Barber Shop Blues (1933)
Genre : Music
Runtime : 10M
Director : Joseph Henabery
Synopsis
A barber shop owner wins a sweepstake. He remodels his shop and hires Claude Hopkins and his orchestra to play for his customers. Two songs are sung, and the Four Step Brothers tap dance in the closing number.
"Made with spray paint and hand-cut stencils, this film was an attempt at maximum plastic intensity… Places Breer for the first time among the major colorists of the avant-garde." – P. Adams Sitney
The Wake is the title of a large-scale multimedia project, the main element of which is an eight-hour long silent movie. The film is based on Finnegans Wake by James Joyce (London 1939), a limit-transgressing, perhaps even limit-dissolving book that not only transgresses the limits of what literature is and is capable of, but inscribes transgressions on almost all conceivable levels. It is at the same time dream book, history book and necrology. It is almost impossible to determine whether we are dealing with a long poem, a prose narrative or a piece of drama.
While birds can be heard singing a shrill song, lines crisscross wildly as if they aimed to form shapes. Their efforts seem hopeless until the very end ,,,
"Swing cat" Louis Prima and his jazz quartette play songs and accompany featured singers and dancers.
This Warner Bros. short reviews in an often humorous way the impact of the automobile on the United States. By 1900, the horseless carriage was beginning to have an impact. Early adopters were often the object of attention by large curious crowds. There were many car manufacturers and the quality of their product varied considerably. Traffic jams, pollution and automobile racing were only a few of the outcomes.
The untold true story set in the winter of 1925 that takes you across the treacherous terrain of the Alaskan tundra for an exhilarating and uplifting adventure that will test the strength, courage and determination of one man, Leonhard Seppala, and his lead sled dog, Togo.
A tribe of cats called the Jellicles must decide yearly which one will ascend to the Heaviside Layer and come back to a new Jellicle life.
Breer's earliest experiments in animation are wonderfully dense yet lyrical abstractions based on Breer's own geometric paintings. - Harvard Film Archive
The film is just this kind wandering through the personal ways and whys of different kinds of pain in different kinds of people. The film searches through the many levels of pain and finds it in its unique position between disaster and pleasure. Pain is..thus plunges us instantly into the midst of controversy and the unknown.
A live action footage of a smiling, bespectacled (presumably) Western tourist set against the familiar cadence of an accelerating train revving up as it leaves the station sets the mesmerizing tone for the film's abstract panoramic survey of an Ozu-esque Japanese landscape of electrical power lines, passing trains, railroad tracks, and the gentle slope of obliquely peaked, uniform rooflines as Breer distills the essential geometry of Mount Fuji into a collage of acute angles and converging (and bifurcating) lines .
In New York, a bank robbery of $300,000 goes unsolved for a year, until some of the marked bills are found in a Los Angeles drugstore theft. Police detectives Cal Bruner and Jack Farnham investigate and are led from the drugstore to a nightclub, where singer Lili is another recipient of a stolen bill. With Lili's help, the partners track down the remaining money, but both Lili and Frank are dismayed when Cal decides he wants to keep part of it.
Claude is a ruthless and efficient contract killer. His next target, a woman, is the most difficult.
Sissi is now the empress of Austria and attempts to learn etiquette. While she is busy being empress she also has to deal with her difficult new mother-in-law, while the arch-duchess Sophie is trying to tell the emperor how to rule and also Sissi how to be a mother.
After a wonderful time in Hungary Sissi falls extremely ill and must retreat to a Mediterranean climate to rest. The young empress’ mother takes her from Austria to recover in Madeira.
The young Bavarian princess Elisabeth, who all call Sissi, goes with her mother and older sister Néné to Austria where Néné will be wed to an emperor named Franz Joseph, Yet unexpectedly Franz runs into Sissi while out fishing and they fall in love.
Ex-con turned private investigator Bradford Galt suspects someone is following him and maybe even trying to kill him. With the assistance of his spunky secretary, Kathleen Stewart, he dives deep into a mystery in search of answers.
Isaiah, a 19th-century businessman, has his eye on the beautiful and very young Jenny. Finally of age, she accepts his marriage proposal, but their love affair quickly turns sour. Ephraim, Isaiah's college-age son, comes for a visit, immediately striking up a chemistry with Jenny. She promises marriage -- if he murders his father first. But Jenny also swoons for John, the fiancé of her best friend, Meg.
Rain rituals with possession dances among the Songhay and Zarma of Simiri, Zermaganda, Niger. Dry Season: The village of Simiri; water carriers, the rainbow tree. Possession of the faithful making their way to the spirits' hut on the seventh day of the seventh month of the dry season. All of the inhabitants of the village go to the spirits' hut to celebrate the Yenendi, the festival of the rain. Preparation by the musicians: under the shelter, gourd drummers. The chief of the village, old Wadi Sorko, prepares his violin. Dance of the "spirit" horse (possession dance).
A doctor performs an experiment on a dying man by placing him under hypnosis on his deathbed.
Lorraine and Mark enter the world of witchcraft where Mara foretells the future and helps them remember their past lives. When a series of mysterious murders begin to occur, they turn to Dr. Helsford for advice.