Nominees For Best Picture Of 1932-33 (Foreign Language)

Boudu Saved From Drowning (prod. Michel Simon)

Liebelei (prod. Herman Millakowsky)

The Testament Of Dr. Mabuse (prod. Fritz Lang and Seymour Nebenzal)

Vampyr (prod. Carl Theodor Dreyer and Julian West)

Zero For Conduct (prod. Jean Vigo)

Nominate Them All, Let God Sort It Out

The nominees for best director of 1932-33, Take Two.

As with the acting nominees, some of the nominees for best director could have gone into either the comedy/musical category or the drama category; I chose one or the other based on a complex and proprietary calculus known as "doing whatever I felt like."

Best Director (Comedy/Musical)
Lloyd Bacon (42nd Street and Footlight Parade) (on left, with Jane Russell)

George Cukor (Dinner At Eight and Little Women) (here with the cast of Little Women)

Victor Fleming (Red Dust and Bombshell) (here with Clara Bow)

Ernst Lubitsch (Trouble In Paradise and Design For Living)

Leo McCarey (Duck Soup)

Jean Renoir (Boudu Saved From Drowning)

Jean Vigo (Zero For Conduct)


Best Director (Drama)
Frank Capra (The Bitter Tea Of General Yen and Lady For A Day)

Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack (King Kong) (with Marguerite Harrison)

Carl Theodor Dreyer (Vampyr)

Fritz Lang (The Testament Of Dr. Mabuse)

Mervyn LeRoy (I Am A Fugitive From A Chain Gang and Gold Diggers Of 1933) (on right)

Rouben Mamoulian (Love Me Tonight and Queen Christina) (center, on set of Queen Christina)

James Whale (The Old Dark House and The Invisible Man) (with Paul Robeson)

Nominees For Best Director Of 1932-33

George Cukor (Dinner At Eight and Little Women) (here with the cast of Little Women)

Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack (King Kong) (with Marguerite Harrison)

Ernst Lubitsch (Trouble In Paradise and Design For Living)

Leo McCarey (Duck Soup)

Jean Renoir (Boudu Saved From Drowning)

Looking Ahead: Boudu Saved From Drowning

I know not all of my readers get Turner Classic Movies on their cable systems (particularly if you're not living in the United States!), but for those of you who do, I'm recommending you set your various recording devices to catch Boudu Saved From Drowning on this coming Sunday night (Monday morning, actually) at 2:15 a.m. EST.

Boudu Saved From Drowning is one of French director Jean Renoir's best movies, a comedy about a suicidal bum who rewards his rescuer with anything but gratitude. Released in France in late 1932, it will be one of the highlights of the Katie Awards of 1932-33, a particularly rich seventeen month period in film history that takes in such classics as Duck Soup, King Kong, Trouble in Paradise and many, many others—at least thirty movies with a serious claim to some sort of award.

On the same night, 45 minutes earlier at 1:30 a.m., is a documentary Rediscovering John Gilbert. I haven't seen it, but I am familiar with the movies of John Gilbert, the star of such silent classics as The Big Parade and Flesh and the Devil. I've written about him briefly here and here. I'm interested in what this 2009 piece has to say about him.