Hoover Dam opens

Jesse Walker now takes us to 1935.

https://jessewalker.blogspot.com/2025/12/the-year-of-wpa-we-have-passed-through.html

Here are his top ten movies:

1. The Bride Of Frankenstein

2. Mutiny On The Bounty

3. Top Hat

4. Ruggles Of Red Gap

5. The 39 Steps

6. A Night At The Opera

7. The Good Fairy

8. Toni

9. Symphony In Black: A Rhapsody Of Negro Life

10. Scenes Of City Life

I can't argue with the top eight, except for their order.  It seems to me Top Hat and A Night At The Opera should be one and two (either way).  After that, however you like.

I haven't seen Scenes Of City Life.  Symphony In Black is a short.

Here are his honorable mentions. (I'm not sure if he had any ten years ago.)

11. Happiness

12. La Bandera

13. Sazen Tange And The Pot Worth A Million Ryo

14. A Colour Box

15. Captain Blood

16. The Hyp-Nut-Tist

17. The Magic Atlas

18. The Devil Is A Woman

19. Les Berceaux

20. The Black Room

I know Hollywood films from 1935 pretty well, but am not so well versed on those from other countries.  Thus, I haven't seen 11, 12 or 13

15 is an enjoyable swashbuckler from Michael Curtiz that made Errol Flynn a star.

18 is the final Dietrich/ von Sternberg collaboration--not without interest, but not among their best.

20 is a fun film Karloff made when he wasn't busy with Bride Of Frankenstein (they churned 'em out back then).

14, 16, 17 and 19 are shorts.

Jesse also mentions Gold Diggers Of 1935, especially for the Busby Berkeley numbers.  It would make my top twenty.  And he brings up A Midsummer Night's Dream, an experiment in high art which to me (and a lot of people) is neither great Shakespeare nor great Warner Brothers.

Other films that would make my top twenty:

An Inn In Tokyo

Roberta

Triumph Of The Will (do I have to note parenthetically I don't approve of the message?)

Other films I like:

Alice Adams, Annie Oakley, Barbary Coast, Bonnie Scotland, Broadway Melody Of 1936, The Call Of The Wild, Carnival In Flanders, The Lives Of A Bengal Lancer, Man On The Flying Trapeze, Mississippi, Peter Ibbetson, The Raven, Steamboat Round The Bend, The Whole Town’s Talking

 

Other films of note:

After Office Hours, Ah, Wilderness!, Anna Karenina, Becky Sharp, Black Fury, The Black Room, Bordertown, Brewster's Millions, The Bride Comes Home, Charlie Chan in Egypt, China Seas, Crime and Punishment, The Crime of Dr. Crespi, The Crusades, Curly Top, Dangerous, David Copperfield, Escapade, Every Night at Eight, The Farmer Takes a Wife, Front Page Woman, G Men, The Ghost Goes West, The Gilded Lily, The Glass Key, Go Into Your Dance, Goin' to Town, Hands Across the Table, Home on the Range, Hop-Along Cassidy, I Live My Life, The Informer, The Last Days of Pompeii, Life Begins at Forty, The Little Colonel, The Littlest Rebel, Lucrezia Borgia, Mad Love, Magnificent Obsession, The Man Who Broke the Bank at Monte Carlo, Les Misérables, The Mystery of Edwin Drood, Naughty Marietta, Our Little Girl, Princess Tam Tam, Private Worlds, Public Hero No. 1, The Raven, Reckless, The Scoundrel, She Married Her Boss, Special Agent, Star of Midnight, A Tale of Two Cities, Thanks a Million, The Wedding Night, Werewolf of London, Westward Ho