Author Archives: Sekenbanashi

Brigadoon (1954 film)

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  • Brigadoon (1954 film)

2/15/24 (Fri)

This 1954 film, made in the glory days of the MGM musical, falls well short of the dizzying standards that the studio had set. The wonderful Broadway version offers ample opportunity for big-screen treatment: it’s set in the lush highlands of an exotic locale with distinctive speech, clothing and culture, and has fantastic music and dance scenes that could easily be opened up for the movie. Unfortunately the filmmakers were apparently unable to film on location in Scotland because of weather and cost issues, so the production looks somewhat cheap, like The Sound of Music without the Alps. Also, Alan Jay Lerner’s dialogue comes across as dated and sappy. That’s not true of other MGM musicals at the time, including Lerner’s own films, and is certainly not the case for Lerner’s engaging stage script. The film feels of its time. Continue reading →

Bunraku: The Sake Shop, The Returning Palanquin (酒屋、戻駕)

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  • Bunraku: 酒屋、戻駕 (The Sake Shop, The Returning Palanquin)

2/11/24 (Sun), Tokyo

Bunraku has been homeless in Tokyo since the closure of the National Theater last October, leaving it to wander among venues. Today’s venue, a 1,249-seat theater, is way too big for puppets (the NT had around 800 seats), but I’ll take what I can get. They chose an audience-friendly three-part program of classics at just two hours or so each, a smart change from the usual two-part show of 4-5 hours each. This was the day’s second pairing. Continue reading →

Saltburn

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  • Saltburn

2/10/24 (Sat)

This wild takeoff on The Talented Mr. Ripley is more interested in shocking the audience than offering a coherent story or characters. The film is set in 2006. Oliver, a plain-looking student at Oxford claiming to be from a poor and broken family, gains the friendship of his hunky classmate Felix, who takes pity on him. When Felix learns that Oliver’s father has died, he invites Oliver to his family’s vast country home for the summer. Oliver is welcomed by Felix’s innocently snooty parents and loose sister as well as her eccentric friend. Felix’s bitchy half-black cousin, also a classmate, is sponging off the family and views Oliver, rightly as it turns out, as a potential threat to his privileged position. Oliver’s stay devolves into drunken parties, drugs, sex and several untimely deaths. We realize in the end that Oliver is not what he seems: he is exposed as having a perfectly respectable background, causing Felix to turn against him, and has plotted from the beginning to insinuate himself into Felix’s life and take over the family home and all its wealth. He succeeds through a mix of flattery, physicality and murder.

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The Boy Friend (film)

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  • The Boy Friend

2/1/24 (Thurs)

Ken Russell’s 1971 adaptation of the 1954 mega-hit musical, which was itself a pastiche of 1920s shows (Rodgers and Hart’s The Girl Friend would seem a pretty obvious source). Those shows tended to be forgettable fluff with lame stories, bad puns and interchangeable songs designed to show off the talents of its stars, an approach that the story-based Oklahoma! had rendered archaic by the mid 1940s. Few of the flapper-era shows were revivable by that time without significant rewriting. The original The Boy Friend is tuneful and fun but depends on a knowledge of what is being parodied, in this case the British variety of 1920s musicals, which would have been well within living memory for 1950s audiences. The plot, if you can call it that, is about a girl’s finishing school in Nice where the lovers who have presented themselves as poor discover in the end that each is actually rich and titled. The story is intentionally silly and delivered in mocking style, acknowledging its own irrelevance while offering lively characters and memorable tunes.

Film musicals were still alive if sputtering in the early 1970s, and Russell must have been looking for something enjoyable after the controversy over his provocative previous work. He evidently did not believe the campy original would translate to film (raising the question of why he turned to this show in the first place), so he did an even campier version where the musical is being performed at a seaside resort attended by a big American film producer there to scout out talent. The musical scenes in the show proper thus mix with backstage clashes within the troupe as the performers try to outdo one another to catch the producer’s eye. When the lead breaks her leg, the stage assistant is catapulted into the main role. (That parallels real life: the lead in the original London stage production fell ill just before the opening and was replaced by a minor performer, Anne Rogers, who rode the role to stardom.) She falls in love with the male lead, who to her frustration shows no interest in her.

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Noh: Basho, Mochizuki (芭蕉、望月)

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  • Noh: 芭蕉、望月 (Basho, Mochizuki)

9/30/23 (Sat), National Noh Theater (Tokyo)

Basho: A dialogue-heavy show by Zenchiku with an unusually beautiful text. A monk in rural China meets a woman who, overhearing him read from the Lotus Sutra, wants to discuss Buddhist precepts. He doesn’t allow her in his hut at first since women are normally prohibited, but gives in when she notes that they live in the same city and draw water from the same river, suggesting a karmic connection.

She turns out to be the spirit of a plantain tree (basho), a plant with large and particularly delicate leaves. They discuss how even non-sentient objects such as trees (“even women and heartless plants,” according to one translation) can attain salvation. Continue reading →

Perfect Days

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  • Perfect Days

1/28/24 (Sun)

Shibuya Ward (which encompasses Shibuya, Harajuku, Aoyama and other Tokyo hot spots) had apparently approached Japanophile Wim Wenders to make a documentary on its clean public toilet project, the Tokyo Toilet, which has installed some innovative and attractive facilities throughout the district (many of which I’ve used). Wenders decided to turn this into a piece about a devoted public worker, allowing him to show the facilities as background for something more profound.

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The Discarnates (偉人たちとの夏)

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  • 偉人たちとの夏 (The Discarnates)

1/26/24 (Fri)

I wanted to see Obayashi Nobuhiko’s 1988 adaptation of Yamada Taichi’s best-seller before the acclaimed UK remake, All of Us Strangers, arrives here in the next few months. The Japanese version’s unusual English title refers to a being that does not have a physical body, basically a fancy word for ghosts. That seems to give the game away; I prefer the Japanese title, literally “Summer with Strangers”. The Japanese film is described as a horror story.

*Spoilers Ahead*

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Café Society

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  • Café Society

1/5/24 (Fri)

Woody Allen’s 2016 work is pretty standard fare for him. The young Woody type, here named Leonard, moves from NY to Hollywood seeking a job with his uncle, a powerful film producer. He falls in love with a down-to-earth girl, but her problem – she has a boyfriend. Bigger problem – her boyfriend turns out to be the uncle. After some back and forth, she goes for the money. The disillusioned Leonard goes back to NY and works at his gangster brother’s nightclub. He becomes a terrific schmoozer and meets another beautiful woman, who he marries. Then his ex turns up at the club with the uncle, now her husband. She has taken on the airs of a Hollywood insider, not at all the simple girl she was before. Nevertheless, Leonard can’t stop thinking about what might have been…

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Kuroneko (藪の中の黒猫)

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  • 藪の中の黒猫 (Kuroneko)

1/9/24 (Tues)

Shindo Kaneto’s 1968 horror film is less scary than it is spooky and moody. It takes place in Kyoto near Rajomon (known later as Rashomon), the massive gate that had become a dilapidated structure by the late Heian Period when, judging from the clothing and the presence of Lord Raiko, the movie is set. The gate was by this time known as a haunted spot good for disposing of corpses and unwanted infants. (The film’s full Japanese title, “Black Cat [or Cats] in a Grove”, perhaps intentionally recalls Akutagawa’s short story In a Grove that was the basis for Kurosawa’s Rashomon. I’m not sure why they chose Kuroneko as the English title rather than the translation, Black Cat.) Cats are supernatural beings in Japanese folklore in the form of “bakeneko” (ghost cats), so the notion of felines lurking somewhere in the woods immediately signals something shadowy.

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The Irony of Fate (Ирония судьбы)

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  • The Irony of Fate (or Enjoy Your Bath)

1/2/24 (Tues)

This two-part Soviet television film of 1976 reportedly proved an instant success, playing to an estimated 100 million viewers, and has since become a beloved New Year’s Eve ritual all around the ex-Soviet world, many of its lines and routines instantly recognizable to Russian speakers. It’s been likened to a Russian It’s a Wonderful Life, though I’ve also seen comparisons to Annie Hall since the characters are members of the intelligentsia (the leads are a surgeon and schoolteacher) rather than common laborers. I’d never heard of it until a few days earlier but was intrigued by the premise. I found Part 1 easily on YouTube.

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7th Heaven

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  • 7th Heaven

12/29/23 (Fri)

Frank Borzage’s 1927 film, based on a play that itself ran for nearly two years on Broadway, was apparently a massive hit in its day. It won the first Academy Awards for Best Direction and Actress (it lost Best Film to Wings), spawned several remakes over the decades (including a flop musical), and turned the pairing of Janet Gaynor and Charles Farrell into a sensation that carried over for another 11 films. Sawato Midori, the benshi narrator who voiced all the characters live for today’s show, noted that Ozu featured a poster of this film in one of his early works, so it must have been popular in Japan as well. A benshi would have presented the movie in this way back in its day (further explained here), so the event was very much a throwback to the silent era. Sawato performed to the accompaniment of a five-piece band.

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