9/4/21 (Sat)
Billy Wilder’s 1953 film about goings-on in a German POW stalag during WWII. That would seem an uncomfortable subject just a few years after the war, but it was based on a highly successful Broadway play by two former POWs recalling their own experiences. Continue reading
5/5/22 (Thurs)
Naruse Mikio’s 1951 film is the first of his six adaptations of novels by Hayashi Fumiko (e.g., Late Chrysanthemums, A Wanderer’s Notebook), an author known for her bleak female-centered works. This novel was actually an unfinished work, but Naruse ably fills in the gaps. The film is said to have launched or revived the shomingeki genre that concentrated on the lives of the common people.
4/30/22 (Sat)
Imai Tadashi’s 1950 film, inspired by a French novel, is a silly piece of sentimental fluff with a slight antiwar twinge. It was apparently a big commercial hit in its day and won the first Blue Ribbon Award as Best Film (Imai’s works won the top prize five times in the award’s first ten years) along with the Kinejun and Mainichi Awards. History has come down in favor of its rival Rashomon, and it is known now primarily for a romantic scene in which the man, loathe to leave his lover’s home, runs back and kisses her passionately from the other side of a window. A favorite of both audiences and critics, Imai is often called the forgotten director in the shadow of Kurosawa, Ozu and other contemporaries, and I did enjoy his Kiku and Isamu. So, having found this online, I figured it would be worth a watch.
It wasn’t. Continue reading
4/23/22 (Sat)
When you hear that an Orthodox Jew, played by Zero Mostel, is visited by an angel named Levine, you don’t expect to see Harry Belafonte. But that’s the premise in this oddball 1970 work adopted from a Bernard Malamud story about a modern-day Job and an emissary from Heaven sent to save him.
23 April 2022 (Sat)
Martin McDonagh’s mordant The Hangmen has finally reached Broadway after a pandemic delay to near universal acclaim. The NY Times reviewer suggests that the reaction to the play today might not be the same as prior to the pandemic since, in his opinion, people have become more indifferent to death, suffering and unfairness. His memory seems rather faulty; I suspect he would have written the same thing back then. In any event, I loved it on its initial West End run some years back and rerun below my thoughts at that time.
9/3/21 (Fri)
Truffaut’s fantastic 1959 film about a boy effectively pushed into delinquency was his first full-length feature but already feels like the work of a master. It is not a story so much as a slice-of-life sequence of events that follow events in the adolescent’s life. The curious title comes from a French idiom, faire les quatre cents coups, that apparently means “to raise hell”. The film was reportedly released initially as “Wild Oats”, which fits the meaning better, but the title soon reverted to the direct translation, where it has remained since. Still, the English title does work in its own way even devoid of context as a symbol of the seemingly endless vicissitudes that the boy is subject to, the blows being psychological as well as physical. And it sounds better than “The 400 Vicissitudes”.
10/17/21 (Sun), Umewaka Noh Theater (Tokyo)
Talk about determination. Ono no Komachi, the legendary beauty, is stalked by a nobleman not just to the grave but beyond. Continue reading
11/23/21 (Tues)
Elia Kazan’s 1949 film about a light-skinned black returning to her roots. Continue reading
11/23/21 (Tues)
Vincente Minnelli’s 1956 film is widely characterized as a gay flick, but the truth is as usual a bit more complicated. Continue reading
11/6/21 (Sat)
Frank Perry’s hallucinatory 1968 diary of a mad has-been. The main character’s precarious mental state is reflected in the odd structure of the film and some bizarre editing. While inevitably a product of its time – not sure if the white, Waspy, nouveau riche setting would be possible today, whether true to the era or not, not to mention a passing reference to “stylish fags” – its unconventional setup has evidently given it a cult following.
11/8/21 (Mon)
Frank Perry’s 1981 gothic portrait of the late Joan Crawford as the mother from hell is well deserving of its reputation as a camp classic. Continue reading
3/20/22 (Sun), Umewaka Noh Theater
The shows today were both cerebral Buddhist-inflected pieces appealing more to Noh lovers than general audiences. The theater was limited to 50% capacity and didn’t even manage to fill that, a sharp contrast with the packed house at the Kanze Noh Theater a week earlier even allowing for Kanze’s more audience-friendly program. I wonder if the undue precautions at some locations actually make audiences more fearful and deter them from coming.
sekenbanashi 