In this interview, filmed by the Criterion Collection in 2019, film scholar Mia Mask discusses blackface and the 'Bojangles of Harlem' number in George Stevens's 'Swing Time' (1936).
Self
A group of self-absorbed actors set out to make the most expensive war film ever. After ballooning costs force the studio to cancel the movie, the frustrated director refuses to stop shooting, leading his cast into the jungles of Southeast Asia, where they encounter real bad guys.
Lovely Linda Mason has crooner Jim Hardy head over heels, but suave stepper Ted Hanover wants her for his new dance partner after fickle Lila Dixon gives him the brush. Jim's supper club, Holiday Inn, is the setting for the chase by Hanover and his manager.
A successful songwriter, dazzled by high society, falls for a society girl who is just playing around.
A mysterious door in the basement of the Hercules house leads to the Sixth Dimension by way of a gigantic set of intestine. When Frenchy slips through the door, King Fausto falls in love with her. The jealous Queen Doris takes Frenchy prisoner, and it is up to the Hercules family and friend Squeezit Henderson to rescue her.
Frustrated when network brass reject his sitcom idea, producer Pierre Delacroix pitches the worst idea he can think of in an attempt to get fired: a 21st century minstrel show. The network not only airs it, but it becomes a smash hit.
A young Jewish man is torn between tradition and individuality when his old-fashioned family objects to his career as a jazz singer. This is the first full length feature film to use synchronized sound, and is the original film musical.
An evocative and imaginative exploration of the racial tensions in Othello and how the themes in Shakespeare's play still resonate today.
Unlike anything else you will see in this year or any other, 'The Decline of the West' is a groundbreaking social allegory that challenges its audience to explore the effects of contemporary conditioning; of the stereotypes, and counter-stereotypes surrounding race and ethnicity. By employing a unique blend of absurdist humor and dry, dark comedy, both the insularity and the inertia of progressive society are put on trial and hanged in this bold film that goes places few have ever gone. The film maintains its extended, detailed allegory, in which the physical layout of Manhattan comes to life as its symbols of Progress slowly turn it into a comic liberal dystopia. Anything that "isn't allowed" is used to confront the audience with hypocrisy. Make-up plays a crucial role throughout the film, as a hinge that simultaneously showcases characters and the existential reality of the players behind them.
Struggling stockbroker Jimmie Shannon learns that, if he gets married by 7 p.m. on his 27th birthday -- which is today -- he'll inherit $7 million from an eccentric relative.
Jun Aisaka seduces one woman after another. His victims were flirtatious married woman Noriko, student Keiko, widow Mitsuko and dancer Rumi. As a result, he ends up in prison, but after escaping with another prisoner, he continues his criminal adventures with a partner. It is clear that this will not end well. Moreover, a couple of detectives are already on the trail of the criminals.
A series of 19 musical and comedy "vaudeville" sketches presented in the form of a live television broadcast hosted by Tommy Handley (as himself).
Bradshaw, an Englishman, is arrested for the New York killing of booze racketeer Buck Cooly. Interrogated by police chief Galvin, Bradshaw claims self-defence, but refuses to name the woman he was with at the speakeasy where Cooly was shot, and who could provide the alibi that would exonerate him from a murder charge. Galvin's continued pursuit of the woman's identity eventually leads to an unwelcome surprise.
General Othello's marriage is destroyed when vengeful Ensign Iago convinces him that his new wife has been unfaithful.
Boisterous teen Judy Bellaire is expelled from her all-female boarding school for convincing her fellow school chorus members to sing a classical piece with a modern swing beat. She returns to her dysfunctional home, dejected, but, with the encouragement of her family's cook, Judy decides to follow her dream and audition for a Broadway musical.
After marrying a dour and disinterested lord for status, a young woman falls in love with a stage actor while her best friend from boarding school enters an affair with her husband.
An ambitious coffee salesman has a series of improbable and ironic adventures seemingly designed to challenge his naive idealism.
Show business twin sisters Rosemary and Susie, one serious and the other a scatterbrain, join the WAVES and both fall in love with crooner Johnny Cabot.
Blackie helps the police rescue hostage from an escaped maniac on a killing spree.
Blackie is implicated in a murder when he accidently sells a phony Charles Dickens first edition at an auction.