Category Archives: Film

Seisaku’s Wife (清作の妻)

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  • 清作の妻 (Seisaku’s Wife)

11/2/24 (Fri), Tokyo

This 1965 work was being shown at the Tokyo Film Festival as part of a tribute to director Masumura Yasuzo on the 100th anniversary of his birth. It is the time leading up to the outbreak of war with Russia in 1904. The attractive Okane (Wakao Ayako) has been forced by her desperately poor family to serve for the past three years as mistress to a wealthy but much older man. When he dies and leaves her a small fortune, she returns with her mother to their old village. Unfortunately the villagers, partly jealous of Okane’s newfound wealth, deride her for having sold her body, however unwillingly, and refuse to have anything to do with her. She, in return, makes no attempt to ingratiate herself with them or help with the village work.

Meanwhile, Seisaku (Tamura Takahiro), a local lad, returns from military service in China and is hailed as a hero. Wartime fever has infected the entire village, which sees serving and dying as a glorious act. Seisaku, determined to improve village morale, has forged a large bell that he clangs early each morning to rouse the people to work. They reluctantly do so in deference to him.

Okane, however, ostracized in any case, refuses to play along. This intrigues Seisaku, and slowly but surely they come to fall for each other. Continue reading →

Wolves, Pigs and Men (狼と豚と人間)

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  • 狼と豚と人間 (Wolves, Pigs and Men)

11/1/24 (Fri), Ginza

Fukasaku Kinji’s stellar 1964 work was being shown at the Tokyo Film Festival in a pristine copy in honor of what would have been its star Takakura Ken’s 100th birthday. A violent, relentlessly driving film about three low-life brothers from the slums who become involved on different sides of a dangerous scheme that could be their salvation – or their death warrant. Continue reading →

Orochi (雄呂血)

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  • 雄呂血 (Orochi)

10/31/24 (Thurs)

This silent film of 1925 apparently broke barriers by presenting an antihero fighting the corruption of the ruling class as opposed to the good samurai defending the masses. The video online has excellent Japanese narration by a professional benshi narrator, which I listened to briefly. But benshi tend to add their own commentary and imagined dialogue; silent films were not made with the assumption of any specific narration and, with the intertitles, are (or should be) perfectly understandable as is. I ended up turning the sound off, which worked just fine. The movie does rely too much on expository intertitles, some of which are very long and hard to read (at least on a television). Thank goodness for the English subtitles.

The title Orochi is not the serpent of Kabuki fame. Though it’s the same word in English, the characters here are a strange mix of unrelated kanji, apparently chosen at random (for instance, the middle character ro is simply part of the screenwriter’s name) when the authorities objected to the original Buraikan or ruffian (often mistranslated in the West as outlaw). The odd word presumably perplexed them enough to let it pass. The film was the first to be produced by the production company set up by its star, former Kabuki actor Bando Tsumasaburo, though it was the second one released. The actor, known popularly as Bantsuma, must have liked it: it’s the only of the 200+ films in which he appeared that he kept the original negatives. And what a film.

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Tetsuo, The Iron Man (鉄男)

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  • 鉄男 (Tetsuo, The Iron Man)

10/19/24 (Fri)

Tsukamoto Shinya’s (Shadow of Fire) surrealistic 1989 horror fantasy about… actually, I’m not sure what it’s about, but it involves a man, a woman and a male hit-and-run victim who gradually turn into machines. I think. Continue reading →

Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow (Ieri, oggi, domani)

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  • Ieri, oggi, domani (Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow)

10/2/24 (Wed)

I had seen De Sica’s later Sunflower, also starring Sophia Loren and Marcello Mastroianni, not too long ago, and a friend strongly recommended this 1963 comedy as well. Comedy is not the first thing that comes to mind for a De Sica film, but it did win an Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film and was a big success in its day.

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Past Lives

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  • Past Lives

9/23/24 (Mon)

Canadian writer/director Celine Song’s debut work is a romantic flick about two Korean childhood friends who are forced to separate at age 12 due to their parents’ jobs. The quiet boy remains in Seoul, while the more vivacious woman emigrates to Canada and then to the US to become a writer. After a 12-year blank, they reconnect thanks to the wonders of Facebook. They begin to chat regularly online, obviously still smitten with each other. The chats become a distraction for the woman, however, perhaps tying her to a past that she no longer recognizes. She impulsively asks him not to contact her anymore.

It is only another dozen years later, marking another turn in the 12-year cycle of the Chinese calendar, that they finally meet in person again when he comes to see her in New York. By this time, he has been dumped by his girlfriend and she is married to a Jewish novelist. They reunite in joy, or what passes for joy in the man’s introverted personality, but soon realize that their chance has gone. Seeing the woman in her new life, the man humbly sacrifices whatever hope he might have held and tells her he is leaving. In a moving ending, they wonder, in the context of a Korean concept known as inyeon, if this life is a past life that they are simply recalling in the future. They might previously have been strangers on a train or a bird and a branch, and who knows how they might meet next time. As he returns to Korea, he tells her that he looks forward to seeing her then, as they separate forever.

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Evil Does Not Exist (悪は存在しない)

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  • 悪は存在しない (Evil Does Not Exist)

9/11/24 (Wed)

Hamaguchi Ryusuke’s (Drive My Car) latest. Small-town folk deep in the Nagano countryside lead a hard-scrabble life in their beautiful natural setting, their basic needs met thanks to the wealth of resources in the area. The main character, a widowed father of a teenaged girl, spends his time chopping logs and gathering water, often so absorbed that he forgets to pick up his daughter from school. A company is eyeing the spot for a gramping site in order to take advantage of soon-to-expire pandemic subsidies. It employs a television talent agency to give a presentation to the local population in what it sees as a mere formality. However, the locals prove less pliant than anticipated. Continue reading →

Monsieur Klein

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  • Monsieur Klein

9/6/24 (Fri)

Joseph Losey’s 1976 film is another identity-challenging work reminiscent of his intriguing The Servant. A successful art dealer in Vichy Paris runs a thriving sideline buying up art on the cheap from Jewish collectors desperate for cash to escape the country. One day a Jewish newspaper arrives at his door addressed to him. Assuming that he’s been mistaken for someone with the same name, he goes to the police. It turns out that the other Klein is wanted by the police, and the art dealer’s efforts to convince them that he’s not the Jewish Klein only prompt suspicions that he’s trying to throw them off the track. This marks the beginning of a Kafkaesque spiral ending in a concentration camp.

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L’Eclisse

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  • L’Eclisse

8/28/24 (Wed)

Antonioni’s 1962 film was part of the Alain Delon series offered by Criterion following his death last week. It’s one of those “movies you must see before you die”, which usually puts me off, and I wasn’t planning to watch any more Antonioni works in particular after the enigmatic Blow-Up. Nevertheless, the Delon connection and the film’s critical reputation persuaded me to give it another try.

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La Piscine

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  • La Piscine

8/19/24 (Sun)

Criterion wasted no time in marking Alain Delon’s death the previous day with a special section of his most famous films­. I picked Jacques Deray’s 1969 iconic work in its original French, not knowing that he simultaneously filmed it with the actors speaking English. Watching part of the English version the next day, I was surprised that it’s edited somewhat differently to match the different takes and, less happily, has an inferior alternative ending to match prudish Anglo tastes. (There’s a brief scene early in the French film where the woman is talking on the phone to a Frenchman in English, which made me wonder if they mistakenly edited the wrong version into that space. But in the English version, she speaks German. I have no idea what that’s about.)

The story is secondary here. Continue reading →

The Barbarian Invasions

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  • The Barbarian Invasions

8/17/24 (Thurs)

I had thought Denys Arcand’s 2003 work was supposed to be a parody of the bumbling Canadian health care system, but that’s only partly true. It’s also a celebration of a hospitalized randy ex-professor who decides to take his life – and death – into his own hands. This is apparently a sequel to a popular film of 17 years earlier, and I’m sure that knowing those characters would have helped here. But it works perfectly fine as a stand-alone piece. The reviews are sharply divided, with a number of critics decrying it as a glib and cynical attempt to cash in on the older film, especially the soppy ending between the father and son. While I see their point, I’d prefer to enjoy it on its own terms.

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