Roslindale Monogatari

Bushido Sixteen (Tomoyuki Furumaya, 2010)

2010-11-26T16:47:00.000-05:00

Furumay's last film, The Homeless Student, had a generally fine cast but didn't quite work -- mostly because the actor playing the central character was way too old for the part and wasn't a strong enough performer to overcome this handicap. The twin heroines here, played by Riko Narumi (How To Become Myself) and Kii Kitano (BandAge), are closer to the right age and far more skilled. The film focuses, almost entirely, on these two girls, who initially meet in passing during a junior high kendo competition (where Kitano beats Narumi by a fluke) and then later wind up in the same high school.

Kitano plays a (mostly) happy-go-lucky character, who participates in kendo because she finds it to be fun (and also, one suspects, because her friends also participate); Narumi's character is the daughter of a kendo master (who lives in the dojo run by her father). Narumi is mortified to learn that Kitano doesn't even recall their prior match -- and is more than a bit ferocious in their first practice match. Despite their contrasting dispositions, the two form a (sometimes rocky) friendship during their first year of high school. The two young stars here do a first-rate job in making the relationship credible.

While the film depicts plenty of kendo practice (and competition matches), these scenes mainly serve to establish the nature of each of the characters and the growth of the bond forming between them. The overall pacing is relatively leisurely, but the film seems to flow about the right speed. The cinematography is not especially flashy but is effective. I suspect this gentle little film does not have much chance of getting Western distribution due largely to its own virtues -- its sweetness of tone and its low-key nature.

The Japanese DVD does not include English subtitles, as is now (unfortunately) becoming the norm for releases of this type. Indeed, this DVD lacks even Japanese subtitles.

(Postscript -- for the first time ever, the Amazon Japan shipment containing this DVD got hit by customs charges).

Sweet Little Lies (Hitoshi Yazaki, 2010)

2010-11-19T23:52:00.005-05:00

A picture-perfect couple (Nao Omori and Miki Nakatani) that is bored, bored, bored with their current life. Both drift into adulterous romances. He with an old college classmate (Chizuru Ikewaki), she with a customer (Juichi Kobayashi) who buys one of the cute stuffed bears she makes. Meanwhile, the couple goes on as if nothing has changed (as best they can). Can this marriage be saved?

Yazaki's last film was the excellent, rather edgy Strawberry Shortcakes (about four young woman who were all in a state of romantic disarray). In this film, Yazaki takes a more classical turn, evoking the 50s family dramas of Ozu and Naruse. One gets echoes of Early Spring, Repast, Sudden Rain, Husband and Wife and A Woman's Heart (among others) -- tinged with (perhaps) a dash of HONG Sang-soo. In a nice touch, Yazaki managed to find a surviving cast member from Repast (Akiko Kazami, who also appeared in Shinozaki's Not Forgotten several years ago) to play an elderly neighbor of the couple.

The Japanese DVD is afflicted with the current curse of no subtitles (not even Japanese ones). This is the kind of release that would have gotten English subtitles just a few years ago (Strawberry Shortcakes had them). But this convenience appears to be a thing of the past. In the event this film turns up anywhere in your neighborhood (sadly not all that likely), I recommend it highly.

Pictures:

Collected short takes, newer films

2009-06-05T16:00:00.009-05:00

More collected capsule comments, scavenged mostly from IMDB postings earlier this year (pre-cellulitis). ;~}

Tonari no Totoro / Totoro (Hayao Miyazaki, 1988)

We finally got to watch (for the first time in at least 10 viewings) this animated treasure (involving two little sisters) along with two young girls (sisters aged 6 and 3½ years old). Their parents being adventurous, we watched this in Japanese (with subtitles). Even so, the girls were mesmerized -- and rarely wondered about what was being said -- mostly they understood this pretty intuitively. All had a wonderful time. (When it was over, the girls asked (nicely -- but in vain) for an immediate re-watch).

Chilsu wa Mansu / Chil-su and Man-su (PARK Kwang-su, 1988)

Pretty much the film that kicked off the Korean New Wave. 1988 was the year of the Seoul Olympics and of Korea's first democratic election (alas, the opponents of the former military dictatorship split the vote, allowing the election of the former dictator's hand-picked successor). Movies had been subject to extensive censorship -- and Park began testing how far Korea's nominal democracy would let him go.

The film starts like a romantic comedy, with Chil-su (an aspiring artist -- who quits his commercial art job) pestering a slightly older colleague Man-su (an artist now mainly employed painting walls and billboards) into giving him a job (and providing him a place to sleep). Meanwhile Chil-su has developed a crush on Ji-na, a college girl (and is trying to pretend he is also a college student). Chil-su, it becomes clear has an active fantasy life -- and trouble keeping it disentangled from reality. Man-su, on the other hand, feels trapped -- wanting to leave Korea but unable to get a passport (due to his father's political "crimes"). One day, taking a break from painting a huge (and racy) billboard on top of a building, the two take a break on top of the advertising superstructure. Knowing no one can hear them, they feel free to shout out their frustrations and criticisms -- but (even unheard) they attract attention -- with authorities deciding they are demonstrators of some sort (who might commit a spectacular suicide as a protest). The befuddled sign painters, on the other hand, can't hear anything said to them (too far up -- and too much urban noise) and become increasing distressed (and too intimidated to simply climb down)...

The stars here (AHN Sung-kee as Mansu, PARK Joong-hoon as Chilsu and BAE Jong-ok as Jina) became main-stays of Korean cinema and television over the following decade. Park's later films became even more explicitly critical -- and served as the training ground for a number of Korea's up and coming directors (particularly HUR Jin-ho and LEE Chang-dong, chief among them) as well as stars (such as Moon Sung-keun).

Ti dao bao / Lucky Encounter (Johnnie To, 1992)

A supremely silly tale of thieves who get involved with the ghost of a little boy murdered by his uncle -- and try to help him both get revenge and get re-incarnated successfully.

Hana-bi / Fireworks (Takeshi Kitano, 1997)

The Japanese DVD was re-issued at a lower price -- and is probably the best looking version of this film (and it has English subtitles). I love many bits of this -- but find it to be a bit uneven. And I really really don't like that very last shot.

Yoshida Kiju ga kataru Ozu-san no eiga / The Cinema of Ozu According to Kiju Yoshida (Kiju Yoshida, 1994)

Mainly made up of film clips and some present day footage of locations of Ozu films as seen today (well, as of 1994 or so) -- with voice-over commentary by Yoshida. He sees Ozu as essentially an avant-garde artist. It's an interesting approach, but I'm not entirely convinced. This was a subtitled condensation of four on-hour shows screened on Japanese teelvision.

Kagami no onnatachi / Women in the Mirror (Kiju Yoshida, 2002)

I liked this film about three generations of women (and the lingering impact of Hiroshima) a lot more than I liked Yoshida's (undeniably gorgeous) earlier films (three seen previously). Very effective -- with good performances (Mariko Okada was, of course, excellent).

Sa-kwa (KANG Yi-kwan, 2005)

Sa-kwa means both apple and apology in Korean. A woman gets dumped by her long-term boy friend -- and decides (eventually) to marry a rather dorky admirer. The two develop some rapport, but gradually become estranged -- and the problems become worse when the heroine re-encounters her old boyfriend. This moves almost imperceptibly from romantic comedy territory to something very different. Slow-moving -- but this is what helps the film ultimately stick in one's mind.

Funuke domo, kanashimi no ai wo misero / Funuke: Show Some Love You Losers (Daihachi Yoshida, 2007)

A savagely black comic family drama. An orphaned school girl and her elder half-siblings (who are not related by blood) -- and the ditzy wife of the older brother. Not exactly one big happy family. the younger sister is a would-be manga writer -- who finds her elder sister's travails excellent subject matter. The whole cast is fine but Hiromi Nagasaku as the brother's wife is the real stand-out.

Zui yu fa / Crime and Punishment (Zhao Liang, 2007)

A fascinating documentary, both funny and more than a little scary, about a Chinese Border Police outpost near the Korean border. The bulk of these police are conscripts -- and very young seeming. They clearly received little training as to either crime investigation or the proper way to interact with the people they serve and protect.

Meotjin haru / Dear Enemy (LEE Yoon-ki, 2008)

Possibly my favorite film of the past year or so. Cannes winner JEON Do-yeon (now on indefinite maternity leave) starts out rigid and angry, trying to collect on a bad debt made a year or so before to a former boyfriend, played by HA Jung-woo. He seems to be utterly irresponsible (and way too willing to exploit women -- easy to do, given his charm). Our "hero" has no cash on hand, and when the "heroine" rejects his promise to wire what he owes to her account (soon), they go off together, as he tries to come up with money to re-pay her. Over the course of the day (and into the late evening), our heroine's assessment of her "enemy" and herself gradually shifts. The two leads are utterly phenomenal. An intelligent and immensely kind-hearted film.

Entre les murs / the Class (literally, "within the walls") (Laurent Cantet, 2008)

A very good, but often disconcerting look at a teacher at a middle school in Paris. In this case, the teacher who wrote the memoir on which the film is based plays himself (more or less). It would be interesting to know how much fictionalization has gone on here. In any event, this is going to require considerably more processing (hopefully a DVD will show up).

Tokyo! (Michel Gondry/Leos Carax/BONG Joon-ho, 2008) (seen screened)

2 out of three isn't too bad. The consensus of our household was that Gondry's Interior Design and Bong's Shaking Tokyo were both pretty decent -- while Carax's Merde was pretty shitty. All three are pretty fanciful -- so not sure any of them gives much of a feel for the reality of Tokyo. The best performances were provided by Ayako Fujitani (Steven Seagal's daughter) as an under-appreciated young woman in Gondry's segment and by Teruyuki Kagawa as a ten-year-long (self-imposed) shut-in in Bong's film. Yuu Aoi's presence in the latter is a bit of a luxury, as she doesn't really get much chance to show off her acting ability.

Kimi no tomodachi / literally Your Friends (Ryuichi Hiroki, 2008)

Frustratingly the DVD of this recent film was not subbed. This story of the friendship between between two girls (in grade school and middle school -- and after) is both sweet and intelligent -- with plenty of emotion but without cheap sentimentality. The teen version of the characters are well-played by Ayu Kitaura (the older of the two sisters in Kore'eda's Nobody Knows) as Yuka (a girl with congenital kidney problems) and Anna Ishibashi as Emi (as a girl with a limp due to a childhood accident). If only this would show up in subtitled form I'd highly recommend it.

Sour Strawberries: Japan's Hidden Guest Workers (Tilman Konig & Daniel Kramers, 2008)

An interesting look at Japan's (mis-)handling of "guest" workers doing unskilled work, with a distraction (of sorts) relating to the Japanese-only policy of some businesses in Tokyo. More functional than "artful".

Akiresu to kame / Achilles and the Tortoise (Takeshi Kitano, 2008)

More apparent artistic self-flagellation by Kitano -- this time in his guise as visual artist. Set in childhood, early adulthood and mid-life crisis time. The first segment is absolutely wonderful (and the boy playing the young version of Kitano is marvelous -- really looking and acting much like a young Kitano). The actor playing the middle Kitano is too old -- and looks nothing like Kitano. The saving grace of this portion is Kumiko Aso -- who plays Sachiko, a young woman in love with our hapless hero (and who ultimately marries him). Kanako Higuchi, who takes over as the older Sachiko is equally fine -- and, of course, Kitano is excellent as (a distorted parody of) himself. Not fully successful throughout, but usually intriguing (and occasionally moving).

Yami no kodomotachi / Children of the Dark (Junji Sakamoto, 2008)

Aoi Miyazaki moves into new territory -- as a volunteer worker in Thailand -- who gets embroiled with criminal organ dealers and child prostitution (after encountering a rather jaded Japanese reporter). Sometimes quite harrowing (and extremely disturbing). Reminiscent in some ways of Ann Hui's (artistically superior) Boat People (set in Vietnam), but with a somewhat less convincing script. (Miyazaki is apparently one of the few genuinely socially conscious young stars in Japan -- and she and her actor-brother often invest quite a bit of effort in international do-gooding).

Hyakuman-en to nigamushi onna / The Million Yen Girl (Yuki Tanada, 2008)

Yuu Aoi winds up in trouble with the law (seemingly wrongfully accused) and, when released, causes trouble for her family (especially her little brother, who winds up getting bullied due to her notoriety). She decides to set off on her own -- and not return until she has earned one million yen. The film traces her travels (and work) at a beach resort, a peach farm and a garden supply store (in a suburb of her own town). Aoi is quite good in this (playing a character more punk-ish than her norm). A nice film by a young woman director. I wish this DVD had subs, however.

Nekonade / Petting the Cat (my translation) (Mika O'omori, 2008)

Another good film by a young woman director. This one is centered on a (forced to be) tough personnel director who adopts a stray cat -- but is too worried about injuring his fierce reputation to let anyone know he has done so. Meanwhile, he has to give bad news to some employees -- and train a group of young women "recruits". Kitano veteran Ren Osugi plays the central role. A film like this could be stupid -- but this one was done extremely well and was very entertaining (for the whole household) despite the lack of subs on the Japanese DVD.

Aruitemo aruitemo / Still Walking (Hirokazu Kore'eda, 2008)

One of the best films of 2008 -- and another master work from Kore'eda. Finally seen – at long last – thanks to the Japanese DVD (which has English subtitles). Around 24 hours of family life (during a reunion for death anniversary of the family's eldest child), plus a brief epilogue. A remarkably (and sometimes painfully) true to life depiction of the relationship between elderly parents and their adult children. The entire cast is spectacular.

Collected short takes, older films

2009-06-05T15:10:00.004-05:00

An assemblage of (mostly) short notes on films seen earlier this year. This post collects comments on older films (with comments on a newer version of one older film). My next post will aggregate remarks on some newer films.

Gyakuryu / Backward Flow (Buntaro Futagawa, 1924)

Like Futagawa's later Orochi (see below), this features silent super-star Tsumasaburo Bando as a wronged hero, pushed into seeking vengeance. In this case, the protagonist is even more floridly dysfunctional as the result of his mistreatment. Interestingly over the top.

Orochi (Buntaro Futagawa, 1925)

A silent chambara starring Tsumasaburo Bando (one of Japan's first great action stars). One of the few nearly complete films from this era. Bando plays a mistreated samurai who falls into bad company after escaping from prison (he was framed). When he encounters his lost love, he is forced to choose between loyalty to his crooked patron and love (though she is now married to another samurai, who seems to be quite ill). Visually impressive (despite lots of story improbabilities).

Yajikita son'nô no maki / Yaji and Kita - Yasuda's Rescue (Tomiyasu Ikeda, 1927)

Yajikita Toba Fushimi no maki / Yaji and Kita - The Battle of Toba Fushimi (Tomiyasu Ikeda, 1928)

Fragments of two films featuring comic star Goro Kawabe and dramatic star Denjiro Okochi as a Laurel and Hardy-esque pair of ne'er-do-wells (actually modeled on Wallace Beery and Raymond Hatton) who get embroiled in adventures around the time of the fall of the shogunate. Lots of silly fun -- too bad so little survives.

Dokuro / The Skull (Sentaro Shirai, 1927)

Kabuki star turned movie idol Utaemon Ichikawa plays a Christian warlord, in the last struggle against the Shogun, who is committed to stamping out Christianity. Meanwhile his lover (and their infant) is not faring well on the homefront. Visually stunning, I wish I could give due credit to the cinematographer. Apparently Shirai (who was incinerated in Hiroshima) created only a modest body of work -- and most of his other films are lost.

Sozenji baba (Masahiro Makino, 1928)

A sore loser samurai kills a fellow samurai who had beat him in a mock sword fight earlier in the day (leading to more teasing than he could bear). He flees to Osaka where he catches the fancy of a gang boss's pretty daughter (who also is pretty good with her six-guns). He is embarrassed after he is rescued (by help she hires) when kinsman of his victim come to avenge the crime. When the next wave of avengers comes, our heroine just won't give up the fight to defend her man. Visually impressive -- and loads of fun. (seems to have a few gaps).

Kurama tengu (Teppei Yamaguchi, 1928)

Kurama tengu - Kyôfu jidai / the Dreadful times of Kurama Tengu (Teppei Yamaguchi, 1928)

Kurama Tengu (the devil from Kurama) was the alias of a defender of the poor (and the Emperor) in the huge struggle between the forces of the Shogun and the Emperor just before the Meiji Restoration -- a character rather reminiscent of Zorro (a hit in Japan of that day) and the Lone Ranger. He was the central figure in a long series of short adventure films, aimed largely at children (with children featured prominently as both objects of protection and protective helpers).

The first of these films featured lots of remarkably choreographed fight scenes. Frightful Days, however, is much more atmospheric -- and reminiscent of Fantomas -- about an impostor (head of a band of thugs) masquerading as Kurama Tengu -- to make money and destroy his reputation.

Interestingly, KT's major opponent through the series is not a villain -- but a hero (albeit one devoted to the cause of the Shogun). There are villains, but they are lesser beings. And then there are the leading females -- the sweet young woman (sister of a villain) who takes care of homeless child acrobats and a pistol-toting "spy" (daughter of KT's most devoted supporter), who may or may not ultimately have a heart of gold.

Raiden (Shozo Makino, 1928)

Raiden means "thunder and lightning" -- the professional name of the protagonist, a sumo star of the late 18th and early 19th century. This short film is pretty much a slapstick comedy. Raiden's elderly mother (using a rather dastardly trick) has forbidden him from winning his next bout (she fears he is winning too much, incurring too much ill will from opponents and their noble patrons). Meanwhile, a samurai has rashly boasted he had a wrestler who could beat Raiden (having no wrestler on his staff at all). A quackish mountain priest (Masahiro Makino, a former child-star for his father, already moving into directing himself) gets pressed into service -- and poor Raiden must desperately try not to defeat his utterly inept rival. Lots of fun.

Ronin-gai / Samurai Town -- I and II (Masahiro Makino, 1929)

All that remains of the first film is the concluding battle -- and it is a stunner.

The second film is sort of a day (or so) in the life of poor (unemployed or mis-employed) samurai. I has an unusual structure -- with multiple story lines, none really resolved fully. Interesting, but not as entertaining as Sozenji baba. I would guess that this provided some inspiration to Sadao Yamanaka -- who would soon tackle films with a similar setting.

Chûkon giretsu - Jitsuroku Chûshingura (Shozo Makino, 1928)

Shijushichinin no shikaku / 47 Loyal Ronin (Kon Ichikawa, 1994)

Two versions of Chuishingura, separated by almost 70 years. One is quite impressive, the other is mostly a turkey. Makino's version (with the missing final section supplied from a film made by his son a bit later) is remarkable. Although old-fashioned in a few ways ways, it is still quite effective. Ichikawa's version on the other hand is quite inauthentic in content, and often plodding; action scenes are lackluster.

Uwasa no musume / The Girl in the Rumour (Mikio Naruse, 1935)

A marvelous film visually, even if occasionally a little abrupt narratively. A story of two sisters, the older being more traditional, the younger a "moga" ("modern girl"). Their widowed father runs the family sake shop -- but is running into financial trouble (causing him to make some bad decisions). Meanwhile, his long-time mistress's little business is also on the rocks. Amidst this, the older sister is introduced to a well-off suitor (a university boy who is much more intrigued by the less traditional "little sister"). Add a dotty grandfather, an officious uncle and busy body neighbors -- and you have a very good (but probably not quite “masterpiece” level) Naruse film.

Otome-gokoro - Sannin-shimai / Three sisters With Maiden Hearts (Mikio Naruse, 1935)

Visually (and aurally) splendid adaptation of a Kawabata story about three sisters, whose mother exploits them (and other young women), forcing them to panhandle musically. Lots of experimentation by Naruse and cinematographer Hiroshi Suzuki -- blurring in and out of flash-backs -- and flashbacks inside of flashbacks, all in the context of as tyle which is (overall) proto-neo-realist. Yet another Naruse film that one probably needs to classify as a masterpiece.

Nadare / Avalanche (Mikio Naruse, 1937)

A rare miss. Based on a then-popular book -- and the script is far too dialog-heavy. Naruse (and assistant director Akira Kurosawa) and his cinematographer (not a Naruse regular) come up with little in the way of visual story telling. One experiment fails -- pulling a dark shade over a character, while their inner thoughts are spoken. It might have sounded good in concept -- but it flops -- and helps add to the overall over-wordiness of the film.

Sanjuusangen-dou, toushiya monogatari / A Tale of Archery at the Sanjusangendo (Mikio Naruse, 1945)

The Sanjusangendo was located less than a mile from our bed and breakfast in Kyoto -- so we put off visiting until the last minute -- and got there about 5 minutes to late (leaving us to peer through an occasional gate) as we walked around the walled perimeter of the temple compound.

The temple in question is a very long one -- and noted for (1) having a very special statue of Kanon (Kwan Yin) plus 1000 additional statues of Kanon, lining all the walls and (2) being the site of archery competitions for about 400 years.

The official central figure in the film is the orphaned teenage son of a samurai who committed suicide after failing to break an archery record (due to some sort of clan rivalry). He has been protected (and raised) by a kind-hearted innkeeper (Kinuyo Tanaka) for 10 years -- but now wants to break the record his father failed to break. His training is not going as well as it should (an he is increasingly at risk from his father's old enemies), when a mysterious stranger (super-star Kazuo Hasegawa) comes to his aid.

The youth is callow (sometimes annoyingly so), but one soon notes that Naruse is more interested in the interplay between Tanaka and Hasegawa -- who are both splendid, Parts of this are wonderful, others are a little clunky -- but very worth seeing.

Historical note -- shot on location (more or less) in Kyoto as Tokyo was being burned to the ground by American fire bombing.

Inazuma / Lightning (Mikio Naruse, 1952)

Almost surely my favorite film from the year of my birth -- and near the top of my list of (many) Naruse favorites. Hideko Takamine is absolutely wonderful as the youngest (adult) child of a rather dysfunctional family. One of Naruse's most optimistic films -- as Takamine manages (at least partly) to seek a path to a more orderly (and rewarding life).

Yukinojo henge / An Actor's Revenge (Kon Ichikawa, 1963)

The new US DVD of this is quite adequate (even if it has little in the way of extras).

As is usually (always?) the case with Ichikawa's collaborations with his screenwriter wife (Natto Wada), one finds a wonderful film -- in this case built on the foundation of a rather silly 1930s swashbuckler (seemingly set right before the opening of Japan to the West). Kazuo Hasegawa, the hero of the original version, reappears in his original role (a young man, who is a kabuki actor specializing in playing women characters) and in a second major part -- as a sort of do gooder master thief (who serves as an observer and comentator on events from time to time). (The film was made, in part, to celebrate Hasegawa's 300th film role). Fujiko Yamamoto plays the leader of a pickpocketing crew from Osaka (also consisting of chambara super-stars Raizo Ichikawa and Shintaro Katsu) who falls for Hasegawa. (FY seems to have retired from acting after this film -- no clue I can find as to what she moved on to). The rest of the cast (including Ganjiro Nakamura and Ayako Wakao) is quite good as well).

Ironiya sudby, ili S legkim parom! The Irony of Fate, or Enjoy Your Bath! (Eldar Ryazanov, 1975)

The show that supplanted the adaptation of Shostakovich's Cheryomushki as the must-see movie on Russian television for New Years Eve, this starts with a brief homage to the older film. A mild-mannered doctor from Moscow is supposed to propose to his girlfriend on New Years Eve, but winds up mistakenly shipped to Petersburg -- after he and his buddies party (and drink) a bit too much at the bath house (an annual ritual for a group of school buddies). He winds up at an identical apartment at the same address as his own -- albeit in a different city (and, of course his key works). The 30-something teacher who occupies the apartment is stunned to find a drunk stranger sprawled on her bed (with her own suitor soon to arrive). After 3 hours, most problems are ironed out. Amusing -- but nowhere near the level of Shostakovich's Cheryomushki, either cinematically or musically.

Silent Bando, Gondry and Suo

2009-06-05T15:02:00.005-05:00

Koina no Ginpei -- Yuki no wataridori / Migatory Waterbirds (Tomokazu Miyata, 1931)

Mainly this is a showcase for super-star Tsumasaburo Bando, who plays Ginpei, a rural yakuza underling in love with the pretty daughter of the local innkeeper (a semi-retired gang member). Two problems, another gang boss wants to take over the territory held by Ginpei's boss -- and the innkeeper's daughter (though fond of Ginpei) is actually in love with one of Ginpei's colleagues. After doing his duty of defending his boss's turf, Ginpei becomes a wanderer. When he returns, several years later, times have changed for the worse in his old town. Some decent fights, but overall less of a visual feast than most of the other old silent chambara I've seen.

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (Michel Gondry, 2004)

Having recently enjoyed Gondry's third of a recent omnibus film (Tokyo!), I decided to check out this earlier movie. Alas, unlike his recent short film, I found it visually hyperactive and narratively over-complicated. I was glad when it was over.

Soredemo boku wa yattenai / {Even So,} I Just Didn't Do It (Masayuki Suo, 2006)

Suo's last movie was the gentle-natured romantic comedy Shall We Dance, made back in 2006. This film -- an expose of the Japanese criminal justice (?) system -- is hard-hitting and a bit didactic. It tells the story of a young man wrongly accused of groping a school girl on an overcrowded train. In it we learn the (sadly true) fact that once accused of a crime, conviction is almost certain (and that appeals mainly exist only to overturn the rare acquittals). We also learn that judges are not independent -- but rather can be demoted or otherwise punished if they issue acquittal decisions. And we learn that, if innocent, one is best advised to plead guilty (not just to groping charges, but even to rape), as the punsihments are nominal compared to what will happen if one claims innocence and demands a trial. Pleading innocence is, it would seem, an affront to the police, the proecutors, the government -- and is almost invariably punished very severely. Virtually none of the due process protections taken for granted in the US (and Europe) exist for accused criminals.

As a movie, rather than a tract, this is also pretty good. Not much real suspense, as one can guess rather early on how things will turn out. A really fine cast, with Ryo Kase as the accused and (the splendid) Koji Yakusho as his lead defense attorney -- and many others. Cinematography is smple and effective, with not much in the ways of artsiness. Music sounds rather Hisaishi-esque at times -- but was actually provided by the director's older brother.

A bit of timely news, just recently the Japanese Supreme Court overturned a groping conviction -- for the first time _ever_.

Naruse, Imai, Bodrov, Kawase and Ikeda

2009-06-01T09:27:00.004-05:00

Sakasu gonin-gumi / Five Men in a Circus (Mikio Naruse, 1935)

The fourth (and lightest weight) of the five films Naruse made for PCL (later part of Toho) in his first year after his departure from Shochiku. Perhaps inspired (a bit) by Ozu's Story of Floating Weeds (made in 1934), this depicts two sets of wandering performers -- a five man band of itinerant musicians (playing Western instruments) and a small-time circus run by a grumpy old tyrant (with two lovely daughters). When all the male circus performers go on strike, the circus hires the five musicians to fill in. Even if "minor" Naruse, the film is charming, visually lovely and sociologically fascinating -- showing an immense amount of westernization in the midst of rural Japan -- classical music, ballet, cabaret, etc.

Bushidô zankoku monogatari / Cruel Story of the Samurai's Way (Tadashi Imai, 1963)
Adauchi / Revenge (Tadashi Imai, 1964)

In Bushido, Imai seems to have taken on more thematically) than he could handle in one (2 hour) film. He tries to show the stultifying effects of submission to state (and family) power throughout the ages (from the medieval era until the present). Some parts work well, others seem a bit cursory. I found it rather a jumble, overall.

In Adauchi, on the other hand, Imai takes a more focused (but still ferociously critical) look at the way the samurai system not only ran roughshod over individual human values but made a mockery of even the values it claimed to uphold. He leaves any parallels to modern times up to the viewer to find themselves.

I found this dramatically and cinematographically more compelling than the highly touted works of Kobayashi (Samurai Rebellion, Harakiri) which cover similar ground -- despite the fact that Imai had a far less accomplished cast (Toei just couldn't provide the deluxe casting that either Shochiku or Toho could provide). This deserves to be far better known.

Mongol (Sergei Bodrov, 2007)

A big, dumb movie -- but often remarkably gorgeous looking (with fairly decent performances). Seems to simply illustrate random (and largely unconnected) moments of Genghis Khan's early days. The (copious) fake blood here makes that in Kitano's Zatoichi look positively life-like.

Nanayomachi / Nanayo (Naomi Kawase, 2008)

A heartbreaker. All the little things that irritated me about the last part of Mourning Forest show up here in full force. Some lovely travel pictures, but dramatically atrocious (with equally atrocious performances). The worst movie I've ever seen by a director I admire.

Tounan kadobeya nikai no onna (Chihiro Ikeda, 2008)

Note : Literally translated, this is something like "the woman of the southeast corner apartment on the second floor", but is mysteriously (and not very appropriately) renamed Tokyo Rendezvous in English.

This debut feature film of a young woman director is quite delightful overall. Clearly shot on a low budget (the DVD makes the quality look rather VHS-ish) but has a first-rate cast -- including Kyoko Kagawa (Tokyo Story, Sansho, Bad Sleep Well). Somewhat in the vein of Jun Ichikawa's loving looks at down-scale Tokyo, mixed with a bit of Yoji Yamada's more populist take on similar material. This covers issues like pressures towards marriage in young professionals, urban land ownership, and finding a place in life (physically and psychically) where one feels comfortable. I fear this will never cross the ocean theatrically, but the Japanese DVD is subbed (for anyone who might be interested).

Ito, Yamanaka, Inagaki, Hou -- and pleasant fluff

2009-06-01T09:20:00.004-05:00

Oatsurae Jirokichi goshi / Jirokichi the Rat (Daisuke Ito, 1931)

Denjiro OKochi plays the title character -- a master thief from Tokyo on the lam in Osaka. He gets entangled there with the travails of two women -- the sister of a thuggish barber (and yakuza boss) and the daughter of a disgraced (and dying) samurai. The action sequences are stunning -- and the perforances and story are equaly fine. A masterpiece..

Kochiyama Soshun (Sadao Yamanaka, 1936)

Another masterpiece -- this one featuring Chojuro Kawarasaki as an ultimately noble criminal, Soshun Kochiyama -- a sort of urban Robin Hood in 18th century Tokyo. Kochiyama gets into trouble trying to protect an innocent street vendor (Setsuko Hara in her first major role, 15 or 16 years old) who is imperiled due to the misdeeds of her juvenile delinquent brother.

Muhomatsu no issho / The Life of Matsu the Untamed (Hiroshi Inagaki, 1943)

Tsumasaburo Bando (one of Japan's first grat action movie stars) appears as a good-hearted (if undisciplined) rickshaw driver in love with a young widow (and devoted to her young son) who he could never hope to marry due to his inferior status. More sentimetal than the Ito and Yamanaka films above, but still wonderful.

Ni luo he nu er / Daughter of the Nile (HOU Hsiao Hsien, 1987)

This HHH film is possibly his most neglected "mature" work, though I can't realy figure out why. It prefigures Millennium Mambo in some ways, focusing the travails of a young woman. A very fine film.

Uchôten hoteru / Suite Dreams literally more like Seventh Heaven Hotel (Koki Mitani, 2006)

Enjoyable fluff that is a bit reminiscent of Fawlty Towers, with some nods to Grand Hotel. Koji Yakushi (as the nuber three executive at a luxury hotel) leads a huge all-star cast in this story of an eventful New Years Eve at a bustling hotel. Not much to speak of cinematically here, but very entertaining.

Signs of life

2009-06-01T08:23:00.004-05:00

Since my last post, I've watched many more films -- but didn't even keep a list of what I failed to report on. I also visited Japan with my wife in February (staying in the Kansai region for 2 weeks) and have spent time in the hospital (and at bome) fighting a foot infection. Consequently, I have had time to watch more films and to write (a little at least) about some of them. Not enough energy to tackle screen captures -- yet.

Just to prove we actually made it to Japan, a few pictures:

Enjoying the plum blossoms at Domyoji Tenmangu Shrine (Fujidera)

In front of the burial mound of Emperor Nintoku (Sakai)

Open Air Museum of Japanese Farm Houses, Ryokuchi Park (Osaka)

Nara Park (Nara)

Following the footsteps of Chishu Ryu and Setsuko Hara -- Kiyomizudera Temple (Kyoto)

Playing pachinko

Gion Hatanaka teahouse (Kyoto)

I have pictures of my foot (at its worst) too -- but I think you should just accept that part of my story on faith.

A few short reviews to follow....

Unreported Films

2008-05-10T10:41:00.001-05:00

For whatever reason, I have found writing up comments on films an almost impossible burden for the past few months. My backlog of undiscussed films simply grows and grows. So -- for what its worth -- I am going to simply list everything I've seen (or, at least, that I still remember seeing). Perhaps this will motivate me to get to work writing (and screen capturing) -- but probably not.

Without further ado ...

Topio stin omichli / Landscape in the Mist (Theodoros Angelopoulos, 1988)

Sad Vacation (Shinji Aoyama, 2007)

Dharmaga tongjoguro kan kkadalgun / Why Has Bodhi-Dharma Left for the East? (BAE Yong-kyun, 1989)

Dom na Trubnoy / The House on Trubnaya Street (Boris Barnet, 1928)

Shchedroye leto / Bountiful Summer (Boris Barnet, 1950)

Himala / Miracle (Ishmael Bernal, 1982)

Insiang (Lino Brocka, 1976)

Una mujer sin amor / A Woman Without Love (Luis Buñuel, 1952)

Uzak / Distant (Nuri Bilge Ceylan, 2002)

Les Raquetteurs / The Snowshoers (Gilles Groulx & Michel Brault, 1958)

La France sur un caillou / France on a Pebble (Gilles Groulx & Claude Fournier, 1960)

Normetal (Gilles Groulx, 1960)

Golden Gloves (Gilles Groulx, 1961)

Voir Miami / To See Miami (Gilles Groulx, 1962)

Un jeu si simple / A Game so Simple (Gilles Groulx, 1963)

Le Chat dans le sac / The Cat in the Bag (Gilles Groulx, 1964)

Où êtes-vous donc? / Where Are You Then? (Gilles Groulx, 1970)

Entre tu et vous (Gilles Groulx, 1970)

24 heures ou plus... (Gilles Groulx, 1977)

Santa Gertrudis, la première question sur le bonheur (Gilles Groulx, 1978)

Au pays de Zom (Gilles Groulx, 1983)

Yuki Yukite shingun / The Emperor's Naked Army Marches On (Kazuo Hara, 1987)

Where the Green Ants Dream (Werner Herzog, 1984)

Le Voyage du ballon rouge / Flight of the Red Balloon (HOU Hsiao Hsien, 2007)

Da zui xia / Come Drink With Me (King Hu, 1966)

Tau ban no hoi / Boat People (Ann Hui, 1982)

Hengbok / Happiness (HUR Jin-ho, 2007)

Kiku to Isamu / Kiku and Isamu (Tadashi Imai, 1959)

En to iu onna / A Woman Called En (Tadashi Imai, 1971)

Tai yang zhao chang sheng qi / The Sun Also Rises (JIANG Wen, 2007)

How To Meet a Perfect Neighbor (JO Nam-kook, 2007)

Subarashiki nichiyobi / One Wonderful Sunday (Akira Kurosawa, 1947)

Rashômon (Akira Kurosawa, 1950)

Ikimono no kiroku / I Live in Fear / Record of a Living Being (Akira Kurosawa, 1955)

Emil und die Detektive / Emil and the Detectives (Gerhard Lamprecht, 1931)

Help! (Richard Lester, 1965)

Orizuru Osen / The Downfall of Osen (Kenji Mizoguchi, 1935)

Naniwa erejî / Osaka Elegy (Kenji Mizoguchi, 1936)

Joyû Sumako no koi / The Love of Sumako the Actress (Kenji Mizoguchi, 1947)

Gion bayashi / Gion Festival Music / A Geisha (Kenji Mizoguchi, 1953)

Uasa no onna / The Woman in the Rumor (Kenji Mizoguchi, 1954)

Chikamatsu monogatari / A Story from Chikamatsu / Crucified Lovers (Kenji Mizoguchi, 1954)

Faust - Eine deutsche Volkssage / Faust (F.W. Murnau, 1926)

Megane / Glasses (Naoko Ogigami, 2007)

Mushishi / Bugmaster (Katsuhiro Ôtomo, 2006)

Saibogujiman kwenchana / I'm a Cyborg, But That's OK (PARK Chan-wook, 2006)

Neoneun nae unmyeong / You Are My Sunshine (PARK Jin-pyo, 2005)

Ne touchez pas la hache / Don't Touch the Axe / The Duchess of Langeais (Jacques Rivette, 2007)

Minato no nihon musume / Japanese Girls at the Harbor (Hiroshi Shimizu, 1933)

Arigato-san / Mr. Thank You (Hiroshi Shimizu, 1936)

Anma to onna (Hiroshi Shimizu, 1938)

Utsukushisa to kanashimi to / With Beauty and Sorrow (Masahiro Shinoda, 1965)

Ruten no ouhi / The Wandering Princess (Kinuyo Tanaka, 1960)

Sha Tan-Zi yu Zhou Shih-Nai /Royal Scoundrel (Johnnie To & CHIK Ki Yee, 1991)

Heung joh chow heung yau chow / Turn Left, Turn Right (Johnnie To & WAI Ka Fai, 2003)

Tie saam gok / Triangle (Ringo Lam, Tsui Hark and Johnnie To, 2007)

Sun taam / Mad Detective (Johnnie To & WAI Ka Fai, 2007)

Hu die fei / Linger (Johnnie To, 2008)

Das doppelte Lottchen / Two Times Lotte (Josef von Báky, 1950)

Nikai no tanin / The Stranger Upstairs (Yoji Yamada, 1961)

Tôku no sora ni kieta / Into the Faraway Sky (Isao Yukisada, 2007)

Asian Animation -- Two Cities Under Attack

2008-05-04T16:58:00.000-05:00

McDull, prince de la bun (Toe Yuen, 2004)

McDull is an anthropomorphic piglet who lives with his mother in an older section of Hong Kong. His mother, believing in the importance of education, sends him to a rather peculiar kindergarten (staffed by humans but seemingly dedicated solely to the instruction of various other cute anthropomorphic creatures). McDull's mother (clearly a single parent) worries about finances -- but sees no reason why she should be any less able to write bestsellers for children than J. K. Rowling. Sadly, young McDull has little interest in hearing his mother's literary efforts recounted as bedtime stories, much preferring Harry Potter. Even sadder, although McDull doesn't realize it, the story he rejects (about McBing, the Prince de la Bun) is actually a (presumably rather embroidered) tale about his own absent father's adventures. Always thinking ahead, McDull's mother is scouting out a suitable family plot, visiting a lovely seaside, hillside cemetery somewhere in the new territories. All the while, the crowded but cozy neighborhood McDull and his mother inhabit is increasingly attracting the interest of urban renewers.

While the HK this film is accompanied by subtitles, one gets a sense that one really needs to be fluent in Cantonese to appreciate fully what one hears in this film. Verbal humor seems a central element that is not fully appreciable by me. I suspect that understanding Cantonese would not, however, render the story here more comprehensible -- as it seems (deliberately) highly random (or, one could say, surreal). Visually, the film is a bit of hodge podge -- mixing manipulated bits of live action footage and 3-D animation with a mostly more-traditional style of animation. I prefer the latter (all my screen shots belong to this category).

McDull began life as the the cousin of another piglet (called McMug) -- in a series of comics. He eventually became a star in his own right. McDull made it into the movies in the 2001 My Life as McDull. The present film was his second. A third film, McDull, the Alumni (one-third animated, two-thirds live action), came out in 2006. The present film is probably the easily way to make McDull's acquaintance, as the HK DVD of My Life as McDull is out of print and the third film is reputedly not as appealing as the first two.

More screen shots:

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Tekon kinkurîto / Tekkonkinkreet (Michael Arias, 2006)

Another new animated film that has urban renewal as a major plot point. The city under attack here seems to be a partly-real and partly fantastic, slightly old-time Tokyo (here named Treasure Town). The protagonists are a couple of young orphans (self-adopted brothers) called Black and White who constitute a gang of two, dedicated to the preservation of their rather tawdry and run-down neighborhood. Their opponents? -- First the yakuza and then (scarier still) what seems to be an extra-terrestrial real estate developer (who commands various super-human minions). A couple of yakuza, one old and another young, however, sympathize with the boy's goals -- against the wishes of their boss.

Visually, this film is simply superb -- much more pleasing to me than the work of the much-hyped Satoshi Kon. This is my vision of dystopia since the extraordinary (critically ignored) 2003 series Texhnolyze. Surprisingly, this nostalgic look at a vanished and vanishing Tokyo was directed by an expatriate American, Michael Arias -- based on a manga by Taiyo Matsumoto. In making this, Arias (whose prior expertise was mainly in the technical side of the animation business) drew on the expertise of Studio 4°C (a "lesser-known" but respected anime production company).

While the primary focus here is on the visuals, I would note the voice acting is quite good, featuring a number of noted performers, including (among others) Kazunari Nimomiya, Yuu Aoi, Min Tanaka and Yusuke Isseya. I saw this on a very good-looking and sounding (English-subitled) Hong Kong DVD. There is now an American DVD as well -- but I don't know how this compares with the version I saw.

By the way, the nonsense-sounding name of the film (and manga) has a fairly simple explanation -- it is a childish mispronunciation of "tekkin konkuriito" (steel-reinforced concrete). More pictures (and that's what really counts here):

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Fue no shiratama / Undying Pearl / Eternal Heart (Hiroshi Shimizu, 1929)

2008-04-13T14:58:00.001-05:00

So far as i can determine, Fue no shiratama is Hiroshi Shimizu's oldest surviving film. According to the JMDB, however, this was actually the fifty-sixth film he directed. So not surprisingly, this is the work of a film maker who had already mastered his craft. While the story the film tells might appear rather conventional, visual presentation is fairly striking.

The central character here is Toshie (played by Emiko Yagumo, who also starred in a number of early Ozu films), a young woman who works as a secretary-typist, but wears a kimono and is relatively reserved and old-fashioned. She has fallen in love with Shozo Narita (Minoru Takada), a young man she has met through her work. Alas, once Narita meets Toshie's vivacious sister Reiko (Michiko Oikawa), Toshie is relegated to the status of little more than a friendly confidante. Toshie selflessly hides her true feelings, and promotes a marriage between Narita and Reiko. But Reiko is so enamored of partying and nightclubbing, that she continues to pursue these activities even after her marriage. Meanwhile Toshie is being courted by her widower boss Mr. Katayama (Jun Arai), who is looking for a mother for his three children. When Toshie visits the Katayamas at their country home, she finds that the children (and their teen-aged girl cousins) are very "lively" and not especially polite. Whether malicious or not, the young people's behavior mortifies Toshie -- and Mr. Katayama doesn't do much to shield her.

As Toshie dispiritedly returns home, Toshie encounters Narita, who tells her of the increasingly dismaying state of his relationship with Reiko. Toshie tracks Reiko down at a dance club (where she is being attended by a rich, middle-aged swell) and insists she return home. Reiko complies, but once home, she tells both Toshie and her husband that she refuses to be tied down -- and then leaves to return to her party.

The film then jumps forward an unspecified amount of time -- and we see Narita telling Toshie that he is planning to leave Japan and travel to America (alone). He asks about her situation with Mr. Katayama, and she assures him that he is being very kind and patient. It is unclear whether she has managed to establish a comfortable relationship with the children at last -- or that she she will actually wind up marrying him. But Narita, still unaware of Toshie's feelings for him, is satisfied by her rather circumspect answer. The film ends with Toshie, Katayama and various friends of Narita, seeing him off as he boards his ship. Reiko is, of course, conspicuous by her absence. As the ship departs, intertitles present Toshie's lament over the loss of the only true love of her life.

Although I said above that this story might seem conventional, perhaps it wasn't -- not back when it was made. Most obviously, the younger sister Reiko is the epitome of a moga (modern girl), which was a new phenomenon that seems to have gotten its start during the rebuilding process following the Kanto Earthquake of 1923. Moga were early adopters of up-to-date western clothing -- and (to some extent) habits.

Barbara Sato's New Japanese Woman (Duke University Press, 2003), which I just finished reading, pointed out something that I had not previously realized. The serious working woman (of which Toshie was a type) was just as much the product of modernity as the moga. Prior to the 20s, young middle-class women usually worked only due to dire necessity, but the nunber of educated working women rose steadily and fairly rapidly throughout the '20s and '30s. Sato also points out that, by contrast, real life moga were were comparatively rare. A survey conducted in Tokyo's main shopping area in 1925 found only one woman in a hundred to be wearing western clothing. Whatever their numbers, it was moga who were the main focus of cultural disapproval. Traditionalists viewed them as decadent and threatening. Leftists, on the other hand, primarily disapproved of their vapidity and consumerist orientation.

Most Japanese movies of the 1920s are now lost to the ravages of time (and war), so one may not be able to pinpoint the first cinematic depiction of a moga. Nonetheless, Shimizu's anti-heroine here is probably one of the earliest. Similarly, this must have been one of the earliest Japanese films that was centered about the contrast (or even opposition) between a somewhat more traditional young woman and a more modern-appearing (and less inhibited) one. This motif would show up with regularity throughout the 30s and still echoed in the 50s (e.g., Ozu's Munekata Sisters, Naruse's Ginza Cosmetics) and even to the present in somewhat attenuated form (e.g., Ôtani's Nana).

In terms of visual style, Fue no shiratama is very heterogeneous. Montage, piecemeal decoupage, moderately long shots and even some florid shots (with an agile camera) reminiscent of contemporary chambara films. The most impressive camera work occurs at the climax of the film, the final confrontation of the two sisters. In a long, carefully choreographed (for actresses and camera alike) take, Toshie tries to restrain Reiko. At the high point of their interaction, Shimizu switches to a shared closeup, in which the two are for a moment virtually nose to nose -- and then Reiko slides past. Shimizu next cuts to a medium shot for the parting of the sisters. While the rest of the film is generally less dynamic than this, it is uniformly visually imaginative.

About the name -- as best I can tell, "fue no" means "indestructible" and shiratama means "white jewel". While none of my Japanese dictionaries helped pinpoint which white jewel the title named, a Chinese dictionary (belonging to one of my children) translated the kanji as "pearl". So one assumes that the kanji used for "pearl" in the Japanese title was intended to evoke some antique poetical work. Once again, we find an important Japanese film burdened by what would seem to be an inaccurate (and, in this case, a bit nonsensical) English name.

It is tantalizing to see any of the comparatively few remaining Japanese films of the '20s. These offer a window into a period in Japanese cinema that that has almost vanished. One can't help wondering just how many great masterpieces have been irretrievably lost. One can only hope that some DVD comany will adopt this early Shimizu masterpiece and make it available to Western viewers.

Two by Kozintsev and Trauberg

2008-03-14T19:29:00.001-05:00

Novyy Vavilon / New Babylon (Grigori Kozintsev & Leonid Trauberg, 1929)

Kozintsev and Trauberg had been working together for 8 years by the time the two made New Babylon. After several years collaborating in experimental theater, they made their first foray into film making in 1924. Having worked with Dmitri Shostakovich in some of their theater productions, they turned to him for their first attempt at making a film with an integral (live) musical score (albeit without dialog). The film suffered from government interference even before its formal premiere. The government approved version was cut by 20 percent from its original length, and the synchronization of the music apparently no longer fully matched the creators' original intentions. These synchronization problems, together with the inability of the theater's orchestra to cope with Shostakovich's musical demands, helped ensure a less than rapturous initial reception. While the longer version has been reconstructed recently and re-synchronized with its original score (by British musicologist Marek Pytel) -- and performed at least once, it was not utilized for the Absolut Media (German) DVD. The cut version represented in this release was approved by one of its directors (Trauberg), but only after the deaths of his two collaborators (Kozintsev and Shostakovich). At least for now, the current DVD represents the only reasonably available version of the film. (Note: an old Facets video might have represented a longer version, but it looked awful and had an inappropriate non-Shostakovich score).

Even in possibly compromised form, what we find is an impressive film. Its topic -- the rise and fall of the Paris Commune in 1871 -- seems like one that would get an epic treatment. However, like Kuleshov and Barnet (and unlike Eisenstein), Kozintsev and Trauberg focus on individuals not proletarian masses -- and incorporate a considerable amount of humor into their film (at least in its early phase).

The story's focal character is Louise (played Yelena Kuzmina), a shop girl in a shopping and entertainment complex in Paris called "The New Babylon" (which makes her an observer of the decadent Parisian upper class). Most of the characters in the film are ones with whom she comes in contact, at work and in her neighborhood. The secondary focus is on a low-ranking soldier named Jean (Pyotr Sobolevsky), who is not a Parisian but rather comes from a rural village. During the siege of Paris by the Germans, Jean's military world intersects Louise's proletarian one. He is given food and money for ammunition (and has his shoes repaired) by the lower-class city dwellers. When the government capitulates to the Germans, and the Parisian populace begins to express dissent, he casts his lot with the army and withdraws with them to Versailles. After the people of Paris take control over their own city (briefly), he plays his small part in crushing the "rebels" -- and then digging the graves of Louise and her comrades (the vengeful victors summarily executed tens of thousands of Parisians in the course of a couple of weeks).

Visually the film is quite rich and heterogeneous, sometimes drawing almost as much on French impressionist (and post-impressionist) artwork as on contemporary cinematic norms. There are shots evoking Monet and Renoir and others inspired by Toulouse-Lautrec (who actually portrayed Parisian decadence of a somewhat later era). Other shots look back to the artwork of the French revolutionary period.

Kozintsev and Trauberg make some use of montage, but also present some quite extended scenes. Especially notable are two matched sequences, one from near the beginning and the other from near the end of the film. In the former, we see well-to-do Parisians dining in New Babylon's cafe, while behind them (and somewhat out of focus) we see others dancing manically. In the latter, we see Jean, shocked at what is happening, while behind him (somewhat out of focus) his comrades slowly and methodically dig the mass graves that will soon be filled. We also see a statuette of the Blessed Virgin overseeing the grim work, as the rainm pours down.

Young Kuzmina (only 20, in what seems to have been her first film role) seems to have a keen sense of comedy, but is required to shift into melodramatic and then tragic heroic mode as the film moves towards its conclusion. Other characters are less individuated, but perform their roles effectively. Aside from Kuzmina, the other stars of the film are Andrei Moskvin's cinematography and Shostakovich's music. The images captured here are often remarkable, including ones not really susceptible to screen capture -- such as scenes played at night involving light reflected from the water laying on muddy roads and cobbled street, disturbed by moving shadows.

The plot can obviously be criticized as propagandistic (major script revisions were demanded after the film was initially approved, due to a shift in high level film making policy demand by Stalin). But I think one can say that the visual and musical-dramatic qualities of the film transcend whatever the purported propaganda was intended to be. Indeed, from the first, Shostakovich's score itself provoked outrage from political purists, as it did not support the noble message the film was supposed to present. (Quoting from Offenbach's operettas during supposedly serious moments was an obvious sign of frivolity). Of course, Kozintsev and Trauberg affirmatively relied on Shostakovich to provide an additional level of "complication" to the film. Insofar as the film was shown after its controversial premiere performances, it was stripped of its score and accompanied by more suitable generic music. We are lucky that, at last, efforts are being made to allow audiences to see (and hear) some semblance of the film that the creators actually wished to make. Until such times as a DVD version of Pytel's fuller version (hopefully) arrives, the Absolut Media DVD (which is English friendly) is the best possible way for this film to reach the wider audience it deserves.

More screenshots:

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Odna / Alone (Grigori Kozintsev & Leonid Trauberg, 1931)

Kozintsev, Trauberg, Shostakovich, Moskvin, Kuzmina and others (including actor/assistant director Sergei Gerasimov and art director Yevgeni Yenej) must have appreciated working with each other. Despite all the problems connected with the making of New Babylon, they soon joined together to make another movie -- a sound film that was not quite a "talkie", set (mostly) in the vicinity of the Altai Mountains in Siberia.

Once again, Kuzmina plays the central character -- a newly graduated teacher looking forward to a comfortable life in Leningrad (with her fiancee) who is, instead, assigned to a rural school in Siberia. Once there, she finds herself at odds with both the local party head and the still powerful traditional village leader. The lives of the children she is sent to teach are, like those of their parents, centered around the herding of sheep. When many of her students are co-opted for work with the sheep, she moves her classroom to the open air. At first irritated by the universal preoccupation with sheep, she gradually comes to understand the importance of this activity. When the part boss (Sergei Gerasimov, a leftist journalist in New Babylon) and village leader (Liu-Sian Van, actually a local villager) to sell the flocks off to a corrupt speculator (Pyotr Sobolevsky, the Jean of New Babylon), Kuzmina protests. When she attempts to travel to a neighboring village to speak to a higher level official, she is marooned in the middle of nowhere. Before she can return, she is caught in a sudden snow storm. When villagers become concerned over Kuzmina's whereabouts, the party boss simply shrugs his shoulders. Nonetheless, volunteer searchers rescue her, though not before she has suffered from severe frost bite. On learning of the perfidy of their leaders, the villagers dislodge them, appointing new leaders -- who immediately request a medical rescue flight to take Kuzmina to the nearest (but still distant) hospital. As she is bundled into the airplane, she promises her students (and their parents) that she will return as soon as she can.

As with New Babylon, Kozintsev and Trauberg took on an approved topic (the promotion of rural education and adoption of collective farming principles) and proceeded to make a film that skirted the edge of what could be gotten away with. Again, significant script re-writing was mandated -- as the film was intended to be much darker in tone. Even so, one wonders how many other Soviet films of this era depicted a popular revolt against corrupt party leadership.

This is a much simpler film stylistically than its predecessor --and most of the storytelling is conveyed by the faces of its performers (almost all of whom were non-professionals, once the shooting moved to Siberia). The children in the film did a superb job, and the adults did almost as well. As in New Babylon, Kuzmina has to negotiate a role that starts off in full comic mode and then shifts from key to (usually darker) key. In one of my favorite moments, one of Kuzmina's most devoted students offers the gravely ill teacher her doll (presumably the only toy she owns) and Kuzmina manages to convey both her underlying pain and her happiness and gratitude for the girl's kindness. Gerasimov, on the other hand, is delightfully sleazy as the lazy and greedy party boss.

Shostakovich's music for this is also superb -- featuring the first use of a theremin in a film and Mongolian throat-singing. He designed the music in a more modular fashion overall, so as to cope better with imposed last-minute cuts. His music, plus information from the script, is all that remains from the reel of the film that remains lost. Unfortunately, the missing portion is actually the climax of the film -- when Kuzmina is abandoned in the face of an oncoming snow storm. The Absolut Media DVD copes with the missing reel by adding descriptive titles that track the events as the (reconstructed) score plays. In addition to the music, Alone features sound effects and bits of talking here and there. Most of the talking in the film emanates from public address speakers (and the like) -- but a couple of lines in the Leningrad section seem to be attributable to the actual characters. I would characterize this as another essential DVD for those who love early Soviet cinema.

A few extra captures:

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Jidao zhuizhong / Zodiac Killers (Ann Hui, 1991)

2008-03-03T21:50:00.001-05:00

Seen in early January 2008

Asian directors going abroad to make films often wind up foundering to some extent. Ann Hui's story of Chinese adrift in Japan is no exception. It reminds me a lot of Takeshi Kitano's Brother (about Japanese yakuza transplanted to Los Angeles). It is a "noble failure" that, for all its serious narrative flaws, is often visually quite striking.

This shows us the exploits of a trio of young Hong Kong Chinese who came to Japan to study. One dutifully studies, another has gotten embroiled with the yakuza (having caught the eye of a mobster's daughter). The third (played by Andy Lau) is drifting, sometimes going to class, sometimes cutting class to work at part-time jobs. His path crosses that of another Chinese student, one (played by Cherie Chung, in her last movie role prior to her retirement). Chung is a scholar by day and a bar hostess by night. Lau is smitten by Chung, but she is not interested in him (except as a friend, more or less). As it turns out, Chung is already in love with a yakuza, albeit one on the outs with his boss. He has returned from exile, seeking reconciliation, but proves to have inconvenient information. He is killed, but not before asking Chung to deliver the dangerous information. She, in turn, drags Lau into her problem. Things go increasingly less well for all concerned as the movie goes on.

With both fine cinematography (courtesy of Daving Chung) and good performances, where does the film go wrong? The most immediately noticeable problem is the film's absolutely abysmal score, which features way too much uninspired synthesizer doodling. But I suspect that one could, with sufficient strength of mind overlook this problem -- if it were the only deficiency of the film. A much more serious problem is the fact that the script is quite poor. It seems to make no attempt to imagine the realities of life for Chinese students studying in Japan -- and the Japan it depicts seems to be the Japan of mediocre action movies, and not the country that actually exists. Even worse, the script lurches about plot-wise, from one fairly arbitrary event to another. Surprisingly, the scriptwriters are WU Nien-jen (a Taiwanese writer who worked extensively with HOU Hsiao Hsien) and Raymond To (an occasional collaborator withTSUI Hark). One wonders just where this team went wrong.

Despite the flaws of the script, Hui anages to sustain the illusion of a credible story for long stretches here and there, even if all the pieces never quite come together. And Hui manges to do a good job of showing interesting bits of Japan's underside -- including not just places but also a remarkable cameo appearance by Kyoko Kishida (Woman of the Dunes, Autumn Afternoon) as an elderly prostitute. The Hong Kong DVD of this film is both cheap and reasonably good-looking -- so fans of Ann Hui, Andy Lau and/or Cherie Chung might find the DVD worth checking out.

Oh -- if you were wondering about the relevance of the English title of the film -- there is none at all. The Chinese name actually refers to searching, using one's utmost effort. A few more pictures:

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Tennen kokekkô / A Gentle Breeze in the Village (Nobuhiro Yamashita, 2007)

2008-03-01T16:44:00.007-05:00

Seen in early January 2008

The Japanese title of Yamashita's new films seems to translate to "natural cockle-doodle-doo". Although about the first thing one hears in the film is a rooster crowing (and we do see chickens from time to time), the significance of the title is not especially clear to me. The film (based on a popular shoujo manga) is set in Shimane Prefecture (the second least populous prefecture of Japan). Clearly built in the post-war baby boom era, the combined grade school and middle school now has less than 10 students -- and is probably reaching the end of its days. The films primary focus is on the oldest student in the school, Soyo (played by Kaho) now in ninth grade. While she has had friends in lower grades, she has never had a classmate in her own grade. At least, never until the start of the film -- when a newcomer from Tokyo (who has family ties to the village) arrives as a transfer student.

Most of the focus of this slow-moving and sweet-natured film is on the relationship that develops between Soyo and the newcomer Hiromi (Masaki Okada), though interactions with her family and schoolmates (most of whom are just "little kids") are not neglected. One complication of her friendship with Hiromi (other than his "attitude") is the fact that he turns out to be the son of her father's first love, who ran away to Tokyo long ago, but who has now returned.

Not much of a plot here, but still -- things happen. Soyo trades her "first kiss" to Hiromi for his fashionable Tokyo windbreaker. The children go on excursions to the beach and to a local festival. Soyo worries about whether her father might rekindle his old romance with Hiromi's mother. The middle schoolers go on a class trip to Tokyo. Just all the normal sort of things kids of this age do. In some ways, this bears a lot of similarity to what might be the first film of this sort, Mikio Naruse's 1947 Haru no mezame (Spring Awakens / Puberty).

The performance by Kaho (who was the same age as the young heroine whose part she played) is very good. Her fellow star Okada, though a couple of years older than he ought to have been, likewise did a creditable job. The cinematography of Ryûto Kondô is quite lovely. One's reaction to the film will probably depend on one's tolerance for a film that favors a low-key atmosphere and mood over plot. As for me, I enjoyed it a lot, albeit not as much as Yamashita's prior Linda Linda Linda, but to be fair that is probably my favorite film of the past couple of years.

More screen shots:

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Watched December 24-30, 2007 (part two): Murnau, Honda and Burton

2008-02-16T17:38:00.001-05:00

Nosferatu, eine Symphonie des Grauens / Nosferatu, a Symphony of Horror (F.W. Murnau, 1922)

The old Kino DVD of this film actually looked quite good (far better than older versions I had seen) but, though it had two musical scores, neither struck me as satisfactory. The new Kino DVD looks better -- and, perhaps more important, sounds vastly better, thanks to the reconstructed, newly recorded, original (1922) score of Hans Erdmann. This version of Nosferatu, or its British cousin (from Masters of Cinema), is an indispensable one for fans of Murnau and of "silent" cinema in general.

This is one of my favorite silent films (and one of my two favorite Murnau films, along with Last Laugh). The cinematography by Fritz Arno Wagner is, to my mind, unsurpassable. While the acting style is florid here, it certainly suits this material. So much has been written about this film that any brief comments I can offer are essentially superfluous, however. More important by far are screen shots -- which I hope convince anyone who lacks a new improved version of this classic to rent or borrow a copy -- or better yet, buy one.

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Matango / Attack of the Mushroom People (Ishirô Honda, 1963)

Perhaps it was unfair to Mr. Honda to watch his Matango the same week that I watched the newly restored Nosferatu. His (very loose) adaptation of William Hope Hodgson's 1907 story "The Voice in the Night" is certainly one of the best of Japan's vintage science fiction films of the 1950 and 1960s. And yet, Matango is not really competitive with the older "horror" film -- or with the story that inspired it.

Hodgson's story is simple but eloquent and narrowly focussed on telling its "incredible" story in a believable fashion. Hodgson tells of a ship, becalmed in the North Pacific, that encounters a man in a small boat, begging for food for himself and his wife. The man refuses to allow himself be seen clearly -- or to come on board the ship. At first suspicious, the crew decides to provide the help he requested, stirred by the urgency and sincerity of his tone. Food having been floated over to the man, he rows back to the isand where he and his wife are standed. Hours later, the man returns. He expresses gratitude and tells them that the two of them agreed that he should recount the story of their misfortunes.

The two were abandoned as the result of a shipwreck, left behind by the crew due to an insufficient supply of life boats. They floated (on a raft they made) to an island, but the island was almost entirely covered by some sort of lichenous growth -- lacking any sort of normal vegetation or animal life. They found a stranded ship offshore, but it too had been taken over by the lichenous growth -- and proved to be uncleanable. Luckily, they found a tiny patch of sandy beach that seemed resistent to the spread of the growth, but they still lacked a source of food (other than the supplies they had brought along and some canned good they found on the abandoned ship). Despite their best efforts to avoid contact with the lichenous contamination, they found that tiny patches of lichen had begun to appear on their skin. When returning from fishing one day (with little to show for his efforts), he found his wife had tried eating fungus due to her dire hunger. While wandering long a path through the island's "forest", he encountered a strange creature that seemed to be almost entirely made of fungus -- and realized the ultimate fate that awaited his wife and himself, if they were to continue eating the lichenous growth. The couple had resolved not to eat any more of the apparently addictive substance, but had now run out of food. The supplies given to them by the ship's crew, would allow them to get by a little longer (as they reconciled themselves to starvation rather than giving into metamorphosis). After giving the crew thanks and a blessing, the man rows away. As he does so, a ray of early morning sunshine shows the crew that the man's story had been no delusion.

The script for Matango is, by comparison, cluttered, totally inconsistent and wildly melodramatic. Here a yacht (with its male and female passengers and its crew) is pushed to an island by a mysterious current -- and once there, the ship is unable to leave. It is a large island, with clean running water and luxurious (normal) vegetation -- albeit apparently devoid of animal life. They find an abandoned ship, contaminated by some strange fungal growth and also encounter some large patches of fungus in the depths of the island's forest. The castaways start running out of food quickly (despite some canned goods left on the other ship, shellfish near the shore and a patch of garden near the shore). While sleeping on board the abandoned ship, which has been beached, they are bothered by what seems to be a mysterious prowler. Lust (and greed for food) causes all sorts of dissension (and some killings). Two of the most troublesome are driven away -- and discover that the fungus is delicious. Eventually only a man and a woman are left onboard. Despite incursions by strange wandering creatures, the two don't stick together -- so, of course, fungus people carry off the woman. The man finally discovers her in a fungal glade, surrounded by an array of weird creatures in various stage of fungus-hood (including the partially-transformed exilees). She too has decided that the fungus is irrestible and urges him to join her in eating it. He runs away in horror, finds the (original) boat useable and heads back towards civilization. This story is framed by the main character, returned to Tokyo and immured in an isolation ward in a hospital. He tells his story, but we never see his face -- until the last moments of the framing story at the end of the film.

Honda does a good job of creating an eerie and foreboding atmosphere, despite the script's poor plotting, non-existent character development and clunky dialogue. He also makes the most of a largely so-so cast. The cinematography is often just serviceably functional, though some striking images can be found. I'm no expert on "special effects", but I assume these were well done for the era. My conclusion -- a better than average film of its genre, interesting but seriously flawed.

Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (Tim Burton, 2007)

While I did like this overall, I discovered, when trying to anlayze it after the fact, that I found more niggling flaws to note than virtues to extol. A catalog of those defects would give an inaccurate impression of my response to the film. The bottom line is that I am glad that a cinematically effective adaptation of a Sondheim musical has finally been made and, likewise, glad to have seen it -- once. I can't imagine ever feeling the need to see it a second time, however. Purely musically, I found this fairly inadequate, far inferior to the original broadway cast recording.

Seen at the theater, so no screen captures.

Watched December 24-30, 2007 (part one): Aoi Miyazaki x 2 and Jun Ichikawa

2008-02-13T22:34:00.000-05:00

Ao to shiro de mizuiro - Scenario Toryumon 2001 (Takahashi Naoharu, 2001)

Aoi Miyazaki's second starring role was as an unhappy (and quite troubled) school girl in Akihiko Shiota's devastating (and outrageously under-appreciated) Gaichu / Harmful Insect (2001). In that film, her best friend was played by Yuu Aoi. In this short (45 minute long) made-for-television movie, filmed not long after Gaichu, Aoi Miyazaki once again plays an unhappy school girl and Yuu Aoi plays her ex-friend. Moving from middle school to high school, Miyazaki got marked for generalized bullying by her classmates -- and her friend, eager to purge herself from the taint of the long prior friendship, is especially merciless. As a result, Miyazaki has only one remaining goal at school, to jimmy open the locked door to the school's roof and throw herself over the edge. The arrival of a new male student (payed by Shun Oguri), looked down on by others due to his juvenile delinquent past history, is viewed as an opportunity by Miyazaki (as it turns out, he carries around a full kit of lock picking tools). When he gets beat up, following an attempt to "borrow" someone else's bike, Miyazaki is roused from her own deep funk to help him out.

While Oguri gives Miyazaki some burgling pointers, he doesn't open the door for her himself. And, as he figures out the depths of her depression, he seems to make certain that she will not succeed in her immediate goal (getting through the door), at least not when he is around to observe. Meanwhile, a new teacher is also worried about what she senses (though most harassment of Miyazaki takes place out of her sight). It seems that she had a good friend who took drastic action due to inability to tolerate bullying any longer.

Naoharu, the director here (all his work until this past year seems to have been television-related), shot this in a mostly low-key fashion. Performances are generally under-stated and naturalistic. The central focus here is on Aoi Miyazaki -- and she acquits herself well, presenting her character in a thoroughly convincing manner (with relatively little reliance on dialog). No subtitles on this Japanese DVD, but probably not needed a great deal in this case.

As to the name of this show, Scenario Toryumon seems to have been a series of films made on a once a year basis for several years. "Toryumon" means "dragon gate" -- but I am not certain what the reference might be to here (there is a wrestling organization of this name, but I can't see any connection). "Ao to shiro de mizuiro" literally means something like "the color of water (light blue) is made from blue and white". I must confess, I am also not able to find any explanation of this phrase either.

Hatsuyuki no koi: Virgin snow (HAN Sang-hee, 2007)

Virgin Snow also stars Aoi Miyazaki, who is now a pretty young (married) woman. And she has graduated from playing middle school and high school students to playing college students. (However, in her current television series, she has actually been promoted to being the wife of one of the last shoguns). Here, she plays the oldest of two daughters of a single mother, and who is both a student at Kyoto University and a kimono-clad attendant at a local temple.

LEE Joon-ki is a currently much-in-demand young Korean actor (following his starring role in the 2005 King and the Clown ). He is undeniably very cute and charming. Here, he plays the son of a visiting professor teaching advanced pottery and ceramics making and a new transfer student at the university (despite his abysmal command of Japnaese). Of course, Miyazaki and Lee meet for the first time even before the credits -- and the remainder of the film tracks the pair's vicissitudes. This film involves dialog in Japanese, Korean and (a bit of) English, making it yet another entry in the recent string of bilingual (or more) films featuring trans-Asian romances (possibly kicked off by the much more arty Last Life in the Universe).

Director Han is extremely accomplished technically, and has a good sense of composition. But the story isn't especially believable and the plot (such as it is) is often rather trifling. Reality breaks in only occasionally -- mostly in connection with the alcoholism of Miyazaki's mother (and her mother's abusive new boy friend). As it turns out, this bit of trauma serves mainly to separate the two young people for a (relatively long) while -- and is forgotten about thereafter.

Unlike Heavenly Forest, which was somewhat haphazardly directed and shot, but required Miyazaki to provide a bravura performance, here she mainly needed to be pretty and gracious -- but watching Aoi Miyazaki be pretty and gracious is scarcely a hardship. The Japanese DVD wound up not having English subtitles; accordingly, those unable to understand Korean will need to decipher the Japanese subtitles.

Aoi Miyazaki trivia. Currently (early February), 22-year old Miyazaki is simultaneously one of the stars of the most popular movie in Japan (Kagehinata ni saku) and the star (and title character) of the most popular television series (Atsu-hime).

A few more screen shots:

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Ashita no watashi no tsukurikata / How To Become Myself (Jun Ichikawa, 2007)

Until the last week of the year, LEE Chang-dong's Milyang (Secret Sunshine) had no real competition for my pick as favorite film of the year. Then I got to see Jun Ichikawa's latest (largely ignored, as usual) film. While the issues in Ichikawa's new film are not so monumental as those in Lee's film, this story of two schoolgirls and their cell phones proved surprisingly moving.

Juri (Riko Narumi) and Hinako (Atsuko Maeda) are classmates, but not close friends. Juri is popular enough in middle school, while Hinako is a class leader -- until she falls from grace and becomes shunned and an object for (mild) bullying. Juri is troubled by what happens to her classmate, but not enough to take any risks on her behalf. However, on the last day of middle school, the two have a covert conversation in the library (safely seated at separate tables, lest someone else come and see them). After Juri apologizes for her cowardice and Hinako re-assures her that she didn't hold this against her, the two have a brief but heart-felt chat.

The two girls go their separate ways, not coming into contact because they attend different high schools, but one day Juri hears that Hinako is moving soon to another part of Japan. On a whim, Juri, whose once ideal home life has frayed (due to the divorce of her parents), sends well-wishing text message to Hinako. Hinako, depressed at having to move (despite not fitting in all that well in her current school), pretends not to know who her correspondent is. Undeterred, Juri apologizes for sending mail to the wrong person by mistake -- but keeps on writing. Hinako, a bit annoyed, can't resist writing back -- and eventually she comes to depend on Juri's messages (which re-traverse their middle school history, albeit in semi-fictionalized form, and provide advice on how to be popular in her new school). When Hinako meets a boy who seems to like her, Juri (who has never had a boyfriend herself) frantically pores over countless online advice columns in order to find suitable advice to pass on. Throughout all the back and forth communication of the two girls, they never acknowledge that they actually knew each other once. While Juri's idealized vision of Hinako initially helps re-build her confidence (allowing her to become popular in her new school), Hinako gradually finds it oppressive to keep acting up to Juri's ideals. Beyond this point, readers wanting to know how things turn out will have to watch the film for themselves (or send me an e-mail begging for personalized spoilers).

The supporting cast here (parents, siblings, clasmates, teachers) are uniformly good -- but the film rests mainly on the shoulders of its young heroines (particularly Narumi's Juri). Ichikawa moves the film at an often leisurely speed, that nonetheless builds up considerable intensity with actions mainly consisting of reading and writing text messages. Although other films (such as Jeong's Take Care of My Cat and Iwai's All About Lily Chou-Chou) have featured cell phones and text messaging in prominent roles, Ichikawa makes this modern form of written communication the primary focus of action here. As a result of the centrality of indirect communication, Ichikawa relies on split screens (and insets) from time to time -- something I do not recall him doing in any of the other eight films I've seen by him.

Alas, the Japanese DVD of this film (like those of all of Ichikawa's films since Tokyo Marigold) lacks English subtitles. There apparently is a fan-subbed version floating about the ether, but I have not heard of any plans for a subbed commercial release anywhere. (Ichikawa's previous film, the very fine Aogeba totoshi never got any sort of subbed release). One final word as to the title -- the literal rendition strikes me as a bit more appealing and evocative, something like "the way of making tomorrow's me".

Watched December 17-23, 2007 (part two): Ozu and Suzuki

2008-02-02T19:42:00.000-05:00

Nagaya shinshiroku / The Record of a Tenement Gentleman (Yasujiro Ozu, 1947)

Ozu's first post-war film (after a 5 year gap in his career) dealt with one of Japan's most pressing (and least attended to) social problems -- the existence of large numbers of homeless children, who were either war orphans or otherwise lost or abandoned. Here, a young boy, six or so years old (Hohi Aoki) has been found by Chishu Ryu (playing a fortune teller of sorts). When he brings the boy home to the house where he rents a room, its owner (Reikichi Kawamura) has no interest in housing a stray child. The two decide then decide to palm the boy off on the curmudgeonly shopkeeper who lives across the street (Choko Iida). Iida has no enthusiasm for the proposal, but acquiesces. She is chagrined to find that the boy still wets the bed at night -- and tries to track down the boy's missing father. Having no luck in this endeavor, she and the boy return home. After he wets the bed again, the boy runs off. Iida, feeling guilty, looks frantically (but fruitlessly for him) -- but late that night Ryu (having found the boy in the same place he had first encountered him), brings him back.

Iida decides that she should, in effect, adopt the homeless boy -- to the amusement of her comparatively well-to-do childhood friend (Mitsuko Yoshikawa), who nonetheless seems to approve of this endeavor (and provides some financial support). After the purchase of new clothes and an outing to the zoo, Iida and the boy go to have a "family" picture taken. That night, however, the boy's father shows up at her house, apologizing for having taken so long to find him (and detailing his own desperate searching). Iida stoically sends the pair off (with new cap, sweater, books etc.), after asking them to visit her now and then. Her neighbors are surprised at how distraught Iida is over the events of the evening. They attribute her tears to her loss of the boy, but she insists that she is actually crying due to her uncharitable thoughts about the "lost" father (who she suspected of abandoning the boy), which she discovered to have been unjustified. She then tells her neighbors (and by extension, the audience) that she now realizes the importance of doing something about all the lost and orphaned children. She can, at least, find another boy who has no family at all and adopt him. The neighbors are a bit non-plussed by her resolution (and the clear implicatiuon that they too have been failing to meet their obligations to the all too many homeless children of Tokyo), but Ryu points her in the best direction to find a needy orphan. The film closes with shots of homeless boys loitering about the statue of Saigo (in Ueno Park -- near the zoo visited earlier in the film).

This first post-war film represented both a new beginning and the end of an era. It was, in essence, a final reunion of most of Ozu's pre-war repertory company -- and his last exploration of the lower working class milieu that was a regular subject in his films of the early (to middle) 1930s. Takeshi Sakamoto makes one last appearance as a character named Kihachi (playing one of Iida's neighbors, a fabric dyer with a flourishing family, who serves as head of the neighborhood committee). While Sakamoto would appear in one more Ozu film, this was the last Ozu appearance for both Iida and Yoshikawa (whose working relationship with Ozu stretched back almost 20 years).

Ozu's film got very little support from its initial audiences. The Japanese government (and public) did not do a good job of dealing with orphaned and abandoned children in the years after the war. As the film suggested, ordinary people seemed too focused on money and material goods to pay much attention to annoying things like homeless children. It would appear that audiences of that day likewise had no interest in being reminded of a moral obligation they had little interest in fulfilling. Despite the film's many charms, it was close to a flop.

Unfortunately, Nagaya shinshiroku also got remarkably little respect in the West for many years. It was probably first mentioned here in Anderson and Richie's The Japanese Film (1959). However, it appears that neither author had actually seen the film. The title was mis-translated into English, based on mis-reading the name as "Nagaya shinshi roku" (Record of a Tenement Gentleman) instead of the correct "Nagaya shinshiroku" (A Who's Who of the Tenement). Even worse, the plot was totally misdescribed:

[the film} was about one of many homeless boys who roamed the streets directly after the war. The boy meets his father, but eventually rejects him to go off on hids own and live his own life

As was seen above, this description has virtually no resemblance to what actually takes place in Ozu's film.

This film also got short shrift in in Richie's Ozu (1974):

It was also the first and last time Ozu can be caught making a nod in the direction of civic endeavor, an idea imported from abroad that enjoyed a brief popularity during the Occupation. At the end of the picture, the middle-aged [protagonist] decides to open a center for war orphans like the one she had come to love. This unlikely, one might almost say un-Japanese, resolve almost ruins the film.

Audie Bock, in her Japanese Film Directors (1979) continued the Western writing off this film, on the same mistaken basis as Richie -- namely, that Iida's decision to open an orphanage at the end was so "un-Japanese". Noel Burch, writing in the same year in his To the Distant Observer, was more charitable to the film -- he found it to be one of the few post-war Ozu films to have any trace of the value of Ozu's pre-war work. ( Burch considered most post-war Ozu films to be "de-vitalized", due to fossilization of Ozu's style, and thus suitable only to "the amusement and edification of the dilettante").

It would appear that the first American champion of Ozu's long spurned film was David Bordwell. In his 1988, Ozu and the Poetics of Cinema, Bodwell noted:

If Ozu had made only this seventy-two minute film, he would have to be considered one of the world's great directors.

Finally, in his A Hundred Years of Japanese Film (2001), Donald Richie made amends for his earlier dismissal of Nagaya shinshiroku, now calling it "one of Ozu's most perfect domestic comedies". Today, any viewer (with multi-region DVD playing capacity) has his (or her) own opportunity to judge the merits of this film. While the film has yet to show up on DVD in the United States, there are two English-subtitled versions to choose from -- a passable Panorama release from Hong Kong and an even better one from Tartan (UK). I suspect that a Criterion edition will show up in North America one of these years.

On last note, fans of Takeshi Kitano's Kikujiro, might find this film particularly interesting. This modern film of a curmudgeonly individual (Kitano as a washed-up petty yakuza) saddled with the job of caring for an unprepossessing young boy shows more than a few echoes of Ozu's Nagaya shinshiroku.

Hishu monogatari / A Tale of Sorrow and Sadness (Seijun Suzuki, 1977)

I make no claim of Suzuki expertise. I found his Pistol Opera weird but (mostly) intriguing and I positively love his Operetta tanuki goten (Princess Raccoon), my favorite contemporary movie musical (pace Burton and Sondheim). Beyond that I know nothing but rumors.

This earlier Suzuki film started off promisingly -- as a send up of modern business (and advertising) in the vein of Masumura's brutal black comedy Giants and Toys (1958). Here, some opportunistic businessmen decide to groom a pretty amateur golfer as a golfing star, in order to take advantage of her potential in fashion advertising. The scheme works -- for a while -- and then their lucky victim becomes dispensable.

This film begins to get very weird about mid-way through, and then simply becomes more and more random. In addition to the main plot (and the heroine's romantic misadventures), there is a younger school boy brother with a very strange girl friend and a very scary neighbor, who basically takes more and more control over the heroine's crumbling life. By the end, the film has totally run off the road.

Unfortunately, much of the random-ness in the latter part of the film is simply not all that interesting, either in terms of story or visual imagery. The most engaging aspect of the film for me was the presence of veteran actor Shuji Sano in his last role (he would die the next year) -- as a grizzled golf professional who resented turning his beloved sport into an advertising opportunity.

The is available on DVD with English subtitles -- from Panorama (HK). alas, this is a pretty abysmal release. A disappointing release of an even more disappointing film.

Watched December 17-23, 2007 (part one): Murnau and Lubitsch

2008-01-31T12:02:00.000-05:00

Tabu: A Story of the South Seas (F.W. Murnau, 1931)

On a frigid winter day, what could be more consoling than watching a movie about the South Seas? Because the weather was so arctic, and my copy of the new Masters of Cinema DVD of Murnau's Tabu had just arrived, this seemed like an obvious viewing choice.

An island maiden and a young fisherman are in love, but torn asunder when the maiden is chosen to be a new "sacred virgin". They flee from one island to another in the South Seas, and think they have found a place they can be safe and happy together. But they are followed by an old warrior sent to proclaim the taboo -- and bring the girl back. Their attempt to flee further is undermined by corrupt behavior by the residents of the more "civilized" island they had fled to.

The story sounds rather hokey -- and the entire cast is made up of non-professionals. But the South Sea settings are beautiful -- and the young leads are good-looking. And Murnau and his cinematographer (Floyd Crosby, with some assistance by Robert Flaherty) make the most of the locale and the cast. Surely the fact that Murnau chose to make this as a "silent" film (it has a musical score-- but no speech) makes it easier for the film to cast is spell.

No real point in detailed discussion of the film's history (and virtues) -- as Master of Cinema's DVD not only looks wonderful but contains copious background information and documentation about the film. More pictures:

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The Shop Around the Corner (Ernst Lubitsch, 1940)

In the lead up to Christmas, our family wanted to watch a film suitable to the season -- so we settled on this, one of Lubitsch's most sweet-natured films, because its climax takes place on Christmas Eve. The film was a perfect choice, with everyone agreeing it was even better than they remembered.

The cast here is near perfect, not just the principals (Jimmy Stewart and Margaret Sullavan), but the entire roster (my favorite of all -- Felix Brassart, as Stewart's meek but honest colleague and friend). And Frank Morgan (better knowmn as the Wizard of Oz) is quite good as the (maritaly) beleaguered shop owner. Stewart is especially good here because he is less easy to like here than he is typically. His character is prickly, and a bit priggish and self-satisfied. Similarly Sullavan's character hovers right on the edge of being annoying here. Lubitsch manages to create an almost perfect romantic comedy out of these somewhat unconventional would-be lovers.

Watched December 10-16, 2007 (part two): Mizoguchi and Imai

2008-01-26T23:13:00.000-05:00

Gion bayashi / Gion Festival Music / A Geisha (Kenji Mizoguchi, 1953)

The first Mizoguchi films I saw were the two that are most highly touted in the West, Ugetsu and Sansho the Bailiff. While I didn't dislike either of these films -- and I admired Mizoguchi's visual sensibility quite a bit -- neither did I fall in love with with them. It was not until I saw Street of Shame that I discovered there was another side to Mizoguchi's work -- one more closely aligned to the world of Ozu and Naruse. When I finally saw Gion Festival Music for the first time, it too was added to the list of Mizoguchi films I liked best.

This film, like Naruse's 1933 Apart From You and 1951 Ginza Cosmetics and Mizoguchi's own 1936 Sisters of Gion, depicts the rather precarious lives of contemporary geisha. All four films involve a pair of women, an older, more experienced one and a younger, comparatively naive one. As in Naruse's two films (and unlike the case in his own older film), the pair of women at the center of attention are presented strictly as distinctive individuals and not primarily as representatives of old and new types of women.

The central figures in Gion bayashi are Miyoharu (Michiyo Kogure), a fastidious, successful 30-something geisha, and Eiko (Ayako Wakao), the teen-aged daughter of a recently-deceased colleague, who had retired to marry a (then) prosperous merchant (Eitaro Shindo). Eiko comes to Kyoto to beg Miyoharu to help her become a geisha, having run away from the relatives who have been looking after her following the death of her mother (her father being too preoccupied with his faltering business to take care of a teen-aged girl). Training and equipping an apprentice geisha is expensive, and Miyoharu has to borrow lots of money to take care of this. Problems arise when Eiko has finally been fully trained, and the businessman who actually provided the loan, made through Miyoharu's employer Okimi (Chieko Naniwa), wants his extra-monetary payback.

Eiko's self-defense tactics leave the client (and financial patron) injured and Okimi furious. This results in a boycott, which will be end only if Miyoharu proves to be suitably "obliging" to a patron who has developed a fancy for her. Desperate, Miyoharu eventually gives in, only to be chided by Eiko for her action. After plenty of recriminations and tears, the two are reconciled -- and Miyoharu promises she will act (in effect) as Eiko's sponsor, and will buffer her from the seamier aspects of the business side of geisha-hood.

The acting in this film (particularly that of Kogure and 19 year-old Wakao) is excellent -- and the cinematography by Kazuo Miyagawa is absolutely gorgeous. The film is a somewhat curious blend of realism (especially the scenes showing the training of Eiko) and rather lurid sensationalism. It also considerably compressed the time period involved in Eiko's transformation from rank beginner to fully qualified practitioner. For all Mizoguchi's vaunted familiarity with the world of the geisha, his presentation seems a lot less "real" than Naruse's treatment of the same sort of material in films like Flowing (as well as the other two Naruse films mentioned above). All the same, I wouldn't want to be without a film as lovely and interesting as Gion bayashi -- and it is nice to finally have a good-looking English-subtitled DVD thanks to Masters of Cinema (UK).

More images:

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Koko ni izumi ari / Here Is a Fountain (Tadashi Imai, 1955)

Tadashi Imai was one of Japan's most popular (and award-winning) directors of the 1950s and 1960s. Yet his work is virtually unknown in the West. Richie and Anderson in their 1959 The Japanese Film, alternated between praising (sometimes very highly) particular films and dismissing him and his work overall. At the root of their dissatisfaction seems to have been the fact that Imai was an unapologetic leftist -- and made no attempt to hide this fact in his films. Time and again, Richie and Anderson return to Imai's politics, claiming too many of his films were nothing but Communist propaganda -- and then deriding him because he got so interested in the details of his films that they turned out to be unconvincing propaganda. One might gently suggest in response that, perhaps, Imai was never so wrapped up in mere propagandizing as Richie and Anderson thought he was.

In any event, where these early writers had mixed feelings about Imai, Audie Bock in her 1978 Japanese Film Directors expressed nothing but dismissive contempt. Richie, in his A Hundred Years of Japanese Film (2001), is more generally appreciative of Imai's work than he had been decades ago. Nevertheless, he attributes Imai's effectiveness and individuality more to his movies' themes than to any identifiable cinematic style. Despite this recent critical "rehabilitation", the many decades of critical dismissal have made Imai's work essentially invisible in the West (and particularly in the United States).

The present film is not one of Imai's most brilliant and inspired works. And it does indeed have a somewhat didactic core -- emphasizing the importance of disseminating high culture (here western classical music) to ordinary people outside the big cities. But is is far from the simple-minded affair described by Anderson and Richie:

Especially interesting was the films suggestion that only in the Japanese peasant and laboring class is there any real appreciation for the inner substance of the music.

In fact, the film suggests nothing of the sort. The film recounts the (sometimes) rather quixotic efforts of an idealistic group of classical musicians to bring music to people in the boondocks. The musicians are not saints, but ordinary (and very fallible) mortals -- and they live a hand to mouth existence most of the time. Their efforts do not always meet with success -- some school audiences (and their parents) are frankly bored to tears. In other places, they can scarcely find opportunities to play. To be sure, the group does get particularly good reception in one remote rural school -- but this would seem to be not just any old school but the famed Yamabiko Gakko, previously portrayed in Imai's 1952 film of that name. They also get an enthusiastic receptions by a group of farmers and the patients at a hospital for lepers -- but surely the novelty of the experience and gratitude towards people who would make such great effort to bring music to them explains some of the attentiveness of these naive audiences. And the finale of the film involves a performance in Tokyo of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony (with some of the group's members playing in the orchestra and others in the audience) -- and the upscale urban audience at this concert shows no lack of interest or receptivity.

Any political point the film might be making seems to me secondary to Imai's interest in depicting the story of his unusual group of musicians. And to help ensure audience interest in his characters, Imai was not averse to using very familiar faces in his cast, which included Keiko Kishi, Eiji Okada, Keiju Kobayashi, Koji Mitsui, Daisuke Katô, Sadako Sawamura, Eijirô Tono, Hisako Hara and Noriko Sengoku. Despite the recognizability of the principal cast members, Imai manages to create an almost documentary-esque feel for his film (integrating non-professionals with his veteran performers).

There is very little point in summarizing the plot here, but one can note that the core character is a violinist played by Eiji Okada. The other most important characters are Keiko Kishi, a pianist (and eventually Okada's wife) and Keiju Kobayashi, more or less the music director of the group, who lets his obsession with music wreck his domestic life. The cast is uniformly effective -- and there is undeniable meta-cinematic fun in watching Daisuke Kato banging drums and Koji Mitsui playing trumpet and the like. The script is by Yôko Mizuki (who crafted many fine scripts for Imai and Naruse, among others) and the cinematography by Shunichiro Nakao (who shot not only many of Imai's best films but also Naruse's remarkable but neglected Haru no mezame). The film is available on DVD in Japan, but not with English subtitles (of course).

Watched December 10-16, 2007 (part one): Kozintsev and Trauberg

2008-01-18T20:27:00.000-05:00

Due to the (increasing) tendency of my posts to slip further and further behind my viewing of movies, I've decided to start breaking my weekly posts up into smaller pieces. And I may take more radical action soon, separating the list of what I watch on an an ongoing basis (which I would try to keep as current as possible) from the reviews (which might take longer to appear). In any event, this week's submission comes in two parts. Part two will move from 1930s Russia to early 1950s Japan.

Yunost Maksima / Maxim's Youth (Grigori Kozintsev & Leonid Trauberg, 1935)

The previous film by Kozintsev and Trauberg was Alone, a pre-talkie with a synchronized score by Dmitri Shostakovich, sound effects and even snippets of speech. With this first film of their Maxim trilogy, they entered the realm of talkies. Nonetheless, this film (and its two successors) retained many features from the silent era -- like long wordless sequences and occasional intertitles. This film also has a bit of music by Shostakovich, accompanying a silent-esque sequence of rich revelers celebrating New Year's Eve by a rather inebriated sleigh race through the streets of St. Petersburg. Revolutionary songs (sung and/or played on the accordion) make up most of the music for the rest of this film.

The first film of the trilogy is set in 1910 (once it gets past the last day of 1909). Its protagonist is Maxim (Boris Chirkov), who is sort of a Soviet (initially pre-Soviet) Everyman. He starts out as a rather heedless young worker and progressively becomes entangled in union activity, which is (of course) viewed as subversive by the owners of his factory and the Czarist authorities. He has two male buddies, who are even less political than himself -- and a female acquaintance, Natasha (Valentina Kibardina), who is up to her neck in labor organization and other left wing political activities, working under the direction of a veteran politician, Polivanov (Mikhail Tarkhanov). Maxim's radicalization begins with the death of one of his comrades due to dangerous conditions at the factory. When the dead man's co-workers hold a funeral procession for him, it is smashed by Army troops. This leads to further unrest, into which Maxim and his remaining colleague are swept. Both are arrested, but the friend makes the mistake of violently resisting arrest. In prison, as the condemned prisoners are being led off to be executed, Maxim and his comrades protest by singing the "Internationale", bringing more punishment on their heads.

Maxim is eventually exiled to any place in Russia except St. Petersburg and Moscow and about thirty other cities and districts (leaving only rural boondocks open to him). After bidding a last farewell to Natasha (now undercover -- as a member of the upper bourgeoisie), Maxim departs for the countryside. But even there, he manages to get tangled up in labor troubles (strumming his guitar, he gives coded directions on where a secret worker's rally is to be held); this time he escapes capture, but just barely.

The style Kozintsev and Trauberg utilize here is closer to the populist one practiced by Boris Barnet than to the more avant-garde work of Eisenstein. But this film shows plenty of traces of the expressionistic style used in their earlier masterpiece New Babylon, particularly in the way lighting is used. The cinematography (by long-time collaborator Andrei Moskvin) is often quite striking, considerably more sophisticated than the relatively simple (albeit interesting) plot.

No English-subtitled DVD is available, but the French-subtitled version from Bach Films is serviceable -- and cheap. More pictures:

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Vozvrashcheniye Maksima / The Return of Maxim (Grigori Kozintsev & Leonid Trauberg, 1937)

Part two of the trilogy, is set in 1914. It is set in St. Petersburg (soon to be renamed Petrograd) --as Maxim has now returned there (still armed, Woody Guthrie-like, with a guitar). Maxim has now openly joined the ranks of revolutionary agitators, along with Natasha who sheds her "respectable" alter ego soon after his return (she acted as a spy, while in a rather courtesan-like situation). Labor troubles are now general, as the First World War is having a devastating impact on the lives of ordinary workers. Maxim is waylaid (and almost killed), and then disappears -- leading his comrades to fear the worst.

Recovered, Maxim helps coordinate a general strike. When attempts to suppress a massive march by the strikers are turned back, the strike turns into an insurrection of sorts. At this point, the Tsarist government sends in troops in full force, overwhelming the workers' feeble barricades. Some of the comrades are killed, and others (including Natasha) are captured. Maxim escapes -- by joining the army, where he will continue to campaign for political change, on the front lines.

Visually, this is a simpler film than its predecessor. Not that there is no mood and atmosphere (when needed), but the style is more vigorous and direct. The success of the first film obviously made greater resources available to the film makers -- and some of the gigantic crowd scenes are quite impressive. This film. like the first, offers a blend of comedy, romance, suspense, music (with more contributions by Shostakovich) and "propaganda". Overall, Kozintsev and Trauberg seem more concerned with the fate of their characters (and the working poor), than in selling ideology here.

Additonal screen shots:

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Vyborgskaya storona/ The Vyborg District (Grigori Kozintsev & Leonid Trauberg, 1939)

With this film, we move (with Maxim) to 1917, around the time of the October Revolution. Interestingly, we none of the "action" featured in other soviet films set in this period, rather the political focus is on parliamentary wrangling. Meanwhile, Maxim himself has been appointed commissar of a leading bank, and the old management is far from happy (and does its best at obstructing oversight). Counter-revolutionaries, making use of economic chaos, try to stir up unrest among the unemployed poor in order to provide cover for a plot to assassinate Lenin. Natasha is busy representing the local worker's organization in the Vyborgsky District (then one of the city's major industrial areas), making demands for more financial help than the government and banks (viz. Maxim) were able to provide. The climax of the film is the trial of looters, including Yevdokia (Natalya Uzhviy), as an impoverished war widow with a sick child, who got ensnared in the unrest due to desperation. Clemency by the people's court, once it hears her circumstances, leads to the capture of one of the leading counter-revolutionaries. At the end of the film, Maxim is once again on his way to fight, this time for the (new) government.

Given the subject matter, this is the most frankly political film of the trilogy -- and it features appearances by Lenin, Trotsky (renamed Sverdlov) and Stalin. While they mainly appear in the "governmental" sections of the film, they do interact with Maxim on occasion. Most amusingly, when they find Maxim taking a catnap, after staying up all night to work, Lenin has Stalin add another hour to the time that Maxim had designated for wakening by his colleagues. The handling of political issues is more heavy-handed here, by necessity. Still, Kozintsev and Trauberg generally keep one interested in the proceedings. As with the preceding film, this features less in the way of stylistic flourishes than did Maxim's Youth -- and the cinematography (still by Moskvin) suits the direct style.

Needless to say, the film also features more music by Shostakovich. To tel the truth, one of the main reasons I ordered the Maxim trilogy from Bach Films was to see and hear how Shostakovich's music was used in context. Disembodied scores can be musically effective -- but (for scores I like) I really feel the need to find out how the musically is actually used. The fact that the films were visually pleasing and generally interesting and entertaining was a nice bonus. While the Maxim films are not as remarkable as Kozintsev's and Trauberg's masterpieces, New Babylon and Alone, they are nonetheless of more than simply historical interest.

More screen captures:

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Watched December 3-9, 2007: Sjöström, Mizoguchi, Kurosawa, Shostakovich's Mouse and Aoi Miyazaki

2008-01-04T12:01:00.000-05:00

Terje Vigen (Victor Sjöström, 1917)

A lovely (and visually remarkable) film, based on a narrative poem by the Norwegian dramatist Henrik Ibsen. The poem tells of Terje Vigen, a sailor who tries to run a British blockade (in 1809) in order to get food for his wife and infant, is captured by the British and imprisoned for five years, and returns home only to find his wife and child have died. Working as a ship's pilot off southern Norway, he is one day called on to rescue the yacht of an English lord (who turns out tho be the ship's captain who captured him), traveling with his wife and child. On recognizing his tormentor, Vigen initially plans to sink the ship with all aboard, but on looking at the child, relents. Unlike most of Ibsen's work, this poem is unabashedly sentimental, with not even the tiniest trace of irony. Sjöström's film seems to follow the plot of the poem pretty faithfully (and the intertitles are based on the poem), though Vigen's prison seems to be land-based, as opposed to the prison barge specified in the poem.

Sjöström not only directs here, he also plays Vigen. His acting style is fairly broad and "old-fashioned", but vigorous and effective. Other cast members have relatively little to do in comparison. The work of German Romantic painter Caspar David Friedrich would seem to have had a lot of influence on Sjöström's scenic composition. The cinematography is generally simple but attractive. However, it rises to a higher level when capturing (and bringing to life) the sea (the only element in the film as important as Terje Vigen himself).

More pictures:

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Tokyo koshin-kyoku / Tokyo March (Kenji Mizoguchi, 1929)

One of the earliest of Mizoguchi's few surviving silent films (out of the 70 or so he made). Alas, this exists in only an incomplete condensed version (preserving a bit more than 20 minutes, out of the original 90 or so minutes). Apparently, the film had several parallel threads about life in 1920s Tokyo, but the condensed version preserves only highlights of one of the story threads (Takako Irie, one of the film's stars appears only briefly and peripherally in the preserved remnant).

The story that remains concerns a young woman living with her aunt and uncle (after the death of her mother, who had been a geisha). All she has to remember her mother by is a ring that was passed on to her -- and she never knew her father at all. In order to not be a burden on her far from affluent relatives, the young woman also goes to work as a geisha. One day she meets a couple of young men, when she tries to help them retrieve an errant tennis ball (and charms them both). In her professional capacity, she also catches the attention of the wealthy father of one of the young men. She and the man's son fall in love, but the (unwitting) father still pursues the girl himself. When trying to gain her favor, he sees the ring she wears -- and realizes she is his own (illegitimate) daughter. Obviously, this puts a crimp in the romance of the two young people. Luckily for her, the other young man adores her too -- and the brother goes off to America to try to forget his sorrows.

The remains of this film are intriguing. The editing is far more "vigorous" than one is used to in later Mizoguchi films (even the 30s silents), but the composition of scenes often prefigures that found in later works. This film is actually a bonus feature on Digital Meme's new subbed, benshi-narrated release of Mizoguchi's Taki no shiraito (The Water Magician). Tokyo March is not only narrated by Midori Sawato (both today's leading benshi and teacher of film narration), she also sings (very well) the song intended to accompany the opening (and close) of the film. One can only hope that Digital Meme will eventually release many more "silent" (or, better, "pre-talkie") Japanese treasures.

More screen shots:

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Skazka o glupom myshonke / The Tale of the Silly Little Mouse (Mikhail Tsekhanovsky, 1940)

My main interest here was the musical score -- in essence a little chamber opera for children by Dmitri Shostakovich, based on a folk tale (as retold by great poet Samuel Marshak). But, as it turned out, this tale of naughty baby mouse who doesn't want to go to sleep at bedtime was a visual treat as well. Mama Mouse calls on various neighbors -- a duck, a pig, a frog, a horse, a sturgeon (!) and (unwisely) a cat -- to coax her child to sleep. Not to worry, the good-hearted (but not terribly observant) neighborhood watch dog comes to the rescue in time. This cartoon came as a bonus on the (German) Absolut Media DVD of Kozintsev and Trauberg's Odna (Alone). Unlike the main feature, this is neither restored nor subtitled -- but it is still a nice extra treat.

More pictures:

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Yoidore tenshi / Drunken Angel (Akira Kurosawa, 1948)

The first of Kurosawa's three "doctor films" -- and (more momentously) the first appearance by Toshiro Mifune in a Kurosawa film. As in many films to come, the central relationship is that between Mifune and Takashi Shimura. Here Mifune is a mid level gang boss and Shimura is an alcoholic doctor who tries to treat Mifune (who turns out to have tuberculosis). Mifune is not a "good patient" -- and Shimura's resentment of gangsters doesn't make the doctor-patient relationship any easier. Mifune's situation takes a turn for the worse, when his former superior is released from prison -- and wants not only his former place back but also Mifune's girl friend (Michiyo Kogure). The boss also is vexed that his former girl friend (Chieko Nakakita) is under Shimura's protection, working as a nurse. Meanwhile, a spunky barkeeper's assistant (Noriko Sengoku) who loves Mifune wants him to flee with her to her family's farm (so he can recover -- and escape gang life). Shimura does have other TB patients -- including young Yoshiko Kuga, who IS a good patient, well on her way to recovery.

The acting style of Mifune and Shimura and the gang boss (Reisaburo Yamamoto) is often intense, on or over the edge of over-acting at times. On the other hand, the performances of the important female characters (all the above, plus Choko Iida as Shimura's maid) are typically more restrained (and natural seeming). The film feels a bit didactic at times, and the plotting a bit schematic. But the visual images are outstanding. A very good film -- but I don't see it as a radical advance from No Regrets for Our Youth (as critical consensus would have it), but rather just an incremental step. The new Criterion DVD probably makes this look (and sound) about as good as currently possible.

Showing off more wonderful moments of this visually striking film:

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Tada, kimi wo aishiteru / Heavenly Forest (Takehiko Shinjo, 2006)

Aoi Miyazaki and Hiroshi Tamaki are college classmates, both a little bit nerdy. Tamaki is interested in photography, so Miyazaki takes this hobby up as well. Miyazaki obviously has a crush on Tamaki, but he is more interested in a more conventional (and popular) classmate (Meisa Kuroki). After arranging for a first kiss (photographed) from Tamaki, Miyazaki disappears. A few years later, Tamaki is invited to the opening of Miyazaki's first photo exhibition. What will he find there?

This sentimental romance has a decent enough premise, but is not structured very well. The cinematography is rather pedestrian -- rather ironically, given that this is a film about photography. Tamaki and Kuroki perfgorm passably, but neither is in the same league as Aoi Miyazaki -- one of the two most promising young actresses of Japan (the other being Chizuru Ikewaki). Miyazaki made a tremendous impression as a child actress, in a virtually silent performance in Aoyama's Eureka, which was followed by her wrenching performance in Shiota's Gaichu (Harmful Insect). Just recently married, she is still negotiating the difficult transition from child star to top level adult professional. First known for her expertise in handling somber (even sad) characters, she has begun to hone her comic skills (viz. Nana). she manages to handle a blend of mild comedy and sadness here. Miyazaki's fans and well-wishers will find this relatively minor romance worth seeing, and others might find it mildly diverting (and find themselves charmed by Miyazaki's gawky heroine).

A few more shots:

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Watched November 26 -- December 2, 2007: Barnet, Somai, Jeong, Bong

2007-12-24T00:00:00.000-05:00

U samogo sinyego morya / By the Bluest of Seas (Boris Barnet, 1936)

Barnet's film takes place in the Caspian Sea -- and an on an island in that sea. But he starts the film with water and waves and two shipwrecked sailors -- and the marine cinematography by Mikhail Kirillov is absolutely stunning. The sailors Alyosha (Nikolai Kryuchkov) and Yussuf (Lev Sverdlin) are rescued by members of a fishing commune on an island in the Southern Caspian. Soon after their arrival, both are smitten by Misha, a pretty commune supervisor (Yelena Kuzmina, star of Kozintsev and Trauberg's New Babylon and Alone). They both go to work for the commune, and compete for the attention of Misha, using means both fair and foul, which puts a considerable strain on their comradeship. As it turns out, she is already engaged to a sailor serving in the Soviet Union's Pacific fleet, so the two set off together (friends again), back across the Caspian to their own hometown.

An utterly delightful (and beautiful) film -- it has helped solidify Barnet's spot as one of my favorite Soviet directors. One can't help wondering why Barnet's lovely film is so comparatively ignored today. Perhaps the fact that it is totally uncategorizable hurts it -- part low comedy, past romance, part socialist propaganda, part musical. Moreover, this is part silent (with intertitles and a synchronized musical score) and part talkie. As beautifully crafted as the film is, it feels unsophisticated, too much aimed at common audiences. At the moment, the only subbed DVD release (from Bach Films), is subbed only in French. It does not appear that much restoration was done for this release, but for the most part this looks lovely, despite the damaged condition of the underlying source print.

Lots more pictures:

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Novgorodtsy / Men of Novgord / A Good Lad (Boris Barnet, 1943)

This war film by Boris Barnet is almost as heterogeneous as By the Bluest of Seas. This film involves a group of partisans who rescue a downed French airman (Viktor Dobrovolsky) in Nazi-occupied Western Russia. Despite the lack of any mutually intelligible language at first, our hero finds romance and aid in trying to restore a downed German airplane to working order. As it turns out, the partisans have found the location of a secret enemy airbase (with the aid of a heroic refugee opera singer), and our pilot needs to get back to his base to lead an air raid to destroy it. Despite its length (just over an hour), the film involves plenty of comedy and music (both folk style and classical) in addition to drama, suspense and romance.

Visually, this isn't quite as splendid as By the Bluest of Seas. And the cast isn't quite as skilled. But the film is still worth seeing (if one gets a chance). Curiously, while this film was shown extensively to Soviet troops in the field (and was quite popular with them), it was banned from exhibition in Russia's towns and cities. One wonders what led to the simultaneous promotion and suppression of a film that certainly seemed patriotic enough for domestic consumption.

More screen shots:

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Ohikkoshi /Moving (Shinji Sômai, 1993)

Of all the wonderful foreign "family films" that have never been distributed in the West, Ohikkoshi is the film whose neglect is most mystifying to me. It is almost certainly the best film ever made (to date) on the impact of divorce on a child. It manages to be both honest and yet still (ultimately) hopeful It is beautifully filmed -- and its star, twelve year-old Tomoko Tabata, gives one of the best performances by a child ever captured on film. In addition, it may be the only live-action film that seems to have both been inspired by the work of Ghibli Studios (particularly Takahata's Grave of the Fireflies and Only Yesterday) and provided a source of inspiration in return (to Miyazaki's Spirited Away).

Renko's parents both seem to be decent enough people and both love her well enough -- but they just can't stand living together any longer. At first, Renko seems (relatively) unflustered by her father's move to an apartment in another part of town. But she begins getting into trouble at school, and also starts dreaming up schemes to reunite her parents. The culmination of her efforts is a visit to Lake Biwa for a fire festival, an event she attended when she was younger (before her family life became troubled by parental discord). Initially a bit amused by her daughter's somewhat underhanded shenanigans, Renko's mother (former pop music star Junko Sakurada) gets extremely upset when she discovers her daughter has invited her father (Kiichi Nakai) as well. After being reassured by her father that he still loves her, she sets off for a solo odyssey. Along the way, she is temporarily "adopted" by an elderly couple she meets by chance. After a frantic search, her mother catches sight of her at nightfall -- only to be told "I'll see you tomorow morning" as Renko slips away again (after promising her protectors that she'd see them again next year). She spends the night at the fire festival, in a bamboo forest on a hill overlooking the festival site (where she prays to the moon), and then on the shore of Lake Biwa -- where she falls asleep and dreams. In the morning, as Renko warms herself over a little fire she made, she is greeted by her mother. Having finally confronted the reality of her situation, Renko is ready to return to school -- where she must make a speech about her family (which she had previously dreaded) and get ready for the passing from elementary school to middle school.

"Ohikkoshi" as used in the film's title literally means "moving" as in "moving from one place to another". Metaphorically, it stands for the heroine's from one situation (and state of mind) to another. As noted above. As with Miyazaki in Spirited Away (another film that centers around "moving"), the young heroine's process of growth and transformation is totally entwined with Shinto motifs and concepts. If this film were ever to appear on DVD in the West, a comprehensive primer on Shintoism and Shinto rites would probably enrich viewers' experience considerably.

Alas, at present, the film is only available as a barebones, unsubbed Japanese DVD of decent (but not superlative) quality. To complicate matters more, the film makes considerable use of Kansai dialects, so even students of Japanese might find some of the dialog rough going. On the other hand, most of the last 45 minutes of the film (which covers Renko's solo quest) are virtually wordless. I recently showed the film to a friend who doesn't understand Japanese, and he was nonetheless left in awe by it. Unfortunately, its creator Shinji Sômai died in 2001 at much too young an age (early 50s), so the film must depend on well-wishers to promote it (and Sômai's other important, but now-neglected films -- such as Typhoon Club). Surely, someday, some enterprising Western DVD company will belatedly discover this remarkable (and indispensable) film and make it available.

Girl's Night Out (JEONG Jae-eun, 1999)

Prior to making her first full length film, Take Care of My Cat, Jeong made three short films. Two of these are available as supplements to the Korean DVD release of TCoMC. This little film about two high school girls who are friends is, in some ways, like a preliminary sketch for TCoMC. One girl is obsessed with photography, but can't afford a real camera. The other girl is obsessed by a hunky older cousin (who takes advantage of her). Both have family problems that complicate their lives. The girls for a day trip to a cheesy coastal resort -- and then come back late in the evening, but still in time to watch an important soccer match on television

This naturalistic little film moves at a seemingly slow pace -- but covers a surprisingly large slice of the girls' lives. It anticipates the patient and attentive gaze on young subjects Jeong she would exhibit in TCoMC and The Aggressives. Unfortunately, the (in my opinion, quite nice) latter film garnered little in the way of critical or audience support, so Jeong's career appears (at least for now) to have shifted into slow gear.

Some more screen shots:

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Flandersui gae / Barking Dogs Neve Bite (BONG Joon-ho, 2000)

Although Bong's subsequent films, Memories of Murder and The Host, were both excellent, I still like his first feature film best of all. It has an audacity and imaginativeness that is quite winning -- unless one is put off by (fictional) abuse of small dogs. The films (at least on DVD) starts off with the assurance that no dogs were harmed in the making of the film -- which is nice to know in advance. As a life-long dog lover, I found the film's robust dog humor hilarious (on the other hand, all MY dogs have been large ones).

The protagonist (LEE Sung-jae) is a would-be academic, currently unemployed for lack of a timely, well-placed bribe. Currently unemployed, and relying on the earnings of his very pregnant wife (KIM Ho-jung), he has gotten increasingly irritable. And nothing irritates him more than the yapping of small dogs in and around his apartment building (where dogs are technically forbidden). When he has a chance to grab what he thinks is the offending dog, he seizes it. Unable to throw it off the roof (as he planned), he hides it in the basement. When he discovers that he got the wrong dog, he goes to let it out -- but discovers that he building's janitor (played by the marvelous Byeon Hee-bong) has turned the poor little pooch into that night's dinner. Unchastened (or, at least, insufficiently chastened), he nabs the dog whose yips drive him nuts -- and this time does throw it off the roof. He is observed, however, by the apartment complex's bookkeeping assistant (BAE Doo-na) and her pudgy friend (GO soo-hee), who runs a nearby convenience store.

Lee's life becomes more complicated when his wife brings home a poodle -- and makes him the dog's unwilling daytime attendant. When he loses the dog through gross negligence (but not on purpose, as his wife believes), his days are devoted to dog hunting. His path crosses Bae's again when he needs to get approval for the "missing dog" posters he needs to distribute. Bae is sympathetic to his plight, as the third dog-napping "victim" in recent days. Bae is so devoted to dog hunting, she loses her job. Meanwhile, Lee is able to put together a proper bribe -- as his wife has had to quit work due to her pregnancy, and her severance pay is just enough to pay off Lee's academic superior. When is all is said and done, one wonders whther Bong has presented a Buddhist parable in the guise of an unusually good-natured black comedy.

This film is structured almost precisely like a classic screwball comedy -- with one important difference; there is not even the tiniest hint of a romantic connection between Lee and Bae. Lee is devoted, without question, to his wife (if not to her dog) and Bae's affections (non-romantic, at that) seem focused on her buddy. The couple interact together only on a common quest (and as unwitting pursuer on an unknown pursued). The film has innumerable wonderful moments, but perhaps none so wonderful as a lengthy story told by the janitor to the building manager (as they wait for the dog stew to finish cooking) -- about a phantom boiler repairman (Boiler Kim).

The cinematography by Choi Young-hwan is superb. And so are all the performer. And so is the jazzy underscore (and the punk rock song played during the closing credits). Although this is probably the kind of film W.C. Fields would surely have loved, the chance of this film being released in the United States today appear slim (to none). Luckily, the Korean and Hong Kong DVDs both have English subtitles. The Korean DVD looks fine (HK DVD unseen by me).

Watched November 19 - 25, 2007: Wu and Naruse

2007-12-16T15:32:00.000-05:00

Shen nu / The Goddess (WU Yonggang, 1934)

This film about a Shanghai prostitute's struggle to raise her son might well be China's greatest silent film. Wu had spent a number of years working in Hollywood, and then returned to make films in China. This film was the first one he made after his return. China's first star actress, RUAN Ling yu, plays the central role here -- and easily demonstrates why she was the leading actress of China -- until her suicide at age 24, a year or so after this film was made.

The film provides no real back story. It starts with Ruan as a single mother, struggling to care for her child, and dependent on the good will of a neighbor to care for her infant after she leaves him alone at night, while she goes out to ply her trade. Her life is complicated further when she falls under the control of a gangster. When her son grows old enough to go to school, she is overjoyed to get him enrolled. Perhaps because he does well there, mothers of other children complain about the presence of a prostitute's child at the school. Although the school's principal is impressed with her determination to get her son a proper education, he is outvoted by his colleagues. He resigns in protest, and the boy is expelled. Ruan, now desperate to leave Shanghai, discovers her gangster oppressor has stolen her little cache of savings. When she goes to demand return of her money, he assaults her. Goaded beyond endurance, she attacks him, causing his death. The retired principal visits her in prison -- and tells her he has decided to adopt her son in order to ensure he gets the education he deserves. Ruan agrees, and urges him to help the boy forget her existence, feeling that his chance for happiness and success can only be lessened by memories of his past (and her sad circumstances).

Wu presents this film in a straightforward and realistic fashion. Insofar as there are melodramatic elements, these arise from the story itself. Performances are understated, rather like those in the realistic films of 1930s Japan. It does not appear that Wu was directly influenced by these other Asian films, rather he simply seems to have adapted Hollywood methods in much the same way as his Japanese contemporaries. Other Chinese films I've seen from this period do not show quite the same level of cinematic sophistication (but I've not yet seen any other films by Wu).

This film has been lovingly restored (though it still shows its age) and released as part of a set (published by the University of Hong Kong) that also includes a book about Ruan Lingyu. the set is a must have item for any fan of Classic Asian cinema -- and can be ordered from the San Francisco Silent Film Festival and the University of Washington Press.

More pictures:

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Kimi to yuku michi / The Road I Travel with You (Mikio Naruse, 1936)

I have now seen several dozen unsubtitled Naruse films -- and have been able to follow almost all of them them reasonably well (especially when I managed to find a useful synopsis somewhere). With this film, alas, I must admit that I can't fully decipher many of the details. To be sure, I can figure out the general outline, but even with the assistance of the brief plot synopsis in Narboni's book on Naruse, much remains fairly opaque.

The problem here is that, in this film, Naruse does a lot more telling than showing. While it is not a bad-looking film by any means (other than a couple of awkward combined pans and tilts), most of the plot movement is purely dialog-based. It comes across as much more like Cukor than Naruse. It doesn't help that the film seems to have been caat with members of Toho's B Team; the only familiar face here is that of Kamatari Fujiwara. Mind you, the performances aren't bad, but neither are they particularly inspired.

In case one is curious, the plot centers on the two adult sons of a former geisha, who live with their mother in a seaside home (which had been given to her by a former patron). The elder son, who has a rather prickly relationship with his mother, is in love with the older daughter of a once well-to-do neighbor (Fujiwara). Unfortunately, financial reverses have caused Fujiwara to arrange for his daughter to make a more financially advantageous marriage. After her marriage, the new bride makes use of a classmate (an archetypal moga, i.e. "modern girl") to communicate with her true love -- and the younger brother finds this bold young lady rather interesting. Things go awry, the older brother dies in a car crash (accidental or suicide) -- and, following his funeral, his true love drowns (nothing shown, only mentioned in dialog). The parents of the dead children seem to blame the go-between, and the younger son finally gets fed up with his mother.

Mind you, there are plenty more complications in the plot -- like Fujiwara's younger daughter also being married off, and negotiations over the younger brother's "adoption" by a family without an heir to take over its family business. For a film lasting only a bit more than an hour, this has an immense amount of plot. At least provisionally, I would rate this near the bottom of the list of Naruse films I've seen (59 so far). Only the even more complicated (and less visually interesting) 1950 War of the Roses struck me as less satisfactory. All the same, until I fully decipher more of the copious dialog, I will have to leave open the possibility of at least a slight upward adjustment for this film.

Okuni to Gohei / Okuni and Gohei (Mikio Naruse, 1952)

This film was one of Naruse's rare forays into samurai film territory. Based on a neo-kabuki play written by Junichiro Tanizaki in the early 1920s, this turns out to be about as Naruse-esque as a samurai film could conceivably be. It is almost totally devoid of "action", devoted instead to exploration of the personalities of the central characters and the nature of their relationship. And, of course, the protagonists are trapped in an ultimately untenable situation.

Okuni (played by Michiyo Kogure) is the wife of a samurai, who was murdered (in an underhanded fashion) by a former suitor, Tomonojo (So Yamamura). So she and one of the retainers of her husband, Gohei (Tomoemon Otani, a famed kabuki artist, during a brief stint in the movies) go seeking the murderer, planning to seek revenge. However, the two have no real clue as to where to seek Tomonojo and their quest seems endless. After Gohei nurses Okuni through a lengthy illness, the distance between mistress and servant is erased. At this point, Okuni begins to be more and more troubled by a seemingly ever present wandering flute player -- whose music seems to have followed the pair everywhere. She fears that perhaps it could be Tomonojo is following them, trying to take them surprise -- but when finally seen, the musician appears to merely be a wandering priest. When the pair set out on the road again, they encounter the priest, who turns out to be Tomonojo in disguise after all. But rather than lying in wait to kill them, it turns out that the lovelorn ex-suitor only wanted the chance to get an occasional glance of Okuni. When Okuni and Gohei attack him, he makes only a feeble attempt at defense -- as he never had any interest in (or skill at) martial arts. Wounded, he tries to goad Gohei into killing him -- first by congratulating him on winning the favor of Okuni and then by poisoning the well of the pair's new-found love, by recounting the intimate conversations he had once shared with Okuni. Having finally finished off the unfortunate Tomonojo, Okuni and Gohei (now haunted by the deed he has done) set off to report their "success" to the clan of Okuni's dead husband.

For all its lack of action, this is a very good looking film -- shot by Kazuo Yamada at the outset of his career (he would later do a lot of work with Inagaki and Taniguchi and also shoot Samurai Rebellion for Kobayashi). Curiously, in this film Naruse returned (for the first time in many years) to the practice of dollying in and out that he had favored in his films of the mid-1930s (albeit in a less obtrusive manner than in those earlier films). Not an "essential" Naruse film, I suppose, but also not a negligible one. Like many of the other rare Naruse films dismissed in a sentence or two in Audie Bock's book on Japanese directors, this proves to be both interesting and enjoyable. Alas, I can't foresee any sort of English-subbed release of Okuni and Gohei any time soon.

A few more screen shots:

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Watched November 12 - 18, 2007: Ichikawa, Yamada, Isshin and Kitano

2007-12-08T18:43:00.000-05:00

The films I saw this week turned out to have a connection I did not anticipate. The two newer films dealt with the same time period (late 50s) as the two older ones.

Anata to watashi no aikotoba: Sayônara, konnichiwa / Goodbye, Hello (Kon Ichikawa, 1959)

A rare vintage Ichikawa film film without a script by his screen-writer spouse, Natto Wada. This pastiche of late Ozu is certainly enjoyable. It has a great cast and is well presented, but lacks some of the distinctiveness Wada customarily brought to Ichikawa's projects.

We find all sorts of familiar Ozu elements here, starting with a genial (if slightly fallible) single father (played by Shin Saburi, recently the father in Ozu's Equinox Flower) who has two daughters of marriageable age -- the older played by a bespectacled Ayako Wakao (soon to appear in Ozu's Floating Weeds) and the younger by Hitomi Nozomi (just recently the heroine with bad teeth of Masumura's Giants and Toys). The logistics are, to be sure, a bit more complicated than the Ozu norm. Wakao likes a salaryman (Eiji Funakoshi) who her cousin (Machiko Kyo, also soon to star in Floating Weeds) also has an eye on -- while the guy her little sister likes (played by Hiroshi Kawaguchi -- who starred in both Giants and Toys and Floating Weeds) is more interested in Wakao. Wakao, involved in auto design, can;'t bring herself to say yet to Funakoshi, who decides to settle for Kyo if he can't have her cousin. After the wedding, Saburi exhorts the morose Wakao to move ahead with her life and not to worry about him -- so she decides to hop on a boat for the land of marital and automotive opportunity (i.e. the USA).

The performances of Wakao and the rest of the cast are engaging, but no one was really called upon to develop an especially complex character -- and no one did. The cinematography is not extravagant, but is generally effective -- sometimes channeling Ozu and other times a bit more daring. While not minimizing the very real charms of this relatively minor Ichikawa work, I wonder if it mightn't be of most use in helping to highlight just what it was that Ozu did that his contemporaries could not easily imitate.

More pictures:

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Shitamachi no taiyou / Downtown Sun (Yoji Yamada, 1963)

While Yamada starts this early film with a visual homage to Ozu during the credits (factory smokestacks, water tanks, ventilators, trains), he moves into his own territory immediately thereafter. He presents a well-drawn picture of working class life -- centered around a young factory worker (played by a young Chieko Baisho, who would work with him on dozens of films over the next four decades). She is fond of a colleague -- but his parents seem to be set on arranging a more advantageous match (with a relative of a factory supervisor). She meets a less refined young foundry worker (who is an accidental acquaintance of her little brother -- due to their shared fascination with trains). Although this new young man takes an interest in her, she is rather put off by his uncouth exterior. Nonetheless, she finds his acquaintance helpful in forgetting her disappointment over loss of her first love. Meanwhile a girl friend from work who was earlier married off to someone she considered her dream mate, has found out marriage (hers, at least) is not as pleasant as she imagined it would be.

Possibly because this film had a fairly low budget -- or maybe because Yamada felt it was more artistically suitable -- this was shot in black and white 'scope format. In any event, the cinematography by Hiroshi Dowaki is quite good. Chieko Baisho not only turns in a fine lead performance -- she does a nice job singing the film's main theme song (initially as she strolls along the banks on one of Tokyo's many rivers).

Even at this early date (two years after his directing debut), Yamada already displays most of the hallmarks of his later style -- careful attention to the details of the everyday life of ordinary people, the ability to present (and evoke) emotion without resort to manipulative sentimentality, the presentation of social problems in a manner that is not blatantly ideological, and a good eye for effective visual composition. Yamada takes us to places that most of his contemporary colleagues paid little attention to -- to the modern analogs of the sort of lower working class settings that figured in the 30s films of Ozu. And there is neither patronizing nor undue idealization in this traversal of working-class Tokyo. The nice-looking, Japanese DVD of this film has only one "flaw" -- no English subtitles (almost always the case when it comes to classic Japanese cinema).

More screen shots:

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Kiiroi namida / Yellow Tears (Isshin Inudou, 2007)

In this film, Isshin visits (fictionally) the same territory covered in a somewhat more straightforward vein in Jun Ichikawa's 1996 Tokiwa: The Manga Apartment. Rather than focusing only on would-be manga authors as Ichikawa did, Isshin's film presents roommates who cover a wider artistic spectrum -- in addition to an aspiring manga artist, we have an author, a painter and a musician. The crew is played by four-fifths of the Japanese boy band Arashi -- with the fifth member of the group also on hand as a local delivery boy.

The film is a blend of well-imagined realism and what would seem to be frank improbabilities -- but would appear to have some foundation in fact, being based on a manga by one of the central figures of post-war manga, Shinji Nagashima. Surprisingly, Isshin uses his crew of pop stars pretty straightforwardly -- resisting the urge to simply rely on their pre-existing images (and popularity). Arashi is supported here by some fine young actresses (include Yu Kashii and Tomoko Tabata) and old veterans (like Kin Sugai).

The roommates are perennially on (or over) the edge of cashlessness -- but on the rare occasions when they bring in some money, they don't necessarily make the wisest of decisions on how to put it to use. The only artistic endeavors portrayed that ring reasonably true are (perhaps not surprisingly) those of the manga artist (played Kazunari Ninomiya). But the overall tone is not the sort of ersatz bathos found in the immensely popular Always -- Sunset on Third Street -- which is little more than an unabashed wallow in reality-free nostalgia for the "good old days" of the 1950s. Isshin brings a fundamental honesty to his films that is more akin to the spirit of Ozu and Naruse than to colleagues content to simply peddle schmaltz. Not quite as good as the real thing, provided by Yamada way back in 1961, but an honorable effort nonetheless.

Kantoku · Banzai! / Glory to the Filmmaker! (Takeshi Kitano, 2007)

Kitano seems to take joy in mystifying and annoying his critics. The West seems to have decided to deal with his brilliant Bunuel-esque Takeshis' by simply pretending it didn't exist. In his newest film, he deconstructs his own creative persona once again, taking an even more in-your-face approach. Unlike Haynes's recent overly-deferential deconstruction of Dylan in I'm Not There, Kitano's effort is (on the surface, at least) utterly frivolous. He begins with a review of a series of failed projects (presided over by a remarkably sententious narrator) and then slips into more extended, utterly deranged tale of a mother-daughter team (Kayoko Kishimotto and Anne Suzuki) whose life becomes entwined with that of Kitano's character -- which turns (sporadically) into a cheesy science fiction film and then ends with the biggest possible of bangs.

Along the way, Kitano offers us a dead-on (but loving) parody of Ozu and a devastating take-down of Always-style faux nostalgia. He also presents a segment inspired by his own 50s childhood -- as a member of a dysfunctional family living in a Tokyo slum. This throw-away episode could (perhaps) have made a fine full-length movie -- but Kitano moves on. Throughout much of the film, Kitano travels about with an almost life-size Kitano doll. Whenever Kitano has any unpleasantness to face (whether a doctor's appointment or a suicide attempt following yet another failure), he leaves it to the doll to cope with.

As with Takeshis', this is a film that practically begs for footnotes. It is stuffed with references to Japanese history and culture -- and to Japanese and world cinema. Does he want people to catch the references -- and ponder their significance? Or is he simply larking, trying to tick off critics who are already hostile even more than ever before? Without a doubt, he intends an invocation of Fellini (as in I'm Not There, we find a giraffe, of sorts) -- but what does it all mean? Perhaps the best way to cope is not to worry, but rather to simply sit back and enjoy. Then again, what if there really is some deeper significance underlying the antics here? Oh well, shikata ga nai (can't be helped).

A few more:

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Watched November 5 - 11, 2007: Eisenstein, Shimizu, Ozu and Godard

2007-12-01T20:41:00.000-05:00

Bronenosets Potyomkin / Battleship Potemkin (Sergei M. Eisenstein, 1925)

I first saw this film around 35 years ago -- at a college screening. This screening is also notable for being the only time I stood up and told a bunch of obnoxious noisemakers to shut up and let the rest of the audience experience the film without the "benefit" of their running commentary. At this remote date, I can't recall what musical score this print used -- but I would assume that it was the 1950s version by Nikolai Kryukov. Subsequent viewings (on video and DVD) all utilized a score cobbled together by bits and pieces of Shostakovich works. Now, at last, there is a restored version that uses the first music composed for the film -- by Edmund Meisel. Although a big fan of Shostakovich in general, I never felt the music borrowed from him fit the film as well as it should. So my main interest in the new DVD (from Kino) was the score.

As it turns out, Meisel's score (which makes lots of use of the melodies of revolutionary songs from the period in which the film was set) was very effective. But, though I had always been (reasonably) satisfied by the visual quality of my prior DVD, I found the improvement in the image quality in this new release equally striking. For all practical purposes, I find it hard to imagine that this new DVD is likely to be bettered anytime in the foreseeable future.

Arigato-san / Mr. Thank You (Hiroshi Shimizu, 1936)

Alas, no one has ever bothered (yet) to do any DVD release (even unsubtitled) of Shimizu's remarkable chronicle of an ordinary rural bus ride. Filmed almost entirely in (and around) a small bus, as it actually traveled rural roads, this film uncannily anticipates the much later work of directors (like Kiarostami). The film is aggressively limited to the present -- we not only see nothing of the past, we hear virtually nothing about it in the conversations that take place.

The primary cast of character here consists of a good-natured (and good-looking) young bus drive (Ken Uehara), a despondent teenager (Mayumi Tsukiji) and her mother, a fusty old businessman and another young woman (Michiko Kuwano), more sophisticated than the first, but probably not a great deal older. Uehara is called Arigato-san because of his unfailing courtesy as he drives his route -- and he seems to know almost everyone he encounters along the way. Kuwano, dressed in the latest fashions, is clearly interested in Uehara -- but he seems to be more intrigued by the sad (kimono-clad) young woman sitting in the back. As it turns out, she is on her way to Tokyo for the purpose of being (for all practical purposes) sold into sexual slavery, due to the destitution of her family. Her chatty mother seems to be willing to talk about their errand -- but the girl, ashamed, doesn't want the topic discussed. The businessman's main function seems to be as a target for the modern girl's barbs. Meanwhile the driver maintains his composure and sunny disposition, sometimes stopping to chat with people he encounters (especially when they are young and pretty women -- like a pair of traveling musicians and a Korean migrant worker).

While the modern girl says almost nothing about her own activities and livelihood, it gradually becomes clear that she may well have been in the same situation as her younger "rival" just a few years earlier. As the journey goes on, her effervescence begins to wane, as the the younger woman slowly (and shyly) begins to take notice of the driver. Shimizu shows great sympathy to not only these two main heroines, but also to the Korean girl -- who has served as part of a road repair crew (along with her family and other impoverished Koreans) but now must travel (on foot) to a distant part of Japan for her next project. At least during this era, Shimizu might be unique in his expression of open sympathy (here and elsewhere) for foreigners subject to economic oppression and/or prejudice.

Apparently there is a nice looking subtitled print of this film, but my exposure has been limited to (first) a very bad looking copy of a television broadcast and (now) a much better (but still not quite satisfactory) copy of a more recent Japanese broadcast. Assuming one is able to enjoy "plotless" Asian films, this film should be considered a "don't miss" if it is shown anywhere reachable -- or eventually becomes available on DVD.

Tôkyô boshoku / Tokyo Twilight (Yasujiro Ozu, 1957)

When I first watched Tokyo Twilight back in 2001 (courtesy of a now long out of print French video), the film was routinely written off in the English-speaking world as failure -- consistent with the almost uniform rejection of the film by both Japanese critics and audiences at the time of its initial release. While Ozu normally shrugged off problems of this sort (fortunately rare), he apparently was greatly distressed by the poor reception this film received (according to Masahiro Shinoda, then an assistant director working with Ozu). The fact that he had been cautioned in advance by his co-writer Kogo Noda, did not lessen his disappointment. Only a few voices, over the years, offered an alternate view. Donald Richie recognized the fact that Ozu had moved (courageously) into remarkably dark territory in this film -- and Japanese scholar Shigehiko Hasumi pointed out both the value of the film and the importance of factoring it into any comprehensive evaluation of Ozu's work. Unfortunately, Hasumi's comments of Tokyo Twilight never made it into English (while the chapter in his Ozu book that discussed this film was published in translation, virtually all discussion of it was omitted). Only with the widely-traveled 2003 Ozu retrospective (in honor of his hundredth birthday), has there been a critical reappraisal of this long neglected film -- and the dawning of an awareness (almost 50 years after its premiere) that this "flop" might actually be a masterpiece.

Why, one wonders, was the initial reaction to this film so hostile? The answer is probably not too hard to discern. First of all, Ozu dared to have his most universally beloved performers, Chishu Ryu and Setsuko Hara, play roles that were like dark inversions of their normal characters -- not "evil" characters, but deeply flawed ones who ultimately cause a great deal of harm. The single father Ryu plays here is oblivious and inept. Hara plays his eldest daughter, who he previously pushed into a fairly disastrous marriage, and who has just moved back home (with her young child), finding life with her abusive husband intolerable. Ryu's younger daughter, played by Ineko Arima, is an unhappy individual clearly in serious trouble, with no one to turn to. Into this volatile situation, Ozu throws a match -- the return of Ryu's divorced wife (who abandoned -- or was forced to leave -- her children when she left him for another man). The mother (Isuzu Yamada) has long been away from Tokyo, having moved to Manchuria with her new husband and then being trapped there for years after Japan's surrender. During her imprisonment, her second husband died. Now, she has finally returned to Tokyo with her third husband, to run a mahjong parlor in a seedy neighborhood (and to covertly try to find out how her children are doing).

Arima is, literally and figuratively, "in trouble" -- but she trusts neither her father nor her older sister (who clearly had to serve as an inadequate mother substitute -- after the mother's departure when the girl was only three years old). While desperately searching for her boy friend (who is a college student, now studiously avoiding her), she encounters her mother but does not recognize her (all photographs of the mother having been destroyed sixteen years previously). As the young woman spirals further and further down the drain, her mother (who sees her obvious distress) is powerless to help. Not only is she a stranger to the girl, but Hara has demanded that she not reveal her relationship (because it might embarrass Ryu). Meanwhile, neither Ryu nor Hara seems to notice just how unhappy and disturbed Arima actually is. While Ryu seems to like Hara (and his grandchild) well enough (despite being a bit nonplussed by their presence in his household), he never displays the slightest trace of affection for Arima. Ryu attributes Arima's mood and behavior to the fact that she was always a troublesome child.

Some writers (for instance, Joan Mellen) have attacked Tokyo Twilight as being a particularly wrong-headed celebration of the virtues of traditional patriarchal values. Such a reading seems to show utter blindness to what Ozu actually does in this film. Ryu is presented as utterly unfit to deal with the responsibilities of fatherhood (and one suspects he was equally inadequate as a husband). Even in a work context, he is presented as vaguely ridiculous. On the other hand, for all the mother's faults, she is presented sympathetically. Similarly, the dutiful daughter, always attentive to her father's wishes (Hara) often comes across as shrill and unsympathetic, while one's heart is wrung by travails of the unfilial daughter (Arima).

The fact that Ozu was critiquing (rather than applauding) Japanese patriarchalism here is reinforced by the fact that, after the universal rejection of this somber film, he immediately made another film showing the harm that clueless fathers (exercising patriarchal prerogatives) can cause their daughters -- the delightful, light-hearted Equinox Flower, which showed harm averted by concerted female opposition to paternal authority. Moreover, most of Ozu's subsequent films also involved variations of the very same theme -- but now with sufficient humor to overcome resistance to any subversive message.

The availability of Tokyo Twilight on English-subtitled DVD (thanks to Criterion's budget-priced Eclipse series) at long last, should markedly increase film lover's familiarity with this important movie. Whether this prickly and difficult film attracts universal approbation or not, it should nonetheless serve to make people more aware of the fact that Ozu was a complicated film maker, whose works covered more diverse territory than genial (or transcendent) acceptance of the status quo.

À bout de souffle / Breathless (Jean-Luc Godard, 1960)

As was the case with Potemkin above, this film is too well known (and too much written about) for a "review" to make any sense. Unlike Potemkin, the new DVD of this (from Criterion) did not constitute a re-introduction of an old friend, but rather a first meeting. Somehow, I had managed not to see this previously -- and reports of the inadequacy of prior DVD versions made me decide to wait until Criterion (seemingly) inevitably tackled its version. I'm glad I waited -- as the new DVD looks very good (and has more extras than I've managed to work my way through to date).

What can I say about the film? Belmondo is cute and sexy -- even if his is character is often a jerk. Seberg is cute and sexy -- even if her character is a bit of a klutz and a bit of a sneak. The story is interesting -- even if it is often not especially believable. And the images Godard (and cinematographer Raoul Coutard) offer are wonderful. What more does one need?

More pictures:

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Watched October 29 - November 4, 2007: Korea in 1990 -- and now

2007-11-23T21:20:00.000-05:00

Keduldo urichurum / The Black Republic (PARK Kwang-su, 1990)

Park was one of the founding fathers of Korea's "New Cinema" of the 1990s. While his first film, Chilsu and Mansu, touched on political matters, Black Republic was his first film to openly confront the turmoil (and devastation) of the political oppression and violence of the 1970s and 1980s (especially in the wake of the Gwangju Massacre in 1980). Censors did insist on removal of most of the flashbacks that actively linked the protagonist's present with his past and filled in the gap between 1980 and 1990. But the implicit links that remain are fairly clear, even for someone as inexpert in Korean history as myself.

The story here centers on a political activist (played by MOON Sung-keun), who has flitted from place to place, remaining "in hiding" for a decade following the Gwangju Massacre. By using a series of false names and identification papers, and restricting himself to life in small provincial towns, he has managed to not get arrested on long-pending charges of revolutionary activity. At the start of the film, he arrives at a small, dingy mining town -- and finds a job. Unfortunately, the mine workers here are on the verge of a strike -- and the mine owner's irresponsible and brutal son (PARK Joon-hoon) causes lots of random chaos in the vicinity.

Despite the town's small size, it is not too small to support a prostitution business (in which women are nominally employed to deliver thermoses of tea and coffee). One of the young prostitutes (SHIM Hye-jin) especially favored by Park is attracted to the new, stand-offish but considerate Moon. As the labor situation worsens, the couple are drawn closer together -- and eventually spend a day at a seaside town (in an inexpensive but pleasing idyll). Shim's attachment to Moon makes her reluctant to continue to "deliver tea", leading to a confrontation with Park. When Moon fights Park to stop his assault on Shim, he is arrested (and roughed up by the police). Moon's false identification papers stand up temporarily, but he is fingerprinted before being released (as a formality). Moon knows he needs to go on the move again -- and Shim hopes to join him. But Park (more dangerous than ever, due to the death of his mother, who had been dumped years before by his father) once again causes complications -- and Moon has to leave on his own.

The performances of Moon and Shim are quite effective. Their finest scene, perhaps, is their leave-taking after their one day of shared happiness. During that day, Moon has told Shim of his past (and entrusted her with his real name). After they part, Shim calls on Moon to stop and wait; at a distance, mostly hidden in shadow, she tells him her real name (presumably she adopted a false name due to her shame at the job she has been "forced" to take, for lack of other opportunities).

The film is visually well-imagined, but the (subbed) Korean DVD is probably not an optimal representation of the film, as it initially looked like. This film deserves a better presentation (fully restored) to be sure, but we are lucky to have any version available of this important and impressive film.

Janghwa, Hongryeon / A Tale of Two Sisters (KIM Ji-woon, 2003)

Kim's film is one of those films that one really is constrained in discussing. First, one does not really wish to say too much about what goes on, for fear of spoiling the film for others who have not yet seen it. Second, the film's nature is such that one is not actually sure as to what is real and what is not. The film is superficially patterned on a Korean folk tale (not too dissimilar from the Grimm's The Juniper Tree) about two young sisters and a step-mother who mistreats them quite cruelly. This folk tale is well known-- and has served as the basis for several earlier films. Paradoxically (or perhaps not), the familiarity of the tale allows Kim greater scope to challenge expectations. Even for someone not inured in Korean folklore, one senses the declining reliability of the narrative as the film proceeds. Indeed, this might be the most virtuosic use of unreliable narration in an Asian film since Kinugasa's Kurutta ippeji (Pages of Madness / Pages Out of Order) back in 1926. This film is more akin, I suspect, to Henry James' Turn of the Screw than to the folk tale that gives it its name.

The performances in this are quite good, the cinematography is excellent, the script is outstanding. It is a film that demands both watching and, afterwards, discussion -- both as to the overall "meaning" and the significance of every little detail. These have occurred in our household of five -- and online. And, in both venues, voices have been raised and tempers have flared (at least a bit). While I suppose one might be able to savor this film's virtues in solitude, it surely benefits, more than most, from attentive communal watching. While live discussions with fellow watchers are unproblematic, online discussions are best handled in threads that warn prominently -- SPOILERS.

Dalkom, salbeorhan yeonin / My Scary Girl (SON Jae-gon, 2006)

The actual translation of this film's Korean name is something like "sweet, brutal lover" -- which gives one a better sense of the film than the cute English title. This is structured rather like a romantic comedy. But it is a romantic comedy with a remarkable number of unsettling twists. As Darcy Paquet said in his review, it is "like a romantic comedy left out on the counter that starts to turn black". Despite its unconventionality, this low-budget (under $800,000) film, shot with HD video, was a big success theatrically in Korea.

A shy college teacher (played by Park Yong-woo), who is not only a perennial bachelor but has never even dated, gets a new neighbor, a sweet-seeming art student (Choi Gang-hee). Things get off to a somewhat rocky start, but Park and Choi eventually take an interest in each other. Among other things, Park is introduced to not only elementary kissing, but also the advanced level. But there ae some negatives -- Choi has some rather strange friends and acquaintances, and shows some puzzling behaviors (like her lack of knowledge of basic art facts that even English teachers know). And then there are hints of secrets that Park knows nothing about. He gets so worried, he even hires a private investigator to do a little (relatively inexpensive) background research. But still Park is drawn like a moth to a flame (or is it more like a fly getting dangerously close to a spider web). The ending -- like the rest of the film -- is original.

The script here is quite good, with that is outrageous in an unconventional fashion -- and usually truly funny. The two leads are excellent -- and so are the major supporting performers. The (digital) cinematography is not especially distinctive stylistically, but is attractive and effective -- and looks surprisingly film-like. I got the HK DVD as a freebie with a recent online order -- and it is quite adequate. Perhaps the Korean DVD is even better.

Watched October 22 - 28, 2007: Sayles and Zhang

2007-11-22T20:39:00.001-05:00

The Secret of Roan Inish (John Sayles, 1994)

Some films, it seems (eventually) wear out their welcome. Roan Inish has been a long-time family favorite. We bought it when it came out on video -- and when we got our first DVD player, it was one of our very first DVD purchases. Our family revisited the film, for the first time in a few years, and discovered (to our dismay) that the film is staring to seem a bit frayed at the edges. The underlying story was enchanting, and many images remained magical, but the talking went on and on sometimes, for much longer than was needed. It was as if Sayles wasn't willing to fully trust the power of his own pictures. On too many occasions, Sayles' words distracted us from his film.

On looking for images to capture from the DVD, I saw something I'd never consciously noticed when watching the DVD on television. Namely, that this is not a terribly good DVD -- and that the print used to make the DVD had apparently undergone color shifting prior to the time the DVD was made. I think we will give this still fondly-remembered film a long long vacation -- probably until a new, digitally restored version shows up.

Ying xiong / Hero (ZHANG Yimou, 2002)

I rather suspect that I might need to watch Hero quite sparingly, as it might be another film that could wear out its welcome (sooner or later) if subjected to too frequent revisitation. I am a big fan of Zhang's earlier films -- and I liked Hero reasonably well (and found it conceptually interesting), right form the outset, but never was totally carried away by it. I never really understood either the heights of adulation or the depths of reprobation this met with. Overall, I responded more strongly to Zhang's later (more "operatic") House of Flying Daggers and (much maligned) Curse of the Golden Flowers.

It strikes me that the criticism that Zhang was somehow celebrating (or justifying) oppressive totalitatianism in this film is offbase. This is not a documentary about a real historical ruler, but a prescriptive depiction of what a ruler (under certain conditions) should be like. It also is, more than a little, a cautionary tale. But most of all, this is a film about color and movement. And, from this perspective, it is a mostly very rewarding film. My one reservation turns on how well the fairly schematic structure will hold up after many repeated viewings. One can never be certain, but I expect it might hold up to more wear and tear by re-viewing than Roan Inish. And, in this case at least, the DVD presentation (the Edko DVD from Hong Kong) doesn't undercut the film.

Watched October 15 - 21, 2007: To and Kim

2007-11-22T20:38:00.000-05:00

Wu wei shen tan / Loving You (Johnnie To, 1995)

LAU Ching Wan creates one of his best roles for Johnnie To in this tale of a policeman pursuing (and pursued by) a vicious drug dealer (CHUNG Hua Tou). The film starts with a drug bust gone awry (due in part to shoddy equipment) that results in the execution of an undercover policewoman by Chung. Lau, as it turns out, is a reasonably dedicated police team leader -- but a total jerk on the personal level, both to his subordinates and his wife (Carman Lee). His indifference (and philandering) have pushed her into the arms of one of her colleagues at work. Just as she makes up her mind to leave Lau, he is shot in the head by his nemesis (though he captures Chung nevertheless). While Lau survives the shooting, he is incapacitated for a long while and -- when he is well enough to notice -- he discovers he has lost his senses of taste and smell. His wife, impelled by a sense of a duty, has helped care for him during his recovery, putting off her plan to leave him. Reconciliation is still not a sure thing, as Lau resents the fact that she plans to bear a child that turns out not to be his. After he returns to work, Chung escapes and takes Lau's wife (now due to deliver her baby any day) hostage. Lau and Chung then proceed to battle it out in an abandoned office building.

Surprisingly enough, the central premise here is based on a real story of a policeman who miraculously survived being shot in the head. But the details are all courtesy of To and script writer YAU Nai Hoi. As usual, even in early To, the film is remarkably visually imaginative and stylish. A number of visual motifs help tie the film together, the most notable is the imagery of sliding (in all sorts of forms). Yet another highly recommendable To film (and the new re-mastered HK DVD looks pretty good).

More pictures:

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Juyuso seubgyuksageun / Attack the Gas Station (KIM Sang-jin, 1999)

I acquired my DVD of this film several years ago as an unavoidable freebie. Consequently I was in no rush to see it. But when my stack on unwatched DVDs sank low enough, I gave it a try -- and was pleasantly surprised to find this far better than I had expected. Of course, this film about of punks taking over a gas station, because the till wasn't full enough (and they want to keep collecting cash from customers until they get a respectable bundle) is hardly an Ozu-esque character study. Nonetheless it manages to give the characters more depth than one initially expects -- and develops a little bit of poignancy -- and it is imaginative and canny in its "dumb" humor.

There once was a good subbed Korean DVD, but I didn't get my lower-quality Hong Kong freebie DVD (panned and scanned, alas) until after the Korean version was out of print. Consequently, for now, if I want to re-watch this film, I have to settle for an impaired viewing experience. All I can do for now, is hope for a release someday of a subbed widescreen DVD. Nonetheless, if you can find a cheap enough (or free) copy of the extant DVD version, do what I did -- give this film a chance.

A few more screen shots:

http://i9.photobucket.com/albums/a59/mkerpan/oct_07/gas02.png
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