Screen Snapshots, Series 12, No. 12 (1933) - Weirdly Fun Old Hollywood Home Movies

So, is this weird little 1933 clip-reel worth your nine minutes today? If you get a kick out of seeing long-dead silent stars sweating in the California sun, absolutely.

But if you want things like plots or characters, you are going to absolutely hate this. 🎞️

It is basically a vintage TikTok compilation of Hollywood actors doing random stuff. You get to see people who were probably famous back then, but now they just look like your grandpa's golf buddies.

At one point, a guy waves at the camera so awkwardly that it made me laugh. It is like he forgot how his own arms work.

The whole thing has this very shaky, home-movie energy. It feels a bit like watching The Galloping Fish or some other old comedy, except nobody is trying to be funny here.

They are just... there.

There is this one lady wearing a coat that looks like it was made out of three different dogs. I kept waiting for some kind of narrator to explain who she was, but the sound quality is so fuzzy it sounds like someone speaking underwater.

It reminds me of those old outdoor shorts like A Zuni Kicking Race where the camera just sits there and hopes something interesting happens in front of it.

Mostly, people just stand around and smile. Some of them look like they really, really want to go home and escape the cameraman.

You can almost see the fear in their eyes when the lens gets too close. It is weirdly fascinating because it feels so raw and unscripted.

There is no polish here, unlike some grand drama like Applause from around that same era.

The film print is dirty, scratched up, and the edits are so sudden they kind of give you mild whiplash.

I think my favorite part was a dog that ran across the background of a shot. Nobody acknowledges the dog, it just exists. 🐶

If you like looking into a time machine that has some dirt on the lens, give it a look. Otherwise, you can probably skip this one and watch Beyond the Rockies instead.