The
world, or at least the internet, seems to be packed with film buffs these
days. How many of them know squat about film history? How many care about
films that were made before they were born? How many ever watch black-and-white
movies, or non-English language films, not to mention films from the silent
era? In this age of amnesia, many so-called movie lovers couldn't care
less about the history of the art, or the great directors, writers, performers,
and other artists that developed its style. Well, this Film Snob says
you're not a film buff if you don't watch older movies. And apparently
there are quite a few CineScene readers who agree with me, because a lot
of the letters we receive, and many of the pieces that are submitted,
concern older films. That's why I put together this feature called Blasts
from the Past, in which I've collected various reviews and other film
writings by our staff and readers, all about movies that were made 25
or more years ago. Plus a Kurosawa piece by reader Alex Kidd for all you
slackers. Well, I hope we can make this an annual event. I have to hope
for something.....
-- Chris Dashiell, Editor
Bay of Angels
(Jacques Demy, 1963).
Pretty boy Frenchman (Claude Mann) is led by his older wiser office mate
to a gambling spree, where they encounter vivacious Jeanne Moreau. Gambling
as flirtation - pretty boy sidles over to a roulette table where he sees
Jeanne Moreau, and as he calls out his numbers, she, looking for a lucky
charm, calls out pretty boy's numbers. They meet, consummate, and on the
downbeat of their relationship when pretty boy's luck goes bad, he finds
Jeanne at the roulette table calling some other guy's numbers. SLAP! Imagine
a world where people wear suits on vacation, and change into white tuxedos
when they go into the Monte Carlo casinos. Hey, baby: five, red, odd. -- Pat Padua
Number Seventeen (Alfred Hitchcock, 1932).
A magnificent specimen of pure cinema in which nearly everyone (including
a dead body) turns out to be something quite different from what we thought.
Appropriately, what starts as a claustrophobic, single-set, door-slamming
affair suddenly transforms into a full-blooded chase with (excellent miniatures
of) buses, trains, and boats. If the pacing were any slower, one could find
time to complain about the disappearance of the very appealing ingenue halfway
through, but it's all too much fun, and what detail there is receives careful,
subtle attention -- witness the carefully choreographed lighting changes
that accompany a man carrying a lit candle up a staircase. A wonderful surprise.
-- Thor Klippert
Late Spring (Yasujiro Ozu, 1949).
The concept of mono no aware is said to define the essence of Japanese
culture. The phrase means "a sensitivity to things," the ability to experience
a direct connection with the world without the necessity of language. Ozu
sums up this philosophy in this serene depiction of the acceptance of life's
inevitabilities and the sadness that follows it. The film shows the pressure
in Japanese families for children to be married as the "natural order" of
things, regardless of their wishes. A widowed Professor, Somiya (Chishu
Ryu), must face the inevitability of giving up his daughter, Noriko (Setsuko
Hara) to marriage. Noriko, however, wants only to continue to live at home
and care for her father, and insists that marriage is not for her. Yet the
social pressure to marry continues to build, coming not only from her father
but also from Somiya's sister Masa (Haruko Sugimura) whom she calls "Auntie,"
and from a friend, the widower Onodera (Masao Mishima) who has recently
remarried. Masa, unrelenting, presents Noriko with a prospect named Satake
who reminds her of actor Gary Cooper, but she is still reluctant. To make
it easier for Noriko to decide, Somiya tells her that he is planning to
remarry and she will no longer need to take care of him. Noriko's agonizes
over her decision and her once beaming face increasingly carries hints of
resignation. At the end, the old man sits alone peeling a piece of fruit
as the ocean waves signal the inexorable flow of timeless things.
-- Howard Schumann
Mr.
Deeds
Goes to Town
(Frank Capra,1936).
One of Capra's populist comedies about the social and political situation
of his day. Gary Cooper plays Longfellow Deeds, an unassuming young man
who inherits a huge amount of money from an uncle he barely knows. He hits
the big city and is set upon by many members of the monied society. Although
he never acts the fool, he is made out to be one by Babe Bennett (Jean Arthur),
a journalist who wants the big story and pretends to be a damsel in distress
to get close to Deeds. Eventually, Longfellow realizes his best course of
action is to give away the money to those who need it. The greedy vultures
around him try to have him committed so they can take away his money. With
its theme of wealthy vs. poor (and this is deep into the Depression, so
we're talking breadlines poor), the picture contrasts the big city (bad,
greedy, morally corrupt) with the small town (good, upstanding, moral).
It makes its point well and doesn't bang you over the head with it. It is
heartfelt - amusing and sweet - bitter and angry - sad and depressed - but
ultimately hopeful. During the final courtroom drama, I was on pins and
needles. A wonderful film.
-- Lovell Mahan-Moutaw
The
Heiress (William Wyler, 1949).
Ruth and Augustus Goetz wrote the screenplay, adapted from their stage play,
which is a not unfaithful version of Henry James's novel Washington Square.
The
film is "opened up" intelligently and successfully, the period details are
convincing; and Edith Head, as usual, gives good costume. I have always
admired Olivia deHavilland; this film convinces me that she's truly a great
actress. An actress who plays Catherine Sloper has to swing quickly and
credibly from self-possession to timidity; she also has to register several
different kinds of humiliation in succession, and then a hardening and deviousness.
It's a wonderful role for a first-rate actress. DeHavilland exceeded my
expectations. In fact, I can't think of a better film performance by an
American actress in the thirties and forties, and that includes the lion's
share of Bette Davis's career. Ralph Richardson, on the other hand, is a
disappointment -- too stiff, I thought, even for the role of Dr. Sloper.
Montgomery Clift, as Catherine's fortune-hunting suitor, is wonderfully
seductive and callow. Aaron Copland wrote the score -- not too hot, not
too cold, just about right. The film is completely absorbing and highly
recommended.
-- Les Phillips
Chushingura
(Hiroshi Inagaki, 1962).
Based on the 1748 kabuki play Kanadehon Chushingura, this is one
of the most lavish interpretations of a true event that is supposed to
have occurred in 1703. Thus far, there are more than 200 film versions
of the tale of 47 ronin (masterless samurai) who, after the unjust and
fatal punishment of their lord, set in motion a move towards revenge that
takes years to draw retributive blood. Chushingura presents a thorny
ethical dilemma for the 47 ronin. After their master is unjustly forced
to commit hari-kari, the now masterless samurai vow to behead the corrupt
and carnal Lord Kira (Chûsha Ichikawa) in order to restore their
clan's honor. But to take down Kira, the ronin are disrespecting the order
of the Shogunate, of which Kira is a member. Much of the drama is comprised
of honorable and courageous men wondering whether or not they should take
down The Man. They weigh the pros and cons. They debate. They plan. They
revise. They ponder. They debate again. But they eventually come to the
inexorable conclusion that knowing what is right and doing something about
it are two different things that not every man knows how to do. Just ask
Hamlet. Or the United Nations Security Council.
With
a reverence and an appreciation for the drama inherent in stillness and
silence, Inagaki takes his time drawing us into the daily rituals of these
homeless samurai, lacking a purpose and a direction. He also lets the
mundane relationships between the ronin and their wives and lovers play
out, instead of cutting right away to the cutting and the hacking and
the blood-letting that you would expect in a samurai piece. The tender
love and sacrifice shared between the lead ronin, Chamberlain Kuranosuke
Oishi (Koshiro Matsumoto) and his wife, Riku Oichi (Setsuko Hara), is
geniune and moving. Chushingura is essentially a genre film, a
part of the jidai-geki or period film set before the Meiji Restoration
in 1868. It's also a part of the "chanbara" or swordfight film tradition.
Working within the parameters of this well-known chapter of Japanese folklore,
told over and over again in kabuki theater, poetry, literature, song,
and film, Inagaki illuminats the genre superbly. The cast is immense -
sizable enough to dwarf even the participation of several icons of the
Japanese cinema, including Takashi Shimura and Toshirô Mifune. Shimura's
role of a bodyguard to the corrupt Lord Kira isn't much more than a cameo,
while Mifune is essentially playing a pumped-up supporting role, a mercenary
of negotiable loyalty, similiar to his character in Kurosawa's Yojimbo
(1961). But the rest of the cast is so good, you don't really miss seeing
more of Mifune or Shimura. Chushingura is not a star piece; it's
genre retelling folklore. However, it could stand some fresh air. Too
much of the story takes place under a roof. Inagaki seems to have recognized
this -- at one point the walls of a house are knocked away, panel by panel,
during a ferocious samurai battle. Chushingura is a challenging,
purposeful epic told by a Japanese master, largely unheralded by Western
critics.
-- Scott McGee
I Am Cuba (Mikhail Kalatozov, 1964).
Filmed in Spanish and dubbed in Russian, this unique collaboration between
Russian director Kalatozov (The Cranes are Flying), the poet Yevgeni
Yevtushenko, and writer Enrique Pineda Barnet, dramatizes the conditions
that led to the 1959 Cuban revolution. Set in the late 1950s, when a ragtag
bunch of students, workers, and peasants organized to overthrow the corrupt
regime of dictator Fulgencio Batista, the film is divided into four sections.
The first depicts the American-run gambling casinos and prostitution in
Havana. The next shows a farmer burning his sugar cane when he learns he
is going to lose his land to United Fruit. Another describes the suppression
of students and dissenters at Havana University, and the final sequence
shows how government bombing of mountain fields induced farmers to join
with the rebels in the Sierra Maestre mountains. The final scene is a triumphal
march into Havana to proclaim the revolution. Marvelously photographed by
Sergei Urusevsky and using acrobatic camerawork by Alexandr Kalzaty, some
of the shots and distorted camera angles are so staggering as to be practically
unbelievable. In one sequence, the camera lifts off from a hotel rooftop,
takes in the Havana skyline, descends several floors, winds its way through
the poolside party-goers, and then takes you for a swim in the pool in one
continuous shot. The caricatures are broad (reminiscent of Eisenstein) but
are presented with such exuberance that it hardly seems to matter. Audacious
and imaginative, I Am Cuba is a revelation, a film of true visionary
poetry, transcending the genre of advocacy filmmaking to reach a pinnacle
of cinematic art.
-- Howard Schumann
Network
(Sidney Lumet, 1976).
Many who have never seen this film know its infamous tagline ("I'm mad
as hell, and I'm not going to take it anymore!"), but they may not know
what a singular social satire they've missed. What was at the time of
its production a scathing cautionary tale on where television was headed,
today appears as an embarrassingly prophetic exposé on just how
far it has sunk. In this world, nothing is sacred in the pursuit of ratings.
Everything from interpersonal relationships to political movements are
corrupted by the drive for market share. This theme has been done elsewhere,
and it's an easy target. It has seldom, if ever, been so savagely attacked
with the pitch perfect balance between pointedly over-the-top humor and
painful honesty. Terrific performances abound, as three of the film's
four Oscar wins (Peter Finch, Faye Dunaway, Beatrice Straight) came in
the acting categories. Even the drab, flat photography and colorless art
direction typical of this era doesn't detract much from the film's vigor.
-- Michael Buck
Sunrise (F.W. Murnau, 1927).
The movies are now buried under digital animation and up-to-the-minute
computer graphics. The classic silver screen sems to have been lost to
newer generations, but this is one classic that shouldn't stay covered
in the gray dust of yesteryear. Sunrise is a story of redemption,
forgiveness, and the restoration of sanity through the healing powers
of love. After falling for the seductive and sinister city woman (Margaret
Livingstone), the farmer husband (George O'Brien) hatches a plan to drown
his wholesome country wife (Janet Gaynor). Tormented by his task, the
husband pushes his anguish aside at the thought of being free to live
in the city with his mistress. He puts his plan in motion by taking the
wife boating for the afternoon, and like a man possessed starts to come
towards her. But when she folds her hands in prayer to plead for her life,
he snaps out of his lust-induced trance and rows to shore, only to have
his wife run from him in horror. The husband runs after his true love
to win her trust and beg her forgiveness. They then find themselves in
the fast-paced city, which becomes a symbol of the couple's emotional
separation and eventual unity. One of the most poignant scenes shows them
entering a church, walking in on a wedding ceremony still in progress.
Realizing that he nearly destroyed his own vows, the husband reestablishes
his marriage with his wife outside the church.
Directed with exquisite style by the great German director Murnau,
Sunrise is a cinematic triumph that transcends the era of its making,
rising above melodrama in its beautiful interpretation of the strength
of love in the most dire of situations. It is the story of a tested love
that overcame the biggest test of them all, showing that love can lead
people to extraordinary feats. Sunrise is a touching film that
resounds deeply for those who have ever been in love.
-- Erika Lake
I'm All Right Jack (John Boulting, 1959).
Set just after the war, this classic comedy focuses on the struggle between
management and workers. Ian Carmichael plays a bumbling upper-class innocent
named Stanley Windrush, recently discharged from the army and out of work.
Despite being from a rich family, he is penniless and hoping for a place
in industry.
He soon finds that his innocent honesty makes him unemployable in management,
so, when offered a job on the shop floor in his rich uncle's factory.
he reluctantly agrees. The factory union representative is Fred Kite,
played perfectly by Peter Sellers. Kite is suspicious of Windrush from
the start, and assumes he is an undercover man trying to make the workers
do more work for less pay. However, when the personnel manager decides
to sack Windrush, Kite suddenly comes down on the other side and threatens
a strike if he is not reinstated. We soon find that Windrush's uncle Bertram
(Dennis Price) and the slimy con man Sid Cox (Richard Attenborough) have
put Windrush in place as part of a massive con, but what they don't bargain
for is his idiotic honesty, and the plan soon falls into disarray. With
heavy emphasis on the class struggle, I'm All Right Jack is often
more bitter than it is humerous, but the film is a must for Peter Sellers
fans, as it features one of his more interesting characters.
-- Mark Ashley
The Man With a Movie Camera
(Dziga Vertov, 1929).
This piece of eye candy from the late silent era has a lot more going
on than is possible to grasp in one viewing. Every camera trick in the
toolbag is employed to make a fascinating visual trip through a day in
the life of a Russian city. More than that, though, it seems to take a
position on, or at least describe, work and play in a communist society.
My first time through, I was merely dazzled by the visuals. Since the
film is presented with no intertitles, the intent of the film may not
be immediately evident to those of us used to the narrative conventions
of sound films. On the second pass, with the aid of the DVD commentary
track provided by art professor Yuri Tsivian, I began to see more than
just a fun experiment in "pure cinema". I expect further viewings to reveal
even more.
-- Michael Buck
Awaara (Raj Kapoor, 1951).
American musicals in their heyday were mostly about the lives of prominent
show business personalities or small town middle class Americana, never
about the outcast or the urban slum dweller. This is not the case with
the films of Indian director Raj Kapoor, whose films call attention to
the less fortunate and, in the case of Awaara, the vagabond whose
life of crime is the inevitable outcome of growing up in the slums. Here,
Kapoor's real father (Prithviraj Kapoor) plays a heartless judge who accuses
his pregnant wife (Leela Chitnis) of infidelity after she is kidnapped
by bandits. The stern judge staunchly believes that a thief's son will
always be a thief and a good man's son will always turn out good. In a
series of flashbacks, the film dramatizes the unfortunate consequences
of this belief system.
The
son, Raju, played by the director as an adult and by his brother Sashi
Kapoor as a child, is born on the streets and grows up in the slums. Under
the guidance of a ruthless bandit named Jagga (K. N. Singh), he turns
to stealing to help support his mother. Raj has little to comfort him
except for a picture hanging on the bare walls of his house of Rita, his
childhood sweetheart played by the stunning Nargis, a real life lover
of Kapoor. The romance between Raj and Rita is one of the central motifs
of the film, and the chemistry between the two is electric. Raju, the
tramp, is forced to live on his wits, but does so with humor and a Chaplinesque
charm. Awaara is reminiscent of both 40s film-noir with its dark
cobblestone streets and menacing shadows, and, in its social conscience,
of the great Italian neo-realists like de Sica. But basically, Awaara
is still in the Bollywood tradition; that means drama, romance, music,
comedy, and action -- all put together in a total package to appeal to
a wide audience. With great songs and dances, amazing dream sequences,
style and panache, strong drama, and an inspiring message, it is not surprising
that Awaara became one of the most popular films in Indian cinematic
history. It is one of my favorites as well.
-- Howard Schumann
The Great Dictator (Charles Chaplin,
1940).
The Museum of Fine Arts, here in Boston, showed a new print of The
Great Dictator last Saturday night. I hadn't realized that it was
Chaplin's first talking film. I'd also forgotten how funny it is. I saw
films like City Lights and Modern Times in college. At that
time, I had a sort of intellectual appreciation of his movement -- his
walking/dancing, his slapstick -- but it didn't move me or make me laugh
that much. I get it now. It took guts and skill to make a film about Hitler
in 1940 that is earnest and angry, but can also represent Hitler as a
bit of a funny, laughable child. Chaplin's Hitler ("Adenoid Hynkel") does
a famous little ballet with a globe that turns out to be a balloon --
the scene is somehow silly, light as a feather, and profound, all at once.
And nothing can match Chaplin's parody of Hitler's crazed stadium-oratory
-- pidgin German, various barking fits of guttural, all descending into
abject gibberish, screaming, flailing, provoking the applause of what
seem like millions of auditors . . . I laughed and laughed.
How
did it feel to see this film in 1940? I guess it depends on your political
view, what you knew, whether you were Jewish. The more interesting question:
what was it like to see the film in 1945, or 1947, as the revelations
were coming forth from Nuremberg. Jack Oakie plays Napolini, an even more
childish rival dictator. In some ways he steals the scenes he has with
Chaplin. I'd certainly forgotten how good he was. Chaplin's monologue
at the end once seemed too Popular Front, too liberal-sentimental. Maybe
it's current events, maybe it's that I was having such a good time at
the movies, but on Saturday night, it went down just fine. Someone at
the MFA decided it would be a good idea to have a Chaplin granddaughter
around after the film for Q and A. Some of Chaplin's grandchildren are
very young. This one, I think, was certainly born after he died, a sort
of twentysomething actress-model-whatever. She listened to Q but provided
no A, or anything else of interest. But boy, does the film endure.
-- Les Phillips
Me
and Kurosawa: Why I Love the Master by Alex Kidd
Let
me start out my take on Kurosawa with a little story from my youth. In
1994 I had my first taste of bitter poverty living with my aunt for the
summer in a Missouri backwoods, one-cow town. Just 14 years of age, my
entertainment at that time consists mainly of two separate but equal camps:
Nintendo and film. Sex, skateboarding, drugs and guitar were still a few
years off on the horizon, so Nintendo or movies it was. My aunt, too poor
to cough up the scant few bucks it cost to rent a movie, opted to instead
drop us off at the local library where the movies and books were free,
dusty, and out of date. Little did I know what a great gift this lack
of modern cinema had brought upon me. Instead of watching shitfest like
Super Mario Bros. or It's Pat, I was exposed to the likes
of Citizen Kane, Some Like it Hot, and The African Queen.
Did I know that these were all cinema classics that I should worship and
drool over? Hell no, all I knew was that watching an old black-and-white
film was better than having to sit through another one of my aunt's long-winded
stories, any day of the week. Sure, there were some woofers in there as
well, like Ernest Goes to Camp and the collective works of Benji,
but for the most part it was all Hollywood gold. After watching every
single Hollywood movie (sometimes I would sit through 2 or 3 a day) that
the horrible malnourished library had to offer, I was left with two choices:
Dorf Goes Auto Racing or an odd-looking Japanese flick called The
Seven Samurai.. Well, I picked the Dorf movie, but then again I was
only 14, and as every kid knows: Midgets + Cars = Hilarity. Besides, the
Japanese movie was a whopping three hours long and subtitled. Subtitles
are like the kiss of death for movies when it comes to young teenagers.
Hell, if I wanted to read, I would have checked out one of those books
long ago. But now I had no choice, I had to check out the Samauri movie.
Time to bite the bullet.
The
big surprise was that within fifteen minutes of pressing play I was riveted
to the screen. Being 14, I didn't quite understand why I enjoyed this
movie so much; all I knew was that it kicked some serious ass. I didn't
comprehend Kurosawa's masterful use of space, his complex, conflicted
characters, his wonderfully choreographed action sequences. I just wanted
the samuari to win, the bandits to lose, and the villagers to live happily
ever after. When the movie was over it seemed like three hours had passed
in half an hour. And that, my friend, is the genius behind Kurosawa. Unlike
some directors who feel like they need to hit you over the head with a
titanium sledgehammer to show how great they are behind the camera, Kurosawa's
cinematic brilliance is transparent. He doesn't have to make grand statements
to prove himself. Rather, he lets his workmanship speak for itself in
the nuances of his films, like the skillful use of his favorite transition,
the wipe, or the how he used camera angles to balance out the scenes.
His ingenuity is so unobtrusive you hardly know it's there, yet in the
end you always feel like you've just watched another great Kurosawa film.
So
who exactly was this Kurosawa cat anyway? First of all, he's probably
the most well known Japanese director of all time, at least in the West.
He's been the architect behind a quintessential collection of materworks
that every movie buff worth his weight in DVDs know, including but not
confined to Red Beard, High and Low, Ikiru, Yojimbo,
Throne of Blood, The Hidden Fortress, Rashomon, and
of course, his magnum opus, The Seven Samurai. Even his less acclaimed
films, such as Drunken Angel or Sanjuro, are worth checking
out, if only to catch a glimpse of a mastermind on his off day. Rashomon,
his meditation on the subjectivity of reality, was the flick that broke
him through to the West and made him into the really, really big figure
that he is today, yet in his home country the movie went widely unnoticed.
Like many Japanese directors that are worshipped outside of their home
country, Kurosawa is seen as just another director by his own people.
Why is this? Probably because, unlike his contemporaries, his style is
seen as distinctly "Western" and therefore inaccessible to most Japanese
audiences.
During
the golden age of Japanese cinema, when Ozu was directing minimalist films
with static camera angles, and Mizoguchi was making thirty different variations
of the same story (the Japanese woman in peril), Kurosawa was forging
new ground and making kickass flicks that dealt with contemporary Japanese
predicaments (the everlasting conflict between traditional and modern,
the fatalist preoccupation of the Japanese populace, etc.), filtered through
a "Westernized" window that let the rest of the world peer onto Japanese
stories and aesthetics. He was definitely a free thinker in what was at
the time a very conformist Japanese society. I guess I could go into all
the theory behind his style, the way he took the Japanese method, turned
it on its head and filtered it through Western influences like John Ford's
classic Hollywood westerns, American pulp crime stories, and even Shakespeare's
plays, but in the end these points are pretty boring to read. In the end,
all you need to realize is that his movies rocked, pure and simple.
But
before you run out to the video store and whip out your rental card, a
word to the wise. If you've never seen a Kurosawa masterpiece, check out
the films with Toshirô Mifune in them first. Not that the others
aren't worth watching, it's just that the ones with Mifune are better.
Mifune was the most famous of Kurosawa's stock actors, a rabid alcoholic,
and a superb performer. He was the real McCoy. Next time you find yourself
cornered in an alley, surrounded by muggers with switchblades, just ask
yourself, "What would Toshirô Mifune do?" and start smashing some
heads in. There's just something about seeing Mifune act in Kurosawa's
films; it's like you're watching reality itself. The relationship between
the two was definitely mutual, because without Kurosawa, Mifune's career
never really went anywhere ("I am proud of nothing I have done other than
with him" were his exact words) and without Mifune, Kurosawa's films definitely
took a dive in quality. Sure, he managed to pull a few more classics out
of his ass (like Kagemusha and Ran), but in general his
films seemed to lack that certain intangible quality without Mifune.
Not that the declining in his film's quality had any effect
on his status as a legend in the film industry. The classics from his
salad days were enough to influence just about every prominent director
in today's craptacular Hollywood landscape. Says George Lucas: "Kurosawa
was one of film's true greats. His ability to transform a vision into
a powerful work of art is unparalleled." I don't think anyone's going
be saying that about Lucas' weak directing in Attack of the Clones,
but it's the thought that counts. Says Steven Spielberg: "He was the pictorial
Shakespeare of our time. What encourages me is that he is the only director
who, right up until the end of his life, continued to make films that
were recognised as classics." Hell, that thick browed Martin Scorsese
even made a cameo in one of Kurosawa's final films, Dreams, and
dude can't even act! This,
along with the plethora of Hollywood remake (A Fistful of Dollars
was a nod to Yojimbo, The Magnificent Seven was the wild
west version of The Seven Samurai) only goes to show the lasting
effect his genius had on directors for generations to come. In my mind,
the true test of his universal appeal comes from the fact that his three-hour-long
Seven Samurai was able to keep my full attention when I was a snot-nosed
teenager with the attention span of a gnat, for every second of its duration.
This is no easy feat. Don't believe me? Try taking your 14-year-old cousin
to an Ingmar Berman film and see how fast he wants to get back to capping
cops on Grand Theft Auto 3.
-- Alex Kidd
The
world, or at least the internet, seems to be packed with film buffs these
days. How many of them know squat about film history? How many care about
films that were made before they were born? How many ever watch black-and-white
movies, or non-English language films, not to mention films from the silent
era? In this age of amnesia, many so-called movie lovers couldn't care
less about the history of the art, or the great directors, writers, performers,
and other artists that developed its style. Well, this Film Snob says
you're not a film buff if you don't watch older movies. And apparently
there are quite a few CineScene readers who agree with me, because a lot
of the letters we receive, and many of the pieces that are submitted,
concern older films. That's why I put together this feature called Blasts
from the Past, in which I've collected various reviews and other film
writings by our staff and readers, all about movies that were made 25
or more years ago. Plus a Kurosawa piece by reader Alex Kidd for all you
slackers. Well, I hope we can make this an annual event. I have to hope
for something.....
The
film is "opened up" intelligently and successfully, the period details are
convincing; and Edith Head, as usual, gives good costume. I have always
admired Olivia deHavilland; this film convinces me that she's truly a great
actress. An actress who plays Catherine Sloper has to swing quickly and
credibly from self-possession to timidity; she also has to register several
different kinds of humiliation in succession, and then a hardening and deviousness.
It's a wonderful role for a first-rate actress. DeHavilland exceeded my
expectations. In fact, I can't think of a better film performance by an
American actress in the thirties and forties, and that includes the lion's
share of Bette Davis's career. Ralph Richardson, on the other hand, is a
disappointment -- too stiff, I thought, even for the role of Dr. Sloper.
Montgomery Clift, as Catherine's fortune-hunting suitor, is wonderfully
seductive and callow. Aaron Copland wrote the score -- not too hot, not
too cold, just about right. The film is completely absorbing and highly
recommended.
With
a reverence and an appreciation for the drama inherent in stillness and
silence, Inagaki takes his time drawing us into the daily rituals of these
homeless samurai, lacking a purpose and a direction. He also lets the
mundane relationships between the ronin and their wives and lovers play
out, instead of cutting right away to the cutting and the hacking and
the blood-letting that you would expect in a samurai piece. The tender
love and sacrifice shared between the lead ronin, Chamberlain Kuranosuke
Oishi (Koshiro Matsumoto) and his wife, Riku Oichi (Setsuko Hara), is
geniune and moving. Chushingura is essentially a genre film, a
part of the jidai-geki or period film set before the Meiji Restoration
in 1868. It's also a part of the "chanbara" or swordfight film tradition.
Working within the parameters of this well-known chapter of Japanese folklore,
told over and over again in kabuki theater, poetry, literature, song,
and film, Inagaki illuminats the genre superbly. The cast is immense -
sizable enough to dwarf even the participation of several icons of the
Japanese cinema, including Takashi Shimura and Toshirô Mifune. Shimura's
role of a bodyguard to the corrupt Lord Kira isn't much more than a cameo,
while Mifune is essentially playing a pumped-up supporting role, a mercenary
of negotiable loyalty, similiar to his character in Kurosawa's Yojimbo
(1961). But the rest of the cast is so good, you don't really miss seeing
more of Mifune or Shimura. Chushingura is not a star piece; it's
genre retelling folklore. However, it could stand some fresh air. Too
much of the story takes place under a roof. Inagaki seems to have recognized
this -- at one point the walls of a house are knocked away, panel by panel,
during a ferocious samurai battle. Chushingura is a challenging,
purposeful epic told by a Japanese master, largely unheralded by Western
critics.
Directed with exquisite style by the great German director Murnau,
Sunrise is a cinematic triumph that transcends the era of its making,
rising above melodrama in its beautiful interpretation of the strength
of love in the most dire of situations. It is the story of a tested love
that overcame the biggest test of them all, showing that love can lead
people to extraordinary feats. Sunrise is a touching film that
resounds deeply for those who have ever been in love. 
He soon finds that his innocent honesty makes him unemployable in management,
so, when offered a job on the shop floor in his rich uncle's factory.
he reluctantly agrees. The factory union representative is Fred Kite,
played perfectly by Peter Sellers. Kite is suspicious of Windrush from
the start, and assumes he is an undercover man trying to make the workers
do more work for less pay. However, when the personnel manager decides
to sack Windrush, Kite suddenly comes down on the other side and threatens
a strike if he is not reinstated. We soon find that Windrush's uncle Bertram
(Dennis Price) and the slimy con man Sid Cox (Richard Attenborough) have
put Windrush in place as part of a massive con, but what they don't bargain
for is his idiotic honesty, and the plan soon falls into disarray. With
heavy emphasis on the class struggle, I'm All Right Jack is often
more bitter than it is humerous, but the film is a must for Peter Sellers
fans, as it features one of his more interesting characters. 
This piece of eye candy from the late silent era has a lot more going
on than is possible to grasp in one viewing. Every camera trick in the
toolbag is employed to make a fascinating visual trip through a day in
the life of a Russian city. More than that, though, it seems to take a
position on, or at least describe, work and play in a communist society.
My first time through, I was merely dazzled by the visuals. Since the
film is presented with no intertitles, the intent of the film may not
be immediately evident to those of us used to the narrative conventions
of sound films. On the second pass, with the aid of the DVD commentary
track provided by art professor Yuri Tsivian, I began to see more than
just a fun experiment in "pure cinema". I expect further viewings to reveal
even more.
The
son, Raju, played by the director as an adult and by his brother Sashi
Kapoor as a child, is born on the streets and grows up in the slums. Under
the guidance of a ruthless bandit named Jagga (K. N. Singh), he turns
to stealing to help support his mother. Raj has little to comfort him
except for a picture hanging on the bare walls of his house of Rita, his
childhood sweetheart played by the stunning Nargis, a real life lover
of Kapoor. The romance between Raj and Rita is one of the central motifs
of the film, and the chemistry between the two is electric. Raju, the
tramp, is forced to live on his wits, but does so with humor and a Chaplinesque
charm. Awaara is reminiscent of both 40s film-noir with its dark
cobblestone streets and menacing shadows, and, in its social conscience,
of the great Italian neo-realists like de Sica. But basically, Awaara
is still in the Bollywood tradition; that means drama, romance, music,
comedy, and action -- all put together in a total package to appeal to
a wide audience. With great songs and dances, amazing dream sequences,
style and panache, strong drama, and an inspiring message, it is not surprising
that Awaara became one of the most popular films in Indian cinematic
history. It is one of my favorites as well. 
How
did it feel to see this film in 1940? I guess it depends on your political
view, what you knew, whether you were Jewish. The more interesting question:
what was it like to see the film in 1945, or 1947, as the revelations
were coming forth from Nuremberg. Jack Oakie plays Napolini, an even more
childish rival dictator. In some ways he steals the scenes he has with
Chaplin. I'd certainly forgotten how good he was. Chaplin's monologue
at the end once seemed too Popular Front, too liberal-sentimental. Maybe
it's current events, maybe it's that I was having such a good time at
the movies, but on Saturday night, it went down just fine. Someone at
the MFA decided it would be a good idea to have a Chaplin granddaughter
around after the film for Q and A. Some of Chaplin's grandchildren are
very young. This one, I think, was certainly born after he died, a sort
of twentysomething actress-model-whatever. She listened to Q but provided
no A, or anything else of interest. But boy, does the film endure. 
Let
me start out my take on Kurosawa with a little story from my youth. In
1994 I had my first taste of bitter poverty living with my aunt for the
summer in a Missouri backwoods, one-cow town. Just 14 years of age, my
entertainment at that time consists mainly of two separate but equal camps:
Nintendo and film. Sex, skateboarding, drugs and guitar were still a few
years off on the horizon, so Nintendo or movies it was. My aunt, too poor
to cough up the scant few bucks it cost to rent a movie, opted to instead
drop us off at the local library where the movies and books were free,
dusty, and out of date. Little did I know what a great gift this lack
of modern cinema had brought upon me. Instead of watching shitfest like
Super Mario Bros. or It's Pat, I was exposed to the likes
of Citizen Kane, Some Like it Hot, and The African Queen.
Did I know that these were all cinema classics that I should worship and
drool over? Hell no, all I knew was that watching an old black-and-white
film was better than having to sit through another one of my aunt's long-winded
stories, any day of the week. Sure, there were some woofers in there as
well, like Ernest Goes to Camp and the collective works of Benji,
but for the most part it was all Hollywood gold. After watching every
single Hollywood movie (sometimes I would sit through 2 or 3 a day) that
the horrible malnourished library had to offer, I was left with two choices:
Dorf Goes Auto Racing or an odd-looking Japanese flick called The
Seven Samurai.. Well, I picked the Dorf movie, but then again I was
only 14, and as every kid knows: Midgets + Cars = Hilarity. Besides, the
Japanese movie was a whopping three hours long and subtitled. Subtitles
are like the kiss of death for movies when it comes to young teenagers.
Hell, if I wanted to read, I would have checked out one of those books
long ago. But now I had no choice, I had to check out the Samauri movie.
Time to bite the bullet. 
The
big surprise was that within fifteen minutes of pressing play I was riveted
to the screen. Being 14, I didn't quite understand why I enjoyed this
movie so much; all I knew was that it kicked some serious ass. I didn't
comprehend Kurosawa's masterful use of space, his complex, conflicted
characters, his wonderfully choreographed action sequences. I just wanted
the samuari to win, the bandits to lose, and the villagers to live happily
ever after. When the movie was over it seemed like three hours had passed
in half an hour. And that, my friend, is the genius behind Kurosawa. Unlike
some directors who feel like they need to hit you over the head with a
titanium sledgehammer to show how great they are behind the camera, Kurosawa's
cinematic brilliance is transparent. He doesn't have to make grand statements
to prove himself. Rather, he lets his workmanship speak for itself in
the nuances of his films, like the skillful use of his favorite transition,
the wipe, or the how he used camera angles to balance out the scenes.
His ingenuity is so unobtrusive you hardly know it's there, yet in the
end you always feel like you've just watched another great Kurosawa film.
So
who exactly was this Kurosawa cat anyway? First of all, he's probably
the most well known Japanese director of all time, at least in the West.
He's been the architect behind a quintessential collection of materworks
that every movie buff worth his weight in DVDs know, including but not
confined to Red Beard, High and Low, Ikiru, Yojimbo,
Throne of Blood, The Hidden Fortress, Rashomon, and
of course, his magnum opus, The Seven Samurai. Even his less acclaimed
films, such as Drunken Angel or Sanjuro, are worth checking
out, if only to catch a glimpse of a mastermind on his off day. Rashomon,
his meditation on the subjectivity of reality, was the flick that broke
him through to the West and made him into the really, really big figure
that he is today, yet in his home country the movie went widely unnoticed.
Like many Japanese directors that are worshipped outside of their home
country, Kurosawa is seen as just another director by his own people.
Why is this? Probably because, unlike his contemporaries, his style is
seen as distinctly "Western" and therefore inaccessible to most Japanese
audiences. 
During
the golden age of Japanese cinema, when Ozu was directing minimalist films
with static camera angles, and Mizoguchi was making thirty different variations
of the same story (the Japanese woman in peril), Kurosawa was forging
new ground and making kickass flicks that dealt with contemporary Japanese
predicaments (the everlasting conflict between traditional and modern,
the fatalist preoccupation of the Japanese populace, etc.), filtered through
a "Westernized" window that let the rest of the world peer onto Japanese
stories and aesthetics. He was definitely a free thinker in what was at
the time a very conformist Japanese society. I guess I could go into all
the theory behind his style, the way he took the Japanese method, turned
it on its head and filtered it through Western influences like John Ford's
classic Hollywood westerns, American pulp crime stories, and even Shakespeare's
plays, but in the end these points are pretty boring to read. In the end,
all you need to realize is that his movies rocked, pure and simple. 
But
before you run out to the video store and whip out your rental card, a
word to the wise. If you've never seen a Kurosawa masterpiece, check out
the films with Toshirô Mifune in them first. Not that the others
aren't worth watching, it's just that the ones with Mifune are better.
Mifune was the most famous of Kurosawa's stock actors, a rabid alcoholic,
and a superb performer. He was the real McCoy. Next time you find yourself
cornered in an alley, surrounded by muggers with switchblades, just ask
yourself, "What would Toshirô Mifune do?" and start smashing some
heads in. There's just something about seeing Mifune act in Kurosawa's
films; it's like you're watching reality itself. The relationship between
the two was definitely mutual, because without Kurosawa, Mifune's career
never really went anywhere ("I am proud of nothing I have done other than
with him" were his exact words) and without Mifune, Kurosawa's films definitely
took a dive in quality. Sure, he managed to pull a few more classics out
of his ass (like Kagemusha and Ran), but in general his
films seemed to lack that certain intangible quality without Mifune. 
This,
along with the plethora of Hollywood remake (A Fistful of Dollars
was a nod to Yojimbo, The Magnificent Seven was the wild
west version of The Seven Samurai) only goes to show the lasting
effect his genius had on directors for generations to come. In my mind,
the true test of his universal appeal comes from the fact that his three-hour-long
Seven Samurai was able to keep my full attention when I was a snot-nosed
teenager with the attention span of a gnat, for every second of its duration.
This is no easy feat. Don't believe me? Try taking your 14-year-old cousin
to an Ingmar Berman film and see how fast he wants to get back to capping
cops on Grand Theft Auto 3.