Panning for Gold: 1934 — 'Cavalcade' — The newsletter Elon Musk doesn't want you to read!
"Everything passes, even time."
Welcome to Panning for Gold, my new series looking back at every Best Picture winner in the history of the Oscars. Each newsletter will go over some of the other nominees, some historical context for each movie, and a brief review. Scroll to the bottom for a list of all previous entries in the series.
Today’s entry is Frank Lloyd’s “Cavalcade,” a romantic drama about the familial legacy of one British family at the turn of the 20th century.
A little programming note: If you are viewing this after clicking on my tweet with this link, you probably got hit with something like this screen after clicking:
This is not because I seek to spam you, Dear Reader, but rather, because Elon Musk is a petulant manchild who was born on third base and has been told he hit a triple his entire life, an emperor without clothes, a deeply unfunny failson who has built his Telsa empire on the work of others, and who has done everything in his power to burn Twitter to the ground after he bought it as a part of a joke last October.
He has decided to flag as spam any Substack links that anyone shares on his platform as a way to eliminate competition. As a private business owner, that’s certainly within his rights. But it’s a dumb business move and further proof that he has no plan other than shitposting.
The analytics for this newsletter shows that not a lot of my referral traffic comes from Twitter anyway, so I may stop posting links there altogether. (In fact, Twitter makes up a minuscule amount of web traffic for most publications. This should show Musk that he needs free posts from news organizations and users more than we need him, but, alas.)
Anyway, I’m off my screed soapbox now. Thank you for subscribing. On to the movies.
Other Best Picture Nominees
“42nd Street,” a musical about the making of a musical
“A Farewell to Arms,” an adaptation of Ernest Hemingway’s World War I novel
“I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang,” a crime drama film about a falsely imprisoned WWI veteran who escapes to Chicago
“Lady for a Day,” a Frank Capra class drama
“Little Women,” the third (and far from final) adaptation of Louisa May Alcott’s novel
“The Private Life of Henry VIII,” about the king’s six marriages
“She Done Him Wrong,” a Mae West/Cary Grant crime/comedy film
“Smilin' Through,” a romantic drama
“State Fair,” a comedy-drama about a farming family’s visit to the Iowa State Fair
Other Awards
Best Director
Best Art Direction
The Stats
Director: Frank Lloyd
Writers: Reginald Berkeley, Noël Coward (based on his play of the same name)
Producers: Lloyd, Winfield R. Sheehan
Starring: Diana Wynyard, Clive Brook, Una O'Connor
Cinematography: Ernest Palmer
Editing: Margaret Clancey
Studio: Fox Film Corporation
Running time: 112 minutes
Wide release date: April 15, 1933
The Context
“Cavalcade” the play premieres in London in 1931, right before the British General Election. Its patriotic themes played a part in the Conservative Party’s victory, although Coward denies this
“Cavalcade” the film is one of the first to use mild profanity (“hell” and “damn”)
Both the movie and play span 30 years in British life
The Movie
Well. It does right what it says on the tin. “Cavalcade” is full of marches, parades, and processionals as it marks 30 years of British life, from New Year’s Eve 1899 to New Year’s Day 1930.
Sort of like a 1930s “Downton Abbey,” the film primarily follows two families during that time period: The upper-class Marryots, and their servants, the Bridges, as well as a few various friends. A medieval cavalcade marching in the background functions as the intertitle editing function for every year from 1899-1930.
During that timeframe, our main characters will see the Second Boer War, the death of Queen Victoria, the sinking of the RMS Titanic, WWI, the Roaring ‘20s, and the start of the American Great Depression.
As is the case with many of these early Oscar winners, this film is concerned with historical events instead of current ones and is also an adaptation instead of an original idea.
It’s interesting to look back at now as a historical document of just how much technology changed in 30 years at the turn of the century, and how much that scared us. If there is a statement to be made here, it’s that time marches on no matter what, and we’ve been making movies about that fact for as long as the film medium has existed.
As a film, it’s pretty to look at and has some amazing production values, but feels too often like a slog of a Greatest Hits of History and “remember when?” nostalgia moments as a way for a 1930s audience to look back on.
I also think it’s interesting that for all of today’s talk about “global” Oscar winners like “Parasite” and “Everything Everywhere All At Once,” these early Best Picture winners have only featured three outright “American” films.
That wraps it up for now. I’ll be back soon with 1934’s Best Picture winner: “It Happened One Night.”
All ‘Panning For Gold’ newsletters
This newsletter is written by me and edited by my favorite person, Taylor Tompkins. Views expressed here are my own and don’t reflect the opinions of my employer.
If there’s anything you want to see covered in a future newsletter, let me know!
You can find me in other corners of the internet as well, if you so choose. There’s Friends At Dusk, my podcast about Christopher Nolan films; my personal website (which focuses on pop culture, stories about religion and my journalism clips); a Twitter account and a Letterboxd account. Subscribe away.