• Imitation of Life (1934)

3/18/21 (Thurs)

An amazing film of 1934 by John Stahl based on a novel published the previous year. Bea (Claudette Colbert) is a widowed mother who has taken over her husband’s maple syrup sales route, doing what she can to keep food on the table for her small daughter. Delilah (an unforgettable Louise Beavers), a black domestic, shows up at the door having mistaken the address on a want ad, but manages to talk Bea into letting her work for just room and board for her and her own grade-school daughter. Struck by Delilah’s delicious pancakes, Bea turns her syrup and the pancakes into big business, becoming extremely wealthy in the process. She scrupulously sets aside a half-share for Delilah, viewing her as an equal business partner. But Delilah’s only ambition is to care for her beloved daughter along with Bea’s household. When Bea suggests that Delilah buy her own home with her earnings, the latter panics, thinking she is being thrown out. She begs to continue living as a domestic with Bea, who has little choice but to agree.

As their girls grow up, each mother faces a dilemma. In the less persuasive story, Bea has finally found her dream man in the form of a hunky ichthyologist (they apparently exist, at least in this film) but discovers that her daughter has fallen for him as well. That is resolved in melodrama. Meanwhile, Delilah’s light-skinned daughter has been able to pass as white and, having grown up with Bea’s daughter, has essentially taken on a white identity. As a young woman, fearing exposure of her black heritage, she brutally rejects her shocked mother (“I don’t know this woman. Does she look like my mother?”) and walks out. That is resolved in tragedy. Delilah’s experience lifts the film into another dimension.

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• Cyrano de Bergerac (1925 silent film)

12/29/20 (Tues), Tokyo

Silent film helmed by Italian director Augusto Genina. The filming was finished in 1922, but it reportedly took another three years to color it using the innovative but labor-intensive Pathé Stencil Color process. A big plus was the star, Pierre Magnier, who was the understudy in the original production back in 1897. After seeing Cyrano, My Love and Mifune Toshiro’s samurai adaptation in recent weeks, Cyrano was on my mind, so this was perfect timing. It was presented by a benshi narrator, Sawato Midori, who improvised dialogue and other developments throughout, and musicalized by a lovely four-piece orchestra (piano, cello, flute, percussion).

Cyrano is an interesting choice for the silent treatment given its talkative title character and gorgeous verse. The entire central conflict revolves around a young handsome soldier’s inability to express himself to a beautiful woman, prompting Cyrano to step in and speak in his place. I was interested to see how that would be handled. The answer is: not very well. Continue reading →

• Trouble in Paradise

12/15/20 (Tues)

Finally a screwball comedy that doesn’t depend on impossible plot twists or unnaturally eccentric characters. Ernst Lubitsch’s 1932 film offers a straightforward story delivered in exceptionally high style, including a fabulously quotable script and totally believable three-dimensional characters. It’s the closest I’ve seen an American show come to British drawing room comedy, albeit written by an American, Samson Raphaelson, based on a Hungarian play. It benefits from supremely confident performances by the three main performers, especially the unflappable Herbert Marshall as the sleekest of crooks, along with wonderful supporting character actors. The romantic settings of Venice and Paris, the social world of the high life – or low life pretending to be high life – and particularly the champagne banter are pretty near perfect. This is operetta in prose.

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• The Awful Truth

12/14/20 (Mon)

Leo McCarey’s 1937 screwball comedy classic. Irene Dunne and Cary Grant play a glamorous bickering couple who, each doubting the other’s fidelity, agree to a divorce, only to discover during the 60-day waiting period that they need each other after all.

The plot is dubious but is only there anyway as a framework for some fun characters and crackling dialogue in what amounts to an American restoration comedy. Continue reading →

• Cyrano, My Love (Edmond)

12/12/20 (Sat), Tokyo

A fanciful story of how Edmond Rostand came up with the idea of his blockbuster hit Cyrano de Bergerac back in 1897. With only three weeks to write the script, he draws inspiration from his own life to craft the show: he helps his handsome but inarticulate friend write love letters to a beautiful woman – ding! A black restaurant proprietor lashes out at a patron for being too timid and unoriginal in his “black” insults, offering him some more intelligent offerings before throwing him out – ding! The process is slow but steady, going from one disaster to another –   e.g. the gangster’s insistence on using a hard-to-handle actress, the star’s bumbling son in a key role, the threatened closure of the show, the female lead’s sudden incapacity on opening night – until the historic triumph with 40 curtain calls lasting an hour (that part appears to be true).

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• Caravaggio (Derek Jarman)

7/12/20 (Sun)

Jarman’s disjointed 1986 look at the tempestuous life of the revolutionary painter. Told in flashback as the painter is dying in exile, more or less in chronological order. Just enough is known about Caravaggio to create a broad framework while leaving details to the filmmaker’s fertile imagination. The painter notoriously employed street people, drunks and lower classes as his models for saints and religious paintings, and the film offers numerous tableaux where models are posing for famous paintings. He was not above selling his talents for money, but still maintained his striking lighting techniques and homoerotic subjects (the only examples shown here – where are the religious works?), which others are willing to overlook in recognition of his sheer talent. The painter’s sexual proclivities are all over the map: he hires a beautiful male model clearly with more than just drawing in mind, but when the model’s girlfriend comes along, he happily beds her as well, setting up a dramatic conflict.

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