Page of Madness (1926), directed by Teinosuke Kinugasa. This is an astonishing film about insanity. The beginning has elements of Weine’s Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and the montage effect of Eisenstein, but the majority of the film is a somewhat more 'realistic' exploration of life in a mental hospital/prison, with the use of distorted images and superimposed images throughout. The plot is simple, if not easy to follow. A man has taken a job as janitor in the institution where his wife is a patient/inmate in order to be near her. At one point, he attempts, unsuccessfully, to haul her out of the place. Another sequence has a visit to the institution by the man's daughter and her fiance. The vision of insanity in the film is harrowing. There are no intertitles, although it is clear when people speak to one another. Apparently, when the film was first shown, it would have been accompanied by a narrator describing what is happening. To give one example of what the film offers, I note the dancer who dances until her feet are bloody. This dancer appears near the beginning and at the end of the film. I might also add the main character’s placing of happy-face masks on the patients at the end. On his own face, he places a sad mask. The nice thing about this moment is that the masks appear to work; the sad and troubled patients become docile in their happy masks. As a work of cinema, Page of Madness demonstrates just how powerful images and camerawork can be.

 

Gate of Hell (1953), directed by Teinosuke Kinugasa. Set in 1160, the Heiji Era in Japan, Gate of Hell tells a story that reverberates with ominous messages to the post-war era of the 20th century. The noble samurai, Morito (Kazuo Hasegawa) proves far less honourble than his exploits during battle would indicate. Also, the benevolent leader, General Kiyomori (Koreya Senda), proves to be a cruel manipulator, willing to play with the lives of his followers. Then we have the empress’s lady-in-waiting, Kesa (Machiko Kyo, whom you will remember from Rashomon, Igetsu, and Street of Shame), who is happily married to Wataru (Isao Yamagata). She is long suffering and self-sacrificing. The plot is, as Frances notes, is Shakespearian. Morito loves Kesa, Kesa loves her husband Wataru, Wataru is unnoticing of his wife’s situation, Morito refuses to give up his desire for Kesa and he threatens to go on a killing spree if she does not give herself to him. All this leads, as you will expect, to tragedy. The film is one of the first colour films in Japan, and it dazzles with reds and greens and purples and yellows and blues. The titular Gate of Hell appears a few times as a reminder of the moral morass the characters fashion for themselves in this tale of cruelty, selfishness, division, and disruption.

 Rancho Notorious (1952), directed by Fritz Lang. This is the Fritz Lang who brought us such films as Die Nibelungen (2 films 1924), the Dr. Mabuse films, and most famously Metropolis (1927) and M (1931). He left Germany after the Nazis offered him a job. In America his most celebrated films are dark versions of cinema noir, but he seemed to like westerns. Aside from Rancho Notorious, Lang made The Return of Frank James (1940) and Western Union (1941). As for his western Rancho Notorious, this is a film that serves as a precursor to Lang's more famous noir, The Big Heat (1953). As in The Big Heat, we have a hero whose female partner (wife in The Big Heat and fiancé in Rancho Notorious) is murdered, setting the hero on a quest for revenge. The title song refers to "Hate, murder, and revenge," and this pretty much sums up the movie, the motivations, and the action. The various goings on, and there are many as the films skips around from place to place and time to time as it sets up its characters, especially this film's femme fatale, Altar Keane (Marlene Dietrich), involve secrecy and betrayal. As her name might suggest, Altar Keane receives the attention of many men who come to pay homage to her. She runs a place - a ranch/hideout for criminals on the lam - called Chuck-a-luck. Chuck-a-luck is also the name of a game of chance (sometimes called Birdcage) that uses three dice, and this game of chance hovers over the action. In this dark (and the technicolour in this film is dark, setting the noir mood) world the evil that people do will reverberate unhappily. All in all, this is hardly Lang's finest achievement, and the title song that sounds at intervals throughout the film does not help. The song is terrible, but then perhaps this jarring song accentuates the jarring action of a film that deals with chance, betrayal, oh and hate, murder, and revenge. Finally, I note that Bosley Crowther in the New York Times refers to Dietrich's "drowsy optics" in the film. He thinks she sleepwalks through the action. I think Altar Keane is preparation for a later and perhaps more telling version of this kind of character, Tanya, in Welles's Touch of Evil (1958). Seen in this light, Dietrich's "drowsy optics" might more richly be her world weariness, the reflection of a woman who has seen just about everything and learned to accept that all we can expect is, well the unexpected in a game of chance.

 Yet another film for these days of isolation, Fritz Lang's Human Desire (1954). Lang made this film a year after his The Big Heat, and both Glenn Ford and Gloria Grahame return as main characters. The story derives from Emile Zola's La Bete humaine (sorry about missing accents), and had been filmed in 1938 by Jean Renoir. This is not top tier Lang, but it is interesting. For me, the trains are most impressive. The trains and the train yards (with Round House no less) mark the energy and thrust and drive and force and inevitability of human desire. Lang dwells on these huge beasts, the trains and especially the engines. These diesel engines are most likely first generation; they are large and shiny. Someone in the film mentions that they have recently replaced the steam engines. Anyway, the trains are a nice backdrop to the heated action with Gloria Grahame delivering a steamy performance with her over-lipsticked lips and slinky movements. Broderick Crawford as her husband is suitably bearish and Ford is strangely dopey as the guy who seems to prefer the fatal women over the young innocent who throws herself at him. No one is particularly likeable in this tale of abuse and desire. 

The Blue Gardenia (1953), directed by Fritz Lang. I am a fan of Lang’s film, and so this film is a must see. It is, however, minor Lang. It has the familiar Lang theme of a haunted and hunted protagonist, this time a beleaguered Nora Larkin (Anne Baxter) who works in a telephone exchange, along with her two pals and roommates, Crystal Carpenter (Ann Southern) and Sally Ellis (Jeff Donnell). Noral finds herself dumped by her boyfriend on her birthday, and on the rebound she accepts an invitation to dinner by the artist, Harry Prebble (Raymond Burr). Beware those oily artists. Before you know it, Noral is fingered for the murder of Mr. Prebble. Newspaper columnist Casey Mayo (Richard Conte) is out for a story and takes it upon himself to investigate the murder. The film has its moments, a couple of darkly lit scenes and ominous compositions. On the whole, however, the film pales alongside Lang’s best, films such as The Big Heat the same year or Scarlet Street (1945), The Woman in the Window (1944), and of course the magnificent early features before Lang left Germany.

 

Cloak and Dagger (1946), directed by Fritz Lang. Perhaps not one of Lang’s best, Cloak and Dagger documents the exploits of a scientist recruited by the OSS (Office of Strategic Services) during the late stages of the Second World War. The scientist had been working on the Manhattan Project, but OSS wants him to travel to Europe to find out whether the Nazis are also developing a nuclear capability. The opening scenes have some powerful excoriations of the bomb, and later the film has a couple of shocking deaths, including one silent fight just inside a foyer of a building. The two leads are Gary Cooper as the scientist and Lilli Palmer as a resistance fighter in Italy. Of course, the two of them fall in love despite the death and destruction around them. At one point, their sojourn in a safe house is ended by a cat! The film begins slowly and picks up steam as it rolls along. The ending is particularly effective. Not at the top of the list of Lang’s films, but sufficiently dark and haunted by fatalism to serve Lang fans well.