I learned after watching Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s wild and starry movie version of Tennessee Williams’ one-act play, filmed only a year after its off Broadway debut, that the stage show itself was presented more or less unchanged on the BBC many years later. That comparison was too tempting to pass up.
6/27/25 (Fri)
Fernando Trueba’s 1993 Oscar-winning comedy was leaving Criterion at the end of this month, and having enjoyed his innovative They Shot the Piano Player, I decided on a whim to check it out.
The light-hearted film is set in the Spanish countryside in the early 1930s when the nation is tottering on revolution. The title refers to the director’s vision of the brief interlude between the toppling of the monarchy and the start of the Franco regime. Fernando, a handsome soldier and wide-eyed innocent, has gone AWOL after an unsuccessful uprising and is wandering the countryside. He is befriended by an old bohemian painter living alone in a sprawling house. They become close, helped by the boy’s cooking skills and companionship. When the man’s family is set to visit, Fernando decides to move on to Madrid to seek a future. As he is about to board the train, however, he gets a look at the man’s four nubile daughters just alighting – and decides to hang around a bit longer.
It’s pretty clear right away where this is going, but the fun is in getting there. Continue reading
Having seen the stage versions of these shows in the past days, I was eager to catch the films. The Japanese titles, literally Living With Mother and Living With Father, make the connection clearer; they are set respectively in Nagasaki and Hiroshima just after the war and are considered part of a trilogy alongside Okinawa-based Army on a Tree.
Yamada Yoji’s 2015 Nagasaki actually preceded the stage show and I suppose is considered the original. However, it takes the material in a direction that veers significantly from Inoue’s vision as seen in the other two parts of the trilogy. Continue reading
7/7/25 (Mon)
Two soldiers in wartime Okinawa remain hiding in a tree Onoda-like for two years after the war without knowing that the hostilities have ended – the setting would seem ridiculous if it weren’t based on a true story. Okinawa-born Taira Kazuhiro’s film is adapted from a highly regarded stage play that the prolific Inoue Hisashi had been preparing to write at his death (only the title, copious notes, and reportedly two lines of dialogue remained). Having learned about the story in a newspaper article, Inoue had been working on it since 1985 and had finally scheduled a production in 2010, but passed away just three months before the show was to debut. Veteran Kuriyama Tamiya was tapped to take over the script, and the production, staged by Inoue’s troupe Komatsu-za, was finally staged in 2013. It has taken yet another dozen years for that to reach the screen.
It helps to know that Okinawans experienced a significantly different war than the rest of Japan, a brutal campaign in which their unspeakably callous treatment by mainland Japanese made them wonder which side was the real enemy. The Ryukyu Islands, which include Okinawa, do not share the same history and culture as the rest of Japan, analogous to Hawaii vs. the continental US, and there is a strong sense that they were essentially fed to the wolves, as amply recorded in museums in the prefecture. The film was significantly expanded from the three-character stage show.
6/21/25 (Sat)
Lee Sang-il’s story of a Kabuki rivalry, based on a best-selling novel, examines a world where blood is thicker than talent, as two onnagata (female-role specialists) vie for National Treasure (kokuho) status: one has the bloodline but not the innate skill, the other is the opposite. Some critics have seen similarities with the Chinese opera world in Farewell, My Concubine, but that’s only in the use of onnagata, which is just skin deep. The film has proven an unlikely success despite its three-hour running time, drawing in nearly 4 million viewers and over ¥5 billion (figures updated as of mid July).（Update: As of November 25, those figures have grown to 12.3 million viewers and nearly ¥17.4bn in revenues, making it Japan’s highest-grossing live action film ever. That’s before its debut in the US and other major markets.)
6/19/25 (Thurs)
John Farrow’s 1948 film, based on a novel of two years earlier, straddles the line between screwball comedy and noir thriller, not always successfully.
A tyrannical media mogul spots someone slipping out of his mistress’s apartment just as he arrives, and unwittingly kills her in the brawl that follows. He confesses the crime to his right-hand man and intends to give himself in, but the latter convinces him that they can pin it on the man before him since no one saw the mogul enter. Though he didn’t get a clear look at the man’s face, the boss calls his ace crime reporter George to find the culprit – not realizing that George is in fact the man he’s looking for. Continue reading
6/13/25 (Fri)
A light-hearted dramedy of 1961 by Kawashima Yuzo. The English title is deceptive, as “geisha” here is clearly a euphemism for prostitute. (The film is also known as Women Are Born Twice, a direct translation of the Japanese title, which makes sense in the film’s final seconds. A better rendering might be “A Woman Reborn”.) The main character doesn’t play shamisen, dance or sing, so she’s not remotely a geisha. She is simply a kimono-clad hostess who entertains customers by chatting, pouring their drinks and feeding their egos, then sleeping with them afterwards. And apparently enjoying it. The Happy Hooker is probably closer to the point. Continue reading
6/12/25 (Thurs)
Masumura Yasuzo’s 1961 courtroom drama is one of 20 collaborations with his muse Wakao Ayako. Continue reading
6/6/25 (Fri), home, 7:15-9:00p
Uchida’s 1962 surrealistic film is based on the popular Bunraku and Kabuki classic commonly known as Kuzunoha. The entire movie is as shape shifting as the foxes within it, moving from semi-realistic to otherworldly to a Kabuki stage. Continue reading
6/5/25 (Thurs)
Misumi Kenji’s 1972 cult flick, the first in what proved a six-film series, is exploitation chambara in the worst way. Continue reading
6/3/25 (Tues)
Uchida Tomu’s 1955 film was his comeback after a 13-year absence from Japanese film. He had reportedly raised suspicions in the movie world for his long stay in China and reported enthusiasm for the Mao regime (despite his active support for the Japanese military during the war – his convictions don’t seem very deep). But he had some big hitters behind him, including explicit support in the opening credits from superstar directors Ozu Yasujiro, Shimizu Hiroshi, and Ito Daisuke (the poster also throws in Mizoguchi Kenji). He supposedly promised to behave in crafting this film, and the content is largely innocuous on the surface. It is based on a popular silent film, Dochu Hiki (now lost), by his mentor Inoue Kintaro. The two leads in that film were happily given roles in the remake: Tsukigata Ryunosuke in a great turn as the suspected thief and Watanabe Atsushi as an official in the comic tea party scene.
5/27/25 (Tues)
Uchida Tomu’s 1959 film, based loosely on playwright Chikamatsu Monzaemon’s 18th-century puppet classic Courier from Hell (冥途の飛脚 ). The English title is misleading: it is not a love affair involving Chikamatsu, but a play devised by Chikamatsu about a doomed love affair in Osaka. (The Japanese title is a more straightforward The Story of a Naniwa Love Affair, using the old name for the city.) As with the similarly title-challenged The Chikamatsu Story, the marketers seem to think that the Chikamatsu name is going to be an attraction for foreigners, who in fact are unlikely to have heard the name at all. The film needs better marketers.
sekenbanashi 