Roslindale Monogatari

Ohara Shosuke-san / Mr. Shosuke Ohara (Hiroshi Shimizu, 1949) Our hero Saheita is nicknamed "Shosuke Ohara" (after a character in a folk song, known for his love of living the easy life). A fairly prosperous farmer -- but one who is not as industrious as he could be -- and a little too fond of behaving into acting as the local Lord Bountiful. He funds a sewing school for the local girls and religious instruction classes for local boys -- and provides baseball uniforms for the the local men's team (and then the boy's team). W hen he starts running into financial trouble, he simply wishes it away. Reality soon catches up, alas... Denjiro Okochi of our good-natured but unrealistic hero calls to mind (a bit) his earlier portrayal of the one-eyed, one-armed (lazy) master swordsman of Yamanaka's Tange Sazen and the Pot Worth a Million Ryo . Yet another genial, interesting film from Shimizu. http://i9.photobucket.com/albums/a59/mkerpan/ohara/ohara01.png http://i9.photob...

Only one actual movie to report: Heisei tanuki gassen pompoko / Pom Poko (Isao Takahata, 1994) Despite the fact that the subtitles call the creatures who star in this cartoon epic of forest animals fighting encroaching development "raccoons", they are really "raccoon dogs" ("tanuki" in Japanese): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raccoon_Dog This is probably the hardest of all Ghibli films for Western audiences to come to terms with. It is unabashedly culturally specific -- and probably a comprehensive annotated booklet would be quite helpful for Western viewers. that said, the basic outline of the story is simple enough. T anuki living in the Tama Hills on the outskirts of Tokyo in the mid-1960s find their habitat being bulldozed and leveled. Being the most magical of Japanese animals (along with foxes), they fight back -- using all their skills (which include shape changing). T he effectiveness of their defense is undermined, from time totime, by their indol...

Peter Ibbetson (Henry Hathaway, 1935) After all the effusive praise I've read about this recently ( here and here , for example) -- I thought I might as well take a look at this long-unwatched DVD (I have this only because it came as an "extra" in the Cooper set I bought in order to see Lubitsch's Design for Living ). I did enjoy this to some extent -- despite wooden performances (not just by Cooper and Ann Harding -- but by virtually everyone in the cast) and over-the-top (and clunky) dialog. Ida Lupino provides a bright spot in the cast, as an English expatriate Cooper meets during a return visit to Paris (as an adult). The main virtue here was the superb cinematography by Charles Lang -- but I really would be interested in seeing the 1921 version (called "Forever" -- directed by George Fitzmaurice and shot by Arthur C. Miller) -- in order to see how much of the "look" of the 1935 film was derived from that earlier version. George Du Maurier ...

Takekurabe / Growing Up / literally Comparing Heights (Heinosuke Gosho, 1955) Based on a story by Ichiyo HIGUCHI -- who also wrote the stories that were the source of Imai's Nigorie (reviewed last week). As it turns out, Higuchi was Japan's first modern woman author, describing life at the low end of the social spectrum during the 1890s (which was when she wrote). Higuchi grew up in a wealthy samurai family, but her life changed drastically when her father's business went bankrupt, and her older brother and father died. After her father's death, the family had to support itself by doing laundry and mending clothes -- until Higuchi took up writing at age 20 (inspired by a school friend who made money when she won a writing contest). She was an almost immediate success -- and wrote furiously -- until her death due to tuberculosis just 4 years later. Her fame is such that she was the third Japanese woman to be honored by being depicted on Japanese currency. The story her...