1929: St Louis Blues (103rd!!!!!)

What else happened this year? Global Financial Crash. Boom!

What is the plot - in one sentence? It’s a short movie, Bessie Smith gets cheated on by her man, she sings a sad song, and then he returns and they dance.

I don't have time, just spoil it for me? You don't have 10 minutes? What are you doing reading this? It was a psyche! move, he was just there to steal some money from her stockings before pissing off for good.

What is the meaning of the title? It’s the song that she sings, with the help of an entire restaurant as the chorus,

Here's Bessie having a beer, a sing and a cry. We call this the Irish sandwich.

Anything that's not aged well? Does a woman get slapped around? Bessie does, as her kept man cheats on her, and then throws her to the ground when she’s confronting him. Also, the woman he’s cheating on Bessie with, a pretty woman, he refers to her as a ‘yellow lady’ for some reason. Also, he cheats on her in a single bed.

Any thoughts? I know Bessie Smith only from that song ‘I need a little sugar, in my bowl’ which is full of eye-opening euphemisms – it’s not subtle. I was therefore surprised to hear her sing here, as her voice is magnificent.

Would you recommend this? It’s 15 minutes long, features a good song, some crazy dancing (the guy who she breaks up with does some running on the spot for it bit and it’s weird. Yeah, you can watch it right here. . Oh, there’s a guy spinning a drinks tray during a dance, and he does a good job of it, it’s pretty funny to watch.

Final thoughts? This could easily have been a longer movie, cram in a few more songs and dances, and I wouldn’t complain. On a lighter note, this is the last one of these I’ll do, and for some reason 1929 was very difficult to accomplish – and I note that I’ve tried to watch the Movie Pandora’s box a few times, and despite the very pretty star, it’s positively glacial – the version I have leaves the interstitial subtitles for 20 seconds. I might watch it, at 1.5x speed, just as the director intended.

That's it! A movie from every year from 1920 to 2022. All for you to peruse, you can find them all right here if you want.* Have I learned anything from this endeavour? Not really, but I've seen some good movies as a result of it, and that's always something.

 

 

 

*If you don't want that, I don't want your readership, get fucked.