10/12/17 (Thurs)
Double Suicide (1969) is Masahiro Shinoda’s highly stylized take on Chikamatsu Monzaemon’s 18th-century Bunraku (puppet theater) masterpiece The Love Suicides at Amijima. Chikamatsu does not emerge from this well.
6/24/15 (Wed)
I wasn’t wild about the idea of a Kitano (“Beat”) Takeshi film given its reputation for over-the-top violence, but Hana-Bi is one of several flicks by him – “by” in a big sense, meaning directed, written and starring – that are widely considered modern classics, especially overseas. So I figured it was about time to check it out. Continue reading
A mention in a newspaper column prompted me to look for The Closet. I tried to buy a download on Amazon and Apple, but they made it so difficult that I just watched it on YouTube.
An accountant in a large company is so dull as to be almost invisible. He is ignored by his colleagues, and neither his ex-wife nor his teenage son will return his calls. Furthermore, he overhears talk that he is going to be axed by the firm. Depressed and lonely, he contemplates jumping off his building. A neighbor aims to help by concocting a scheme: he anonymously mails the company a doctored image of the guy in a leather suit with his hands all over another guy, strongly implying that he is gay. That apparent revelation makes it impossible for the company to fire him, and more than that, makes him suddenly an object of fascination for the entire firm. Continue reading
5/19/15 (Tues), Tokyo
These were silent films by Torajiro Saito, evidently known in his day as film studio Shochiku’s “king of comedy”. They were narrated by a female benshi, Akiko Sasaki, who sat at the side of the screen and voiced all the roles as well as narrating non-dialogue sections in her own words. The music was newly composed and played live on a keyboard. The setup directly recalled (and perhaps stemmed from) Japan’s Bunraku puppet theater, where the narrator and musician sit in full view of the audience on a raised platform beside the stage and give voice to the voiceless puppets. The mixture of film and live performance seemed very modern somehow, so it’s interesting to note that Japan was doing it nearly a century ago. Continue reading
These films, said to be the pinnacle of the Italian “spaghetti Westerns” (known oddly in Japan as “macaroni Westerns”), had been strongly recommended by a European friend. I was skeptical. The Western is probably the most distinctive film genre of the American cinema given the phenomenon at its core: the vastness of the landscapes, the lure of uncultivated and unknown territories, the opportunity to create new societies from nothing but soil and daring – there is nothing remotely comparable in the European experience. The bulk of settlers were not running from persecution or war but, piqued by curiosity or ambition or boredom, toward the infinite possibilities of a new life that they themselves would have to build. The courage of those willing to plunge into the void on the basis of sheer hope is a situation that lends itself to broad archetypal characters, and the best of the Westerns reflect this sense of a land still coming together, fueled by an optimism built into the American psyche that anything is possible. I was curious how a non-American would approach this.
The results were fascinating. The films, both by the Italian director Sergio Leone, reminded me of 19th-century Kabuki writer Kawatake Mokuami, whose tales of dried-up samurai and low-life villains punctured the heroics of classic Kabuki drama. Continue reading
8/10/17 (Thurs), DVD
An historical drama by Alexander Korda about the scandalous affair between Emma Hamilton and Lord Nelson, played by the real-life scandalous couple Vivien Leigh and Laurence Olivier at the peak of their own illicit affair. Continue reading
7/11/17 (Tues), DVD
This singular 1964 film by Shindo Kaneto about two country women scraping out a life in the turmoil of 14th-century Japan was described to me as a horror flick, but that description doesn’t seem quite right. Horror can be easily forgotten once the thrill is over. That is not the case with this movie. Continue reading
7/8/17 (Sat), Tokyo
My second viewing of last year’s National Theatre production the previous day inspired me to seek out the old film version, which appeared just a few years after the original 1952 stage show and was scripted by Rattigan himself. (There are also several BBC television adaptations, most recently in 1994, and a bizarre film deconstruction from 2011 that I turned off after five minutes.) This first film stars Vivien Leigh, just coming off Streetcar, as well as the original stage performer Kenneth More as the lover Freddie. Continue reading
6/29/17 (Thurs), DVD
I’m not always a fan of screwball comedies, which often seem to be trying too hard. But I loved Carole Lombard in her immediately preceding My Man Godfrey, so I thought I’d give it a shot.
A flailing newspaper reporter Wally Cook seeks to make his name with a human interest story on a small-town girl named Hazel Flagg who is dying of radium poisoning. Unbeknownst to him, Hazel has discovered that she was misdiagnosed and is not dying after all, interrupting her plans to whoop it up for her final weeks (she moans about being “brought to life twice – and each time in Warsaw”). She thus jumps at the chance when the reporter offers her an all-expense-paid trip to New York to help her enjoy her short remaining life – that is, he wants to exploit her to sell papers, and she wants to exploit him to see the big city. Her initial enthusiasm for the city fades quickly when she finds herself the object of pious pity everywhere she turns, including from Wally himself. As the double double-cross proceeds, he makes the mistake of falling for her. Hazel tries to sneak away and fake a suicide, after which she hopes to vanish, but is caught at the last minute by Wally – and she starts to fall too. An examination by eminent European doctors finds her fit as a fiddle, but by this time too many people are invested in the story to risk exposure. So they come up with a ruse… Continue reading
2/22/17 (Wed), Tokyo
Martin Scorsese’s film of Endo Shusaku’s 1966 novel about a test of faith for Jesuit missionaries in early Edo Japan. Continue reading
東京暮色 (Tokyo Twilight)
9/6/14 (Sat)
An uncharacteristically dark film by Ozu about a dysfunctional family. Continue reading
The films that solidified Mizoguchi’s status as director in the mid 1930s. Continue reading
