Film Nitrate

"Ruggles, how are you about shocks?" Though I've been massively impressed with Leo McCarey's dramas such as An Affair to Remember  (1957) and Make Way for Tomorrow   (1937), it's for his comedies that he is most remembered today, so I approached his 1935 feature Ruggles of Red Gap with high expectations. Though it's not been widely distributed in recent years, a recent Blu-ray release has show that this is a film that's been neglected for too long. McCarey had received a lot of praise for the 1931 Marx Brothers' film Duck Soup , but  Ruggles comes at the start of what was to be a very prosperous time for the director, both commercially and critically, and the film itself was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Film in 1936 (losing out to Mutiny on the Bounty , which incidentally also starred Charles Laughton). The film concentrates on the character of Marmaduke Ruggles (Charles Laughton). Set at the turn of the century, he is employed as ...

"We changed our course today." Leo McCarey made two genres of films, and make them very, very well. The first, and the one that he is most know for today, is comedy films. This is due to his most famous film, the Marx Brothers' Duck Soup (1933) being one of the best comedy films of the 1930s. Other comedies, such as Ruggles of Red Gap (1935) also stand up well today, as do the timeless Laurel & Hardy films he directed. But McCarey is also known for his strong moralistic views, reinforced by his Catholicism. In 1937 he made the heartbreaking (and criminally under-rated) Make Way for Tomorrow , and in the 40s he had some of his greatest commercial successes with the dramatic films Going My Way (1944) and The Bells of St. Mary's (1945). After his 1952 anti-Communist film My Son John was a failure at the box-office, McCarey retired from filmmaking for 5 years. He returned in 1957 with An Affair to Remember , at a time when it had been over a decade since hi...

Make Way For Tomorrow is a film that deals with a subject that seldom comes up in film: becoming old and forced to depend on your children for support. Interestingly enough, Yasujiro Ozu's Toyko Story, one of the most critically acclaimed films of all time,  uses a very similar concept to Make Way For Tomorrow , and Ozu himself stated that he had been heavily influenced by this film when directing Tokyo Story .  However, many people have heard of Tokyo Story , and as I said earlier, it consistently ranks towards the top of 'Best Ever Movie' polls, but Make Way For Tomorrow seems to have become almost forgotten. So why is this? If this was a bad film in any way, or if it made some serious mistakes along the way that would be more understandable, but the fact is, Make Way For Tomorrow is a seriously good yet deeply depressing film. I think the biggest problem facing this film, and director Leo McCarey, is that it's simply very, very un-Hollywood By 1937,...