TOP-TEN NON-ENGLISH LANGUAGE FILMS OF THE THIRTIES AND FORTIES
Aug 22 '04 (Updated Dec 23 '04)
The Bottom Line Bottom-Line: Continuing my series of Top Non-English Language Films by decade, here's a Top-Ten for the Thirties/Forties as well as ten more for a second helping.
For purposes of this list, I’m grouping together two decades to provide a more adequate pool of films. It’s only fair since I’m limiting the selection to non-English language films. Moreover, there is no Epinions topic category, currently, for the decade of The Thirties. This is a subjective list – i.e., my personal favorites. It is not intended to represent critical consensus. I hope you find something here that piques your interest and turns into a rewarding viewing experience.
TOP-TEN NON-ENGLISH LANGUAGE FILMS OF THE THIRTIES AND FORTIES:
#1. Children of Paradise (1945)___Country: France___Director: Marcel Carné
This film was shot in France between 1943 and 1945, under the iron heel of Nazi occupation and was ready for theaters immediately following liberation. Carné’s style of “poetic realism” was ideally suited to a celebration. This film is a unique love story involving the beautiful Garance and her four suitors, but most especially the irrepressible mime Baptiste. This film was once selected by the Cannes Festival for a Cesar of Cesars and was thereby declared the greatest French film of all time.
#2. Grand Illusion (1937)___Country: France___Director: Jean Renoir
Renoir’s films generally have an antiwar and pro-humanist message. The story revolves around two French airmen by a German fighter ace, who later becomes the commandant at the POW camp where the airmen are confined. What follows is a battle of wills between the prisoners’ determination to escape and the commandant’s confidence in the absolute security of his prison. In the effort to gain freedom, two prisoners encounter the beautiful Elsa who has also suffered terribly from the war. Renoir’s eye for beautiful imagery is unsurpassed.
#3. Ivan the Terrible I/II (1944/6)___Country: ___Director: Sergei Eisenstein
Ivan the Terrible Parts I and II were originally intended as the first two installments of a trilogy, but Eisenstein died before making substantial progress on Part III. The two completed segments follow the career of Ivan the Terrible from his magnificent coronation in 1547 to the height of his power and a failed assassination attempt. Eisenstein’s visual vocabulary is truly extraordinary. Every object is carefully situated and designed. Light and shadows are carefully controlled. Every posture and gesture adds symbolic meanings. Each frame in Ivan the Terrible thus becomes something of a miniature painting.
#4. L’Age D’Or (1930)___Country: France___Director: Luis Buñuel
This masterpiece of surrealist cinema is an irreverent, iconoclastic satire of social restrictions that caused riots when it first appeared in Parisian cinemas in 1930. Buñuel’s intent was to remind us that the passions of the subconscious mind provide much of the impetus for our activities and that excesses of repression stifle the human spirit and creative impulses. L’Age D’Or is a fantasy about a man and a woman whose attempts at love-making are constantly interrupted and thwarted by the forces of righteousness. The rich and exhilarating images comprise a celebration of the imagination.
#5. The Rules of the Game (1939)___Country: French___Director: Jean Renoir
This amazing combination of burlesque and tragedy on the eve of World War II was Renoir’s plea for sanity in a world about to explode like a volcano. Renoir duly captures the shallowness of the preoccupations of the bourgeoisie with decadence and deceits. Renoir uses a remarkable multilayered cinematic technique to create nonstop action in this bedroom farce, with husbands, wives, lovers and mistresses, maids and servants thrown together in lively adulterous fashion.
#6. The Bicycle Thief (1948)___Country: Italy___Director: Vittorio De Sica
This highly acclaimed masterpiece of Neo-realism won the Oscar for Best Foreign Film in 1949 and was once voted by critics the best film of all time. Setting in postwar Italy where jobs are few and poverty rampant, the protagonist, Ricci, is finally able to secure a job because he has a bicycle, which he gets out of hock by trading the sheets from the bed he shares with his wife. During his first day on the job, however, Ricci’s bicycle is stolen. In ever deepening desperation, he searches high and low for the stolen bicycle that he needs to support his family.
#7. Shoeshine (1947)___Country: Italy___Director: Vittorio De Sica
Two shoeshine boys are best friends. Pasquale and Guiseppe help the local racetrack owner work out his horses and despite the poverty of their existences, the two dare to dream of someday owning their own horse. Hoping to earn some quick cash, they deliver stolen goods for a black market profiteering outfit and are arrested. Refusing to rat out the older men (which would likely be fatal), Guiseppe and Pasquale soon find themselves in a juvenile detention facility, in harsh and squalid conditions, where bunks are infested with bedbugs and beatings are dished out regularly by sadistic guards. This film comprises De Sica’s stinging attack on the corrupt legal and brutal juvenile detention systems of post-War Italy.
#8. La Belle et la Bête (1946)___Country: France___Director: Jean Cocteau
This is not a children’s version of the great myth, but a masterful rendition that breaths new depth into the old fairytale. With amazing cinematography, a brilliant score by Georges Auric, and marvelous performances by Josette Day as Beauty and Jean Marias as the Beast, this film blazes with magical intensity. The sets by art director Christian Berard are unforgettable.
#9. Á Nous la Liberté (1931)___Country: French___Director: Rene Clair
This 1931 comedy was so reminiscent of Chaplin’s 1936 sentimental and satirical silent feature Modern Times that it led the French production studio to sue Chaplin for plagiarism. Standing at the transition point between silent and integrated sound films, this film features some portions that are silent and others incorporating both dialog and music. It also delicately blends slapstick and biting social satire. During an attempt to escape from prison, Emile sacrifices himself so that Louis can escape to freedom. On the outside, Louis quickly remakes his life from prison inmate to wealthy industrial capitalist. When Emile gets out of prison, he wanders aimlessly into one of Louis’s factories, where his free spirit disrupts the orderly and mechanized activities of factory. Inevitably, Emile and Louis are reunited.
#10. M (1931)___Country: Germany___Director: Fritz Lang
A German city is terrorized by a serial killer who murders little girls. The job of nabbing the murderer falls to Police Inspector Lormann, but while the police work frantically to identify the killer using all of the conventional police tactics, the criminals throughout the city are equally determined to end the activities of this killer because he’s hurting business. The beggars are mobilized on every street corner to be the eyes and ears of the community. The killer, Franz Becker, is masterfully played by the incomparable Peter Lorre.
TEN MORE FOR A SECOND HELPING (CHRONOLOGICALLY):
Threepenny Opera (1931)___Country: Germany___Director: G.W. Pabst
The Testament of Dr. Mabuse (1933)___Country: Germany___Director: Fritz Lang
Zero for Conduct (1933)___Country: France___Director: Jean Vigo
L’Atalante (1934)___Country: France___Director: Jean Vigo
Mayerling (1936)___Country: French___Director: Anatole Litvak
Pépé le Moko (1937)___Country: France___Director: Julien Duvivier
Alexander Nevsky (1938)___Country: Russia___Director: Sergei Eisenstein
Paisan (1946)___Country: Italy___Director: Roberto Rossellini
Orphée (1949)___Country: France___Director: Jean Cocteau
Les Parents Terribles (1949)___Country: France___Director: Jean Cocteau
Please check out my other decade lists:
Top-Ten Non-English Language Films of the Fifties
Top-Ten Non-English Language Films of the Sixties
Top-Ten Non-English Language Films of the Seventies
Top-Ten Non-English Language Films of the Eighties
Top-Ten Non-English Language Films of the Nineties
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