About this Event
September 23 – Politics, 1931, 73 minutes, directed by Charles F. Riesner, starring Marie Dressler and Polly Moran
Hattie Burns (Marie Dressler) is fed up with city government fueled by prohibition gin and deadly force. She runs for mayor, promising to send the cockroaches of City Hall scurrying. To win, she engages the greatest unrealized asset in town: the womenfolk. Comedy and drama are woven throughout this riff on Lysistrata, appearing just eleven years after passage of the 19th Amendment. Politics is a modest film that scored big at the box office, thanks to the amazing Dressler. In her sixties, and blessed with a face she described as "a mud fence," she was the most popular movie star in the early years of the Depression.
CinemaLit / September 2022 – The 1930s Get Real
What are your impressions of American films in the 1930s? Gossamer musicals and Marx Brothers' slapstick? Stodgy romances burdened with wooden acting? Nonsense escapism from the Great Depression? That's all to be found. But dig deeper for a wealth of films of exceptional depth and complexity. September at CinemaLit is devoted to four films from four genres that are terrific entertainments AND fascinating historical and sociological relics. We've got a musical (Gold Diggers of 1933), screwball comedy (My Man Godfrey), comedy-drama (Politics), and social drama (Imitation of Life). And even as you're laughing or toe tapping, we've also got homelessness, political corruption, racism, bread lines, war, M**der, unemployment, sexism, and the generation gap. Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.
Event Venue & Nearby Stays
Mechanics' Institute, Mechanics' Institute, San Francisco, United States
USD 0.00 to USD 10.00