Tag / 1939

by Jaime Rebanal

Mr. Smith Goes to Washington – Review

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With the current political climate it is only fitting that a film like Frank Capra’s Mr. Smith Goes to Washington exists. Capra’s films have always carried a spirit that only shows the most inspiring that classic Hollywood cinema can ever reach and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington is no exception to the rule for it represents patriotism in such an open embrace and more audiences are invited along. As a matter of fact, the very nature of the film is so on the nose for the time it came out, its relevance has only grown so much stronger as years have come by. Nearly eighty years have passed and not a single day has ever managed to age Mr. Smith Goes to Washington rather than make it feel younger.

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by Jaime Rebanal

The Rules of the Game – Review

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Had I been around during the initial release of Jean Renoir’s The Rules of the Game, I would have tried my best at commending such a film for exposing a side to the bourgeois that might still be around within this day and age. To think a film would have been so ahead of its time for the era in which it had scared its audiences because of what they were witnessing to the point they were repulsed – the whole history of The Rules of the Game only allows me to strengthen what it is that I love most about watching it. But where else can oneself go when talking about what else Renoir managed to achieve in The Rules of the Game? I don’t know, but all I know is that it was a perfect film to come out during its time and to this day it is still that perfect film.

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by Jaime Rebanal

The Story of the Last Chrysanthemums – Review

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The first moment in which I saw Kenji Mizoguchi’s The Story of the Last Chrysanthemums, the impact was beyond overwhelming to that point my writing had been stinted from going even further than what I had wished when I wanted to talk about what it had left upon me. The only thing I could ever pick out, however, was that it had broken my heart the way no other Mizoguchi film has done so, and I knew from first glance that only he could have handled such a story so masterfully. Yet this was unlike anything that I have seen from Mizoguchi, as the moment in which it had ended, I found myself in a wrecked state. I was wrecked because I was witnessing pain. Pain which I had also felt upon myself, it was all the more difficult to describe. Mizoguchi’s masterpiece, but also one for all of humanity. Continue reading →

by Jaime Rebanal

Only Angels Have Wings – Review

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Howard Hawks’s Only Angels Have Wings is a national treasure. Although Howard Hawks may be a name recognized for directing classics like The Big Sleep and Rio Bravo for they still are amidst his most popular directorial efforts a personal connection comes in regards to the fairly ignored Only Angels Have Wings, which not only stands as my favourite of his films but also one of the most inventive means of toying with how we perceive romance in cinema, for if it isn’t the most spectacular of romantic melodramas to have been provided within Hollywood’s Golden Age, what is? Continue reading →