The photographer Ralph Steiner, who had been making abstract avant-garde films in the late 1920s, contributed his own parody of American economic life with PANTHER WOMAN OF THE NEEDLE TRADES, OR THE LOVELY LIFE OF LITTLE LISA (1931). The film, which opens with Jehovah (Morris Carnovsky) creating the world out of a test tube, proceeds to present a short history of the universe before the birth of Elizabeth Hawes (1903), the heroine of the film’s title. It then follows her career from childhood seamstress to Parisian designer of haute couture via a college education at Vassar. Reminiscent of Robert Florey’s THE LIFE AND DEATH OF 9413—A HOLLYWOOD EXTRA (1928) in terms of its art direction and elliptical narrative style, PANTHER WOMAN is a parody of the all-American success story, a young woman’s fantasy of a glamorous career in an age of diminishing possibilities. (via: http://encyclopedia.jrank.org/articles/pages/2902/Avant-Garde-Film.html)
Julius goes rabbit hunting while Alice goes bear hunting. Alice and her cat learn at their own expense that one shouldn't bother animals, whether those be rabbits or bears.
Len Lye scraped together enough funding and borrowed equipment to produce a two-minute short featuring his self-made monkey, singing and dancing to 'Peanut Vendor', a 1931 jazz hit for Red Nichols.
The Driver is carrying an Asian child who has been chosen for a strange ritual. He must drive him through a dark night in the city to get to a monk's house, while eluding several American cars out to get the child.
First of several filmed versions of a popular period operetta, in which an early 18th century noblewoman in Poland falls in love with a revolutionary student activist.
Black Coffee is a 1931 British detective film directed by Leslie S. Hiscott. Based on the 1930 play Black Coffee by Agatha Christie featuring her famous private detective Hercule Poirot, it stars Austin Trevor as Poirot with Richard Cooper playing his companion Captain Hastings.
A truck driver "too lazy to work and too nervous to steal" gets mixed up in racketeering. Naturally his underhanded business practices make him a pillar of the community.
Jeremy Wales, a crook who stays on the safe side of the law but bends it whenever possible,has tricked short-sighted John 'Dad" Saunders to sign a note for ten thousand dollars instead of the one thousand that Saunders borrowed to work his "Rose o' My Heart" mine.
Comments
Have you watched Panther Woman of the Needle Trades, or The Lovely Life of Little Lisa yet? What did you think about it?
