The best Fredric March’s documentary movies
If you love cinema, you will share this ranking of the best Fredric March’s movies, although you may have ordered them differently. In any case, we hope you love it and with a little luck discovering a movie that you still don’t know about Fredric March.
Complicated Women
7.7/10
A look at actresses who starred in films with thought-provoking subjects made between 1930 and July 1934, before the Hollywood Production Code —the infamous Hays Code— was enforced.
The Spencer Tracy Legacy: A Tribute by Katharine Hepburn
7.8/10
In this tribute to her frequent co-star and longtime love, Katharine Hepburn hosts a behind-the-scenes look at Spencer Tracy's personal and professional life that features intimate personal accounts, interviews and clips from his most acclaimed work on the silver screen.
Hollywood: Style Center of the World
4.9/10
This short promotes the premise that movies often create a demand for the fashions seen in them. It starts with a vignette in rural America. A mother and daughter go to town to buy a new dress. In the dress shop window is a designer dress worn by Joan Crawford in a recent movie. We then go to Hollywood and visit Adrian, MGM's chief of costume design, and see how multiple copies of a single clothing pattern are produced. The film ends with short segments of several MGM features.
Cavalcade of the Academy Awards
8.5/10
This 1940 presentation features highlights of earlier (1928 onward) Oscar ceremonies including Shirley Temple and Walt Disney, plus acceptance speeches for films released in 1939 with recipients and presenters including Vivien Leigh, Judy Garland, Hattie McDaniel, Fay Bainter, Mickey Rooney, Thomas Mitchell, Sinclair Lewis, and more, with host Bob Hope.
Myrna Loy: So Nice to Come Home To
7.4/10
This tribute to Myrna Loy is organized chronologically with a few photographs, many film clips, a handful of personal appearances, and a detailed commentary delivered on camera by Kathleen Turner. Turner walks us through Loy's career as a dancer and an actress miscast as an exotic. She comes into her own as a grown-up women: shrewd, funny, decorous, and sexy - in "Manhattan Melodrama" and "The Thin Man." Her volunteer work during World War II, later stage work, and progressive politics come in for admiration as well. It's her style - seen best in her roles as a wife of charm and independence - that's captured and celebrated here.
The 400 Million
6.7/10
The 400 million people of China are heirs to a great civilization, as their pagodas and stone lions can attest. But they are under attack from the Japanese. Civilian refugees walk, stumble, crawl to escape the destruction of their cities... While in the China of tradition, water buffalo still work the paddies and camels cross the desert, modern China is now a republic founded by Dr. Sun Yat-sen, with modern schools, heavy industry, large engineering projects... The government of Chiang Kai-shek resists the Japanese invasion from the coast. Madame Chiang receives a cheque from the U.S.A. for war relief. War production continues in distant villages safe from the grasp of the Japanese. With modern weapons the Chinese are pursuing their struggle behind enemy lines. And still their opponent persists in his reprisal bombings of civilian targets. "Will these people win?"
Famous Monster: Forrest J Ackerman
7.7/10
Famous Monster takes a fast-paced, colorful look at the life of science fiction's greatest fan - Forrest J. Ackerman, whose 85 year love affair with the genre helped bring it into the mainstream and shape the way we view science fiction today.
Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?
7.1/10
Period music, film clips and newsreel footage combined into a visual exploration of the American entertainment industry during the Great Depression.
Albert Schweitzer
6/10
This biographical drama/part-time documentary, narrative written by Dr. Albert Schweitzer and spoken by Frederic March, traces the life of Dr. Schweitzer (with actors playing the characters), from his birth in France up to about the age of 30 when he makes the decision to go to French Equatorial Africa and build his jungle hospital. The latter half of the film encompasses a full day in the hospital-village following the 80s-plus Samaritan in his daily rounds.
