Twentieth Century

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  • Twentieth Century

9/27/21 (Mon)

Howard Hawks’ hilarious 1934 screwball comedy, boasting an ever-quotable script by Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur based on their Broadway hit of two years earlier. I knew the basic story via the stage musical: a high-strung NY stage producer, down on his luck, finds himself on the same train liner from Chicago as his ex, now a big Hollywood star. He sees a golden opportunity to return to the spotlight – he just needs to create an entire play and sweet-talk her into starring in it by the time they arrive in New York. And the race is on.

The film has the usual breathless pace, screaming and exaggerated acting that characterize this genre, but it’s all done in great style. Continue reading →

Breathless (À Bout de Souffle)

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  • À Bout de Souffle (Breathless)

9/7/21 (Tues)

I was already in Truffaut mode after The 400 Blows, so with the news of Jean-Paul Belmondo’s death, I immediately decided to watch the actor’s breakthrough Breathless, which was co-written by Truffaut. Jean-Luc Godard’s 1960 debut work is considered a milestone in film history – one critic says in apparent seriousness that movies can be divided into pre- and post-Breathless. It stands with the previous year’s Blows as one of the founding works of the French New Wave. Unlike that film, though, it hasn’t aged well.

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Stalag 17

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  • Stalag 17

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 →

Repast (めし)

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  • めし (Repast)

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.

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Until We Meet Again (また逢う日まで)

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  • また逢う日まで (Until We Meet Again)

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 →

The Angel Levine

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  • The Angel Levine

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.

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A Look Back: The Hangmen

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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.

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The 400 Blows (Les Quatre Cents Coups)

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  • Les Quatre Cents Coups (The 400 Blows)

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”.

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