Trailers, Songs, Scenes, 2 Cartoons, a Short & Clips from January 1930. Plus:

THREE FULL MOVIES:

19300101 Party Girl (A Fiesta 7/13) & 19300104 Peacock Alley (A Fiesta 8/13)

& 19300129 The White Devil

Just Hit Play All and You Have The Full Fiesta 13 for January 1930.

Playlist: 193001312 19300132 The Full Fiesta 13 for January 1930 with Peacock Alley, Anna Christie, Seven Days Leave & Love Comes Along

Skip to Taste

But Wait, There’s More…

Also from January 1930…

Clip | Anna Christie | Warner Archive

Men Without Women

19300102 Under the Roofs of Paris (Criterion)

(A Fiesta 6/13)

With each The Full Fiesta 13 comes The Fiesta 13 Pointless Review, where we review another movie from the trailer reel month on streaming.

Under The Roofs of Paris, a critically-acclaimed French movie, remastered so much, it looks better than its first showing, now in 4K on Criterion Channel.

Not our 1st-12th choice of movies released in January 1930 to review, but it was on streaming. The movie’s about the hard-scrabble life of Parisians in 1930, well, that’s what the critics say. These Parisians live better than I do. In the Skid Row of 1930. Set only on one picturesque street, it’s also not really a travelogue. The visuals & camera movements were impressive, even groundbreaking, but marred by mixed storytelling. Not a silent picture or really a full talkie.

The main story is simple triangle love story between a homeless Romanian girl, a court square singer & a couple of other guys, hard really to know. 

Under the Roof mostly reminds me of the 1967 Freaks rip-off She-Freak. As She-Freak takes place at a working carnival & the director must not have been allowed audio equipment inside the carnival. Every outside scene—at a county carnival—didn’t have mic’ed dialogue, no voice-over, just no-sound with people jabbering unheard over canned carnival music. 

UtRoP isn’t a silent film, about 20% of the movie has dialogue & the rest are songs & songs over unheard dialogue. Plus the subtitling was infuriating, some songs had subtitling, most not. Same with dialogue & no silent movie-style cards. Just people speaking an non-subtitled foreign language with no sound. So, quickly, we had no idea what was happening. Now, there are a few crowd songs where the people are singing live and mic’ed. So, why couldn’t they mic a simple two-person scene?

So you zone out to the French accordion music until slow madness sets in.  Plot, who need plot? There’s accordion music.

The lead guy, Andy, Alex, A-something sang then sold the sheet music he was selling to random, very willing hard scrabble Parisians. It’s like he monetized, then weaponized Christmas-caroling, but with confusing love songs. Suddenly a group of twenty people are shouting songs in the street mid-afternoon— with the grim enthusiasm of people living between two World Wars. 

And a, natch, blind accordion player plays the happy/sad songs the French so love. Sadly/Happily—not a beret in sight.

And this guy made money. Strange. There’s pickpocket & a guy with a Basil Fawlty mustache who are the bad boyfriends, framing The Music Man sheet seller somehow with a bag of something. Two lines of subtitled dialogue, please, my high school French can’t lip-read French mumbling. There’s a Criterion Edition of this.

Cool scene of a fight with only train noises behind it. The only discordant sound design that worked. The ending was very French. Wait, that sounds stereotypical. Because, as far  as I could follow, the plainish, little Romanian girl went off with some—have even seen him yet?— other skinny dude I’m kinda sure wasn’t ever even shown except the last scene.

French?

Still, UtRoP is a world-beloved French classic, is not boring movie (The Worst Movie Kind), but is not surreal or hefty enough to justify the incoherent story telling. It just an experiment in sound that is spotty at best with miss-matched dialogue-less audio & vaudeville music & more & more accordion.

Weird Al, cleanse the accordion gunk from my ears.

#

Also She-Freak, don’t put the last shocking shot of the movie on the poster. Not a good sign.

It was your only special effect. The Pay-Off. Also, the freaks weren’t freaks, but just a little person in a cowboy hat, the opposite of freak, but fucking cool.

She-Freak tries, but swerves away, from CrazyTown, missing the off ramp, skipped, and pulled back from the ‘sploitation elements the plot & title implied.

Here @The Fiesta 13, we ask the same question of every movie to determine success:

 “Does the movie go to CrazyTown?”

Unfortunately, UtRoP does not. No.

We give Under the Roofs of Paris a 6 out of 13 Fiestas.

UtRoP, A Fiesta 6.

Under the Roofs of Paris 1930 Trailer

SHE FREAK [Official Trailer – AGFA]

19670503 She Freak (A Fiesta 5)

###