Roslindale Monogatari

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 nightclubbin...

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 recons...