate for work to pay the bills. A neighboring songwriter happens to be a runaway rich boy, and his stuffy Boston brother will do anything to keep him off the stage. Four exhilarating Busby Berkeley numbers, “We’re in the Money” (Ginger Rogers sings a verse in pig latin) “Pettin’ in the Park”, “The Shadow Waltz” (with its neon violins) and “Remember My Forgotten Man” are a highlight. Anita Loos, the author of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, recalled a chat with a young friend during the Sexual Revolution of the 1970s. “You mean, you could get a diamond bracelet just for doing that?” said a young woman who did what an earlier generation might have called, “giving it away.”

100% on Rotten Tomatoes

january

april

BABY FACE

LOVE IS A RACKET

Jan 30

Directed by William A. Wellman

february

may

KING KONG

RED DUST

May 1

Directed by Josef von Sternberg

Directed by Michael Curtiz

NIGHT NURSE Directed by William A. Wellman

SKYSCRAPER SOULS Directed by Edgar Selwyn

Jun 19

GOLD DIGGERS OF 1933 Directed by Mervyn LeRoy

TICKETS $7

For more information go to:

All screenings at 7pm on Wednesdays

CAROLINATHEATRE.ORG/MOVIEDIVA FACEBOOK.COM/MOVIEDIVA

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Mar 27

Jun 5

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Directed by Wesley Ruggles Screenplay by Mae West

june

I’M NO ANGEL

FEMALE

what is the moviediva film series?

Those of you who know me from my nineteen years as Film Curator at the North Carolina Museum of Art, or, from my monthly WUNC Radio appearances on The State of Things with Frank Stasio and Marsha Gordon, have an inkling about my taste, already. This series will focus on Pre-Code Women, films from the early 1930s prior to the introduction of strict censorship in mid-1934. The films are frank about sex, and sometimes, murders go unpunished. There is plenty of scanty lingerie, hard-boiled attitudes about the Depression, and surprising roles for a diverse cast of characters; in one film the heroine’s best friend is African American, in another Asian. There are great roles for women, even older women, who often provide the wise-cracking wisdom. The Art Deco glamor of the sets and costumes still occupy a pinnacle of droolworthy style.

– Laura Boyes (Curator, Moviediva Film Series)

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May 22

309 W MORGAN ST, DURHAM, NC 27701 919.560.3030 / CAROLINATHEATRE.ORG

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Feb 27

Mar 13

CAROLINATHEATRE.ORG/MOVIEDIVA FACEBOOK.COM/MOVIEDIVA

PR

Directed by Victor Fleming

march

TICKETS $7 All screenings at 7pm on Wednesdays

Directed by Merian C. Cooper

SHANGHAI EXPRESS

film series

Apr 24

Directed by Alfred E. Green

Feb 13

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wed, jan 30

BABY FACE (1933, 76 min)

DIRECTED BY ALFRED E. GREEN STARRING BARBARA STANWYCK, GEORGE BRENT, DONALD COOK

Sultry Lily, pimped by her degenerate father, breaks free and sleeps her way to the top of an Art Deco skyscraper with no regrets. Baby Face was one of the most notorious films of the Pre-Code era, and is often cited as one of the causes of film censorship being imposed in mid-1934. Lily uses her sexuality both for empowerment and social mobility, she thrives in her sinful lifestyle. Certainly, there are plenty of men willing to participate in her horizontal negotiations, including a young John Wayne. Lily’s best friend, Chico, is African American, played by Theresa Harris. The censors felt the film was “glorifying vice” and ordered it edited to show “morally compensating values” but this is the unedited pre-release version. 100% on Rotten Tomatoes.

wed, feb 13

KING KONG (1933, 100 min)

DIRECTED BY MERIAN C. COOPER STARRING ROBERT ARMSTRONG, FAY WRAY, BRUCE CABOT

wed, mar 13

I’M NO ANGEL (1933, 87 min)

DIRECTED BY WESLEY RUGGLES / SCREENPLAY BY MAE WEST STARRING MAE WEST, CARY GRANT EDWARD ARNOLD

Tira is a come-hither lion tamer who controls the big cats as confidently as she controls her men, in 1933’s top grossing film. She crosses the line of respectable female behavior, and racial lines as well, bonding with her Greek chorus of African American maids. Her sultry persona was inspired by a famous 1920s drag performer named Bert Savoy. The opening carnival scenes harken back to Mae’s vaudeville days as a “muscle dancer,” and her lowdown number “They call me Sister Honky Tonk” a reminder of her affinity for black blues and black musicians.

Mae makes a spectacle of her lustful middle-aged desires in a world that values youth, where every woman is alluring and every man can be had.

wed, mar 27

NIGHT NURSE (1931, 71 min)

DIRECTED BY WILLIAM A. WELLMAN BARBARA STANWYCK, BEN LYON, JOAN BLONDELL

King Kong rules Skull Island. One day, invaders overpower and capture him, bringing him to another island, the stone jungle of Manhattan, where he must again assert his power and majesty. Hemmed in, he searches for the island’s highest point and climbs the two year old Empire State Building. The one Pre-Code film that lives in the American Pop Culture imagination, King Kong is a superlative monster movie, but also an ethnographic film in which the subject exacts revenge on the explorer. To some, Kong represents every outsider, minority, feminist, or LGBT individual exploited by white male adventurers, although its director insisted, “King Kong was never intended to be anything more than the best damned adventure picture ever made.”

A hard luck dame lands a spot in nursing school and then hires herself out to a swanky family to mind two mysteriously ailing little girls. Night Nurse has it all, lacy lingerie, bootleg hooch, hopheads, child abuse and a great, censor-evading insult.

Tough talking Stanwyck is more than a match for a sinister chauffeur (played by rising star Clark Gable) and a genial bootlegger. Danny Reid on Pre-Code.com says: “There are few I’ve seen that are as infectiously fun and crazy as 1931’s Night Nurse. It’s a deceptively tight B-movie, filled to the brim with everything that makes pre-Code fun while toying with social issues and never losing an ounce of momentum… director William A. Wellman has concocted a roller coaster for the ages.”

wed, feb 27

wed, apr 24

SHANGHAI EXPRESS (1932, 82 min)

DIRECTED BY JOSEF VON STERNBERG STARRING MARLENE DIETRICH, CLIVE BROOK, ANNA MAY WONG

“It took more than one man to change my name to Shanghai Lily.” A tumultuous train trip from Peking to Shanghai, commandeered by revolutionaries, is lensed in lush, stylized chiaroscuro. Two reunited lovers face death, and two women with checkered pasts entwine fates as Chinese-American silent star Wong holds her own against smoldering Dietrich. Josef von Sternberg and his muse, Marlene Dietrich, made some of the most visually stunning films of the 1930s. Obsessed with the film’s design; the plot secondary, Shanghai Express is considered the pinnacle of their collaboration. His biographer stated, “Had von Sternberg made only Shanghai Express, his position in the pantheon of filmmaker would be secure.” The top grossing film of 1932, and 100% on Rotten Tomatoes.

LOVE IS A RACKET (1932, 72 min)

DIRECTED BY WILLIAM A. WELLMAN / STARRING DOUGLAS FAIRBANKS, JR., ANN DVORAK, FRANCES DEE, LEE TRACY, LYLE TALBOT, WARREN HYMER

A Broadway columnist walks “Up and Down Broadway” mingling with both the racketeers and the swells. His sweet-faced girlfriend has a weakness for writing rubber checks and crosses paths with a smarmy gangster. This fast paced yarn bounces between comedy and murder, aided by sparkling performances and director Wellman’s sure hand. Fairbanks and Tracy are roommates in a book-strewn apartment where the door is always unlocked so their friends can wander in for some bootleg booze. Doug Jr. plays a part intended for James Cagney and modelled on true-life columnist Walter Winchell. Love is a Racket has electrifying language (getting drunk is “swacko”) great overcoats and a swanky penthouse, in every way the movie dream of Art Deco New York.

wed, may 1

RED DUST (1932, 83 min)

DIRECTED BY VICTOR FLEMING STARRING CLARK GABLE, JEAN HARLOW, MARY ASTOR, GENE RAYMOND

A Saigon hooker on the lam hides out on a rubber plantation run by hot (and sweaty) roughneck Clark Gable. When an uptight surveyor and his sex-starved wife arrive, savage passions are aroused. Away from civilization all pretense at respectability fall away, as Gable, Harlow and Astor make hearts pound with every suggestive fade-out. Jean Harlow’s platinum hair blazed like a comet across the screen, there was never anyone like her before or since, a seen-everything sexpot who could make an audience laugh, and adore her. The entire film was shot on a sound stage, a fabricated Indochinese landscape complete with working river, a stunning example of big studio movie magic.

100% on Rotten Tomatoes

wed, may 22

FEMALE (1933, 60 min)

DIRECTED BY MICHAEL CURTIZ STARRING RUTH CHATTERTON, GEORGE BRENT, LOIS WILSON

Alison Drake has been running her father’s automobile factory since his death, ruthlessly making business decisions and sexually harassing her male employees.

Will the new hire, a dishy engineer, make her realize she ought to mend her #himtoo ways? Chatterton had been a Broadway star since 1914, and made her name in “weepies” in which women sacrifice endlessly for their men—she was Oscar nominated twice for it.

A woman of a certain age (OK, 40) she sparks off her real-life, 12 years younger husband, Brent, as they duel over who will wear the trousers at Drake Motors.

Is the ending a maddening cop-out, or thrillingly subversive? You decide.

wed, jun 5

SKYSCRAPER SOULS (1932, 99 min)

DIRECTED BY EDGAR SELWYN. WARREN WILLIAM, MAUREEN O’SULLIVAN, GREGORY RATOFF, ANITA PAGE, VERREE TEASDALE, NORMAN FOSTER, JEAN HERSHOLT, WALLACE FORD

As Wall Street or Wolf of Wall Street or any tale of financial chicanery, Skyscraper Souls fuses male ego, money and power. David Dwight is the master of a phallic symbol even bigger than the just completed Empire State Building. Below his penthouse-dwelling feet the lives of the humble and the great unfurl.

Women work, but sex seems to be their true vocation, whether they are dedicated executive secretaries, lowly stenographers, dress fitting models or restless wives. Tender morsel Maureen O’Sullivan is wooed by one of those creepy mashers who populate Depression-era films, but she’s also slavered over by an amoral tycoon, in spite of his cosy relationship with his secretary. When a financial crisis erupts, who will weather the whirlwind?