The 10 SADDEST old movies (I've watched)

NOTE: This entry was reposted over MovieFanFare, becoming one of their most popular articles with nearly 1,000 comments :)

Well, you know them. You're watching them and you're thinking:

"Mother of god, life can be awful. Why people have to suffer so much! I'm not gonna cry, I'm not gonna cry. Think of something positive. Or something that makes you angry. Oh no, a tear is coming. I'm gonna cough to try to pass this heavy lump in my throat. Oh, what did she or he have to say that line? That's the saddest thing..."

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Anyway, I sacrificed myself for you, and re-watched some of these films. I included movies in which the predominant feeling is sadness or those whose endings are very dramatic.

So, grab your tissues, here we go (warning: spoilers ahead):


10.- Les parapluies de Cherbourg (1964)
Plot: A girl and a boy fall in love and have a child but can't be together (review).
You can't hold your tears when...they say goodbye at the train station (watch).

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9.- Waterloo Bridge (1940)
Plot: Vivien Leigh thinks her boyfriend Robert Taylor is dead so she finds a socially rejected way to survive (mentioned in 5 movies in which tragedy was caused by chance).
You can't hold your tears when...the camera focus a little special object after some tragic event and then Robert remembers Vivien in the bridge (watch the ending).

8.- The Wedding Night (1935)
Plot: A writer (Gary Cooper) falls in love with a girl (Anna Stern) from a strict Pole family of farmers (review).
You can't hold your tears when...at the end, Gary looks out the window and "sees" the love of his life disappearing (watch a clip from the movie).

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7.- This Land Is Mine (1943)
Plot: Awesome Charles Laughton and Maureen O'Hara respectively play a coward teacher and his love interest in this World War II film (review).
You can't hold your tears when...Charles sees how a teacher he admired and respected is killed. But the worst part is the ending, one of the best fictional uses of the Declaration of Human Rights (watch).

6.- Camille (1936)
Plot: An impossible love between a courtesan (Greta Garbo) and Robert Taylor (listed in Favorite Movies).
You can't hold your tears when...Camille faces Lionel Barrymore and when Robert visits a "very weak" Camille in the last scene (watch the trailer).

5.- A star is born (1937)
Plot: After two actors marry, the success of their careers enter in a inversely proportional relationship (review and haiku).
You can't hold your tears when...the granny takes her granddaughter to the station. And when Fredric March embraces Janet Gaynor knowing it would be the last time and then he says "do you mind if I take just one more look?" (watch the second moment).

4.- Make Way for Tomorrow (1937)
Plot: An old couple (Victor Moore and Beulah Bondi) realize they have the worst children in the history of cinema (mention).
You can't hold your tears when...these people are humiliated and separated, which is practically the whole film (watch an example).

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3.- Three Comrades (1938)
Plot: After World War I, three German friends (Robert Taylor, Franchot Tone, Robert Young)  meet Margaret Sullavan and their lives change forever. Adapted by F. Scott Fitzgerald.
You can't hold your tears when...you watch the final scenes. Really. (here are some of them edited).

2.- The small one (1978)
Plot: A poor family have to get rid of their old donkey, a task that is entrusted to the kid (mention).
You can't hold your tears when...the last time I saw this one I cried my eyes out like the whole film, especially when the kid tries to cheer up his little animal and the ending (watch the whole film).

1.- Ever in my heart (1933)
Plot: Barbara Stanwyck marries a German before World War I (review).
You can't hold your tears when...the family faces tragic situations (I mean TRAGIC) and the ending (trailer).

Honorable mentions: Letter from an Unknown Woman (mini review), I Remember Mama (mention), Penny Serenade and Doctor Zhivago.

What do you think?

Caught a cold: sick people in classic films

Guys, just a quick post to apologize! The day of THE auction of the century I stayed up late and caught a cold. I was in bed since then, today is the first day I'm feeling a bit better. So, I decided to make a post of classic movies showing sick people...but people that recovers, not dying people like Camille or Beth in Little Women.

Just press play to go to the interesting part!

The Apartment: poor C. C. Baxter caught a cold!



The Shop Around the Corner: Mr. Kralik (James Stewart) visits sick Klara...


The Nun's Story: Audrey has TB and a cute monkey + Peter Finch to take care of her...

Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison: Drunk Mr. Allison scared Sister Angela and now he needs to save her...

I remember mama: One of the kids of a poor Norwegian family is sick and the hospital doesn't allow visitors...Mama Irene Dunne won't take no for an answer...


Sullivan's Travels: Joel McCrea caught a cold and is pissed off...

Which scene featuring sick people do you remember the most?

The Scarlett O'Hara War (1980): guess who's who

I finally watched this movie! I was so curious to find out how was it like and how close were the actors playing Classic Stars. Well, one of the few good things about this movie --based on the novel Moviola by Garson Kanin-- is that at least it gives you an idea about the great crusade that meant looking for the perfect Scarlett O'Hara. The main characters are David O. Selznick --played by Tony Curtis-- and his brother, Myron Selznick.

The main events shown are: the conversations with Crawford and Paulette Goddard who really wanted the role (the other actresses are just shown briefly); parties given by David to promote the movie; castings in several cities; two random guys who made a parallel fake casting to get girls; screen test with many performers, including Tallulah Bankhead; a party were David reunited all the possible actresses to play Scarlett; Myron noticing Vivien and then the burning of Atlanta. 

I don't know too much about old Hollywood gossips, hope you can help me out here, but according to this movie Joan Crawford slept with David Selznick to try to get the role. I don't think that this is a good movie; I didn't like, for example, the way they made fun of Chaplin, showing him always doing exercises and looking stupid. Most of the characters were really a caricature, all their dialogs were unidimensional. There are also dialogs that sounds fake, like Mayer explaining Gable what happened when he showed his t-shirt in It happened one night. 

But it was fun to spot someone that was supposedly a Classic Star and to hear people mentioning famous movies, like at some point someone laughs about Mayer doing a crazy musical called The Wizard of Oz. Then they mention Rebecca (at the end Myron is looking the screen test and notices Vivien). Also Cukor talks with Crawford and other actresses about the idea of The Women. Chaplin would be doing a movie about Hitler (The great dictator).

I know, I know, you want to see famous people. Some of them are OK, the actress playing Joan Crawford for example had something; but there are some that are not remotely alike. My least favorite is Carole Lombard, gosh, did they see a picture of her before the casting?? Oh, I can't say if they talked like the original actors, because the only copy I got was dubbed in Spanish. Well, try to guess who's who before reading the caption:

David O. Selznick

Myron Selznick

Louella Parsons

Charles Chaplin

George Cukor

Louis B. Mayer

Katharine Hepburn

Paulette Goddard

Tallulah Bankhead

Joan Crawford

Joan Bennett and Margaret Sullavan

Miriam Hopkins and Jean Arthur

Lucille Ball

Carole Lombard...really.

Yeah...really. Carole Lombard and Clark Gable.

Laurence Olivier...I think.

Clark Gable

Vivien Leigh. The actress, Morgan Britanny, had played Vivien in Gable and Lombard. 

What do you think? Who's your favorite? And your least favorite?

PS: 101 people have decided to follow my blog so far. That means that I'll be celebrating this weekend, stay tuned!

3 movies about marriage (part 1): "Next time we love" (1936)

Uhm, how are you guys? I hope you had and continue having a wonderful time. I practically ate candies for breakfast, chocolates for lunch and gumdrops for dinner the past few days, so I really feel guilty right now. Oh, I almost crashed the jeep into a fence the other day with the 60% of my family in it. It seems that every time that I have to do something extra while driving, like adjusting the mirrors or move the gearstick I completely lose control of the vehicle. Anyway...

In the past few days I also saw three movies, and without knowing it, the three of them were about marriage, only with very different approaches. They were Next time we love (1936; Edward H. Griffith), Dodsworth (1936; William Wyler) and Third finger, left hand (1940; Robert Z. Leonard). This is the review of the first film, I'll publish the others in the next days, becoming my last reviews of 2010 :)

The way things ended for both actors is more dramatic than this movie.

Reading Leading couples, I learned that James Stewart and Margaret Sullavan worked in four movies together. I had seen and liked The Shop around the corner so I wanted to see more from them. Next time we love sounded interesting so I watched it. It's about a young married couple that has problems because their jobs keep them apart. And Ray Milland, a friend of the couple, is always around. The end. 

No, seriously. The first problem with this movie is its very slow beginning. They tried to show that they were really in love, but it becomes repetitive and boring. It's like, "yeah, we get it, they are madly in love with each other!". Then, there's the script. It was written by Melville Baker (author of another average movie with great actors, Now and Forever), Ursula Parrott (story) and has an uncredited collaboration by Preston Sturges. The story didn't convince me because I felt it was kind of mechanical (their attitudes changed too abruptly) and I didn't find that their problems were really terrible. I mean, they choose to be apart: he wanted to work in Europe as a reporter and she wanted to stay in the US and become a famous actress.

I think they had more possible solutions to their problems, so all their drama about becoming two strangers, having a kid that practically doesn't know his father and Ray Milland being all supportive just because he's in love with his friend's wife, wasn't really effective. Oh, and the end. Too soppy and abrupt. According to Wikipedia (click if you want to read about Margaret's SAD personal life), even she had "strong reservations" about the story, but she had to "work off the damned contract" :)

With Ernst Lubistch during the filming of The Shop around the corner.

I think that it's more interesting and dramatic the info Leading Couples contains about the main actors. They met in 1931 an dated briefly. Some years later, Sullavan requested him as her leading man in Next time we love, boosting his career.  Seems that James always loved Margaret, and even his wife Gloria assumed this as a fact, saying: "I always knew he was madly in love with Margaret Sullavan, and she was with him. But she was more in love with her career." The story doesn't end well at all:

Even though they were now living on different coasts, the two remained close. When Sullavan began suffering from hearing loss, Stewart, whose hearing started to decline in the late 1940s, offered his support. Just as she taught him how to act in movies years before, he tried to teach her how to act in a world of silence. It could been a moment from one of their movies --two kindred spirits brought together by the pain of life.

Margaret Sullavan died really young, on January 1, 1960, of drug overdose. She was 51.