Top 10 Films of 1938

1. "The Masseurs And A Woman" (Hiroshi Shimizu, Japan)

2. "Bringing Up Baby" (Howard Hawks, RKO)

3. "Alexander Nevsky" (Sergei Eisenstein, Soviet Union)

4. "The Adventures Of Robin Hood" (Michael Curtiz, Warner)

5. "The Lady Vanishes" (Alfred Hitchcock, UK)

6. "Olympia" (Leni Riefenstahl, Germany)

7. "Hollywood Hotel" (Busby Berkeley, Warner)

8. "Quai des brumes" (Marcel Carné, France)

9. "La Femme du boulanger" (Marcel Pagnol, France)

10. "If I Were King" (Frank Lloyd, Paramount)

Other great films:

The Adventures Of Tom Sawyer
Alexander's Ragtime Band
Algiers
Angels With Dirty Faces
La Bete humaine (France)
Block-Heads
Bluebeard's Eighth Wife
Carefree

Child Bride
The Childhood Of Maxim Gorky (Soviet Union)
The Dawn Patrol
The Divorce Of Lady X (UK)
Four Daughters
Geniusz sceny (Poland)
The Girl Of The Golden West
Gold Diggers In Paris
The Goldwyn Follies

Granica (Poland)
The Great Citizen Part 1 (Soviet Union)
The Great Waltz
Holiday
Jezebel
Just Around The Corner
Listen Darling
Little Miss Broadway
Love Finds Andy Hardy
Luciano Serra pilota (Italy)
Ludzie Wisly (Poland)
Mad About Music
The Merry Wives (Czechoslovakia)
Pawel i Gawel (Poland)
Pygmalion (UK)
Quadrille (France)
Rebecca Of Sunnybrook Farm
Robert i Bertrand (Poland)
Room Service
Sing, You Sinners

Stolen Death (Finland)

Strachy (Poland)
Sweethearts
Swiss Miss
Terror Of Tiny Town

Verwehte Spuren (Germany)
Volga Volga (Soviet Union)
You Can't Take It With You
The Young In Heart
Zapomniana melodia (Poland)

Great shorts:

1. "N Or NW" (Len Lye, UK)

2. "Uncle Si And The Sirens" (USA)

3. "That Mothers Might Live" (Fred Zinnemann, USA)

Other great shorts:

The Exposé Of The Nudist Racket

Hollywood Script Girl

Swingtime In The Movies

Violent Is The Word For Curly

Cartoon Top 10

1. "Mickey's Trailer" (Ben Sharpsteen, Disney)

2. "Porky In Wackyland" (Robert Clampett, Warner)

3. "Brave Little Tailor" (Bill Roberts, Disney)

4. "Katnip Kollege" (Cal Dalton, Cal Howard, Warner)

5. "Ferdinand The Bull" (Dick Rickard, Disney)

6. "Have You Got Any Castles ?" (Frank Tashlin, Warner)

7. "Cinderella Meets Fella" (Tex Avery, Warner)

8. "An Optical Poem" (Oskar Fischinger, MGM)

9. "The Daffy Doc" (Robert Clampett, Warner)

10. "Porky The Fireman" (Frank Tashlin, Warner)

Great cartoons:

A-Lad-In Bagdad
Boy Meets Dog
The Captain's Christmas
Cleaning House
Daffy Duck And Egghead
Daffy Duck In Hollywood
Donald's Nephews 
Doomsday
A Feud There Was
The Frog Pond
Gandy The Goose
Good Scouts
Injun Trouble
The Isle Of Pingo-Pongo
Johnny Smith and Poker-Huntas
Jungle Jitters

Merbabies

Mickey's Parrot
Midnight Frolics
Moth And The Flame
Mother Goose Goes Hollywood
Old Smokey

On With The New 

Porky At The Crocadero
Porky's Hare Hunt 
Porky's Party
Porky's Poppa
The Sneezing Weasel

South Sea Sweethearts (Holland)

The Whalers

Wynken Blynken And Nod

You're An Education

Weak films of 1938:

The Big Broacast of 1938
Boys Town
The Citadel (UK)
The Cowboy And The Lady
Family Diary (Japan)
Hôtel du Nord (France)
Kosciuszko pod Raclawicami (Polska)
Madreselva (Argentina)
Marie Antoinette
Merrily We Live
Sex Madness
Suez
Test Pilot
Vivacious Lady

Weak shorts:

Making Fashion (UK)
North Sea (UK)

Weak cartoons:

All's Fair At The Fair
Be Up To Date
Blue Monday
Boat Builders
Buried Treasure
The Captain's Pup
Count Me Out
Cracked Ice
A Day At The Beach
Donald's Better Self
Donald's Golf Game
Farmyard Symphony
The Fox Hunt
Heavenly Post Office (UK)
Honduras Hurricane
Hunky And Spunky
Little Ol' Bosko In Bagdad
The Little Bantamweight
Little Pancho Vanilla
Love And Curses
The Major Lied 'Til Dawn
The Mice Will Play
My Little Buckeroo
The Night Watchman
Now That Summer Is Gone
Out Of The Inkwell
The Penguin Parade
Pipe Dreams
Polar Trappers
Porky And Daffy
Porky In Egypt
Porky's Five And Ten
Porky's Naughty Nephew
Porky's Phoney Express 
Porky's Spring Planting
Porky The Gob
Poultry Pirates
Pudgy The Watchman
The Pygmy Hunt
Riding The Rails
Sally Swing
Self Control
A Star Is Hatched
Swing School
Thrills And Chills
What A Lion!
What Price Porky
Wholly Smoke
The Winning Ticket

Top 3 Musicals of 1938

1. "Hollywood Hotel" (Busby Berkeley, Warner)

2. "Alexander's Ragtime Band" (Henry King, 20th-Fox)

3. "Carefree" (Mark Sandrich, RKO)

The Masseurs And A Woman (1938) *****

A cinematic miracle written and directed by Hiroshi Shimizu. Arguably his greatest film, a very subtle narrative rollercoaster that constantly plays with its viewers' expectations. It begins like a comedy, but then slowly becomes a whodunit, before touching on some melodrama in order to finally settle for a touch of romance. One of the least predictable films ever made.

Hollywood Hotel (1938) ****

Busby Berkeley's last Warner Bros. musical. His best film, a possible inspiration for "Singin' In The Rain". Musical numbers:

"Hooray For Hollywood"  ***
"I'M Like A Fish Out Of Water"  **
"Silhouetted In The Moonlight"  *
"Let That Be A Lesson To You"  **
"House Hop"  ***
"I've Hitched My Wagon To A Star"  **
"Silhouetted In The Moonlight" (reprise)  **
"Dark Eyes"  **
"I've Hitched My Wagon To A Star"  (reprise)  **
"Sing You Son Of A Gun/Hooray For Hollywood"  **

Olympia (1938) ****

Love Finds Andy Hardy (1938) ***

The most memorable of all Andy Hardy comedies. Judy Garland sings three songs:

"In Between"  **
"It Never Rains But What It Pours"  *
"Meet The Beat Of My Heart"  **

Swiss Miss (1938) ***

Memorable feature film starring Laurel and Hardy.

The Merry Wives (1938) ***

Geniusz sceny (1938) ***

An homage to a great Polish theatre actor, Ludwik Solski, presenting some of his greatest acting triumphs. Winner of two awards at the Venice Film Festival, for acting and for screenplay.

The Young In Heart (1938) ***

Pleasant film about a family of fraud artists who befriend a lonely rich old woman.

Verwehte Spuren (1938) ***

Robert i Bertrand (1938) ***

Legendary pre-war Polish comedy because it united two greatest Polish comics of the era: Eugeniusz Bodo and Adolf Dymsza. Unfortunately, only about half of the film has survived the war. Ditto for the two comics: Bodo died in a Soviet gulag, while Dymsza joined the Communist party after the war.

Songs by Henryk Wars and Emanuel Schlechter:

"Robert i Bertrand"  **
"Zakochany zlodziej"  **
"Goralu czy ci nie zal"  *

Stolen Death (1938) ***

Algiers (1938) ***

Charles Boyer plays Pepe le Moko in this Hollywood remake of the classic French film starring Jean Gabin.

The Adventures Of Tom Sawyer (1938) ***

Classic adaptation of Mark Twain's immortal novel.

Sweethearts (1938) ***

Another fine musical starring Jeanette McDonald and Nelson Eddy.

The Divorce Of Lady X (1938) ***

Two strangers of opposite sex (Laurence Olivier and Merle Oberon) share the same room in a hotel. Chirpy, effervescent Oberon is the main reason to see this somewhat dated, but very pleasant screwball comedy about propriety and decorum.

Quadrille (1938) ***

Clever comedy of manners about an unfaithful mistress.

Bluebeard's Eighth Wife (1938) ***

A perfect example of the celebrated Lubitsch's Touch.

The Great Citizen Part 1 (1938) ***

The film is mostly set in 1925, during the preparations for the 14th Party Congress and the bitter conflict between Trotsky's supporters of an immediate worldwide revolution and Stalin's supporters of building socialism in one country.

Luciano Serra pilota (1938) ***

Italian fascist propaganda film, winner of the Mussolini Cup at the Venice Film Festival. Uneven. The first half is quite boring, but the second half is a fairly exciting war movie with Ethiopian troops attacking a train.

Strachy (1938) ***

Granica (1938) ***

Child Bride (1938) ***

Gold Diggers In Paris (1938) ***

Nice little musical set in Paris. Musical numbers:

"I Wanna Go Back To Bali"  *
"Day Dreaming All night Long"  *
"A Stranger In Paree"  *
"The Latin Quarter"  ***
"I Wanna Go Back To Bali" (reprise)  **

Ludzie Wisly (1938) ***

Social realist drama set among Vistula sailors. Directed by Aleksander Ford.

Vivacious Lady (1938) **

Ginger Rogers plays a nightclub singer who marries a university professor in this dated comedy of manners.

Boys Town (1938) **

Spencer Tracy won an Academy Award for Best Actor playing Father Flanagan, the founder of a famous orphanage near Omaha, Nebraska.

Hôtel du Nord (1938) **

Between 1937 and 1945, Marcel Carné has directed six films. Five among them are among the greatest achievements of the French cinema - "Drôle de drame" (1937), "Quai des brumes" (1938), "Le Jour se lève" (1939), "Les Visiteurs du soir" (1942) and especially the immortal "Les Enfants du paradis" (1945). The sixth, "Hôtel du Nord" (1938), is a mediocre melodrama set in a rundown hotel on the outskirts of Paris. Coincidentally, the five classics were all written by the great Jacques Prévert, while "Hôtel du Nord" was penned by Jean Aurenche and Henri Jeanson.

Merrily We Live (1938) **

Screwball comedy about a writer mistaken for a tramp who becomes a chauffeur.

Marie Antoinette (1938) **

Robert Morley is excellent as Louis XVI, but Norma Shearer makes a barely adequate Marie Antoinette in this overproduced costume drama.

Suez (1938) *

Very inaccurate biopic about Ferdinand de Lesseps.

Kosciuszko pod Raclawicami (1938) *

Polish film about the Kosciuszko Insurrection in 1794.

Family Diary (1938) *

Very conventional melodrama about marriage. An unusually weak script by an otherwise excellent writer Tadao Ikeda, based on a dreadful story by Nobuko Yoshiya.

Test Pilot (1938) *

Uncle Si And The Sirens (1938) ****

A married man buys a television set. Brilliant and experimental short film, with visually striking innovations and a tasteful sense of beauty.

N or NW (1938) ****

Len Lye's experimental documentary about love and postal codes.

North Sea (1938) **

Scottish fishermen from Aberdeen are braving a stormy sea. Their trawler is in serious trouble. Only by re-establishing a radio contact with General Post Office operators, can they avoid dangerous waters and safely return home. The picture was directed by H.Watt and produced by A.Cavalcanti for the GPO Film Unit.

That Mothers Might Live (1938) ***

Swingtime In The Movies (1938) ***

Hollywood Script Girl (1938) ***

The Exposé Of The Nudist Racket (1938) ***

Violent Is The Word For Curly (1938) ***

One of Three Stooges' best films.

Making Fashion (1938) **

Documentary about the British fashion.

Terror Of Tiny Town (1938) ***

An all-midget western. Often considered as a camp classic, it is in fact a fairly good film that can be enjoyed "straight".

The Childhood Of Maxim Gorky (1938) ***

Interesting Soviet film set in tsarist Russia.

Bringing Up Baby (1938) *****

The best, the funniest and the wildest of all the 1930's screwball comedies. It stars Cary Grant as a bumbling palentologist and Katherine Hepburn as a crazy heiress who falls in love with him.