Master's Top 10 Hollywood/English Films from 1930 to 2013

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Masterofoneinchpunch
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Re: Master's Top 10 Hollywood/English Films from 1930 to 201

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While I am thinking of "must see" watches for the future I had to peruse this list again because I kept track of the Mark and Retro films I had not seen on their lists.

I saw the following:

The Guns of Navarone
Collateral: Finished all of Retro's 2004 picks. This was on Mark's list as well.

Both fine films and I am glad I saw them. Surprisingly I liked Collateral more than I thought I would. I probably should not have been surprised because I have liked all the Michael Mann films I have seen.

Now I need to check to see if I put up a top 2013 list (be back). EDIT: put up my 2013.
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Masterofoneinchpunch
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Re: Master's Top 10 Hollywood/English Films from 1930 to 201

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Shingster wrote:
Masterofoneinchpunch wrote:I want to see a few more Flynn films before I tackle the book (I do own it.) I think I've seen most of his major films though. I wonder what the next film of yours on your list that I have not seen that I will watch next?
Have you seen Gentleman Jim? Obviously Flynn was more a boxer than a fencer in real life so in some ways it's a subject closer to his heart than most of his swashbuckling classics and Ward Bond is an absolute joy to watch as John Sullivan.
I finally saw this. I was wondering who had posted about this and I checked a few site I post on and finally thought I should check here. Fun film and Ward Bond had an excellent over-the-top role of an over-the-top person. I generally like both Errol Flynn and the director Raoul Walsh so I liked this. The choreography was pretty good, their were always cuts to show the feet of Gentleman Jim and his swift fighting style. Flynn does well copying the style of Jim. It is kind of funny how the Shakespearean quotes were just thrown in there. Flynn did fancy himself a fighter, though I have read he was not always successful in his bar fights.

It is interesting how fast that Flynn started to flame out post WWII. I think he probably would not have been fired if he had cut his drinking and partying down (or if he had not stop making huge hits). Though I do not think Flynn would have wanted to cut his lifestyle down. I have his autobiography (it was finished by the ghostwriter), but I have not read it yet.
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Re: Master's Top 10 Hollywood/English Films from 1930 to 201

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Masterofoneinchpunch wrote:Flynn did fancy himself a fighter, though I have read he was not always successful in his bar fights.
Yeah he was a legendary bruiser, very quick to stir up trouble in bars, even lesbian bars! There's a story that he got punched out by a lesbian when he caught her dancing with his girlfriend and caused a fuss! :notworthy:

I do have a soft spot for Gentleman Jim though, mostly because of Ward Bond's turn as Sullivan., it's all sentimental, idealistic hogwash of course, the real Jim Corbett was a monumental racist. One of my favourite real life stories about Corbett comes from when he was the cornerman in the "Great White Hope" fight between Jack Johnson and Jim Jeffries and supposedly Corbett was shouting all manner of racial abuse during the fight and was accusing Jack Johnson of running & hitting and not fighting like a man, and Johnson shouts back: "I'm just doing what you did Jim!" :D
It is interesting how fast that Flynn started to flame out post WWII. I think he probably would not have been fired if he had cut his drinking and partying down (or if he had not stop making huge hits). Though I do not think Flynn would have wanted to cut his lifestyle down. I have his autobiography (it was finished by the ghostwriter), but I have not read it yet.
Yeah I think there was someothing inherently larger-than-life about Flynn that made him such a good showman in peppy action adventures, but after the war cinema became a little grittier and he couldn't really adapt, I think his underage sex scandal in the early 40s somewhat tarnished his image as a romantic lead as well didn't it?
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Re: Master's Top 10 Hollywood/English Films from 1930 to 201

Post by Markgway »

Flynn also put on weight in the late 40s. His drinking visibly aged him prematurely.
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Re: Master's Top 10 Hollywood/English Films from 1930 to 201

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He was a bit of a wreck physically even by the early 40s when he couldn't fight in WW2 because he failed the physical (probably another reason his appeal waned post-war) but he didn't really pile on the pounds properly until the early 50s, if you look at him in films like New Adventures of Don Juan and Montana around 1948-1950 he was still a reasonably trim, strapping bloke, but once Warner Bros dropped him that was it & by the mid 50s he was definitely looking a bit chunky.
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Masterofoneinchpunch
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Re: Master's Top 10 Hollywood/English Films from 1930 to 201

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Shingster wrote:He was a bit of a wreck physically even by the early 40s when he couldn't fight in WW2 because he failed the physical (probably another reason his appeal waned post-war) but he didn't really pile on the pounds properly until the early 50s, if you look at him in films like New Adventures of Don Juan and Montana around 1948-1950 he was still a reasonably trim, strapping bloke, but once Warner Bros dropped him that was it & by the mid 50s he was definitely looking a bit chunky.
I was about to answer with this then I saw this last post with pretty much what I was going to state though I have a few additions. I made a joke earlier that Flynn had the Three Stooges syndrome (reference to Simpsons episode; I might not have even made the joke at this site) when he failed his physical with so many different ailments. However, here was the problem: Warner Bros. and Flynn did not talk about it. Presumably WB did not want to talk about it because it might hurt the image of Flynn as this strapping young lad. So his popularity took a bit of a hit as the war went on because many people thought he was avoiding service. Flynn wanted to serve though.

I just saw Adventures of Don Juan -- Flynn's last big budget film. A solid movie, I know Flynn's health affected several scenes (he seems to sweat a lot in this movie), but he still looks healthy.

But with WB dropping him and him investing in himself in which he lost a lot of money producing it seemed to be a downward spiral for him.
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Re: Master's Top 10 Hollywood/English Films from 1930 to 201

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Yeah it's just crazy to think a guy like Flynn with the kind of work he was doing could be washed up physically by his early 40s! Fairbanks declined around the same age as well, although most put that down to his smoking habit. I guess there was just something about the physical filmmaking combined with the Hollywood party-hard lifestyle back then that wasn't all that conducive to longevity, either that or crappy genetics!
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Re: Master's Top 10 Hollywood/English Films from 1930 to 201

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Shingster wrote:Yeah it's just crazy to think a guy like Flynn with the kind of work he was doing could be washed up physically by his early 40s! Fairbanks declined around the same age as well, although most put that down to his smoking habit. I guess there was just something about the physical filmmaking combined with the Hollywood party-hard lifestyle back then that wasn't all that conducive to longevity, either that or crappy genetics!
RE: Fairbanks

Take a look at The Private Life of Don Juan (1934; on an Eclipse set Alexander Korda Private Lives from Criterion -- worth buying) when Fairbanks is 52 it might change your mind. He is sprite and moves well for his age though he does not do as many stunts as he did (like with Buster Keaton at MGM I doubt the studio would have allowed him -- though this is conjecture from me, though he was ageing like Jackie Chan so he might have had too many pains). It completely surprised me when I saw it. He does not have the greatest voice (probably the biggest criticism that was labeled to him, though if this had made more money who knows if Fairbanks would have done more acting as a lead.) But yeah Fairbanks, while retired, died way too early from a heart attack. If Flynn had just stayed away from the drinking and the later drugs (actually if he just kept to drinking he might have lived longer who knows.)
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Re: Master's Top 10 Hollywood/English Films from 1930 to 201

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I havent seen Blood on the Sun but after that, AFAIK The Manchurian Candidate (1962) was a major Hollywood film to use martial arts
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Re: Master's Top 10 Hollywood/English Films from 1930 to 201

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I ahven't seen The Private Life of Don Juan MooiP, will have to check it out! :thumbs:

Manchurian Candidate was one of the first to use asian martial arts (chiefly karate) but really many of the classic swashbucklers from the 30s-50s incorporated really good technical swordfighting grim, so I guess it depends on what's classed as martial arts.
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Re: Master's Top 10 Hollywood/English Films from 1930 to 201

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Good point Shing, I hadnt thought of that :)
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Re: Master's Top 10 Hollywood/English Films from 1930 to 201

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grim_tales wrote:I havent seen Blood on the Sun but after that, AFAIK The Manchurian Candidate (1962) was a major Hollywood film to use martial arts
When you look into it, it is surprising to see Asian MA being used in even earlier films. For example in the Mr. Moto series (especially Think Fast, Mr. Moto (1937: Norman Foster)) in the 1930s Moto (Peter Lorre) talks of Ju-jitsu and later he talks Judo (and Peter Lorre's stunt double uses it.) In The Awful Truth there is a Ju-jitsu flip scene with Cary Grant.

One of the earliest I had seen (quote from my review):
Sidewalks of New York (1931: Zion Myers, Jules White)

This is the earliest American film where I have seen martial arts in it. Buster Keaton gets picked apart by an Asian-American kid (unfortunately not credited and IMDB does not have his name) who picks him apart with a variety of Judo throws like the Tomoe-nage (circle throw). Later Buster does the same to a bunch of criminals making this a much early appearance of Judo than James Cagney’s in Blood on the Sun (1945).
Now I had found an earlier mention of Jiu-jitsu in an American book in the 1920s.
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Re: Master's Top 10 Hollywood/English Films from 1930 to 201

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I assume much like with The Manchurian Candidate these first "proper" eastern martial arts fight sequences in the 60s made it into these films because either the main stars or someone in the cast/crew was a student of someone or just practising generic martial arts to keep fit. I know they taught Judo to US soldiers in both world wars so I can imagine the Japanese fighting styles at least bled into US consciousness between those years, and then you have the proliferation of Japanese-American actors & characters in silent and early sound cinema that must have opened the doors for some martial arts to seep in here and there.
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Re: Master's Top 10 Hollywood/English Films from 1930 to 201

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Shingster wrote:I assume much like with The Manchurian Candidate these first "proper" eastern martial arts fight sequences in the 60s made it into these films because either the main stars or someone in the cast/crew was a student of someone or just practising generic martial arts to keep fit. I know they taught Judo to US soldiers in both world wars so I can imagine the Japanese fighting styles at least bled into US consciousness between those years, and then you have the proliferation of Japanese-American actors & characters in silent and early sound cinema that must have opened the doors for some martial arts to seep in here and there.
Good points. I knew WWII had a big influence on Judo being pushed afterwards, but you had me curious on WWI fighting techniques. For the most part I mostly hear of Jiu-jitsu in film if a martial art is mentioned in a movie (I gave some examples earlier.) Post WWII: I tend to hear Judo being described for a few decades until Karate then Kung Fu becomes the dominant forms mentioned.

I just found a training video for WWI: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ga4zLsMmkE0 Here they show a combination of boxing, judo/jiu-jitsu mixed with bayonet training. Unfortunately the intertitles are too quick so I cannot see if they actually mention an art form or not. The individual shown is Allan Corstorphin Smith. He had been awarded a black belt (Kodokwan) in Tokyo in 1916 (information from Black Belt magazine Dec. 1971) Apparently he authored seven booklets named "The Secrets of Jujitsu." I am thinking that these are the earliest works on Jiu-jitsu in the US or Europe. This is some interesting stuff.
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Re: Master's Top 10 Hollywood/English Films from 1930 to 201

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The man who brought Eastern martial arts to the army could make a cool film! :D
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Re: Master's Top 10 Hollywood/English Films from 1930 to 201

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Shingster wrote:The man who brought Eastern martial arts to the army could make a cool film! :D
I would especially be interested in his time in Japan.

Another story that should be done is a newer big screen version of was the Japanese Americans involvement in the European theater in WWII (442nd Infantry Regiment).
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Re: Master's Top 10 Hollywood/English Films from 1930 to 201

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I bet if that was made into a HK film they would try to make it into a Wong Fei Hung sort of thing, it could work, in OUATIC2 (?) WFH and his troops have to contend with Western guns and stuff like that, maybe it would be interesting if he was shown teaching a Western army martial arts :?
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Re: Master's Top 10 Hollywood/English Films from 1930 to 2013

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Well out of Mark and Retros list since last update I saw: Sahara, The Woman in the Window, The Desert Rats, Run Silent Run Deep, Child’s Play.
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