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If I Had A Million

by Gwyer Maitland

If I Had A Million is a very funny look at the common man. It was made in the midst of the great depression in 1932. The story is about a dying millionaire who decides to give his millions away to strangers rather than the rotten people in his family.

He chooses people randomly to each receive a million dollars.

The story unfolds a series of film shorts where we meet each of the recipients living their normal day to day life prior to receiving their money. We are shown enough for each to get a feel of the kind of people they are - their strife, their struggles, their kindness and their fool-heartiness.

The film must have provided a sense of relief to those who watched it when it came out in 1932. In that context, I think laughter truly is the best medicine.

The first time I watched If I Had A Million…

The first I saw this film, I was around eleven years old.

At that time, there were basically only 3 primary television channels. On Saturday nights, there was a late movie that came on at 11:00 p.m. every week. Even at that age, I loved watching movies and often
did on the weekends.

I just happened to be looking for a movie to watch when it came on with no idea what to expect.

About 15 minutes into the movie, my mom got out of bed and said,”what’s so funny? You woke me up with your laughing.”

We sat and laughed together at the well executed humor throughout the rest of the movie.

Not only is the dialogue clever, the situational comedy exemplifies just how people do things in real life giving viewers a chance to laugh at themselves vicariously and to laugh at life in general.

Most of the shorts are above average. The acting and screen writing is a lot of fun.

WC Fields stars in one of the segments, and I think this may be the movie that got me stuck on his humor. I honestly don’t remember because I have been a WC Fields fan for so long, but his segment is terrific.

Charlie Ruggles is hilarious too.

Rather than spoil your experience, with my description of the humor, watch If I Had A Million yourself and enjoy it personally.

I have been looking for this movie for a long time and only recently came across its availability. I had actually tried to rent it Seattle, Montana, Pennsylvannia, New Jersey and Atlanta and have not been able to find it in inventory.

One time, in 1990 a friend of mine called me from LA to let me know it was available there. Interestingly enough, her brother in law’s dad was Harpo MArx, but that’s another story. For one reason or another, that connection did not work out.

If I Had A Million is one going into my collection because I ordered it this morning…

Get you own copy of If I Had A Million

It’s a keeper.

Kurosawa Films

Kurosawa Films are some of the best movies of any era or genre.

There are so many good titles, it’ll take some time to discuss them all. Akira Kurosawa is one of my all time favorite film makers - and that’s saying something because I like a bunch of them.

Just today I wrote an article about Kurosawa Films on ezinearticles.com that will be live a few days.

Of the top of my head, my favorite movies of his are:

• Dreams
• Sanshiro Sugata
• The Seven Samurai
  
• The Stray Dog
  

I really love “Dreams” that he made in the 80’s. It was a series of shorts each presented as a myth or a fable. Really cool use of art mixed with story telling - and it was done with state of the art technology at the time.

And of course, The Seven Samurai is one of the all time classic films. We watched it again about two weeks ago.

In the past I’ve watched all the Kurosawa films I could find - most of them at least twice, some four or five times. With the advent of this blog, we’ll watch them all again as a refresher.

We’d like some feedback about what old films you like - which directors, which actors and why.

This blog may turn out to be a lot of fun.

As afar as this tumblr goes, this is brand new for me - so please forgive the learning curve with all this web 2.0 stuff…

Buy Old Movies

When you buy old movies you can watch a piece of history before your eyes, literally.

We love old movies - it’s more than a hobby, it’s an artistic aspect of who we are.

The medium has always been fascinating to me because it’s more interactive than books - although we’re big readers too. I’ve never understood how we can experience the actual energy of the actors - the emotion, the psychological implications and the physical experience through digital data or a projector.

Pretty cool though…

We’ve been movie buffs for a long time. So we’ve decided to play with something we love in a blog - so we can share our favorites and get feedback about your favorites too.

We’ll put together a great selection of movie reviews of our favorite flicks and create our own evaluation scale. We may make mistakes here and there as we learn how to interact through this technology.

But we’ll get it down and with your feedback and input, we’re going to have a blast sharing stuff we really like with really interesting visitors and participants.

We’re pretty much going to stick with old movies on dvd, I think. Although that may change - who knows how technology may change in the next five years.

We’ll create categories of old movies, movie reviews, blog the favorites and have fun and even a way to watch and buy old movies.

Here are two of my favorites:

If I Had A Million

The Quiet Man (Collector’s Edition)

Look forward to lots of fun together,

Gwyer Maitland