Roslindale Monogatari

Jun'ai monogatari / The Story of Pure Love (Tadashi Imai, 1957) Two teen-aged war orphans (played by Shinjiro Ebara and Hitomi Nakahara) try to survive on the fringes of Tokyo, not surprisingly becoming juvenile delinquents. Nakahara has worked as a pickpocket since her grandparents died (when she was still just a child). Ebara has already been in and out of reform school several times. Nakahara's pickpocketing skills are, somewhat mysteriously, waning -- as she becomes more and more clumsy (aggravating her gang mates). Ebara rescues her from her own gang, but the two fall into trouble with the law again, resulting in their separation. Well-intentioned criminal justice officials try to keep them apart, considering them to be bad influences on each other. Actually, however, each provides an incentive for the other to go straight. As Ebara learns a trade, Nakahara grows increasingly weaker. As it turns out, she had visited Hiroshima with her grandparents just three days...

Chiyari Fuji / A Bloody Spear on Mount Fuji (Tomu Uchida, 1955) Uchida's comeback film (after a long period of self-imposed exile in Manchuria and serious health problems) was produced by his long-time friends and colleagues Yasujiro Ozu, Hiroshi Shimizu and Daisuke Ito. This humanistic, revisionist samurai film looks back to the work of Sadao Yamanaka and forward to the recent work of Yoji Yamada. In my opinion it is a masterpiece. Kojuro (Eijiro Kataoka) is a good-hearted, but undisciplined young samurai on a mission to deliver a tea bowl to Tokyo for his clan lord. He is traveling there, along the Tokaido Road, with his two retainers -- his lance bearer, the middle-aged Gonpachi (Chiezo Kataoka), and his aide Genta (Daisuke Kato). Along the way, they encounter people of every rank -- and even pick up some traveling companions (including an young orphaned boy and a traveling musician with her little daughter). They have various adventures, ranging from comic (a group of noble...

Hataraku ikka / the Whole Family Works (Mikio Naruse 1939) More proto-neo-realism from Japan. A working class family with lots of children (mostly boys) has to struggle to make ends meet. The father seems chronically under-employed -- and depends on the older sons to help support the family. When a teacher pushes the fourth son to attend high school rather than go to work, familial strife ensues -- as the older boys also decide they want to continue their educations, rather than being stuck in the same cycle of poverty as their parents. Neither parents not children are wrong -- but their needs seem irreconciliable. Not heavy-handed, but laced with lots of passing humor -- with an enigmatic ending that struck home with my wife and myself (children doing hyperactive gymnastics in their room -- while parents below wonder whether the ceiling will cave in on their heads). Ningen Johatsu / A Man Vanishes (Shohei Imamura, 1967) Imamura loves to pull the rug out from under his viewer's f...

So This Is Paris (Ernst Lubitsch, 1926) Lubitch at his most light-hearted -- in this very very loose adaptation of the same French play that gave the world Johann Strauss's "Die Fledermaus". The four principals - Monte Blue, Patsy Ruth Miller, Lilyan Tashman and George Beranger -- are utterly perfect (and Myrna Loy appears as a maid -- in one her earliest roles). The sardonic intertitles are often a treasure in their own right. Feet First (Clyde Bruckman, 1930) This early Harold Lloyd sound films re-traces "Safety Last" to a considerable extent. But the high-altitude daredevil stunts just go on to long for me. Shukujo to hige / The Lady and the Beard (Yasujiro Ozu, 1931) Of all Ozu's surviving films, this may be his most purely comic film. No deep messages, but with superb performances (especially from Tokihiko Okada, our bearded hero, and Hiroko Kawasaki, our virtuous but practical, kinono-clad secretary) and utterly entertaining. As with Yamanaka...