Category Archives: Film

Imitation of Life (1959)

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  • Imitation of Life (1959)

2/12/22 (Fri)

I see where a musical version of the great Imitation of Life is in the works, drawn from the original 1933 novel and both the 1934 and 1959 film adaptations, all of which differ in significant ways from the others. It is being written by the estimable Lynn Nottage (Sweat) with music and lyrics by pop star John Legend in his first musical. What modern-day writers and audiences will make of the material is to be seen, but the two movies give some clue as to changes in perspective over time. The earlier and superior film rendition was melodrama that crossed into tragedy. Douglas Sirk’s remake a quarter-century later never made that crossing.

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The Gentle Twelve (12人の優しい日本人)

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  • 12人の優しい日本人 (The Gentle Twelve)

4/23/13 (Tue)

Nakahara Shun’s 1991 film version of a play from the previous year by the prolific Mitani Koki envisioning jury duty à la Japonaise based on the format of Twelve Angry Men – call it “Twelve Not-So-Angry Japanese”. While the jury system has since been introduced in Japan, Mitani seems less interested in politics than in showing the Japanese temperament at work. Twelve jurors initially dismiss a murder case in an eagerness to get their duty over with and return home, but one of them has second thoughts and forces a serious discussion, which proceeds in the movie roughly in real time. A man has been run over by a truck after allegedly being pushed into the street by his ex-wife. But was it premeditated or self-defense? Did the woman have murderous intent, or did she push him without realizing the truck was coming?

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Stranger by the Lake (L’Inconnu du lac)

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  • L’Inconnu du lac (Stranger by the Lake)

8/1/25 (Fri)

A recent retrospective of the work of French writer/director Alain Guiraudie in connection with his latest release, Misericordia (2024), resurrected this 2013 film. The isolated scenes that I had watched on Criterion seemed like gratuitous porn disguised as suspense, which dampened my interest, but recommendations from friends made me reconsider. Continue reading →

The Wages of Fear (Le Salaire de la peur)

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  • Le Salaire de la peur (The Wages of Fear)

7/21/25 (Mon)

I finally got around to seeing Henri-Georges Clouzot’s 1953 classic after enjoying the jaw-dropping US remake Sorcerer nearly a year earlier. This version was equally spectacular and intense but differed in certain ways (Friedkin always insisted that he based his film on the original novel).

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I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang

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  • I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang

3/17/26 (Tues)

Mervyn LeRoy’s well intentioned 1932 crime film was the industry’s third biggest earner that year after Gold Diggers of 1933 (which he also directed) and 42nd Street (which he was supposed to direct). It was based on the previous year’s same-titled autobiography (the state, i.e., …Georgia Chain Gang!, was removed for commercial and political reasons), though naturally taking certain liberties with the character and story.

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Rental Family

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  • Rental Family

3/1/26 (Sun)

A lonely gaijin (Brendan Fraser) living in Tokyo is struggling as a would-be actor since his starring role seven years earlier in a Japanese toothpaste commercial. He spends much of his time in his tiny apartment looking forlornly Rear Window-like at people in the various apartments on the other side. Summoned for a job one day, he is surprised to arrive at a funeral – and even more shocked when the corpse pops up from the coffin and thanks everyone.

It turns out that the mourners were simply actors, employed by the man to provide him comfort that he will be remembered and that his life was worth something. The bewildered Fraser catches the eye of a businessman, who turns out to be an agency for just such bit players. He hires Fraser to act out real-life roles.

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The Jewish Wife (Die jüdische Frau)

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  • The Jewish Wife (Die jüdische Frau)

2/20/26 (Fri)

I learned of Brecht’s 1935 short piece in researching Crooked Cross and found a performance online. The setting is again contemporary Germany. The first 20-25 minutes of the 30-minute work constitute a monologue by a woman who is calling friends to let them know that she’ll be leaving for Amsterdam for a few weeks – she tells her bridge partner to find someone to fill in, and ensures another friend that the planned dinner next week will go on despite her absence as her husband will still be there. She calls a servant to ask if she’ll take care of the husband, an eminent scientist, while she’s away, saying this time, though, that she’ll be back in a few months. We come to realize that this is no ordinary journey. We learn that she is Jewish, and her husband is not.

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Gold Diggers of 1933

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  • Gold Diggers of 1933

2/15/26 (Sun)

Mervyn LeRoy’s joyous musical celebration comes between two other Warner Bros backstage musicals the same year, 42nd Street and Footlight Parade, that pretty much define the era. The songs are performed as stage productions rather than character or narrative numbers and are essentially interchangeable, having nothing to do with the underlying story; the producers in fact switched out the final number for a new song with no effect at all on the narrative. The show is based on a stage farce from 1919 that already had two previous film treatments. This one apparently was supposed to be a drama as well but added musical numbers following the success of 42nd Street (they moved fast in those days). Its huge popularity spawned several sequels.

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The City Without Jews (Die Stadt ohne Juden)

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  • The City Without Jews (Die Stadt ohne Juden)

2/4/26 (Wed)

I was made aware of this startling 1924 silent film when the irreplaceable Mark Steyn featured the German novel from two years earlier in his column. The film had long been thought lost, but fragments were found in poor condition in Amsterdam in 1991, which were only shown publicly years later. Then, in one of those seemingly impossible coincidences, a full copy in excellent condition emerged at a French flea market in 2015. That was digitally restored and released three years later.

A large city – Vienna in the original, a limp “Utopia” in the film – is roiled by economic troubles and severe public discontent amid a stark divide between the decadent rich and the struggling poor. Looking for a scapegoat, politicians soon target the Jews, blaming them for all the city’s woes. The Jews are compared to a pest that must be exterminated to protect the roses. The government orders that all Jews be expelled from the city, though allowing second-generation Jews to remain if they agree to be baptized. It arranges stock cars to take them away along with all their worldly possessions, ripping them from their roots. The city is soon bereft of all Jewish life. It quickly becomes clear that its business and cultural life has been torn apart as well: the theaters are empty, fashion houses flounder, the currency plunges, businesses die. “When you expelled the Jews,” says one person, “you banished prosperity as well.”

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