1930s

Jean Vigo's Zero De Conduite (1933) and L'Atalante (1934), Jacques Feyder's Le Grand Jeu (1934), and Julien Duvivier's Pepe Le Moko (1936; a Polar, or police thriller), were the first films of France's stylised, atmospheric Realisme Poetique movement. Vigo completed only a handful of films before dying of tuberculosis. Realisme Poetique's most significant director was Marcel Carne, whose greatest films are Le Quai Des Brumes (1938), Le Jour Se Leve (1939), and Les Enfants Du Paradis (1945). (The dream-like theatricality of this latter film would be equalled the following year in Jean Cocteau's fantasy La Belle Et La Bete.) Jean Gabin, the star of Pepe Le Moko and Quai Des Brumes (and Jean Renoir's La Bete Humaine, 1938), became the movements's greatest icon, and appeared with Eric VonStroheim in Jean Renoir's masterpiece La Grande Illusion (1937).

Renoir's deep-focus photography, constantly moving camera, long takes, and tragi-comic narratives were all used to greatest effect in La Regle Du Jeu (1939), and the film is still acclaimed as European cinema's greatest achievement. European cinema's most questionable achievement is perhaps the Nazi documentary Triumph Des Willens (Leni Riefenstahl, 1934): an outstanding technical accomplishment, though also a lionisation of Adolf Hitler.

Riefenstahl had previously starred in several of the popular mountainside films (known as Bergfilme) by Arnold Fanck, including Der Heilige Berg (1926), though she did not appear in Fanck's first example of the genre (Das Wunder Des Schneeschuhs, 1921). Alongside the Bergfilme during the 1920s were a series of educational documentaries, made primarily by the UFA studio, known as Kulturfilme. The first significant example was Wege Zu Kraft Und Schonheit in 1925, directed by Nicholas Kaufmann and Wilhelm Prager.

The Classic Hollywood System:
Studios, Genres, And Stars

The 1930s is regarded as Hollywood's 'golden age', in which the hardships of the Depression were temporarily replaced by the glamour of Technicolor. Gone With The Wind (produced by David O Selznick for his own studio) and The Wizard Of Oz (from MGM), both directed by Victor Fleming in 1939, are the greatest films of this period. Gone With The Wind is a sumptuous, epic romance, resplendent in three-strip Technicolor, following the hand-colouring of the 1900s, the tinting of the 1910s, and the two-strip Technicolor of the 1920s. The first feature-length Technicolor film was The Gulf Between (Wray Bartlett Physioc, 1917), though it is no longer extant.

The Wizard Of Oz is particularly memorable for the moment when its sepia-tinted prologue in Kansas is transformed into the Technicolor paradise of the land of Oz. Also significant is the vivid Technicolor 'swashbuckler' The Adventures Of Robin Hood (Michael Curtiz, 1938). In Britain, Things To Come (William Cameron Menzies, 1936), though filmed in black-and-white, was a similarly spectacular production (in contrast to the cheap 'quota quickies' churned out following a 1927 Act requiring a proportion of all exhibited films to be dosmestically produced).

The Hollywood studio system, by now at the height of its artistic and commercial success, began more than ever to produce films formulated according to specific genres. For example, many hundreds of westerns (known as 'horse operas', 'sagebrushers', and 'oaters') were made during the decade, the best of which was John Ford's Stagecoach (1939), starring John Wayne. Ford would continue to make Westerns with Wayne for the next thirty years, though he also made the classic Western My Darling Clementine with Henry Fonda in 1946.

Universal produced many horror films in the 1930s, notably Frankenstein (1931) and Bride Of Frankenstein (1935), both by British director James Whale, though the most unusual was Edgar G Ulmer's bizarre The Black Cat (1934). Of all the Universal horror films, Bride Of Frankenstein is the most significant, being both a prototypical horror film and a blackly comic parody of the genre's conventions. It is an incredibly subversive film, with barely disguised gay and blasphemous subtexts.

Alongside horror, the gangster genre also established itself in the early 1930s. Mervyn LeRoy's somewhat dated Little Caesar (1930) was the first of the cycle, though far more powerful is William Wellmann's The Public Enemy (1931), released shortly afterwards. Both films, made by Universal, were swiftly surpassed, however, by Howard Hawks's Scarface (1932) starring Paul Muni, produced by Howard Hughes.

The popularity of horror and gangster pictures was a cause of concern for the Catholic Legion of Decency and the Motion-Picture Producers and Distributors Association. The president of the MPPDA, Will Hays, drew up a Production Code forbidding excessive cinematic sex and violence.

The musicals 42nd St. (Lloyd Bacon), Gold-Diggers Of 1933 (Mervyn LeRoy), and Footlight Parade (Lloyd Bacon), all choreographed by Busby Berkeley for Warner in 1933, were popular with audiences eager for escapism. (They also inspired Brazil's Chanchada musicals such as Carnaval No Fogo by Watson Macedo, 1949.) Berkeley later directed the Technicolor fantasia The Gang's All Here (1943).

Western-style Rancheras films were hugely popular in Mexico, with the most successful being Fernando DeFuentes's Alla En El Rancho Grande (1936). Another Mexican genre from the period, Cabaretera, involved innocent women venturing into sleazy nightclubs and being seduced into lives of wanton debauchery, with Alberto Gout's Aventurera (1949) being the acknowledged classic of this cult exploitation genre.

The Screwball comedy sub-genre made a star of Cary Grant, who appeared in Leo McCarey's The Awful Truth (1937) and Howard Hawks's Bringing Up Baby (1938). Screwball comedies, initiated by Hawks (Twentieth Century, 1934) and Frank Capra (Platinum Blonde, 1931; It Happened One Night, 1934), were characterised by their fast-paced dialogue and 'battle of the sexes' humour. Screwball films were essentially frenetic variants of 'rom-com' romantic comedies; traditional rom-coms were regarded, somewhat dismissively, as 'chick flicks' (known in Germany as Frauenfilme), epitomised by the melodramatic Now Voyager (Irving Rapper, 1942).

The most popular stars of the period were Swedish icon Greta Garbo and Teutonic legend Marlene Dietrich. Garbo had been a silent film star since the early 1920s, notably in Flesh And The Devil (Clarence Brown, 1926), and she later appeared (and, famously, spoke) in Clarence Brown's Anna Christie (1930) and Edmund Goulding's creaky Grand Hotel (1932). Dietrich starred in a series of films directed by Josef VonSternberg, including Der Blaue Engel (1930) in Germany and The Scarlet Empress (1934) in America. She was equally famous as an actress and singer, and her most memorable song is Ich Bin Vom Kopf Bis Fuss Auf Liebe Eingestellt from Der Blaue Engel.

Garbo and Dietrich were great rivals, though had actually appeared together in the same film (Die Freudlose Gasse) in 1925. Both stars eventually became recluses: in Garbo's case this happened rather suddenly in 1941, though Dietrich was a film and cabaret star until the 1970s.