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Greatest Films
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Greatest Films
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Return
1932
- A Bill of Divorcement (1932), 70 minutes, D: George Cukor
A sensitive performance by John Barrymore. Hillary Fairfield (John Barrymore), who has been living in a mental hospital for 15 years, escapes. He returns home to his wife and family on the day his wife Margaret (Billie Burke) is divorcing him so that she can remarry. His strong-willed daughter Sydney (Katharine Hepburn, in her film debut) had always been told that he had been shell-shocked from the Great War, but now discovers from him a family history of hereditary mental illness, and she starts to believe that she is next.
- Blonde Venus (1932), 92 minutes, D: Josef von Sternberg
A camp classic. Helen Faraday (Marlene Dietrich), a cabaret singer, is also a loving mother and wife who sells herself to nightclub owner and wealthy playboy Nick Townsend (Cary Grant) in order to pay for her scientist husband Edward's (Herbert Marshall) medical bills so that he can go for treatment in Europe. Her husband is an American chemist dying of radium poisoning. Upon his return from treatment, he discovers her liaison with Townsend and files for divorce and custody of their son Johnny (Dickie Moore). In the end, her husband realizes that her sacrifice was for his cure, and they are reconciled.
- Cabin in The Cotton (1932), 77 minutes, D: Michael Curtiz
A rich, young and wicked Southern woman Madge Norwood (Bette Davis) entrances a poor sharecropper's son Marvin Blake (Richard Barthelemess), who works at her father Lane Norwood's (Berton Churchill) general store as a night clerk. When promoted to bookkeeper, he learns how Norwood is cheating the tenant farmers, caught in the conflict between his loyalty to his employer, his love for Madge, and his roots as a farmer. The film is known for Madge's famous line: "Ah'd like to kiss ya, but ah jest washed ma hair."
- Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1932), 90 minutes, D: Rouben Mamoulian
From Robert Louis Stevenson's classic novel. The story of a fatally curious doctor, Dr. Henry Jekyll (Fredric March) who adventures into the unknown. He self-tests a serum formula that releases the uninhibited, subconscious evil in his soul, and develops a monstrous split personality as Mr. Hyde. As the hideous Mr. Hyde, he cruelly brutalizes and victimizes prostitute Ivy Pearson (Miriam Hopkins). In the finale, he is hunted and killed by London police, who gasp to see him revert to Dr. Jekyll in death.
- A Farewell to Arms (1932), 78 minutes, D: Frank Borzage
A romanticized version of Ernest Hemingway's tragic love story. A wounded American ambulance driver Lt. Frederic Henry (Gary Cooper) falls in love with British volunteer nurse Catherine Barkley (Helen Hayes), while both serving in the war in WWI Italy. They are both brought together and separated by the circumstances of the war, and the manipulations of jealous womanizer Major Rinaldi (Adolphe Menjou). A sentimental, romantic, and moving film.
- Freaks (1932), 65 minutes, D: Tod Browning
A bizarre horror film, but a cult favorite. This is the truly amazing masterpiece about a group of grotesquely deformed circus freaks (the film features many real-life circus sideshow freaks, including "pinheads," the "living torso" Prince Radian, Siamese twins Daisy and Violet Hilton, and the half-bodied Johnny Eck, and others). A beautiful but heartless high-wire artist (Olga Baclanova) marries a wealthy circus midget (Harry Earles), but then plots with her strongman lover (Henry Victor) to poison him to death for his money. In revenge, the group of freaks protect the midget from his bride and get even with the high-wire artist.
- Grand Hotel (1932), 112 minutes, D: Edmund Goulding
An MGM all-star classic film and soap opera - Best Picture-winning film. World War I is over, and Berlin's beautiful, art-deco Grand Hotel is busy with the intersecting lives and destinies of its glamorous guests in a 24-hour period. The dramatic ensemble cast includes a weary, unloved and lonely ballerina Grusinskaya (Greta Garbo), a financially-destitute nobleman and jewel-thief Baron Felix von Gaigern (John Barrymore) who she falls in love with, a sexy hotel stenographer Flaemmchen (Joan Crawford) who meets a dying clerk Otto Kringelein (Lionel Barrymore) searching for a last fling, and a crude industrialist Gen. Director Preysing (Wallace Beery).
- Horse Feathers (1932), 68 minutes, D: Norman Z. McLeod
One of the Marx Brother's greatest, most zany films, with numerous one-liners. Groucho is Professor Wagstaff, president of Huxley College, who mistakenly hires Chico, the local speakeasy bootlegger and iceman, and his assistant Harpo, a dogcatcher, as professional football players, so Huxley College can beat their rivals at Darwin. In the big game, Huxley wins through madcap maneuvers.
- I Am a Fugitive From a Chain Gang (1932), 93 minutes, D: Mervyn LeRoy
The powerful, realistic drama of an innocent man, a World War I veteran James Allen (Paul Muni) who has been convicted, and sentenced to ten years of hard labor for a crime he didn't commit. He is trapped in a brutal Southern chain gang. Prisoners are treated inhumanely by the guards. After a prison escape through the swamps, he reestablishes himself in Chicago with a normal life, but is discovered and voluntarily returns to the South, with a promise that he will be pardoned. Upon his return to prison, he is again brutalized. The film is known for its chilling climax, and for its effectiveness in promoting social reform.
- Love Me Tonight (1932), 104 minutes, D: Rouben Mamoulian
An adaptation of Rodgers and Hart's Broadway musical, with innovative direction and editing, one of the best musicals. This is the romantic tale of a Parisian tailor Maurice Courtelin (Maurice Chevalier) who tries to win the heart of a princess, Princess Jeanette (Jeanette MacDonald). Includes the songs "Lover," "Mimi," and "Isn't It Romantic?"
- Night after Night (1932), 73 minutes, D: Archie Mayo
Mae West's first talking film, full of her notable wisecracks and one-liners in a secondary role. Joe Anton (George Raft), a reformed thug, who has many uncouth, low-life acquaintances from his past (including Mae West), opens up a night club, and attempts to woo Park Avenue, upper-class beauty Jerry Healy (Constance Cummings). During a dinner party, blonde Mandie Triplett (Mae West), one of Joe's former girls, bursts in, and disrupts the proceedings, with her inimitable presence and dialogue.
- The Old Dark House (1932), 70 minutes, D: James Whale
Notable as one of James Whale's bizarre horror films, with Boris Karloff in his first film role. A theatrically creepy story of a group of stranded travelers who take shelter in the mysterious, haunted dark old house of the Femm family. The assorted collection of guests include Philip Waverton (Raymond Massey), his wife Margaret (Gloria Stuart), their friend Roger Penderell (Melvyn Douglas), Sir William Porterhouse (Charles Laughton) and his companion Gladys DuCane (Lilian Bond). The residents of the house include 102 year old bedridden Sir Roderick Femm (Elspeth Dudgeon), a son Horace (Ernest Thesiger), daughter Rebecca (Eva Moore), and a psychotic mute butler (Boris Karloff).
- Red Dust (1932), 83 minutes, D: Victor Fleming
A steamy classic drama, with hot-blooded chemistry between the two stars. Dennis Carson (Clark Gable), head of a Indo Chinese rubber plantation, takes in a female house guest, Shanghai prostitute Vantine (Jean Harlow), running from the authorities. His lusty relationship with the wisecracking Vantine is put to the test when a boat arrives with newlyweds, an engineer Gary Willis (Gene Raymond) and his cultured attractive wife Barbara "Babs" (Mary Astor), and Carson turns his attentions toward Barbara. Eventually torn between the two, he returns into the arms of his bawdy girlfriend Vantine.
- Scarface, the Shame of the Nation (1932), 90 minutes, D: Howard Hawks
A violent, fast-paced, intense crime/gangster melodrama, the 'first' of the great gangster films. Based on Al Capone's life, the film chronicles the rise and fall of Roaring 20's tough Chicago gangster and bootlegger Tony Camonte (Paul Muni). Tony is a brutish, primeval character, and the film portrays scandal, violence, and 28 on-camera murders, as he confronts both his rivals led by Johnny Lovo and associates such as Guino Rinaldo (George Raft). The film was also considered controversial because of hints of incest between Tony and his sexy sister Cesca (Ann Dvorak).
- Shanghai Express (1932), 80 minutes, D: Josef von Sternberg
A romantic adventure film. While on the Shanghai Express train traveling through civil war-torn China, a couple fall into the hands of revolutionaries led by a cruel war lord Henry Chang (Warner Oland). Shanghai Lily (Marlene Dietrich), the mysterious and erotic temptress meets her past love Captain Donald Harvey (Clive Brook), and they rekindle their relationship when they are interrupted by rebels who attack the train.
- Tarzan, the Ape Man (1932), 104 minutes, D: W.S. Van Dyke
The first sound Tarzan film, and one of the best renditions of Edgar Rice Burrough's classic jungle tales. An expedition searching for elephant ivory treasures is met in the wilds of Africa by ape man of the jungle, Tarzan (Johnny Weismuller). He kidnaps Jane (Maureen O'Sullivan), the daughter of the leader of the English expedition, and the two discover their love for each other. Includes some great action sequences.
- Trouble in Paradise (1932), 83 minutes, D: Ernst Lubitsch
A sophisticated, witty, comedy farce. The story of two jewel thieves Gaston Monescu/LaValle (Herbert Marshall) and Lily Vautier (Miriam Hopkins), who work together to fleece a widow Mme. Mariette Colet (Kay Francis) of her fortune, by posing as her secretary and maid. However, things don't go as planned, as Gaston falls in love with Mariette, and is recognized by a former victim.
Created in 1996-2008 © by Tim Dirks. All rights reserved.
