Red Beard (赤ひげ)

Posted on by
  • 赤ひげ (Red Beard)

11/27/20 (Fri)

This 1965 work is one of Kurosawa’s most popular and acclaimed films, so I was looking forward to seeing it despite the off-putting three-hour running time.

The setting is a rural village in the mid-19th century towards the end of the Edo Era. A privileged medical student (Kayama Yuzo) expecting to serve as the shogun’s physician pays greetings at a poor public clinic in what he believes a formality, only to learn that he has in fact been assigned there. He detests his surroundings, complaining of the low life and stink (“the smell of the poor”, he is told), and imperiously refuses to wear the uniform or follow the rules. He is eventually won over by the clinic’s virtuous head doctor, known as Red Beard (Mifune Toshiro), who seeks to heal his patients’ souls as well as their bodies (shades of the earlier Drunken Angel). Moreover, his experience with a sickly young waif in the film’s second half brings him an understanding of the struggles of the kindly townspeople. He eventually receives his commission to the shogun, but turns the offer down in order to stay and help the underprivileged (probably a good thing since the already struggling shogunate was overthrown just a few years later).

A film full of clichés and melodrama. Continue reading →

Drunken Angel (酔いどれの天使)

Posted on by
  • 酔いどれの天使 (Drunken Angel)

11/22/20 (Sun)

One of Kurosawa’s first postwar flicks and his first film with Mifune Toshiro. It amounts to a rather heavy-handed look at yakuza culture as well as the race for riches that threatens to undermine the societal ties that bind. It featured exaggerated performances by both leads, who do lots of declaiming in place of normal speech. There is nothing natural in Shimura Takashi’s gruff language or treatment of others, while Mifune is charismatic but over-the-top in trying to be the tough gangster, putting on a show even in intimate moments. It’s hard to believe in either of these guys.

The story itself is interesting. Continue reading →

Crazed Fruit (狂った果実)

Posted on by
  • 狂った果実  (Crazed Fruit)

1/5/21 (Tues)

Nakahira Ko’s seminal 1956 film, which put the so-called taiyozoku (太陽族) or “sun tribe” on the map, is essentially Japan’s Look Back in Anger, a sensationalist look at disaffected youth in the postwar era that electrified the staid Japanese film world. It was adapted by Ishihara Shintaro from his novelette, which was bundled with two similar stories that were all made into films the same year (this being by far the best). The series includes the notorious Season of the Sun (太陽の季節), known infamously for the scene in which the main character slams his erect organ through the paper shoji screen. The title of that story led an interviewer to refer in an article to the Sun Tribe, a label that came to define a generation. (The story is alluded to in this film in the boat’s English name, Sun Season.) Ishihara makes a brief appearance in the film as one of a group of thugs, but more important was his insistence that the filmmakers cast his younger brother Yujiro, creating a legend.

Continue reading →

High and Low (天国と地獄)

Posted on by
  • 天国と地獄  (High and Low)

11/14/20 (Sat), Tokyo

This 1963 Kurosawa work is really two films. In the first half, a well off industrialist (Mifune Toshiro) is battling for control of a major shoe company with other board members who want to cut corners on product quality for greater profit. The industrialist refuses to give in and throws his entire fortune into a secret deal that will give him a majority stake.

Just when that deal is set to go through, he receives a call that his son has been kidnapped. Frantically, he agrees to pay the enormous ransom with the money he had gathered despite knowing that this will ruin him financially. Then unexpectedly the son wanders in. It turns out that the kidnapper has mistakenly taken the chauffeur’s son instead. The industrialist is now faced with a moral dilemma: does he save the boy at devastating cost to himself, or save his own family from a bleak future? Continue reading →

Stray Dog (野良犬)

Posted on by
  • 野良犬 (Stray Dog)

11/13/20 (Fri), Tokyo

Two veterans of the recently ended war, we learn, had their backpacks stolen when they were younger. One channeled his anger into a desire to help the world and has become a policeman. The other let his anger destroy him and has become a criminal. That thin line between “stray dog” and “mad dog” is the film’s theme in a nutshell.

Kurosawa’s Stray Dog (1949) is nominally a detective story, a stylish film noir, but it digs much deeper. Continue reading →

Calamity Jane (1963 TV version)

Posted on by
  • Calamity Jane (1963 TV version)

11/9/20 (Mon), YouTube

Thirty-year-old Carol Burnett had just performed in the stage adaptation of the Doris Day film musical in Kansas City when CBS scooped her up for a television version. This marked her television special debut, but with a Tony nomination (Once Upon a Mattress) and Emmy Award already under her belt at this point, she was completely at home. Plus she appeared here with most of the co-stars from the stage production, giving it a real theatrical feel.

The show itself is no great shakes, an obvious (and inferior) rip-off of Annie Get Your Gun with songs that, while fun, are pale imitations of infinitely better numbers like “Anything You Can Do” and Oklahoma‘s “(Everything’s Up to Date in) Kansas City”. The story would never pass muster today with the woman ultimately seeking a man; the stage version never seems to have made it to Broadway and is unlikely to do so without significant rewriting, though it’s popular in the UK. But it doesn’t aspire to profundity, just entertainment, and it easily passes that test with its Wild West setting, unflagging high spirits, and boisterous star cowgirl role.

Continue reading →

Noh: Kiyotsune, Tatsuta, Kumasaka (清経, 竜田, 熊坂)

Posted on by
  • Noh: 清経, 竜田, 熊坂  (Kiyotsune, Tatsuta, Kumasaka)

11/8/20 (Sun), Tokyo

Today’s shows, appropriately enough, were all pieces set in autumn. Having seen shows by the Kanze, Kita and Hosho schools in recent weeks, I added Konparu to the list today, though without knowing it until after the fact. The theater had a dismal showing at maybe 10-20% capacity. I was furious to see that the singers wore masks hanging loosely over their faces. I really don’t want to be reminded of this virus while I’m watching a 15th-century play. If I had known that was the case, I wouldn’t have shown up. I’m definitely going to call beforehand and check that the next time. Continue reading →

Sanze Tangen and the Million-Ryo Pot (丹下左膳余話 百萬両の壺)

Posted on by
  • 丹下左膳余話 百萬両の壺  (Sanze Tangen and the Million-Ryo Pot)

11/1/20 (Sun), Tokyo

The Tokyo International Film Festival is featuring a special section on director Yamanaka Sadao, a prolific film director from the 1930s who tragically died at age 28. He made over two dozen films in a brief period at a pace of 4-5 per year, but only three survive, all of which are highly regarded. That makes it easy to do a retrospective of his career, and all three have been digitally cleaned up for the occasion. That includes one of my all-time favorite Japanese films, Humanity and Paper Balloons. Today was the oldest of the surviving films, dating from 1935, when sound was just taking hold in Japan. The theater is not practicing social distancing, so we’re back to crowded seats (the theater was around 60% full even for an old flick readily available on YouTube). I guess I should be careful what I wish for, especially since everyone was concentrated in the center. Still, it was good to be in a packed house again.

Continue reading →

Kabuki: Sogoro the Fishmonger, The Sword Thief (魚屋宗五郎、太刀盗人)

Posted on by
  • Kabuki: 魚屋宗五郎、太刀盗人 (Sogoro the Fishmonger, The Sword Thief)

10/17/20 (Sat), National Theater

I haven’t been to Kabuki since January because of this dumb pandemic as well as the ridiculously foreshortened offerings at the Kabukiza since their August reopening – they really expect us to spend ¥8,000 for shows lasting  little more than half an hour?? They’re out of their minds. The National Theater restart is short by its standards but still a full 2.5 hours, making it a much more attractive option.* The morning show featured a newly written skit about a pandemic in Edo where actors sneak into a closed theater during a long shutdown and perform their favorite roles. I saw Koshiro, today’s performer, do something similar in Las Vegas years ago and am still traumatized. In contrast, the afternoon show featured the audience favorite Sogoro the Fishmonger as its main offering with the reliable Kikugoro, who’s been playing the role for decades. I haven’t seen it in years, so I decided to go for it. Continue reading →

Noh: Mitsuyama, Shokun (三山, 昭君)

Posted on by
  • Noh: 三山, 昭君  (Mitsuyama, Shokun)

10/11/20 (Sun), Tokyo

I’ve seen shows at the Kanze and Kita schools in recent weeks, so now it’s Hosho’s turn (partly because I couldn’t get tickets for the sold-out Kanze performance). The shows today were both relative rarities. Each has the unusual feature of two characters entering after the break rather than just the star. The tickets were 70-80% sold, meaning 35-40% of the theater. I’m not sure how they make money on these, but I’m glad they’re pushing ahead. Continue reading →