The following interview with critic Imogen Sara Smith was recorded in 2022.

Directed by Dorothy Arzner • 1931 • United States
Starring Claudette Colbert, Fredric March, Monroe Owsley

The incandescent presence of two rising stars—Claudette Colbert and Fredric March—lights up this deft blend of comedy, romance, and social drama. A young secretary (Colbert) faces a life-al...

Directed by Ernst Lubitsch • 1931 • United States
Starring Maurice Chevalier, Claudette Colbert, Miriam Hopkins

Maurice Chevalier’s randy Viennese lieutenant is enamored of Claudette Colbert’s freethinking, all-girl-orchestra-leading cutie. Yet complications ensue when the sexually repressed pri...

Directed by Ernst Lubitsch • 1932 • United States
Starring Lionel Barrymore, Phillips Holmes, Nancy Carroll

Though best known for the sophisticated comedies he turned out with elegant ease in the 1930s, director Ernst Lubitsch took a rare, often overlooked detour into serious-minded drama with t...

Directed by Ernst Lubitsch, Norman Taurog, Norman Z. McLeod, H. Bruce Humberstone, James Cruze, Stephen Roberts, and William A. Seiter • 1932 • United States
Starring Gary Cooper, Charles Laughton, George Raft

An all-star cast of golden-age Hollywood legends adorns this unique and whimsical dayd...

Directed by Rouben Mamoulian • 1932 • United States
Starring Maurice Chevalier, Jeanette MacDonald, Charles Ruggles

A case of mistaken identity gives a romantic Parisian tailor (Maurice Chevalier) the opportunity to woo the princess of his dreams (Jeanette MacDonald) in this exquisite musical, r...

Directed by Dorothy Arzner • 1932 • United States
Starring Sylvia Sidney, Fredric March, Adrianne Allen

One of director Dorothy Arzner’s most fascinatingly subversive portraits of marital dysfunction stars Sylvia Sidney as a wealthy socialite who falls in love with an alcoholic writer (Fredric M...

Directed by Archie Mayo • 1932 • United States
Starring George Raft, Constance Cummings, Wynne Gibson

“Goodness, what beautiful diamonds.” “Goodness had nothing to do with it, dearie.” The inimitable Mae West made her striking screen debut in this pre-Code drama about a speakeasy owner (George R...

Directed by Ernst Lubitsch • 1932 • United States
Starring Maurice Chevalier, Jeanette MacDonald, Genevieve Tobin

Ernst Lubitsch reunites Maurice Chevalier and Jeanette MacDonald, this time as a seemingly blissful couple whose marriage hits the skids when her flirtatious school chum comes on to ...

Directed by Josef von Sternberg • 1932 • United States
Starring Marlene Dietrich, Clive Brook, Anna May Wong

An intoxicating mix of adventure, romance, and pre-Code salaciousness, SHANGHAI EXPRESS marks the commercial peak of an iconic collaboration. Marlene Dietrich is at her wicked best as Sha...

Directed by Ernst Lubitsch • 1932 • United States
Starring Miriam Hopkins, Kay Francis, Herbert Marshall

When thief Gaston Monescu (Herbert Marshall) meets his true love in pickpocket Lily (Miriam Hopkins), they embark on a scam to rob lovely perfume company executive Mariette Colet (Kay Francis...

Directed by Ernst Lubitsch • 1933 • United States
Starring Fredric March, Gary Cooper, Miriam Hopkins

Gary Cooper, Fredric March, and Miriam Hopkins play a trio of Americans in Paris who enter into a very adult “gentleman’s agree¬ment” in this continental pre-Code comedy, freely adapted by Ben H...

Directed by Lowell Sherman • 1933 • United States
Starring Mae West, Cary Grant, Gilbert Roland

“Why don’t you come up sometime and see me?” purrs a seductive Mae West to a fetching young Cary Grant in this star-making smash hit based on West’s successful play, “Diamond Lil.” She is at her absol...

Directed by Cecil B. DeMille • 1934 • United States
Starring Claudette Colbert, Warren William, Henry Wilcoxon

Master of the epic screen spectacle Cecil B. DeMille outdid himself with this lavish account of the Egyptian queen (a vampish Claudette Colbert) whose powers of seduction first charm Ju...