The self-centred bourgeoisie of The Rules of the Game are content living with a constant mistrust of their own peers if it means preserving their status and wealth, becoming the targets of Jean Renoir’s biting social satire as he comically undercuts the egos entangling themselves in an intricate web of affairs over one weekend at a country estate.
If Southern belle Scarlett O’Hara represents the Old South in Gone with the Wind, then her selfish vanity paints a pricklier portrait of this historical culture than one might expect, deserving nothing less than the sweeping Technicolor grandeur of what may be Hollywood’s most ambitious historical epic put to film.
The ripples of history that would go on to generate monumental waves can be felt all through Young Mr Lincoln, where John Ford turns the future president’s origins as a judicious Illinoisian lawyer into a historical fable, offering us insight into the storytelling traditions and legal battles that have shaped an entire nation’s values of liberty and justice.
As a man driven to murder reminisces on the sequence of events that has led to this moment, Marcel Carne constructs a bitterly nostalgic narrative through masterful tracking shots and expressionist lighting, turning Le Jour se Leve into an indelibly moving portrait of France’s lost innocence as it heads into World War II.
It takes a director as known for his sophisticated “touch” as Ernst Lubitsch to smoothly integrate Greta Garbo’s brilliantly blunt deadpan into such an elegantly blossoming romance, thereby creating one of the great comedic characters of the 1930s in Ninotchka.
With a rigorous dedication to turning the Gothic architecture of Wuthering Heights into its own eerie character, William Wyler cuts right to the heart of Emily Brontë’s classic novel, submerging his tragic paramours in a ghostly melancholy that haunts them through life and death.
