Success or Snub? All Quiet on the Western Front (3rd Academy Awards Review Pt. 2)

  To see part 1, click here.

Paris, Stay the Same~Maurice Chevalier - The Love Parade

This is probably going to be one of the shorter installments in this series because, to tell you the truth, there wasn’t a whole lot of competition for All Quiet on the Western Front. Don’t get me wrong, there were good movies that came out in 1929 and 1930, but they all appear to have come out outside of the defined time bracket (Aug 1929-Jul 1930). Most of the major splashes seem to have earned their way into film history by simply being firsts rather than actually being classic films. Por ejemplo:

There’s Blackmail, which was Alfred Hitchcock’s first sound film and the first British talkie film.

Also Atlantic which was the first sound movie to be based on the RMS Titanic disaster as well as the first sound film released in Germany (after it was dubbed).

The Big House was one of the first and most definitive prison movies and pioneered most of the clichés of the genre (the evil warden, the corrupt guards, the lunchroom protests, the crappy food, solitary confinement, the prison snitch, the jailbreak; really all it’s missing is the shower room sodomy and the allegory for how prison is your life and escaping means setting yourself free).

And there was also the first sound adaptation of Tom Sawyer.

None of these are really worth going back to. The problem with a lot of films from the early sound era is that they still hadn’t mastered the art of sound design and soundtracks so all of them sound oddly quiet. In addition, many were actually originally conceived as silent films but were then switched to talkies about halfway through production. Blackmail especially suffers from this. You wouldn’t think that the first sound movie by Alfred Hitchcock would be this clunky but the whole film is so damn awkward.

On the flip side, however, if you can get over the lack of music and sound design, the 1930 version of Tom Sawyer is actually pretty solid. The Big House also might be worth a watch if you’re into laughing at stupidly bad, poorly-aged scenes. The climax is the most ridiculously overblown gunfight I've ever seen. And I watch James Bond and Arnold Schwarzenegger films on a regular basis.

Our big hitters involve us going back to the musical genre which continued to make strides this year and, as you can probably predict, was the big genre of the 1930s (the equivalent today would be the superhero movies of the 2010s).

First is Hallelujah, the first movie with an all-black cast, not a single a white person appearing throughout the whole movie. Needless to say, the film was banned from countless theaters in the American South and the director, King Vidor, had one Hell of a time actually getting it made (having to pay for most of the expenses out of his own pocket).

Surprisingly given the social mores of the time period, Hallelujah is pretty solid and engaging and you probably don’t even notice that there aren’t any non-black people while watching it. The movie is a slice-of-life story about Zeke Johnson (Daniel L. Haynes), detailing his troubled relationships with his family and the women in his life, particularly his mother (Fanny Belle DeKnight), his on-and-off girlfriend named Rose (Victoria Spivey) and a seductive troublemaker named Chick (Nina Mae McKinney).

Hallelujah is a great film for three reasons. First is the character of Zeke and how complex and three-dimensional he is. He’s portrayed as just an everyday person like you and me but the movie acknowledges that an everyday person like you and me can sometimes be a dick. He makes mistakes, sometimes very big ones, but you see his struggle to do what he knows is right vs. what he personally wants. It’s very realistic as he almost never does the right thing but you always how big decisions really wreck his mind and morals.

Second is the sense of culture and community. King Vidor said that his goal was to create an accurate representation of the average black man’s life in the South at the time and, while the accuracy has been disputed, there’s very little stereotyping for its era; it’s just a slice-of-life of this community. Watching it, you feel like you could hang out in that dance hall or be sleeping with your brothers and sisters as your mom sings you a lullaby or attend the sermon and connect with everyone there.

And finally, there’s the song sequences. This is the first movie to combine sound design with dubbing which makes the transition between songs and talking feel more fluid. You hear much more in the background while the characters’ voices are amplified as the camera switches to them. Special mention goes to the scene inside the dance hall where you can always hear the chitter-chatter and music in the background while still listening to the characters interact with each other and have conversations. (Said dance hall scene is also important as it’s one of the few very accurate representations of southern black dance halls put to film. These places are commonly considered the birthplace of classical jazz.)

In a just world, this film would be a strong contender and we could seriously dwell on it and whether or not it deserved to win but let’s be real here, fellas: Hallelujah had a snowball’s chance in Hell of winning the Academy Award for obvious (and awful) reasons. Despite this, if you’re studying the history of musicals and the birth of sound in filmmaking, Hallelujah presents the next step forward after The Jazz Singer (1928) and The Broadway Melody (1929). In terms of holding up today, Hallelujah has been attacked by some historians as being an example of white paternalism with an abundance of stereotypes while others hold it up as being one of the most progressive films made before the Civil Rights Movement. Speaking as a white man, I don’t think it’s my place to definitely answer this debate one way or the other but I will say that compared to a lot of other movies I’ve watched from this era, Hallelujah feels a lot more real, not as stereotyped and has characters with actual depth. Watch it for yourself and decide for yourself.

The real big competition, final evolution of the musical genre and other truly classic movie to talk about, though, is The Love Parade, which was nominated for a whopping six Oscars (keep in mind that at this ceremony there were only eight categories so that’s a pretty big number). Of course, it took home none of them at the end of the night but that’s beside the point.

If The Jazz Singer, The Broadway Melody and The Desert Song (1929) were the first ever movie musicals, then The Love Parade is where the genre was defined and arguably where it truly began. By that, I mean that there aren’t song and dance numbers in The Love Parade because the characters work on Broadway or hang out in jazz clubs, it’s because they exist in a world where they like to sing and dance, pouring out their emotions and what they’re feeling through the power of song.

In the wake of The Jazz Singer and The Broadway Melody, the musical genre was already taking off. By now, movie executives were bringing over then-Broadway sensations and adapting Broadway plays to take advantage of the new sound medium. Gold Diggers of Broadway (which is now sadly lost) was the highest grossing movie of 1929 and more and more directors were hopping onto the bandwagon. The Love Parade was sort of the real kicker here that exemplified this “dawn of musicals” time period. Right down to the fact that the film’s stars, Maurice Chevalier and Jeannette Macdonald, were already famous on Broadway and the producers invited them over to make their big screen debut for audiences across America to hear their singing on the screen.

Another key to The Love Parade’s popularity was the silliness of the story. Instead of the delusions of grandeur and questionable moral compass of The Broadway Melody, The Love Parade is more like your typical romantic-comedy. Count Alfred (Maurice Chevalier) is in trouble for his frequent womanizing and must report to Queen Louise I of Sylvania (Jeannette MacDonald). Upon meeting each other, sparks quickly fly between the two with sexual tension so thick that you could cut it with a knife and the rest of the movie is their relationship and all of its ups and downs. And their respective brain-dead servants gossiping about them and also falling in love behind their backs. And some explicit sexual innuendos that could only have existed before they Hays Code (this movie is so old-school Hollywood, I freaking love it.)

The Love Parade’s musical numbers were a technological marvel for the time they came out. They move fast, the dancing is elaborate and their lips are actually synced appropriately with what they’re saying. And unlike The Desert Song or Hallelujah where they all just stood and danced in one place, the dance numbers in The Love Parade are actually edited and moved and danced to the beat of the music. Maybe a bit slower than today’s musicals but compared to The Broadway Melody, this was a huge step forward.

Skip about 2:30 in for the song, 3:30 for the dance.

There’s also some music in the background of some scenes. Not because there’s music off-camera but just a plain ol’ soundtrack. And remember, this movie came out in 1929, just over a year after The Jazz Singer came out. It’s downright amazing how quickly the technology developed. It also helps that the songs are actually still somewhat catchy (I especially love Paris, Stay the Same).

On the movie itself, I actually do think it’s one of the better old-school Hollywood romances. The courtship our two main characters have only takes up the first half of the movie; the second half actually revolves around the problems that they have as a couple. Most rom-coms, even now, usually just leave it when they get together and live happily ever after but The Love Parade actually shows the problems they have as a couple and it’s a good conflict that real couples might go through. The way it resolves itself is also pretty mature (though still playing into the film’s silliness).

The last thing to mention about The Love Parade is that it may actually be one of the most pivotal films in Hollywood history, and I’m not talking about the musical numbers here. The movie came out very shortly after the stock market crash of 1929 and the success helped recoup the losses that Paramount felt from the crash. Some speculate that The Love Parade actually helped save Paramount from going under. Considering how Paramount was one of the big studios of the era, that meant a big chunk of the industry could’ve gone under with it. The Love Parade may very well have saved Hollywood from the Great Depression (in fact, Hollywood and movies turned out to be one of the very few depression-proof industries during the 30s but that’s a story for another time).

That brings us back to the title of this sub-chapter: success or snub? While The Love Parade and Hallelujah were big breakthroughs in filmmaking and still remain pretty good movies, All Quiet on the Western Front was also a breakthrough and is just so much better. It was considered the best war movie made up until that time; one critic actually commented that the best way to stop any future wars would be to make every elected official in the world watch it.

Obviously, it deserved it but, for fun, let’s speculate why it actually won the Oscar. As mentioned, the Academy seldom goes for films this dark and The Love Parade seemed like it would be more their cup of tea, especially since the industry was rapidly embracing musicals. It probably comes down to the fact that All Quiet on the Western Front is just that good of a movie but I have my own theory.

By 1930, the Great Depression was well underway and only getting worse and one of the few points of pride American culture still had was World War I and how much ass we kicked during it. 90% of all war movies coming out at that time were based on World War I and celebrated American involvement. In addition, another prevailing sentiment was trying to ensure another war did not happen again just because of how much havoc World War I wreaked. So, when you have a movie come out that’s being hailed as the best war movie made up until that point and it’s about World War I and shows why we don’t want another one, it’s easy to see it as movie of the year.

But, then again, maybe I’m being too cynical. All Quiet on the Western Front is an amazing film and calling it the best movie of 1929 and 1930 was definitely a…

SUCCESS!

Personal Favorite Movies of 1929/30:

• All Quiet on the Western Front (dir. Lewis Milestone)
• Hallelujah (dir. King Vidor)
• The Big House (dir. George Hill)
• The Love Parade (dir. Ernst Lubitsch)
• Tom Sawyer (dir. John Cromwell)

Favorite Heroes:

• Count Alfred (Maurice Chevalier) (The Love Parade)
• John Morgan (Chester Morris) (The Big House)
• Mr. Hammer (Groucho Marx) (The Cocoanuts)
• Paul (Lew Ayres) (All Quiet on the Western Front)
• Tom Sawyer (Jackie Coogan) (Tom Sawyer)

Favorite Villains:

• Chick (Nina Mae McKinney) (Hallelujah)
• Hot Shot (William Fountaine) (Hallelujah)
• Mr. Crewe (Cyril Ritchard) (Blackmail)
• The Teacher (Arnold Lucy) (All Quiet on the Western Front)
• Zeke Johnson (Daniel L. Haynes) (Hallelujah)