Cavalcade (1933)

On New Years Eve 1899, an English family welcomes in the new century. Little do they know what tragedies that century will bring to them. Based on a play by Noel Coward, the film covers the years 1900 to 1933 in the lives of that family mostly seen through the eyes of its matriarch (Diana Wynyard). The winner of the best picture Oscar in 1933, this is film making at its most crude. While some directors like Lubitsch and Mamoulian had already started making movies move, this comes across as bloated and stodgy. The acting (especially by Wynyard) is remarkably poor. It's that stilted stage acting that often passed for good acting in the early talkie era until actors like Spencer Tracy brought a more natural style of acting to the screen. So we slog through two wars (the Boer war in South Africa, WWI), the sinking of the Titanic, love and death till finally (and it was a relief, believe me) the film exhausts itself to its conclusion. There's an uncomfortable favoritism toward the upper classes in the film, who are portrayed as noble while the "lower" classes (like the servants) are portrayed as vulgar and shiftless. Well, it is England after all. Directed by Frank Lloyd. With Colin Brook, Margaret Lindsay, Ursula Jeans, Una O'Connor, Frank Lawton, Bonita Granville, Herbert Mundin, Beryl Mercer and Merle Tottenham.