L'Atalante and 1934

I just watched Jean Vigo's surrealist/realist portrait of the first year of marriage, L'Atalante, on Hulu (thank you, Hulu/Criterion collection collaboration), and it got me thinking about the year it came out, 1934, and how that was a pretty amazing year at ye olde picture shows.

Not only did we get Vigo's only full-length film (he sadly died at the age of 29 from tuberculosis), but we got the following:

 Howard Hawks' Twentieth Century.

Capra's It Happened One Night. I'll put this one up against any romantic comedy, then and now.

The greatest Tarzan film ever made, Tarzan and his Mate, and I'm only slightly swayed by the pre-code nudity.

The first Thin Man, and still one of the best comedy/mystery/romances ever made.

Hitchcock's brilliant English thriller, The Man Who Knew Too Much.

 Bela Lugosi in The Black Cat.

 Bette Davis and Leslie Howard in Of Human Bondage.

The first pairing of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers in The Gay Divorcee.

And Claudette Colbert as Cleopatra in DeMille's epic. Seen here bathing in milk.