A TASTE OF HONEY (Tony Richardson, 1961).
Lonely teenager Jo (Rita Tushingham) lives with her neglectful, promiscuous
mother (Dora Bryan) in Manchester. After a brief romance with a black
sailor, she finds herself pregnant, and her mother is too busy getting
married to a lout (Robert Stephens) to pay much attention. Jo decides
to make it on her own, with the help of a young gay man (Murray Melvin).
Based on a play by Shelagh Delaney, who co-wrote the script with Richardson,
the picture was part of a trend in the late 50s to early 60s, in which
the lives of working class characters were portrayed with a freshness
and verve that was completely new in British film. Most of the time
the subjects were the "angry young men" that had become a dominant theme
in British drama since John Osborne's Look Back in Anger. With
its focus on a female protagonist, and resistance to stereotypes about
women, A Taste of Honey has a special feeling and relevance.
One of the picture's main strengths is its naturalistic location photography
by Walter Lassally, conveying the untidy atmosphere of urban life. The
script is pleasantly unpredictable, with some witty yet believably sharp
repartee, especially between Jo and her mother. Rita Tushingham, an
unknown who was picked by Richardson from two thousand applicants, is
a revelation. She's not beautiful; in fact, she's rather odd-looking
with her big eyes and gawky mannerisms, and she's perfect for the role
of this determined, prideful, wounded girl. Because it's her first film,
she doesn't receive top billing (instead getting one of those "And introducing"
credits) but she's the star all the way.
The device of the gay best friend has now become a cliché. At
the time it was practically unheard of. In any case, the relationship
between Jo and Geoffrey is not a bit hackneyed - it's ambivalent and
rather complex. The film's treatment of unwed pregnancy is emotionally
honest and direct - one of the best scenes has Tushingham hitting a
doll that her friend has given her for "practice," saying that it's
the wrong color, and then confessing that she doesn't want the child.
On the negative side of the ledger, the film's music is sometimes intrusive
and has aged badly (a common problem in films from the 60s, for some
reason). And the open-ended finale leaves something to be desired -
I wanted a bit more resolution to the story. Overall, though, this is
one of the better examples of the British New Cinema movement, with
a lead performance in which actress and heroine are poignantly one.
THROUGH A GLASS DARKLY
(Ingmar Bergman, 1961).
David (Gunnar Björnstrand), a writer, is vacationing on an island
with his mentally ill daughter Karin (Harriet Andersson), his teenage
son Minus (Lars Passgård) and Karin's husband (Max von Sydow).
Karin has just been released from a psychiatric hospital, but her condition
is hopeless, and she struggles between lucidity and God- tormented visons,
while the other three cope with their own difficult feelings about her
and each other.
This film marks the point in Bergman's career when he began to reduce
the number of characters in his films, the better to delve deeper into
the spiritual and psychological complexities of their minds and relationships.
With only four performers in the film, against the background of the
rocky, austerely beautiful island of Fårö (which Bergman
later made his home), Through a Glass Darkly has an intensity
and focus that sets it apart from the Swedish director's earlier films.
The photography (Sven Nykvist) is stunningly crisp and clear, arguably
the most beautifully shot of Bergman's black-and-white pictures. And
it boasts a world-class performance by Andersson, who dominates the
film. She is thorougly compelling in a very difficult role. Even the
best actors can have trouble portraying madness - Andersson is passionate,
heartbreaking, scary, and luminous, making this troubled young woman
seem real.
The film is the first in a trilogy about the problem of God (the other
two being Winter Light and The Silence). In a postwar
world cinema of irony and cool, Bergman seemed almost alone in his explicit
concern with this theme. As a director, he was able to convey an appropriate
gravity, along with a sensitivity to character and a skillful dramatic
technique, in order to make religious conflict relevant and vivid. In
this film, Karin's vision of God seems like a natural extension of her
family's experience, a darkness that is both personal and cosmic.
David, the father, embodies the dilemma of the artist in Bergman's
world view - his emotional distance, his use of the suffering of his
daughter as grist for the mill, has terrible consequences, almost crushing
him with guilt, and yet he somehow cannot do otherwise without ceasing
to be an artist. The husband's answer to the God challenge is to be
the perpetual servant, even though he feels his own selfless love to
be ineffectual. The son seems in some ways to be the saddest character
of all - yearning for connection with his father, his vulnerability
invites hurt. Describing the dramatic architecture of the film makes
it seem much more schematic than it is - Bergman knows how to use mood
and atmosphere to present ideas nonverbally, which makes the eventual
revelations of speech more powerful.
Through a Glass Darkly has not been one of the director's universally
admired films. Some have been repelled by its bleak, minimalist aesthetic.
Certainly it seems hermetic compared to the experimental works of his
next phase. beginning with Persona (1966). Some of the element
of struggle and contradiction in Bergman's own relationship to religion
has been projected into the film's style, and I can see how he solved
some of these problems with more insight in later works. Yet I never
fail to be moved by this film, by its compassion, its respect for human
failings, and its eerie evocation of the soul's twilight realm.
PICTURE SNATCHER (Lloyd Bacon, 1933).
James Cagney plays a gangster who, after serving time, decides he wants
to go straight. His guile and familiarity with the underworld gets him
a job as a photographer for a scandal sheet, working under a good natured,
alcoholic editor (Ralph Bellamy). He falls for the daughter (Patricia
Nolan) of the cop who busted him, but then gets in hot water after finagling
his way into a high-profile execution and taking a picture with a hidden
camera.
A mere two years since attaining instant stardom with Public
Enemy, Cagney had made seven pictures, and his screen
persona was well-established - the cocky, lovable tough guy. His style
was a good match with the fast-paced methods of the Warners studio (although
he walked out briefly in '32, until they raised his pay). Picture
Snatcher is a showcase for his personality, and he pushes it to
the limit, with his restlessly agile movements, sly facial expressions,
and wise guy patter. The grapefruit-in-the-girl's-face from Public
Enemy was already legendary, so here we see him push Alice White
(playing a floozy) in the face a couple times. (Sexual politics were
rather primitive in those days.) At the same time, he's believable making
love talk with Nolan.
The story is preposterous, but not so much as to spoil the enjoyment
of watching Cagney making a fool of the cops, the prison warden, and
anyone else who gets in his way. An unexpected pleasure is Ralph Bellamy,
playing a tougher, more engaging character than in the "other man" roles
he got stuck with later on. Picture Snatcher is not high art
by any means. It's not even in the upper tier of Cagney films, but in
terms of escapist entertainment, I have to confess a weakness for these
early Warner Brothers potboilers. They knew how to do more with less.
THE NAKED SPUR (Anthony Mann, 1953).
A bounty hunter (James Stewart) chases down a gunman (Robert Ryan),
while picking up a couple of unwanted partners (Millard Mitchell and
Ralph Meeker) along the way, and falling for a woman (Janet Leigh) who
was on the run with the outlaw. After the capture, they travel through
the mountains to return the criminal for the reward, but tensions within
the group threaten to destroy them.
This was the third of Mann's eight films starring Stewart (five of
them westerns), a partnership that helped create a new, harder image
for the actor. The tale is pared down to the minimum: just five characters
in the wilderness, none of them completely trusting the others. The
western form was an opportunity for filmmakers to portray the most basic
human conflicts in elemental form, without having to contend with much
social background. The Naked Spur, considered by many to be Mann's
best film, is a prime example of that.
Shot in the Colorado Rockies, the picture has gorgeous color photography
(by the veteran William Mellor), and a lean, satisfying narrative pace.
In the bad guy role, Robert Ryan is all smiles and wisecracks. It's
one of his better performances. Stewart plays a sullen, obsessed man,
who was cheated out of a ranch by the woman he loved, and has become
bitter against the world. He gets to show his fierce side, and it's
a measure of how good he is that you're not sure for a while if he's
supposed to be a good guy or not. Leigh plays the romantic interest
(twenty years younger than Stewart, and thus has it always been in Hollywood)
and my, she was lovely.
I have to wince when a group of Indians gets wiped out because of the
duplicity of Meeker's character, and all the others have to say is,
"You almost got us killed." Well, I guess I shouldn't expect anything
else from a 50s western (the sequence is brilliantly edited, I admit.)
Give this film points for the ambivalence of Stewart's character, Ryan's
genial villain, the convincingly ugly group dynamics, and Mann's taut,
workmanlike style.
EQUINOX FLOWER (Yasujiro Ozu, 1958).
Ozu's first color film is an intriguing study of double standards.
It begins with a wedding, where a distinguished businessman (Shin Saburi),
a friend of the bride's father, makes a speech in which he extols the
modern practice of marrying for love instead of by the parents' arrangement.
But later, when he discovers that his older daughter (Ineko Arima) has
gotten engaged without his consent, he is outraged and refuses to allow
the marriage.
The unique style of the director's postwar work is in full bloom here:
single shots for each character's dialogue, stationary camera at sitting
level, meditative establishing shots, low-key performances with gentle
coordination of movement. The warm, naturalistic color scheme adds to
the sense of balance. This aesthetic approach creates a feeling of reassurance,
as if to offset the challenging nature of the story.
Athough critics seem to have labeled the film a comedy, stressing its
themes of reconciliaton, the film never takes the easy route. The father
pouts self-righteously throughout the movie. When he is asked by a friend
(Ozu stalwart Chishu Ryu) to talk to his daughter (Yoshiko Kuga) who
has become estranged from her father because of his refusal to recognize
her marriage, you might expect him to see how the situtation could appy
to his own case. But Ozu's insight into human intractability is finer
than that - the father simply doesn't make the connection. Similarly,
a subplot in which a foolish woman from Kyoto (Chieko Naniwa) tries
to get her daughter married off, only highlights the blindness of the
father, who advises the girl (a friend of his daughter) to disregard
her mother's advice and marry for love.
A subtler theme is the transformation of traditional Japanese values
through western influence. The young people in the film are breaking
with the old ways, and believe in freedom of choice. The difficulties
of the older generation in adjusting to this change is treated with
humor, but sensitively, letting the viewer observe the conflicts involved
without being preached at or otherwise persuaded. The mother (Kinuyo
Tanaka), for instance, understands her daughter's motives better than
her father, but this is shown rather than told. Resolutions, when they
occur, are not painless or all-encompassing, but fraught with contradictory
feelings, and in this Ozu, as always, is remarkably true to life.
©2003 Chris Dashiell
CineScene
