Lumsdal Good , But It Is Overrated By Some

BelSports This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

Janae Milner Easily the biggest piece of Right wing non sense propaganda I ever saw.

Philippa All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

Hot 888 Mama . . . since Germany had, with ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT, the ONLY foreign movie ever to win the "Best Picture" Oscar (1930). Or perhaps WINGS "started the fire," as the first claimant of this top prize in 1928. But both of these "best pictures" focused on WWI (or "the Great War," as it was called until the 1940s), while the 1933 top Oscar winner, CAVALCADE, is far more diffuse, covering 33 years of British history and even throwing in the kitchen sink! Yes, CAVALCADE is the template for PBS' perennial TV favorites, UPSTAIRS DOWNSTAIRS and DOWNTON ABBEY. As Billy Joe realized when he wrote his #1 hit in 1989 cataloging 119 items of mental furniture for the late Beatnik and early Baby Boomer Generations, a montage of headlines can be enough to create quite sentimental Art, reminding your "target audience" of its Youth. CAVALCADE is quite upfront about its intentions, daring viewers to observe a family (no doubt like themselves--in 1933, that is; AND, you have to count the servants, of course, for the realists in the audience) buffeted by "the cavalcade of the New 20th Century." Why not give household members tickets to the Boer War in South Africa, a place at the front of Queen Victoria's funeral cortège, a space at the railing on the Titanic, a white cross in a WWI cemetery, a knighthood, a showgirl, and a champagne toast on two New Year's Eves to bracket everything else? There's a continuing motif here of "ghost riders in the sky," presumably to symbolize the passing cavalcade of this flick's title. Though it is up to History to determine whether this movie OR Billy Joel's ode will be meaningful at the NEXT turn of a century (when everyone with a living memory of the events of either may have passed on), the superimposed battle sequences of WWI in CAVALCADE are among the most stirring martial art ever presented on screen.

ActionFigure CALVACADE "1933"Calvacade needs to be a necessary film for anyone into film history. Starting off with a Vaudville story-line it quickly becomes a lesson in film and screenplay history. Originally a story by Noel Coward, the screenplay is sharp and directive. Scenes are well-thought out and dialogue becomes a crucial focus. The performances age with all the makeup, but it's charming. I'd watch it again. Many times.TCM brings it again. Highly recommended.

calvinnme I enjoyed this film, not so much as a piece of entertainment that still holds up today, but as a moment frozen both in time and geography. Unlike "42nd Street" and "Dinner at Eight" which are other films from 1933 that I think most Americans would find very accessible today, you might not care for Cavalcade if you don't know what to look for.This film is totally British in its perspective and it is also very much in the anti-war spirit that pervaded movies between 1925 and 1935 as WWI came to be seen by nearly all its global participants as a pointless war and caused everyone to lose their taste for fighting another.The British perspective that you have to realize is that the Marryotts are accustomed to being on top - both in the world as England had dominated the globe for centuries, and socially, as they were part of the aristocracy. That didn't mean that they were snobs - they were very friendly and compassionate with their servants. But the point is, they were accustomed to the relationship being their choice and under their control. Suddenly England appears to be on the decline on the world stage and the servants they were so kind to are coming up in the world on their own and don't need their permission to enter society. Downstairs is coming upstairs, like it or not.Downstairs is personified in this film by the Bridges family, Marryot servants that eventually strike out on their own and into business. Eventually the daughter, Fanny, enters into a romance with the Marryot's younger son. When Mrs. Marryot learns the news she is not so shocked as she is resigned to the fact that this is another sign that her world is slipping away. As for Fanny Bridges, she seems to personify post-war decadence as she grows from a child to full womanhood in the roaring 20's. At one point in the film, as a child, she literally dances on the grave of a loved one. This is not a good sign of things to come.If the movie has a major flaw it is that it goes rather slowly through the years 1900 through 1918 and flies through the last fifteen years. Through a well-done montage you get a taste for what British life was like during that time - in many cases it looks like it was going through the same growing pains as American society during that same period - but it's only a taste.Overall I'd recommend it, but just realize that it is quite different in style from American films from that same year.

Qanqor Well, I finally got the chance to see this. It's not an easy movie to get a hold of. For several years, now, I had had only two movies outstanding in my quest to see all the Best Picture films, and this was one of them; the other is Wings. Netflix, usually a wonderful source, mysteriously refused to have either of them. Finally, a friend of mine simply *bought* me the two films. I got the chance to watch Cavalcade tonight.Meh. I guess it's reasonably well made, for what it is. But I don't especially care for what it is. Exactly the kind of movie I don't care for, it's more a sequence of events rather than having any coherent plot. Rather a history lesson of the early 20th century, spun around the lives of two families (and to make that work, it sometimes gets rather contrived).But I think what really harms the movie the most for me is simply when it was made. The movie covers the time frame of 1900-1933, the year the film came out. And if you make a movie like this in 1933, you are necessarily going to have a skewed view of history. We, the viewers, know '33 as the year Hitler came to power and set events in motion that would lead to perhaps the biggest event of the century: WWII. But the film, of course, doesn't know that yet, so when it makes a big deal out of the *Boer War*, it's pretty weird, and hard to get all worked up about it. Similarly, from the time of the movie-- and especially the *place* of the movie (it is a British film), I guess it made sense to have the death of Queen Victoria be a big deal, but as a modern American, I really was unable to shake off a profound feeling of "Who cares????" And you might expect that, again, from 1933, the Great Depression might get some coverage. But no. No time for a trivial little thing like the Great Depression, c'mon, we've gotta tell people all about the hell that was the *Boer War*!!! So I'm afraid this film really didn't do it for me. It wasn't awful, I wouldn't list it as the worst Best Picture (I've seen some I positively *hated*, and I didn't hate this). But it wasn't magnificent.