Some World Cinema:

Law of the Border (1966), directed by Lofti O. Akad. Imagine a Turkish western, and then watch Law of the Border. The film has a hero (or anti-hero), Hadir (Yilmaz Guney) who is reminiscent of Clint Eastwood in his Leone westerns, taciturn, menacing, and prone to outbursts of violence. At least one scene in Law of the Border clearly reflects the Leone films. Set in a village near the Turkish/Syrian border, the film follows Hadir, an impoverished man trying to raise his son in an area where just about the only means of making a living is through smuggling. This is dangerous business, the border lined with landmines, and the authorities on the watch and ready to use their firearms. What lifts this film above the pulp storyline is the realist picture of life downtrodden and lean. Into the community comes a female teacher. On her arrival, the village does not have a school and none of the children has any education beyond the skills it takes to survive in a dangerous and barren land. The teacher manages to convince, with the help of the new local commandant, the villagers to use an abandoned building as a school. Hadir’s son proves to be bright, and Hadir can now envisage a better future for his son. Of course, matters turn dire. We have shootouts and landmines exploding. All in all, this is a gritty exercise in film making. Law of the Border turned out to be an important film in Turkey, reviving the career of Akad who had retired, but who now returned to make several more important political films in his home country.

 

Muna Moto (1975), directed by Dikongue-Pipa. This film from Cameroon is a devastating critique of a system of oppression, especially against women. Tradition can be both sustaining and celebratory and also burdensome and retrograde. We see this in the story of two star-crossed lovers who fall victim to the dowry and patronage system. The two principle actors, David Edene as Ngando, and Arlette Din Beli as Ndome, give intense and compelling performances. The camera is fluid and poetic as it details life in a Cameroonian village. Life is difficult, partly because of the colonists depleting of the fishing resources. Ngando works at night fishing and during the day chopping trees in an effort to get what he needs for the dowry. His efforts prove exhausting and futile. His uncle, who already has four wives, one of whom is Ngando’s mother, pays the dowry and tries to take Ndome for himself hoping she will give him a child. She does have a child, but not the Uncle’s. This is a delicately emotional film that delivers a stark vision of the clash between tradition and modernity.

 

Insiang (1976), directed by Lino Brocka. We recently watched Red Cliff, a film nearly 4 and a half hours long with hectic activity, bodies of horses and men flying through the air in slow motion. The film probably took months to film. Insiang, a 94-minute film from the Philippines, took 17 days from the beginning of production to its appearance in theatres. Both are astonishing films. Insiang begins as a neo-realist look at life in the slums of Manila, turns to melodrama, and then to tragedy. The pre-credit sequence takes us inside a slaughterhouse where pigs are being gutted. The opening is visceral, and it sets up both the latent violence that exists in the impoverished lives of the slum dwellers and the ending of the film. The plot takes us close to the lives of one family, especially the lives of the eponymous character, Insiang (Hilda Koronel) and her mother, Tonya (Mona Lisa). These two have a difficult relationship because Tonya sees in her daughter the husband who left her for a young mistress. Tonya has taken on as a lover a young man from the slaughterhouse, Dado (Ruel Vernal). He, of course, has eyes for the luminous daughter. Insiang has more than one man seeking her attentions, and she hopes to escape her life with a curly-headed fellow named Bebot (Rez Cortez). Bebot proves as trustworthy as Dado or the husband of Tonya. Anyway, these characters live lives in a crowded, noisy, dirty, and closed in space. We often see them, especially Insiang and her mother, behind barred windows or gates or fences or lattices. The drama plays out with intensity and even a certain predictability, a predictability that does not fully prepare us for the end of the film. This is a powerful, and I daresay important film.

 

Taipei Story (1985), directed by Edward Yang. This is a film that examines urban malaise. It begins with a good-looking couple examining an apartment for rent. The man, Lung (Hou Hsiao-hsien) seems bored and uninterested as he swings his arms like a baseball player. The woman, Chin (Tsai Chin) lists the commercial items that could fit here: stereo, tv, VCR and so on. Cut to the film’s near final shot of blood on the street adjacent to a pile of thrown out items such as a tv, a couple of soft chairs and bags of stuff and you see what such dreams come to. The film moves along at a slow measured pace, rarely, if ever, changing the pace. It is a slow burn. Throughout the film, we have references to the United States as a place of possibility and hope, but such possibility and hope are as illusory as all dreams. At one point a character asks Lung what Los Angeles is like. He replies that it is much the same as Taipei. Another connector is baseball. Lung, as a young person, was a fine baseball player with dreams of making baseball his success in life. Once again, we have a reminder of dreams failing to come true. Shots of the city in both daylight and at night keep reminding us of the combination of decay and glitter, of hope and its opposite. As I watched the film, I kept thinking of Kramer vs Kramer (1979), although the two films are quite different. Taipei Story is, however, about a couple’s strained and unworkable relationship. We also have a cast of peripheral characters nicely drawn. One of these characters, an architect, looks out a high-rise window at the city and remarks that he can no longer tell which buildings he has designed because all the buildings look the same. This pretty much sums up the vision of a world drained of energy, a world of boredom and ennui.

 

Revenge (1990), directed by Ermek Shinarbaev. This film is part of the Kazakh New Wave, a movement in Russian cinema that arrived just before the collapse of the Soviet Union. It begins with a prologue set in the seventeenth century in which we see the rise of a young Lord who comes into conflict with his best friend, the court poet. Then we move to 1915 Korea where the actual story begins. Before the film ends we have visited China and finally Sakhalin on Russia’s eastern coast. By the end, we have moved foreword to just at the end of 1945. The story finds impetus in the killing of a young girl by a drunken teacher back in 1915. This murder results in the father of the murdered girl seeking revenge, something he seeks vainly for years, ultimately passing on his desire for revenge to his young son from a second wife. The son seeks revenge for many years until … Well, you will have to see what happens. The film is noteworthy for its light. Scenes are filled with light, a light that counterpoints the darkness in humanity’s heart. We also have a number of cryptic but compelling images: a huge sea turtle far from the sea and seeking to return home, a rat dowsed in gas and set on fire running frantically until it finds a barn with hay, a hedgehog, a young man hemorrhaging blood from his groin, a fast-moving truck with an iron container chained to its bumper, more than one mute person, and more. The film seems to have something to do with time and space, as well as to the deleterious effects of seeking revenge. Some of what we see reminded me of images in films by Tarkovsky. All in all, this is a strange, yet powerful film.

 

Kalpana (1948), directed by Uday Shankar. This is the only film by the dancer and choreographer Uday Shankar, brother of Ravi Shankar. It is, among other things, a celebration of Indian dance, at one point noting that Hollywood often mistakenly presents Indian dance as if it were African dance. In any case, the film is much more than a celebration of dance. This celebration is part of a celebration of India, despite all its flaws. And flaws aplenty it has, according to this sumptuous exploration of what ails India. Shankar holds his ideology on his sleeve. He speaks openly here of injustices associated with caste/class, with rapacious capitalism, with education or the lack thereof, with misogyny, and so on. His call for equality of the sexes is forthright and moving. As for the viewers’ visual experience, we have magnificent dance sequences, surreal sequences, echoes of silent cinema, especially Fritz Lang’s Metropolis, and painterly compositions, one of which reminded me of Jacques-Louis David. All of this serves a story of a child growing into a man wishing for more than a life controlled by the expectations of elders and tradition. The young man, Udayan (Uday Shankar), finds himself desired by two women, his childhood friend Uma (Amala Shankar), and the wild woman he meets in the wilderness, Kamini (Lakshmi Kanta). Jealousy and anger surface, in a narrative that blends dream and reality. Released in 1948, Kalpana (apparently this means ‘Fantasy’) reminds us that Hollywood was in the heyday of musicals at the time. The film also reminds us just how stubborn are the forces of neoliberalism; the film resonates still.

 

The Cloud-Capped Star (1960), directed by Ritwik Ghatak. Huge trees, a train passing, lattice-work, close-ups reminiscent of Eisenstein, deep focus, odd camera angles, all give this film a distinct feel. The tree we see in the first shot lets us know about stability, rootedness, shelter, nature. That same shot transitions to a close-up of Neeta (Supriya Choudhury) , our protagonist; in the background moving across the screen is a train, letting us know about people on the move, change, and an unknown destination. The lattice-work we see throughout lets us know of constraint. In the first shot, we also hear the singing of Neeta’s brother, Shankar (Anil Chatterjee). Throughout the film sound is either mellifluous or jarring, dissonant. The odd angles tell us of people and places out of joint. The story deals with a family displaced by the partition of India in 1947, and especially the eldest daughter Neeta who is effectively the head of the house. The learned, but feeble, father (Gyanesh Mukherjee), the domineering mother (Gita Dey), the flirtatious younger sister Geeta (Gita Ghatak), the sports-loving brother Mantu (Dwiju Bhawal), and the older brother Shankar all have their own ambitions and rely on Neeta to provide for them. The story follows Neeta in her self-sacrificing decline into illness as she watchs her uncaring family find what they wish for. Neeta is, for sure, a cloud-capped star. This is melodrama, but with a trace of humour and fantastic cinematography. I have neglected to mention Neeta’s boyfriend, Sanat, who is graceless enough to marry the younger Sister Geeta. Sanat, in a love letter to Neeta, calls her a “cloud-capped star veiled by circumstance,” and Neeta is indeed an intelligent woman whose life is ruined by the destructive environment in which she lives. This is melodrama touched by tragedy.

 

Mysterious Object at Noon (2000), directed by Apichatpong Weerasethakul (aka Joe). Dennis Lim describes this strange and mysterious film from Thailand as “part road move, part folk storytelling exercise, part surrealist parlour game.” This description is accurate, but it hardly touches the strangeness of the film. Viewers first see the words, “Once upon a time….,” and so we know we are in store for a fairy tale. But this is more like the building of a fairy tale as we meet characters who tell us bits and pieces of a story the arises from a mysterious small round object that falls to the floor early in the film. As each set of characters, and actors, tell the story, the story becomes more and more baroque. As we go along, we have a travelling fish seller, a crippled boy and his teacher, two deaf mute girls, a theatre troop, a gaggle of school children, among others, all adding to the story of an alien who comes to earth. Frankly, the story never does cohere for me, although I suspect it might for others. I get the sense we are being introduced to a story from Thai folklore. The filming is in grainy black and white, and it has a documentary feel, although this is not an out and out documentary. We also have moments I might call meta, where the making of the film is what we are seeing. Everything is quite odd, just out of reach, and yet compelling for some reason. The strangeness comes in the form of a sophisticated and complicated film looking primitive and naïve. This is quite an experience.

 

Before the Rain (1994), directed by Milcho Manchevski. This is the first film from a newly independent Republic of Macedonia. As for a summary, Noel Murray in AV Club (July 1, 2008) puts it succinctly:” In the film's first section, ‘Words,’ Grégoire Colin plays a young Macedonian monk who discovers an Albanian girl hiding in his quarters, and attempts to hide her from a local militia. In the second section, "Faces," Katrin Cartlidge plays a London photo-agent who's been having an affair with one of her foreign photojournalists, and struggles with how to tell her husband. In the third section, "Pictures," the photojournalist, played by Rade Serbedzija, returns to his Macedonian village and becomes embroiled in centuries-old skirmishes. Each section "rhymes" in different ways. There's a rumble of thunder in each, as well as a character vomiting, turtles, a snippet of Beastie Boys' "So What'cha Want," and the repeated line, "Time never dies… the circle is not round." For most of the movie, Manchevski subtly suggests that each section is taking place at roughly the same time; in the final five minutes, he reveals exactly which scene goes where, and underlines the idea that in the former Yugoslavia, it doesn't matter whether a person tries to help or stays neutral. Trouble ensues either way.” “Trouble ensues either way,” says it all. Clearly Manchevski has watched westerns and I can locate quotations from both Peckinpah and Ford in this film. The storyline turns on the futility of things, and somehow futility seems to be a word suitable to the situation humanity continues to find itself in.

 

Hive (2021), directed by Blaerta Basholli. Set in the village of Krusha in Kosovo in the aftermath of the 1999 massacre in that village. Many of the men have gone missing, and the surviving wives and families of the missing struggle to find news of their loved ones and to survive without the men in their lives. Fahrije (Yllka Gashi), along with other women of the community, organize to lobby the authorities to find their missing husbands, and also to create a company that makes and sells adjvar, a condiment made from red peppers and aubergines. These women have to contend with the deeply patriarchal villagers, including Fahrije’s father-in-law Haxhi (Çun Lajçi) and her daughter, Zana (Kaona Sylejmani). Fahrije also tries to maintain her missing husband’s bee hives. Those worker bees reflect the worker-bee mentality of the women who set about to control their lives. The handheld camera stays close to Fahrije as she sets out to make life work in an environment wracked by war, and held by misogynist traditions. The film is based on a true story, and it is a testament to independence and the will to survive. 

 

24 City (2008), directed by Jia Zhang-Ke. Filmed as a documentary, 24 City reminds me of Martin Scorsese’s Rolling Thunder Review in its blending of fact and fiction, real people and actors. It tells the story of an airplane parts factory, and its destruction in order to replace it with luxury apartments. Most of the film depends upon “interviews” with people associated with the factory from its early days to its closing (actually it is moving and not just closing). In other words, the film slyly moves through time without actually depicting those various times. The people we meet all have a melancholy story to tell. The film is quiet, slow, intense, and somehow moving in its presentation of people whose lives have depended on a factory that controlled their lives, and that now, in its fall, leaves them unmoored, drifting too far from shore. This is an unusual film, well worth seeing for its picture of China as it was and as it develops in the present century.

 More from Japan.

The Story of the Late Chrysanthemums (1939), directed by Kenji Mizoguchi. Near the beginning of his career, Mizoguchi sets a pattern giving us the story of a woman who sacrifices everything for a man. He presents his story in slow long takes with the camera more often than not set at a distance from the actors, or from a middle distance. Rare are close-ups or full face-on shots. This gives the proceedings the air of a theatre performance, something pertinent here because the story follows the life of a young kabuki actor, Kinunosuke (Shotaro Hanayagi), from a famous acting family who at first fails to impress with his performances, finds himself leaving Tokyo for Osaka, then falling farther when he joins an itinerant group of performers, and finally after much suffering learns his trade. He does all this with the help of the long-suffering woman, Otoku (Kakuko Mori), who becomes his wife much to the chagrin of his father. The point seems to be that arts demands suffering, and suffering nurtures great art. In any case, Kinunosuke’s art takes the life of Otoku who is willing, even anxious, to sacrifice herself for the man she loves. What is noteworthy about this film is the camera, its placing and its fluid movement. Take for example an early scene in which the two young lovers walk along a quiet dark road. The camera is placed in a ditch below the path on which the two people walk so that we look up at them. The camera placement is odd and therefore catches our eyes. What we are seeing is that these two people are elevated above the petty gossipers and disapprovers who attempt to thwart their love. Much of the time, we watch as people, often quite a few people, perform their tasks in the distance. All the world’s a stage, etc. 

 

The Life of Oharu (1952), directed by Kenji Mizoguchi. Here is another masterful exploration of patriarchy’s greed and self-interest. Mizoguchi’s film tells the story of a privileged woman’s fall from a position of comfort into degradation. Oharu (Kinuyo Tanaka) is a lady at court who falls in love with a lowly page (Toshiro Mifune). This is a forbidden love and results in the page’s execution and Oharu’s exile from the court and Kyoto. Thus begins her downward journey into various humiliating situations – concubine to a lord, wife, mother, nun, courtesan, wouldbe suicide - until she finally becomes a prostitute. Through it all, Oharu maintains her dignity. The film ends with her a mendicant going from house to house seeking alms. Mizoguchi characteristically films most of this from a distance, his camera slowly following the movements of people, often from a heightened position. Two scenes stand out: one in which Oharu disrobes to give her garments to a greedy seller of fabrics who claims she has taken the fabric from him, and the other in which a wealthy lady for whom Oharu works reveals that a disease has caused her hair to fall out. These two scenes powerfully show just how powerless women are, how fragile is their place in society. As ever, Mizoguchi’s camera locates items that underscore what is happening, two short stalky pillars in the scene in which Oharu becomes the page’s lover, the many busts of disciples of Buddha, the temple, the stone wall, and so on. This is not a ghost story (I think of Ugetsu), and yet is has the haunting effect of a ghost story. 

 

What Did the Lady Forget? (1937), directed by Yasujiro Ozu. Ozu’s second sound film is something of a dry-run for The Flavour of Green Tea Over Rice. Like the latter film, What Did the Lady Forget? Has a middle-aged couple at odds with each other, and a niece visiting who brings with her the winds of change. The niece, as in Green Tea, is named Setsuko (Michiko Kuwano), and she is strong-willed and modern in outlook. This is a small film, running just 71 minutes, and it is distantly reminiscent of the screwball comedies Hollywood was beginning to produce at the time. At one moment, Setsuko mentions Frederic March, a reminder of her interest in Hollywood films, and quite possibly Ozu’s interest in these films. The film does have one shocking moment when the doctor professor Komiya (Tatsuo Saito) slaps his wife Tokiko (Sumiko Kuishima), and she reacts by admiring his manliness. This film is, perhaps, lesser Ozu, but lesser Ozu is far better than other films then and now.

 

There Was a Father (1942), directed by Yasujiro Ozu. Ozu is one of cinema’s most recognizable directors with his fixed camera, nearly always just above ground level, his tendency to include shots of spaces empty of human activity, his framing through doorways or windows or hallways, and his emphasis on family and sacrifice and time. There Was a Father clearly follows the Ozu aesthetic. It is a wartime film that alludes only obliquely to the war. What sets the film within the wartime sensibility is the emphasis on patriarchy, on the father as a figure to be honoured and obeyed, and as a figure willing to sacrifice his happiness for the success of his son. Shuhei Horikawa (Chisu Ryu) is a well-liked teacher in a provincial town. While on a school excursion with a group of his students, one of the students dies in a boating mishap; one shot of an upturned boat is enough for Ozu to communicate what has happened. This image tells us not only that a student has drowned, but also that Horikawa is now alone and his life upturned. He never recovers from the sense that his negligence caused the student’s death. He now sets out to see that his son finds the success that he, the father, could not have. This means sending his son to boarding school, and moving away for work in an office in the big city. Father and son, from that time on, see each other only occasionally. Although the wartime virtues of duty, sacrifice, and hard work are front and centre, these take on a distinctly ambiguous air as Ozu examines the relationship between father and son over many years. The love between father and son is perhaps most endearingly shown in scenes of the two fishing, tossing their long rods in unison. Early in the film these shots suggest a unity between father and son. Late in the film we see a similar shot of father and now grown son only from a different angle. This second shot ends with a feeling of separation rather than unity, and not long after this, the father takes ill and dies. The film offers Ozu’s characteristically quiet, yet intense, world of families struggling to come to terms with outside forces and with time itself. The trains we see here might remind us of the inexorable movement of time, the movement both away from and toward home. Ozu’s cinema is the cinema of mood and stillness, even as time delivers its challenges to human desire for security and peace. Ozu is a very special film maker.

 

The Flavour of Green Tea Over Rice (1951) directed by Yasujiro Ozu. Ozu is one of cinema’s most recognizable directors, and also one of its most subtle, sly, delicate, and consistent directors. His consistency lies in both theme and aesthetic. He deals with family conflict, intergenerational tensions, and class differences. He deals with tradition confronting modernity. His camera rarely moves, and when it does, it does so smoothly, quietly, and unobtrusively; it also rarely, if ever, rises above waist level. He frames shots with doorways, windows, hallways, streets, often layered to give a strong sense of the frame as confinement. Such compositional geometry finds punctuation in still shots of signs or trees or man-made structures such as a water tower. His titles, The Flavour of Green Tea Over Rice, Late Spring, Early Summer, The Floating Weeds, Tokyo Twilight, Late Autumn, The End of Summer, and so on evoke time; they have the whiff of nostalgia. In short, Ozu is a special director and his films offer delicacies that are rare in cinema. The Flavour of Green Tea Over Rice is one of the most satisfying of Ozu’s films taking us to baseball games and bicycle races, as well as to a pachinko parlour and a spa. The story follows the marital difficulties of Mokichi (Shin Saburi) and his wife, Taeko (Michyo Kogure), the efforts of their niece Setsuko (Keiko Tsushima) to avoid an arranged marriage and get on with her new friend Noburo (Koji Tsuruta), and the relationships with close friends of Mokichi and Taeko. This film comes just before Ozu’s most famous (and celebrated – number 4 on Sight and Sound’s most recent list of the greatest 100 films ever!) film, Tokyo Story. I found it just as good as Tokyo Story, maybe even more satisfying. I should mention the importance of food in this film. Food brings people together and it may also nudge them apart.

 

Good Morning (1959), directed by Yasujiro Ozu. Ozu is special. Watching this film, I could not but think that Wes Anderson has seen and absorbed Good Morning. This film has the colour palette, the geometry, the stillness, the close-ups, the sensibility we see again in Anderson’s work. But Ozu remains distinct. Here he is in a light-hearted mood, as the jaunty music over the credit sequence lets us know. Light-hearted this film may be, but it takes on serious matter nonetheless. The focus is on communication. The children criticize the adults for making meaningless small talk, the adults rationalize such small talk as lubrication, a loosening of the gears of communication. Adults also indulge in gossip and rumour, communication that can be hurtful. Such small talk is a sort of flatulence, a point made several times throughout the film, not least when one adult male character farts, only to have his wife appear asking if he had called her. This occurs more than once. The children play a farting game, twirling an arm in victory when they have successfully farted. I might add that the sound of the farts differs from one person to another. Then we have silence as a mode of communication when the two principal boys refuse to talk because their parents will not purchase a television. The television is also a communication device, one that shows Sumo wrestling. Wrestling itself is perhaps a sign of communication in a rough but regimented mode. Regimentation is a way of life, as the boys’ school uniforms may indicate. The television also gives us an image of boxed in communication, and the people we meet here lived in compartmented spaces. Finally, this film, like its precursor in Ozu’s filmography, I Was Born, But … (1932), gives us a perspicacious view of childhood. We have playfulness, bullying, fear, confusion, stubbornness, secretiveness, desire, and the gathering of kids. Well male kids anyway. This is a special film by a special director. Highly recommended.

 

Double Suicide (1968), Masahiro Shinoda. Claire Johnston gives us this summary: “This film is a close adaptation of Chikamatsu’s 1720 doll-drama The Double Suicide at Ten No Amijima, and traces a basic conflict in Japanese drama, giri-minjo, between social obligation and personal emotion in the bourgeois milieu. Jihei, married with two children, falls in love with a courtesan, Koharu. As there is no possibility of being together in this world, Jihei sees the only solution as double suicide. When Koharu appears unwilling to die with him, he temporarily abandons her. Eventually, following a mandated divorce, Jihei and Koharu commit suicide together.” Filmed in kabuki-style, Double Suicide begins with puppeteers setting up for performance before it begins to tell the story. We also have a number of black-clad people populating scenes (kurago or puppeteers who manipulate the banuku puppets), moving props, and generally reminding us of Death! The camera is fluid, the sets rudimentary, the close-ups intense, the black and white cinematography stark, and the acting broad. The artificiality distances us from the action. Like the kurago, we witness the action but are unable to enter it. Of course, the end is clear from the beginning. Eroticism, Shinoda appears to say, when divorced from duty results in death. This is bleak. Interestingly, the two women, the courtesan Koharu and the wife Osan (both played by Shima Iwashita), share a mutual respect. As for the filming, we have odd compositions, freeze-frames, bizarre sets, and the black-clad kurago puppeteers moving about. All of this reminds us that narrative is manipulative, cunning, and institutional. The film is as much about narrative itself as it is about a double suicide or the tragedy of love.

 June has arrived. Here are a few more films.

A Woman’s Face (1938), directed by Gustaf Molander. This is an early Ingrid Bergman Swedish film, and it was remade a few years later in Hollywood with Joan Crawford. The story follows a young woman whose face has been badly burned and disfigured in a fire when she was a child. She is embittered and enters a life of crime. Events transpire that bring her to the attention of an accomplished plastic surgeon. This doctor operates on the woman and restores her beauty. She then becomes a governess in the home of a wealthy consul; her intention is to participate in the murder of the young boy, the consul’s son, in order that her criminal gang can benefit. As you might expect, things do not work out the way the gang hopes they will work out. Near the end, we have a magnificent set piece, a sleigh chase at night through the snow and across a frozen lake. The film is suitably dark for this season of noir. Although Anna (Bergman) leaves a life of crime, she also leaves the possibility of marriage behind as she embarks for a life of helping others in China at the end of the film.

 

"Not a film, but a two-hour study of sofas and pianos." That's how one critic described Carl Theodor Dreyer's final film, Gertrud (1964). The film does have pianos and sofas as part of its sparse settings. It also has a mirror, a statue, some paintings, a table, chairs, and a fireplace. All of these bits of furniture and art are placed carefully, deliberately, in order to serve the emotional intensity of the film. This is a slow burn of a film. The opening scene lasts just over twenty minutes, and another long take of Gertrud and her young lover lasts some ten minutes. The characters move slowly; they appear enervated. And yet they are insistent, stubborn, focused, intent on their desires. This is a film about desire. It stirs below the placid surface. For the eponymous character desire is everything, and as we know, desire cannot find satisfaction, completion, fulfillment. Amor omnia perhaps, but such a slogan only reminds us of melancholy, the melancholia of a world in which everything is unattainable, just out of reach, but always beckoning, leading one on. This film might remind us of work by Ingmar Bergman, or by Lars von Trier. It has light swallowed by darkness. The sets are spare and articles stand out as symbols. The mirror with its rococo frame is a reminder of illusion as well as vanity. The statue in the park is a reminder of both modesty and the pleasures of the flesh Gertrud talks about. Indeed, this is a film that talks. Scenes give us two or three people, moving slowly if at all, talking to each other, not looking at each other, confined in their own circles of desire. The principal characters are artists and politicians, a mixture sure to find trouble. Gertrud, unable to find the happiness she longs for, travels to Paris and joins a group of intellectuals who sublimate their desire in intellectual pursuit. Still, in the end, amor omnia.

 

Cold War (2018), directed by Pawel Pawlikowski. The first third of this film is dazzling in its cinematography. Well the whole film, shot in monochrome, offers superior beauty in its compositions and lighting, but the first third is especially impressive. Shots are reminiscent of photographs by Brassai or scenes from Tarkovsky. Just to look at this film is to have an experience worthwhile. The story spans the years 1949-1964 when the Cold War was growing colder. The two main characters are a pianist and composer/arranger who at the beginning is traveling the countryside looking for raw folk talent and music, and a young woman who hopes to find a place among the many other young people from the countryside looking to enter a folk group under the tutelage of the pianist and his company. These two fall in love, and the film follows their strained and complicated relationship over the next 15 years, taking them, separately, to Paris, Yugoslavia, Italy, and finally back to Poland where they had begun their journies. Along the way, the cold hand of authoritarianism grows colder and as it does the lives of these two become less and less workable. The cinematography and the music also change becoming less shining and more cacophonous until we are back where we started in a ruined church. In the beginning we saw this place in winter, but it had striking beauty; at the end we see this place in another season and the beauty has diminished, just as the lives of these two have become less capable of moving forward.

The Passion of Anna (1969), directed by Ingmar Bergman. In Swedish the title is "A Passion," a more apposite title because the film explores passion or its absence in not one, but at least four people. Each of these people is played by a familiar Bergman actor. This is Bergman territory we know well, intense inner drama. The backdrop of images - water, snow, dead animals, fire, alcohol, photographs, the island, a sun dog - keep reminding us of rage and anger and desire and accident and generally existential hollowness. These are people out on a limb hacking away at that limb heedless of the fall once they have hacked through that limb. One sequence shows us famous footage from the Vietnam War on a TV screen, footage that captured the attention of the world. It shows the shooting of a young Vietnamese person. Just what this piece of historical actuality is doing in the film is worth asking. Here we have the savagery of human interaction as starkly evident as possible. This is a film replete with dislocation, loneliness, aimlessness, and anchoress desire. As the film's final shot indicates, the film is about disintegration. If the film has to do with passion, then it is passion on the wane, passion unable to find purchase, unable to find fulfilment. It is lots of fun.

 

The Serpent's Egg (1977), directed by Ingmar Bergman. The most noteworthy aspect of this film for me is the cinematography by Sven Nykvist. It is crisp, sharp-edged, and stark, a perfect expression of the film's dark message - the coming of social and political darkness. The centre cannot hold. This is Bergman's only Hollywood film, the one film he made while on self-imposed exile from Sweden. It does not work for me, partly because David Carradine seems somehow in the wrong environment. However, the echoes of such German films as M, The Blue Angel, Pandora's Box, and Lang's Mabuse films catches the viewer with what those films missed, the serpent lurking in the Germany of 1923. The only reality is, indeed, fear. Touching on the dislocation caused by social division and xenophobia, this film resonates today in a way, perhaps, not available in 1977. It may not be the Bergman we associate with spiritual turmoil and psychological angst, but it does serve up its share of angst. Constant images of bars and narrow labyrinthian hallways and crowds and police/soldiers remind us of entrapment. The hospital archives are reminiscent of Kafka, and of course the medical and psychological experiments evoke the period's interest in eugenics, and mind control. The more I think of it, the more terrifying this film becomes.

 Just a few miscellaneous films for May. Politics!

Beanpole (2019), directed by Kantemir Balagov. This film chronicles the effects of war, and these effects are not pretty. Iya (Viktoria Miroshnichenko) is a nurse working in a Leningrad hospital that is filled with wounded soldiers. Iya is also unusually tall – hence the name Beanpole. She has a friend, Masha (Vasilisa Perelygina), who has just returned from war duty. Iya has been caring for Masha’s son, Pashka (Timofey Glazkov), but in one of her strange catatonic fits, a result of post-stress, Iya smothers Pashka. Masha takes the news without obvious emotion. Masha has a deep desire for a child, but she learns because of a war wound that she is infertile. She wants Iya to have a baby for her. Such is the plot. The film moves along slowly with a palette that is dour with red and green and a sickly yellow. The setting seems closed in, effectively strengthening the sense of the PTSD that most of the characters experience. What the film offers is a stark and unsettling view of trauma caused by war. The two women are a study in contrast, Masha being outgoing and domineering, and Iya being introverted and shy, trying to make herself less visible than she is. Moments in the film come close to the grotesque. Clearly, war has altered the lives of these people in ways that shatter any possibility of normalcy. This film resonates with our times, sadly.

Official Secrets (2019), directed by Gavin Hood. This is a political thriller that recounts the story of Katharine Gun (Keira Knightley), a government employee who in 2003 leaked an email from the U.S. government that encourages other countries, the U.K. for example, to assist in coercing several countries to vote in the United Nations for war against Iraq. These were the Bush/Blair years, the time of Colin Powell’s unfortunate speech at the U.N. concerning “weapons of mass destruction.” The film is a procedural that follows Katharine Gun’s decision to leak the document, her home life and eventual arrest, the reporters for the Observer newspaper who track the story (played by Rhys Ifans, Matthew Goode, and Matt Smith), and the civil rights lawyers who defend Katharine (played by Ralph Fiennes, Indira Varma, and John Heffernan). Hood manages to keep all the storylines moving briskly and effectively. The duplicity of governments is nicely set out and reverberates with contemporary politics, as well as with past events such as the Watergate events of some thirty years earlier. This is a tense and timely film.

Le Havre (2011), directed by Aki Kaurismaki. Anything by Kaurismaki is worth seeing, and Le Havre is among his best. This is a film about illegal immigrants and community and marriage and friendship and goodness. Aside from the story, the look of the film is attractive. Kaurismaki and his crew make the down and out parts of Le Havre look inviting. The colour scheme is distinctly Kaurismaki with its muted blue and grey and yellow. This is a film about life among the humble. The protagonist is the shoeshine man, Marcel Marx (Andre Wilms), who lives with his wife and canine friend in a run-down part of town. He shines shoes here and there in the city, sometimes with a Vietnamese friend. His wife Arletty (Kati Outinen) is not well, and she goes to hospital where the doctor says she has a terminal illness. Meanwhile, Marcel meets Idrissa (Blondin Miguel), an illegal immigrant from Gabon who is on the run from the authorities. Idrissa is on his way to London to find his mother. He is a boy in a strange and frightening place. Kindly neighbours help Marcel protect the boy, although one neighbour is less than kindly, calling the police more than once and ratting on the boy’s whereabouts. Marcel’s last name is no accident, and we have here a comment on policing, community, borders, freedom of movement, and kindness. The people we meet live on a shoestring, as it were, and they are all the better for this. Finally, I note that sometimes miracles do happen! This film is sure to win your hearts. Oh, I nearly forgot Little Bob whose appearance reminds us of Leningrad Cowboys!

Lunana: A Yak in the Classroom (2019), directed by Pawo Choyning Dorji. “Gross national happiness,” the motto of Bhutan, informs this film. Taking place in the remotest village in Himalayan Bhutan, the film lets us know that fulfillment (“happiness”) is possible without money or material goods or modernity. Happiness comes in a connection with nature and with song. Singing is important here as a way of honouring local deities and connecting with others, including animals, especially the yaks that provide food and fuel for the local people. Moving at a lyrical pace, the film celebrates community, connection, and education. The story of a fish out of water is familiar and, I suppose, even predictable, but here the location of the shooting, the actors, especially local unprofessional child actor Pem Zam, have charm and charisma. The film does not break new ground, but it does introduce us to a place where contentment, health, and satisfaction are possible, far away from the crowded and loud streets of the city, far away from modern conveniences, and far away from the self-absorbed urbanites we see frequenting bars looking for the happiness they think is available in a glass. 

Sharper (2023), directed by Benjamin Caron. Here is a film for our time, a film about compulsive liars, grifters, con artists, empty people interested only in spondulicks. The plot has twists and turns galore (some predictable) and the film moves from chapter to chapter, each chapter following a specific character, until the connection between all the characters becomes clear. The film is stylish and devilish with the actors – Julianne Moore, John Lithgow, Justice Smith, Brianna Middleton, and Sebastian Stan – turning in sly performances, as people who go through life acting slyly. The film begins in a bookstore, and this nice touch might just let us know that we should not judge a book by its cover or a book-buyer by his or her choices. Everything moves along smoothy, if coolly, until an end that spills into absurdity.

1000 Rupee Note (2014), directed by Shrihari Sathe. Budhi (Usha Naik) is an elderly widow whose son has committed suicide because he could not pay back a large debt. She lives alone in a rickety shack that also houses the family of the shepherd, Sudama (Sandeep Pathak). Budhi talks with this family through the flimsy wall that separates their two places. She also has a close friendship with Sadama. The first third of the film is quite lovely; Budhi has little or no money, but she gives whatever she has, tea, fluffy bred, a half rupee, to others, cheerfully and willingly. Her life is simple, and she manages to eke a living by cleaning the houses of the wealthy people who live nearby. Then the local politician, Uttamrao Jadhav (Ganesh Yadav), comes to the village to give a speech. He doles out money to the locals, including a few 1000 rupee notes to the poor widow, Budhi. In other words, he buys votes. The corruption here is a sign of things to come. Budhi and Sadama go to the nearby town or city to spend some of Budhi’s newfound wealth at the market. This is where things go awry, and Sadama and Budhi end up in jail. It turns out winning the lottery, so to speak, is not necessarily a good thing. Of course, Sadama and Budhi manage to be released from incarceration and find the money to return home. On the way back, Budhi takes the 1000 rupee note that the police captain had given her when he released her and tosses it out the window and into the river, a gift to the river gods. This is a quietly effective film, short and very sweet.

 Some Japanese films for February.

This Transient Life (1970), directed by Akio Jissoji. This is the first of Jossoji’s Buddhist trilogy, and it is a blend of softcore pornography and art film. The art film aspect is writ large with a baroque delivery of various camera swirls and angles and movements that seemingly try to outdo Welles’s flashes in Citizen Kane. We also have visual and aural allusions to the likes of Antonionni, Bergman, Godard, Ozu and others. The soundtrack is, at times cacophonous, at times mellifluous (Bach has never sounded more strident), and constantly delivering an array of sharp sounds. Then we have the story, a story of transgression. Masao (Ryo Tamura), only son of a wealthy business man, does not know what to do with his life. Meanwhile, his older sister Yuri (Mitchiko Tsukasa) keeps rejecting the suitors her parents arrange for her. Mom and Pop go on a trip to Tokyo, Masao and Yuri cavort like kids, wearing masks. Masao becomes rather too aggressive and ends up raping his sister. She decides she enjoys the experience and we have a taboo relationship well under way. One day, a local monk sees the brother and sister engaged in sexual activity in the woods. Oh boy. This cannot end well, methinks. Well, it ends with a giant carp dug from the seaside sand by Masao and his deceased grandmother (yes "deceased"). The carp has ‘eaten’ all the people Masao has engaged with, and turned them into stones. Of course, we have the Buddhist content. At one point Masao apprentices to a master carver of Buddhist statues; and yes, he seduces the master’s wife, and then invites the master to share the bed. The master dies in flagrante delicto and his son also dies trying to kill Masao. You can see that lots goes on here, lots of transgressive stuff. I’d like to say that all this coheres into a compelling story, but, alas, this is not the case, for me at least. Sex and death served up raw is what we have. Not knowing anything about Buddhism, I cannot comment on this aspect of the film. The film does have its interest, but it will not be for everyone.

 

Mandala (1971), directed by Akio Jissoji. The second entry in the Buddhist trilogy is another adventure in eros and thanatos, here presented as eroticism and agriculture. The story, such as it is, concerns student unrest and a search for utopia in a cult based on not much more than rape and voyeurism. Once again, we have the roving camera and kinky angles. Early in the film the sets are reminiscent of what we see in The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, and this held some interest for me. The relentless misogyny, however, is wearisome and distasteful. This is a film easy to dislike. From a technical standpoint, it does hold some interest, but the ongoing rape of young women, the running down a beach, the cavorting in sand, the pseudo-philosophizing of the characters, their vapidity, stupidity, and cruelty are difficult to take. Allusions to the usual gathering of French New Wave directors, and even to the venerable Ozu are not enough to lift this film from the sludge.

 

Poem (1972), directed by Akio Jissoji. This is the third film in Jissoji’s Buddhist trilogy. We still have elements of the pinku genre, but mercifully, this element has fewer moments here than in the previous two films. Shot in stark black and white, Poem tells the story of Jun, houseboy to the eldest son of the Moriyama family. Jun is interested in calligraphy, and he spends his off time making rubbings in a nearby cemetery. Calligraphy and death order Jun’s life. He lives an austere life, refusing to make a trip with his boss to the family home in the mountains because it is not his day off. The filming here seems to me an attempt on the part of Jissoji to render the look of the film calligraphic. From this perspective, what we have is a poetic revery. Things move along slowly and moodily. The family is on the verge of dislocation and dissolution. Poor Jun tries his best to save the family, but he fails. I am a viewer who is unfamiliar with the traditions at work here; for a viewer such as I, the experience is largely visual, although the soundtrack does have Jissoji’s interest in sounds of various kinds, and Vivaldi is also a prominent part of what we hear. All in all, this is quite stunning.

Boiling Point (1990), directed by Takeshi Kitano (aka Beat Kitano). This is Kitano’s second feature film, and it lacks the flare of his later work, although it does have the later work’s violence and absurdity, and even a bit of the later work’s visual sense. The plot has two gormless friends who play on the same baseball team and work at the same gas station getting involved with the yakuza. You can imagine that things do not work out well. Beat Kitano appears as a psychotic killer who delights, in a deadpan manner, hitting people, raping people, playing the voyeur, and generally going through life treating others in an ugly and unpleasant way. What the crazy action might mean is anyone’s guess. I am not sure of the baseball metaphor, or is it a metaphor? Perhaps the whole thing is a pile of feces since the film begins and ends with the main character, Masaki (Yurei Yanagi), in an outhouse, suggesting the entire action was what Masaki daydreamed while sitting on the toilet. I guess this is Kitano learning his trade, experimenting with things visual and things violent and things wonky and perverse. His misogyny is difficult to take.

 

Hana-bi (1997), directed by Takeshi Kitano. Imagine Ozu crossed with Fukasaku and you will have an idea what Hana-bi is like. We have the silence, the spatial intensity, often empty spaces, the serenity of faces, some of the compositions, and dislocations in time we might associate with Ozu, coupled with the violence and yakuza gangs and quick cutting of Fukasaku. Take just one strand of this layered film, the shooting of police officer Horibe (Ren Osugi). The shooting is quick and violent, leaving Horibe in a wheelchair. He has thoughts of suicide while he tries to come to terms with his new life as a paraplegic. Someone suggests he take up painting and he does, painting, for the most part, figures with flowers for heads set in bright primary-coloured backgrounds. The wheelchair reminds us of life’s struggle; the paintings remind us of life’s possibilities. Together they remind us the film has something to do with life pitted against art, and art focusing life. The film is awash in significant visual content: feral cats, the sea and sky, paintings, colour, hallways, sunglasses, fire, a kite, faces, snow, blood, sand, cherry trees. The pacing is, for the most part, measured. We follow Nishi (Beat Kitano, aka Takeshi Kitano), a detective, whose child has died and whose wife is dying of leukemia. To make matters worse, his partner, Horibe, is shot, and Nishi feels responsible for the death of another officer who leaves behind a young wife and child, and he owes money to the yakuza. This is enough to depress anyone. Nishi leaves the police force, paints an old taxi to look like a police car and sets out to organize life for himself and his wife. He does so, and the film ends with Nishi and his wife by the sea. This is where they too end.

 Some Ernst Lubitsch films.

Anna Boleyn (1920), directed by Ernst Lubitsch. Taking a few liberties with history, this film tells the story of Henry VIII’s second wife. The sets and costumes are sumptuous, and Emil Janning’s Henry is uncannily well done. The same cannot be said for Henny Porten’s Anna; she rarely looks energetic, mostly sporting a dour and even lugubrious expression. Lubitsch moves things along fairly briskly. He manages to deliver spectacle (the film has thousands of extras), while at the same time he gives us a close-up of the principal characters. The film has intimacy laced with grandeur. It runs nearly 2 hours, but the time passes easily, even pleasingly. Henry’s move to become head of the Church takes place quickly. His flirtations are nicely done. And his gourmandizing is hearty. All in all, an impressive early Lubitsch, showing the master learning his trade.

 

The Wildcat (1921), directed by Ernst Lubitsch. This is a visual feast. The sets, the costumes, the shifting screen shapes and sizes, all of this is baroque, if not expressionistic. Lubitsch’s wit and humour are apparent here in abundance. Early sequences remind me of Seven Brides, the Buster Keaton film. Chaplin also resonates here. The story, such as it is, involves two women and two men, who come from two sides of the law. One woman and man are attached to the military outpost, and the other man and woman are members of a mountain robber gang. The whole thing is a spoof. Mostly, however, what matters is what we see, a river of tears in the snow, an outpost with canons everywhere (and I mean everywhere), swords decorating doors and windows, wild clothes and zany uniforms, much running about in various places, including up and down a strange staircase, and the clothing and tents of the robbers festooned with skulls. Here Lubitsch treats the image as a work of art, going so far as to shape his frames in post-production. We have round, oval, jagged, wobbly, diagonal screen shapes. We have portraits and landscapes. The whole thing is rather demented, but delightful.

 

Broken Lullaby (1932), directed by Ernst Lubitsch. Here is an anti-war film from the master of comedy. The first shot of the film shows a parade of soldiers celebrating the one-year anniversary of armistice. The shot is taken through the legs of a soldier, or rather leg of a solider. This soldier has clearly lost a leg in battle. In other words, this celebration neglects the costs of war. We also have shots of soldiers filling a church, their swords lining the exits to pews. The melodramatic plot has the French soldier, Paul (Phillips Holmes), coming to the German town of Walter (Lucien Littlefield), the soldier Paul killed in battle, seeking forgiveness from Walter’s parents. He intends to confess to these parents. What follows is a tale of deception and love. Paul falls in love with Elsa (Nancy Carroll), the fiancé of Walter.  The film registers the agony of those who survive the war. Both Paul and Walter were musicians, and it is through music and love that any reconciliation can happen. This is a relentlessly dour film, but it does have several exceptional set pieces. For example, we have the scene in which Elsa and Paul walk the streets of the German town, setting bells a-ringing as they go. Windows and doors open as the townsfolk peek out and look with suspicion upon this unlikely friendship. Lubitsch takes aim at twisted nationalism and militarism. Traces of the expressionistic film making associated with German cinema in the silent period add to the power of Lubitsch’s vision. 

 

Trouble in Paradise (1932), directed by Ernst Lubitsch. Gaston Monescu (Herbert Marshall) tells the wealthy widow Mariette Colet (Kay Francis) that if he was her father, he would spank her for attempting to look after her own business affairs. She asks what he would do if he was her secretary. He replies, “The same thing.” Her retort is, “You’re hired.” This is Lubitsch: witty, suave, naughty, and a touch cynical. People behave that way. We have much ado with doors, windows, beds, champagne bottles, clocks, looks, and innuendo. The plot has two master thieves, Monescu and Lady Lily (Miriam Hopkins) planning to fleece the good widow, but things get sticky once Monescu begins to fancy the lovely widow who owns a perfume factory. Which woman will he steal away? Meanwhile, Mariette has two suitors, Francois Filiba (Edward Everett-Horton) and the Major (Charles Ruggles) who provide comedic work as things go along. Everything is sophisticated, clever, and adroitly presented. We have a running in-joke when Monescu runs up or down Madame Colet’s lavish stairway. The joke is that Herbert Marshall had only one leg. The film begins with a street-cleaner singing loudly and dumping a garbage can onto his barge. The place is Venice, city of sophistication and beauty. But we see what a load of old garbage is here. Surface sorcery covers somewhat more crass motives beneath the activities. This is fantasy that has the feel of reality.

 

Design for Living (1933), directed by Ernst Lubitsch. Here is an early 1930s film that speaks openly about sex (both the film itself and the characters in it speak openly about sex). Not only is sex spoken about openly, but the flaunting of convention stays right to the final shot of the film, a final shot that has the three principal characters, two men and a woman, driving off into their future together, a menage a trois that is bound to fracture sometime after this smile of an ending. The three characters are two artists, Tom Chambers (Frederic March) and George Curtis (Gary Cooper), and the sparkling young independent woman Gilda Farrell (Miriam Hopkins). The film opens on a train and ends in a car. The opening scene, played mostly silent, is a masterful introduction to these three people, and Gilda’s caricature of the two sleeping men nicely captures the mood of the piece. Witty and sophisticated this film is, as we would expect with Lubitsch. He adapts, with the help of screenwriter Ben Hecht, Noel Coward’s play. The first half or so of the film takes place in Paris in the bohemian quarters of the two artists, soon to be accompanied by the perky young woman. She loves both of them; they both love her. A “gentleman’s agreement” says she can live with them in chaste comfort. Hah! Things go awry. Soon the two male friends are at loggerheads, and soon after Gilda marries another man, Max Plunkett (Edward Everett Horton), he of the advertising business. Gilda may be married to Max, but she does not satisfy him sexually, and he kicks over a rather obviously phallic plant before she up and leaves him to go off with the other two men -without even a notice of divorce. All this sexual daring is fine, and the film does have its charms, but on the whole, something is flat here. The “Lubitsch touch” is at work, but with less subtlety than we find elsewhere in his work.

 

Bluebeard’s Eighth Wife (1938), directed by Ernst Lubitsch. No, this is not a dark tale of a homicidal husband and a curious wife. It is the light froth of a tale about a millionaire and the woman who finally stops his philandering ways. Gary Cooper as the millionaire, Michael Brandon, overacts, and Claudette Colbert as the penniless daughter of a Marquis, Nicole de Loiselle, wears Travis Banton’s creations with verve and spark. The dialogue, written by Charles Brackett and Billy Wilder from a play by Alfred Savoir, has some witty exchanges and fast talk. The action takes place on the Paramount back lot and sound stages that stand in for the French Riviera. All in all, this is a standard screwball comedy trying to be naughty and coming up a bit stale. Take, for example, the bit about Louis XIV’s bathtub. Mr. Brandon, brash American, sits in it and manages to break it in two without even a brief, “Oh dear, what have I done?” So much for history, so much for a priceless antique, so much for spondulicks when you have so much of it. Then we have Mr. Brandon tossing a copy of The Taming of the Shrew into the fire because he tried to use it as a self-help tome and found it wanting. The characters all have a yen for oodles of money, although we are supposed to think that love wins in the end. The Lubitsch touch is on better display elsewhere; nevertheless, this is Lubitsch and even lesser Lubitsch is more engaging than other makers of such fare.

 

The Shop Around the Corner (1940), directed by Ernst Lubitsch. The first of our Christmas films this year has the Lubitsch touch! Two shop employees dislike each other, but unbeknownst to each of them, they are corresponding intimately with each other in a series of anonymous letters. Complications ensue, and grow especially entangled as Christmas approaches. The film is lively with enjoyable performances by everyone involved. The shop owner, Hugo Matuschek, is played by none other than Frank Morgan (yes, the Wizard of Oz). He has a wife we never see, but who plays an important part in the goings-on. Indeed, Mrs. Matuschek provides that touch the film offers, a touch of naughtiness that slips over to one of the shop employees, the obsequious Ferencz Vadas (Joseph Schildkraut). The interactions of the various characters are delightful, the script subtle and humourous, the sets meticulous, and the Christmas decorations suitable for this time of year! We have no angels seeking their stars here, but we do have a set of impeccably staged scenes with characters who hold our interest, and even manage to communicate a whiff of that wonderful life sensibility. The film was remade in 1998 as You’ve Got Mail.

 

Cluny Brown (1946), directed by Ernst Lubitsch. Feed squirrels to the nuts, if you please. This is Lubitsch’s last completed film, and it has much to recommend it. Cluny Brown (Jennifer Jones) is the daughter of a plumber who is capable of rattling a few pipes herself. Set in London on the eve of World War 2, the film focuses on Cluny Brown’s struggles with the British class system and her slowly emerging relationship with the Czech refugee, Professor Adam Belinsky (Charles Boyer). Both Brown and Belinsky are outsiders in the social milieus they find themselves among. The script is snappy, as we would expect and the “Lubitsch touch” is as deft as ever. The actors are all agreeable. Charles Boyer has never been more attractive. Jennifer Jones turns in a sprightly performance. Una O’Connor does not have one line of dialogue, beyond some hearty throat-clearing, and she manages to steal every scene she is in. I especially enjoyed Richard Hayden as Johnathan Wilson, the nasal-sounding and rather stuffy chemist who seeks Cluny’s hand in marriage, until she brazenly fixes his plumbing! Lubitsch’s interest in competent independent women is on full display here. Delightful.

 February musicals. February musicals were meant to perk up winter, and so why not close the month with West Side Story (1961), directed by Robert Wise? Add to this that 2020 will see a remake of this film directed by Stephen Spielberg. Can musicals do tragedy?

Pauline Kael's review scorched the earth: The movie was "frenzied hokum," the dialogue was "painfully old-fashioned and mawkish," the dancing was "simpering, sickly romantic ballet," and the "machine-tooled" Natalie Wood was "so perfectly banal she destroys all thoughts of love."

I wonder what Pauline Kael really thought of the film. Actually, I have some sympathy with what she says. The film is hokey. It is also colourful, chippy, and most certainly well-intentioned. Take for example, the requisite balcony scene (the story is, after all, derived from Romeo and Juliet). Here the fire escapes of the New York tenements serve to remind us of the fire burning among the young and disparate peoples of the city, and their desire for escape. The bannister bars remind us that this city is a prison, a place of anger and resentment. The two lovers are trapped. There is no way out. The racial antagonism remains and it is not difficult to understand why the story continues to resonate. 

I had not seen the film for many years, since the 1960s, and yet many of the set pieces stayed with me - Officer Krupe, America, Tonight, and so on. Sure the candy shop seems rather naive now, but it does connect with the previous decade's Bowery Boys films with Leo Gorcey and Huntz Hall. The Bowery Boys frequented the soda shop run by Louis, and the Jets in West Side Story hang out at Doc's candy store. What the Bowery Boys films left unsaid, that the world of city gangs is violent and brutish, finds voice in West Side Story. The scurrying of the gang members over steel and wire fences, through sewers, and across concrete playgrounds accentuate the lower depths. 

The music is memorable, even catchy, and the dancing is earnest. Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the dancing is that it serves to surface antagonisms. We are a long way from Astaire/Rogers or Gene Kelly dancing with Tom and Jerry.

 

Now that's entertainment. The Band Wagon (1953), directed by Vincente Minnelli. Fred Astaire was 53 when he made this film, and his age figures in the plot. An aging song and dance man finds himself paired with a young and talented ballet dancer, and she is tall (Cyd Charisse)! They do not get along. Not only are they separated by age, but they also come from different artistic backgrounds. And she is tall! Then they take a buggy ride into Central Park and go "Dancing in the Dark." This sequence brings them together, romance blossoms, dances ensue, and the travelling group has a success on Broadway. Dance breaks barriers, brings people together, blends the public and private. Dance creates community. Through dance love blossoms. The film has many parts, many dances, the carnival sequence, the noir-tinged detective dance, the triplets, the rehearsals, the dance in the dark, and so on. But all this disparate stuff comes together because - you guessed it - that's entertainment.

Singin’ in the Rain, "all elements in this rainbow program are carefully contrived and guaranteed to lift the dolors of winter and put you in a buttercup mood." That is Bosley Crowther writing in the New York Times about the 1952 film, Singin' in the Rain. Directed by Gene Kelly and Stanley Donen, Singin' in the Rain is a feast of colour and movement and sound. It is also a nice take on the art of film. The plot turns on the transition in 1929 from silent film to sound, and we have loving homage to early films with stars such as Gloria Swanson, Douglas Fairbanks, John Gilbert, and Greta Garbo. We even have a strange dance sequence in which Cyd Charisse, dressed provocatively in green, invokes Louise Brooks while performing a decidedly modern (not 1920s) dance with partner Kelly. The film is buoyant as two set pieces, "Make Em Dance" and "Good Morning," exemplify. The film pulls out all the stops. It is lavish and upbeat. The energy is palpable as when Donald O'Connor dances up a wall or Gene Kelly splashes deliriously in puddles. Jean Hagen invests her role with a verve and stridency just right for this silent star whose voice is decidedly unsuitable for sound pictures. And of course the question of cinema as an art form finds a celebratory answer. The film blends old and new in its play with form. Oh, and I neglected to mention the Busby Berkeley bits too.

Top Hat (1935), directed by Mark Sandrich. Top Hat is the 4th film with Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. In total, they made 10 films. Top Hat is probably the best known of these films. As the lyrics to the title song indicate, this is a film that simply "reeks with class," in more than one sense of that word. ‘Class’ indicates that the people who populate this film are not only classy, they are also of the upper class, wealthy and artsy. They have servants. ‘Class’ also refers to style. These people have style as their clothes and their surroundings indicate. In other words, this is a film about the well-to-do and the sophisticated. It takes its place alongside a long tradition of comedy that goes back at least to the society plays in the Restoration and 18th Century, plays by the likes of Congreve, Sheridan, and others. Like those long-ago comedies, the plot of Top Hat is baroque; it is convoluted, turning on misunderstandings. These misunderstandings have to do with relations between the sexes, and the plot turns on sexual dalliance and suggestions of transgression. It has its naughty side. This film is playful in its dealings with husbands and wives and those who deviate from the norms of society. One example is Erik Rhodes as Alberto Beddini. Beddini is clearly a gay man. His “marriage” to Dale Tremont (Ginger Rogers) amounts to an act of chivalry, not an act of love.

Comedy is a social mode. It begins with a breakdown in a community and ends with a restoration of order in the community. The restoration of order often takes the form of a marriage or a dance. In dance, everything is executed with skill, grace, and timing. Dance communicates order. So too does marriage. After a plot that has played with marriage breakdown (divorce and infidelity), the action rounds to a marriage that signals good breeding and sound morality. Society once again assumes its acceptable form. Beginning and ending with feet, the film is about dance and soul. The feet keep us grounded, fleet, fast, and flourishing.

The combining of drawing room comedy with show business people is also noteworthy. This is America and in America show business is not necessarily a dubious profession. These show people are also society people. They inhabit a fantasy world that gathers America, Great Britain, and Italy together. Venice becomes a fantasy space where class comes together. In this Venice, people swim leisurely in the canals! People who work in the entertainment business can represent working people, yet they are also members of an elite group. The fantasy is that just plain folk can be rich, elegant, sophisticated, and successful.

The fantasy resonates because of the film’s location smack in the middle of the Great Depression. This is a film to lift the spirits. It presents a wish fulfillment world in which love triumphs. In other words, this is the world we might dream about, but never experience in reality. As a dream, the film takes the viewer out of reality for the 100 or so minutes of its running time. For this time, make believe wins the day.

The clothes and make-up and hairstyles, as well as the sets communicate this make believe. No one has hair as smooth and perfectly set as Fred Astaire or Ginger Rogers. No man has lips as smoothly drawn with lipstick as Fred Astaire. No one wears clothes like Ginger Rogers. The people are live versions of the Art Deco sets. Art Deco exhibits smooth, uncluttered, soft and rounded and long lines. The sinuous lines of dancers are examples of Art Deco. Some of Fred Astaire’s poses during his dances exhibit the Art Deco lines, as do his top hat and tails that accentuate the long lean line and along with the lighting sometimes present a silhouette effect. The Art Deco geometric shapes and lavish decoration have something of a futuristic look, accentuating the unreality of the action. No gondola in the actual Venice looks exactly like the gondolas we see in Top Hat. Art Deco is a style of art that communicates elegance, luxury, and exuberance. It is clean and clear. It is an expression of freshness; it looks forward to a utopian future. This may explain its rise during the Depression years. Art Deco counters the brute facts of reality with a dream of better times.