The Classics Corner #12: Ran

Genre: Action/Drama/War

Director: Akira Kurosawa

Writers: Akira Kurosawa (screenplay), Hideo Oguni (screenplay), Masato Ide (screenplay); William Shakespeare (Play “King Lear”)

Producers: Katsumi Furukawa, Serge Silberman, Masato Hara, Hisao Kurosawa

Cast: Tatsuya Nakadai, Akira Terao, Jinpachi Nezu, Daisuke Ryû, Mieko Harada, Yoshiko Miyazaki, Hisashi Igawa, Peter, Masayuki Yui, Kazuo Katô, Norio Matsui, Toshiya Ito, Kenji Kodama, Takashi Watanabe, Mansai Nomura

Music: T?ru Takemitsu

Cinematography: Asakazu Nakai, Takao Sait?, Masaharu Ueda

Editing: Akira Kurosawa

Distribution: Toho

Release Dates: June 1, 1985 (Japan); December 20, 1985 (US)

Running Time: 160 min

Akira Kurosawa is one of the masters of the cinema, aside from Hitchcock, I would argue that no other director has had more influence on the medium than Kurosawa. An expert in visual storytelling, Kurosawa’s films continue to feel fresh and exciting. Today is the 100^th anniversary of Akira Kurosawa’s birth, and in honor of this great filmmaker, today on The Classics Corner I’m taking a look at what I consider to be his magnum opus, Ran. Made when Kurosawa was seventy-five years old, Ran was one of the most ambitious projects Kurosawa took on. Ran is an adaptation of King Lear with elements of Japanese folklore and noh theater, but it’s so much more. During the time of production Kurosawa was severely out of favor with the Japanese film industry, his films were being seen as too stilted and old-fashioned, either too Japanese or too western, but also during the production Kurosawa’s beloved wife passed away. After Ran Kurosawa was only able to make three small scale films before passing away in 1998, and Ran in many ways was his last breath. Let’s take a look.

As mentioned before, Ran is an adaptation of King Lear, but Kurosawa isn’t interested in creating a faithful adaptation here. The most radical changes any fan of Shakespeare will notice is that Lear’s daughters have been changed into the sons Taro (Akira Terao), Jiro (Jinpachi Nezu), and Saburo (Daisuke Ryû). The three brothers like in King Hear are the sons of the ruler of the land, and here in Ran that’s Lord Hidetora Ichimonji (Katsumi Furukawa) who unlike Lear is a cruel warlord who has pillaged villages and murdered women and children. Hidetora is old and dying and splits his kingdom up among his three sons, but Saburo is wary of his father’s actions and dissents resulting in his banishment despite being the only one of the three sons that actually loves his father. It’s not long then before a power struggle ensues between Taro and Jiro and Hidetora is cast into the wilderness to go mad.

Kurosawa places a heavy emphasis on pacing in Ran, allowing the story to unfurl itself at a slower pace than normal for the director. The audience spends a lot of time with Hidetora, seeing the world through his eyes as everything seems to tear itself apart. Kurosawa is fascinated by the power struggle that develops over the film, but one gets the sense that the struggle for power isn’t just between Hidetora’s sons, but also a much larger event being played out in the heavens. Kurosawa did call the film a “series of human events witnessed from heaven,” and in Ran Kurosawa turns the viewer into a God almost witnessing the human destruction being wrought. Even in chaos Kurosawa always manages to find the humanity. One plot thread involves a woman whose parents were killed by Hidetora, and her brother blinded by his soldiers. There’s a scene where she stands with Hidetora against the sunset and tells him how she cannot hate him, and Hidetora begs her to do so. This scene is all done in one long take with very little camera movement, and no background music, all we’re shown is the interaction between these two characters, and the human connection between them. These are the scenes I think Kurosawa wanted viewers to focus on, and these moments are so simple and subtle that one cannot help but feel for the characters. The mood of the film always has a soft subtlety to it, and even the horrific elements are depicted in a somewhat minimalist manner, a far cry from the heightened emotion of Kurosawa’s earlier productions.

The story arc throughout the film is handled in an almost symphonic manner. Though Kurosawa places a heavy emphasis on pacing, he never allows the film to become bogged down in itself, everything flows naturally working itself up to the unforgettable climax. Like Shakespeare, Kurosawa is a poet who knows how to create sublime poetry, and he displays this skill perfectly in Ran. As I mentioned earlier Kurosawa turns the viewer into a God almost, and he does this by filming mostly in long takes and long-shots. Kurosawa painted out every scene on the storyboard to make sure his vision would translate perfectly onto the screen, and it does. The use of color in Ran is bold and spectacular, employing rich hues for every scene. All of the battle scenes are filmed in long-shots as well, using jump cuts to convey tension, and a haunting score is used in place of the noise of war. It’s an effective method, and the battle scenes in Ran, are some of the best in cinema. They manage to be both beautiful and horrific at the same time. The cinematography is so stunning that words cannot describe the pure cinematic effect of it; it must be seen in every sense.

Ran is spearheaded by a fantastic performance by Katsumi Furukawa who plays Hidetora. As usual in Japanese cinema the performances are highly stylized and theatrical, but impressive, and Furukawa gives an intense performance. His performance relies heavily on body language and facial expressions, and one can literally see the change in him and his character as the film progresses. About halfway through the film Hidetora is trapped in a burning castle as arrows fly around him and he sits motionless. Furukawa keeps a stoic, but broken look to his face that slowly keeps on breaking apart, it’s fantastic acting. Of course there are plenty of fantastic supporting performances, and one I think that’s worth highlighting is the crossdresser Peter as Hidetora’s fool. There’s a strong sense of sexual ambiguity that Peter brings to the role that works really well, and he brings a subtle dose of humor to the film while still allowing us to take his character seriously. The other cast members perform at top game, and Ran is a film that has its whole cast putting it all into the project.

There aren’t enough good things to say about Ran, it’s a perfect film. Akira Kurosawa is a talent who the twenty-first century could sorely use, he was a master craftsman, and although he’s been imitated and copied from, there’s still no experience like actually watching a Kurosawa film. My grandparents who never watch foreign films, and who don’t even know who Kurosawa is saw a part of Ikiru on Turner Classic Movies, and were glued to their seats, this just shows how Kurosawa has transcended both time and cultural barriers. Happy birthday Kurosawa.

The Classics Corner #11: Sátántangó

Genre: Comedy/Drama

Director: Béla Tarr

Writers: László Krasznahorkai (novel) and Mihály Vig (story), Péter Dobai (story), Barna Mihók (story); László Krasznahorkai (screenplay) and Béla Tarr (screenplay)

Producer: György Fehér, Ruth Waldburger, Joachim von Vietinghoff

Cast: Mihály Vig, Putyi Horváth, László feLugossy, Éva Almássy Albert, János Derzsi, Irén Szajki, Alfréd Járai, Miklós Székely B., Erzsébet Gaál, Erika Bók, György Barkó, Peter Berling, András Bodnár, Ilona Bojár, Péter Dobai, István Juhász, Zoltán Kamondi, Barna Mihók, Mihály Ráday

Music: Mihály Vig

Cinematography: Gábor Medvigy

Distribution: Facets (US)

Release Date: February 8, 1994

Running Time: 450 min

There’s been a change in schedule; my review of Umberto D. is on hook until further notice.

Béla Tarr, anyone with even a passing interest in art cinema has heard that name. Roger Ebert calls him a director that’s more talked about than watched, and indeed for the longest time Tarr was just a name to me. I’d heard about Werckmeister Harmonies and Sátántangó, but I’d never actually taken the time to sit down and view the films. Why? Sátántangó is a long movie, and I don’t mean long as in it’s more than and hour and a half and the teenagers with ADD find it long, I mean seven and a half hours long. If you’re still here, good. It’s not an easy film to write about, and not just because of its length, but simply because it’s artistry is so intense it’s difficult to know where to begin, but I will make an attempt to review Béla Tarr’s 1994 masterpiece Sátántangó and prove that the film isn’t just known for its runtime.

Béla Tarr has constructed such an impressive, and hard to define work most summaries of the film come off as obscure and incomprehensible. What the film actually is about is a group of desperate strangers on a failing collective farm at the fall of Communism who fall prey to the conman Irimiás (Mihály Vig) and his partner Petrina (Putyi Horváth). The film is organized around the steps of a tango, for every step forward the story takes it takes a step back. The film is divided into three different acts and further into twelve smaller chapters that all twist back and forth in time. Though this is by no means Quentin Tarantino in Hungary, though Tarr’s film does have the explicit language, but unlike other films like Rashomon and Citizen Kane which use flashbacks and time-twisting narratives to create confusion Tarr here uses his narrative as a means of actually making the film flow more, there’s a certain poetry to the structure of the film and it’s hard to imagine the film working as a single flowing narrative.

Tarr has complete technical control over his film at all times. Sátántangó has been described as a two hour film elongated to seven hours, and that’s not untrue. Tarr shot Sátántangó entirely in long takes very reminiscent of Andrei Tarkovsky’s work, although unlike Tarkovsky who would break up long takes with quicker ones Tarr uses only 150 shots throughout the entire film and all are at least four-five minutes long. However his compositions are striking. Shot entirely in a grungy black and white, and often using Lynchinan industrial noise every shot in the film is perfectly controlled and beautiful, whether the camera is still or moving everything is sublime. I’ve never seen a film where each shot has such gravity as Sátántangó, there’s a weight and atmosphere of doom that Tarr creates, and he never lets up. Because of the film’s unique style it takes some adjusting to get used to the length of the shots, but once you’ve entered Tarr’s world there is no escape, the long takes are so astounding, and the way his camera flows from one situation to another without cutting is amazing.

There are so many hypnotic scenarios in the film, but the most memorable revolves around an old alcoholic doctor played by Peter Berling. The entire hour devoted to him shows him spying on his neighbors and recording their activities in a journal while trying to get drunk. The entire sequence is disgusting and unholy yet absolutely hypnotic. His house is like a giant piece of mold slowly enveloping him, and when he treks out to get more drink night begins to fall and he stumbles around in the dark, its enthralling cinema. There are so many other sequences I could discuss, the men walking in the wind, the little girl and her cat, the manor sequence where the camera flows from one character to another in a strange melancholy. Tarr’s use of rain is extremely sensual, and the rain and mud become characters unto themselves surrounding the film, the characters, and the farm.

Tarr leaves much room for contemplation throughout the film, and as a viewer I was left with far more questions than answers. The characters motives, the interpretations of certain scenes, and the overall structure of the film leaves a lot open to debate. Tarr insists that his films contain no symbolism, but Sátántangó does contain a lot of symbols. On the surface the film is about the failure of Communism but also a critique about the corruption of Capitalism, but the film isn’t a political drama by any means, its main theme is more of a power struggle, not just between the villagers but between nature and machine.

The acting in the film is a tough nut to crack. On one hand the actors are more like chess pieces to Tarr, and yet there are some great performances. Peter Burling is perfect as the doctor, and he plays a good drunk and Mihály Vig is exhilarating as Irimiás, but the film isn’t a textbook for great acting, but that’s alright because this isn’t an actor’s picture, and for the material given the actors do a good job. One performance that really stood out to me was Erika Bók as the tortured little girl Estike, for a child actor her performance is nothing short of outstanding. Overall this is a well-acted picture, but don’t expect too much.

Sátántangó is not easy to write about, and it’s a film that since finishing a few days ago I continue to be puzzled by. One recommendation I make is to watch a disc at a time. This isn’t like Fassbinder’s Berlin Alexanderplatz which can be watched in parts, but it’s rather one long take. It’s a film that fascinates me though, and on some level it’s a strange sort of masterpiece. I look forward to the required second viewing as insane as that sounds.

Welcome One, and Welcome All

To The Classics Corner, where I your humble reviewer ZGDK will be taking a look at great movies from all across cinematic history. The first ten articles I uploaded are the first ten installments of The Classics Corner I wrote for my blog at That Guy with the Glasses, but I've decided to try Blogger as a way to possibly expand my audience. I love to discuss film, so feel free to contact me if you're interested in talking, take some time and look around, enjoy, have a coffee.

The Classics Corner #10: Persona

Genre: Drama

Director: Ingmar Bergman

Writer: Ingmar Bergman

Producer: Ingmar Bergman

Cast: Bibi Anderson, Liv Ullman, Margaretha Krook, Gunnar Björnstrand

Music: Lars Johan Werle

Cinematography: Sven Nykvist

Distributed By: AB Svensk Filmindustri (Sweden), United Artists (US)

Release Date: October 18, 1966 (Sweden), March 6, 1967 (US)

Running Time: 85 min

“At some time or other, I said that Persona saved my life — that is no exaggeration. If I had not found the strength to make that film, I would probably have been all washed up. One significant point: for the first time I did not care in the least whether the result would be a commercial success...”

-Ingmar Bergman on Persona

I am often asked what my favorite movie is. To that question I would answer either Hitchcock’s Notorious or Fellini’s La Dolce Vita. Both movies for me embody what I love so much about going to the movies. Notorious is a film that is cinematic to the core, a film that is elegant, subtle, and suspenseful and propelled by fantastic performances. La Dolce Vita is life, music, art, love, sex, literature, and all those things on film. It’s a film that has had a tremendous impact on me, not just in the way I look at film, but how I look at art and life in general. There are other movies too that I love like Ran or It’s a Wonderful Life or Touch of Evil or here I go again. Now ask me what the greatest movie ever made is and here we have a problem, because greatest is different from favorite. Greatest implies that it is the best of all time, and film when compared to literature and music is still in its infancy, so there are so many great films that have yet to be made, but my answer must for now be Ingmar Bergman’s Persona, the subject of today’s Classics Corner. There are SPOILERS ABOUND so you have been warned.

Persona is a difficult film to approach, it’s by no means an easy film to watch, and the best way to describe the experience is an existentialist nightmare. Bergman’s muse Liv Ullman plays an actress named Elisabet Vogler who for some reason stops speaking in the middle of performing Electra. The silence seems to stem from some horrible trauma she has suffered in her mind, and in order to recuperate she is sent to a beachside house to rest herself. Bibi Anderson plays Nurse Alma who tells Vogler all of her secrets believing she will not tell anyone. What plays out is a power struggle between the two women who find that their very identities are disintegrating into one another. This is the most plot we get; the film is really a series of events that heavily mix dreams and reality. The viewer is never quite sure if what’s being shown is real or not. The famous opening scene of the reel of silent film clips and a later “interruption” of the film by a repeat of these clips suggests that what we are witnessing is a film within a film and son on. Persona also features heavy sexual imagery from the quick shot of the erect penis at the beginning to the surreal dream Alma has of Elisabet to the camera heating up and then cooling down. Then there’s the pure intensity of the struggle between the two women, it’s violent and unpleasant, the two abuse each other physically and emotionally and it is painful to watch, Persona is an intense emotional experience.

It’s these elements that have led critics to label the film as a sort of a modernist love story between the two women, though I believe it is simpler than that. The power struggle is a result of the repressed sexual feelings the women have for one another, it’s all pure lust and guilt. The film is also about female expression, remember this film was made in 1966 just as the feminist movement was gaining ground, and Bergman’s representation of the female mind was shocking for the time. Nurse Alma is a sexually manipulative woman, and in a famous monologue she explains how she seduced two adolescent boys on the beach into having sex, though she is unsure of whether it was intentional or not. Elisabet’s rejection and horror of becoming a mother was and still remains shocking, because even today many do not understand the horror many women feel during pregnancy. This is my own opinion on what I believe the film to be about, Bergman allows for plenty of different ideas to be presented, and the film is extremely open-ended and allows for many emotional reactions.

If all this sounds confusing, it is, Bergman intended for Persona to be a “visual poem,” and he succeeds in that area. Collaborating with his favorite cinematographer Sven Nykvist, the entire film is shot in a high contrast black and white. Everything has this feeling of eerie sterilization, as if what we’re watching isn’t real at all, but rather some distorted version of reality. It’s a visually stunning work, and each shot is set up with careful attention to detail. The contrast between black and white increases as the film progresses until we reach the scene where the two women sit down for dinner clad in pure black clothing. Like with The Seventh Seal there are scenes in Persona which have entered the popular culture, the scene where the two women’s faces come together has been borrowed by other filmmakers like David Lynch or parodied several times. However even when the film isn’t being visual it still keeps visuals in play. During Alma’s monologue about her day at the beach, she describes the entire event in such detail that we cannot help but imagine the scene in explicit detail, and Bergman keeps the dialogue in tune with the rest of the film, that cryptic, sterile style so that we are able to imagine the scene as looking like what we have been seeing on screen. His use of film stock is also well used, he uses just enough for effect, but doesn’t go overboard with it, and each piece of film stock is selected to fit in with the film and its themes.

Like always Bergman extracts fantastic performances from his actresses. Liv Ullman and Bibi Anderson understood what Bergman was trying to create and they pull from somewhere two great performances filled with what must have been an unbearable agony. Liv Ullman is perfect at playing the ice queen, her eyes and sly expression are always hiding something, and she feels manipulative, but her face also hides something else, a broken woman. Bibi Anderson has a child-like naivety about her, and a certain innocence that lends well to her role, but as she gets closer to her breakdown she begins to breakdown, and her performance is filled with just this great intensity. The two actresses are amazing with one another, and their performances must be admired if not that they are great performances, but for what must have gone into these performances that made them so great.

Persona is an enigma; it’s neither an easy film to watch nor an easy one to write about. Perhaps that’s why it took me nine previous articles before I was ready to write about it. I haven’t been able to say everything there is to say about the film, but there isn’t enough time to go more in-depth than I have, so I leave you all, dearest readers with this. Go watch Persona, if you haven’t seen it, see it, if you have seen it, watch it again. This film really shows us what cinema is capable of.

The Classics Corner #9: Bride of Frankenstein

Genre: Horror/Sci-Fi/Thriller

Director: James Whale

Producer: Carl Laemmle, Jr.

Writers: Mary Shelley (suggested by the original story written by) (as Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley); William Hurlbut (adapted by) and John L. Balderston (adapted by) (as John Balderston); William Hurlbut (screenplay); Josef Berne (adaptation)(uncredited), Lawrence G. Blochman (adaptation)(uncredited), Morton Covan (adaptation)(uncredited), Robert Florey (story)(uncredited), Philip MacDonald (adaptation)(uncredited), Edmund Pearson (screenplay)(uncredited), Tom Reed (contributing writer)(uncredited)R.C. Sherriff (adaptation)(uncredited)

Cast: Boris Karloff, Colin Clive, Valerie Hobson, Ernest Thesiger, Elsa Lanchester, Gavin Gordon, Douglas Walton, Una O’Connor, E.E. Clive, Lucien Prival, O.P. Heggie, Dwight Frye, Reginald Barlow, Mary Gordon, Anne Darling

Music: Franz Waxman

Cinematography: John J. Mescall

Editing: Ted Kent

Distribution: Universal Pictures

Running Time: 75 min

Release Date: April 22, 1935

Bride of Frankenstein is one of the most deliriously original films I’ve yet seen. Rightfully called Campenstein no other film has combined horror, comedy, drama, and a bit of homosexuality the way Bride of Frankenstein does. Here we have a film that bounces back and forth between its various elements while never sticking to any one single element. What we have instead is a cocktail of various ideas, which somehow shouldn’t work, but do.

James Whale is a director who is especially noted for his work in the horror genre, the original Frankenstein is a classic, and probably the first important horror film of the sound era. However it isn’t a perfect film, but it’s a prerequisite for watching Bride of Frankenstein, and it is a triumph of art direction. The film was a financial success, but Whale held off from directing the sequel, he felt the story had been exhausted, and a sequel would be foolish. Money talks though, and he was promised complete creative control, so he took up the task. What he came up with was a much more original film, the original Frankenstein lacks an edge that it had back in 1931, the film was about shocks, and it doesn’t shock anymore. This time Whale had bigger ideas in mind, for one he sticks closer to the novel and some of the bigger themes of the novel, and although he insisted the film was meant to be made as a farce he doesn’t allow the campiness get out of hand, and even leaves room for some scenes of pure beauty surprisingly enough.

Perhaps the greatest change this time around is the character of The Monster, once again played by Boris Karloff. The Monster is no longer the antagonist, but rather a sympathetic anti-hero. He’s a lost soul trying to become human, but alas he’s doomed from the start. About halfway through the movie, The Monster befriends a blind violinist who has all but been abandoned by society. The relationship between these two misfits is oddly touching and has a certain beauty. Karloff allows himself to become much more human here, the expressions he takes on are quite heart-wrenching, and express so much, and in the scenes as he’s introduced to those good ol’ vices like smoke and drink there’s a childlike curiosity in his face that really brings the character to life.

The film, as mentioned, has a great dose of camp value. Most of this is supplied by the wonderfully flamboyant Dr. Pretorius (Ernest Thesiger) who has come to rope Dr. Frankenstein (Colin Clive) into creating The Monster’s bride. Thesiger gives a gloriously over-the-top performance, and he just secrets melodrama and lights up the screen every time he comes on. He is the archetypical mad scientist, but at the same time he’s a fully fleshed out character. There’s a scene where he shows to Dr. Frankenstein his army of little men, the twinkle he gets in his eyes is unsettlingly funny, one can tell Thesiger had a blast playing the role. One minute he can be docile and humorous and the next he’s a madman. Pretorius is a fascinating character, and he supplies the film with some of the most memorable scenes. There’s one moment where he decides to have a full course meal while sitting in a crypt, it’s hard not to laugh as he sits there are docile and when The Monster enters he doesn’t express any surprise what so ever. Yet, like The Monster, he’s a tragic character, what is it he really wants? To make The Monster a mate, or further his experiments?

The acting around the table is memorable. Colin Clive’s role as Dr. Frankenstein is limited, but he provides the perfect foil to Pretorius, he’s more calm and collected, and the look on his face as he gets dragged into the whole affair is priceless. There’s plenty of turns by some great character actors as well, who can forget Una O’Connor as the bumbling Minnie? The blind hermit, mentioned earlier is brought to life perfectly by O.P. Heggie, who brings the right amount of pathos to his role.

It’s this tug between horror, drama, comedy, and camp that makes Bride of Frankenstein such a great film and the film is also enhanced by masterful visuals. Whale was working with a bigger budget this time around, and this allowed for a bit more visual elaboration. The creation scene of The Bride is much more extravagant than the one in the original movie; it’s unforgettable, and truly amazing. The scene where Pretorius displays his little people boasts some great special effects that still hold up today. Whale’s cinematographer John J. Mescall was supposedly drunk all the time, but he conjures up some great images, and uses expressionist lighting and a mobile camera to create some indelible images. The design of The Bride is a triumph of art direction, and though her role is limited she creates a lasting effect. This is one tightly directed film.

Bride of Frankenstein is a classic, it remains not only one of the best horror films, and one of the best sequels of all time, but one of the greatest films in general. It’s witty and full of creativity at every turn. They certainly don’t make horror like this anymore.

The Classics Corner #8: Meet Me in St. Louis

Genre: Family/Music/Romance

Director: Vincente Minnelli

Producer: Arthur Freed

Writer(s): Irving Brecher (screenplay) and Fred F. Finklehoffe (screenplay); Sally Benson (book)

Cast: Judy Garland, Margaret O’Brien, Mary Astor, Lucille Bremer, Leon Ames, Tom Drake, Marjorie Main, Harry Davenport, June Lockhart, Harry H. Daniels Jr., Joan Carroll, Hugh Marlowe, Robert Sully, Chill Willis

Music: Ralph Blane, Hugh Martin, Nacio Herb Brown, Arthur Freed, George E. Stoll

Cinematography: George J. Folsey

Editing: Albert Akst

Distribution: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

Release Date: January 1945

Running Time: 115 min

Is there any genre more joyous than the musical? Just think emotions so strong that they can only be expressed in the medium of song and dance. Director Vincente Minnelli understood this, and with Meet Me in St. Louis he cemented his reputation as one of Hollywood’s most creative auteurs and the master of the American musical. When film critic Andrew Sarris wrote his famous work The American Cinema he placed Minnelli in the far side of the auteur paradise for “believing more in beauty than in art,” but what he failed to recognize is that beauty is the core of Minnelli’s art. If Meet Me in St. Louis wasn’t so beautiful almost all of the time, would the film still be loved today?

For the musical, Meet Me in St. Louis was a film that changed the genre, no longer did people break out into random song and dance numbers, but the music was integrated into the story. While I normally like my musicals with some nice dance routines, there’s a certain flow to this film that other musicals lack. Take Top Hat for example, the dance scenes between Fred and Ginger are spectacular, but they’re placed in at an uneven pace, and in between what we have is nothing more than a typical rom-com. Even Singin’ in the Rain, which tells a wonderful tale, suffers from an uneven pacing in its musical numbers. To a certain extent the same problem exists in Meet Me in St. Louis, most of the musical numbers are front-loaded into the beginning of the film, but because everything flows so well, and the story is so well-written it really doesn’t matter.

The heart of the film’s story is the characters, a typical middle-class family living in St. Louis at the turn of the century. They’re all well-rounded and well-acted. In The Wizard of Oz I found Judy Garland to be irritating, but here she’s playing a character that is more grown-up, and her performance feels more natural. She expresses so much with her face that Esther comes to life in a way many actresses would not be able to pull off. When she sings “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” to her sister Tootie (Margaret O’Brien) there exists this achingly heart-wringing melancholy in her eyes, and her voice is like that of an angel. However then there’s the famous trolley car sequence as Esther looks around for the boy next door, at first everyone around her is singing as she’s squeezed in by them, and her face expresses anxiety, but then she breaks out into a song of her own, and the joy, real joy is there. It helps that Esther is a three-dimensional character instead of just an object to push along the story with. She’s very human, and her trials and tribulations are human as well.

The rest of the characters are fascinating as well. I mentioned the six year old sister Tootie, but she is perhaps the most fascinating character in the film, not to mention she’s played perfectly by O’Brien, but she supplies an undercurrent of darkness to the film. Tootie has a morbid obsession with death, and this is put on full display during the famous Halloween sequence when Tootie “kills” her neighbor with flour so that she can help build a massive bonfire. The older sister Rose (Lucille Bremer) is out looking for love as well, but she’s far more cynical than Esther, obsessed with finding a mature man, which forms a humorous subplot that carries on throughout the film. There’s also Katie (Marjorie Main) the maid, and the two parents (Mary Astor and Leon Ames) who are trying to keep their love alive and Grandpa (Harry Davenport), and many others. Somehow we are all kept interested in these characters and like everything else in the film Minnelli balances out his cast well, squeezing excellent performances from all of them.

The film is one of the best directed films out there. Minnelli often designed his own sets and costumes, and here he uses bright, bold colors, and gives the film a dreamy look. His use of color is especially noteworthy, and he uses different shades and hues for each season. The camerawork is excellent, take during the trolley song as his camera travels all over the trolley, picking up little details while never loosing sight of Esther or during the ball sequence as the audience is carried from one dancer to another. The film looks and feels beautiful, and the songs are outstanding and catchy as I’ve mentioned before. This here is beauty on film.

Meet Me in St. Louis remains one of the best Hollywood musicals ever lensed, it’s a film where all of the diverse elements come together perfectly, and we are always left in awe. It’s the type of movie that Hollywood simply does not make anymore.

The Classics Corner #7: Double Indemnity

Genre: Crime/Film-Noir/Thriller

Director: Billy Wilder

Producers: Buddy DeSylva, Joseph Sistorm

Writers: James M. Cain (novel); Billy Wilder (screenplay) and Raymond Chandler (screenplay)

Cast: Fred MacMurray, Barbara Stanwyck, Edward G. Robinson, Porter Hall, Jean Heather, Tom Powers, Byron Barr, Richard Gaines, Fortunio Bonanova, John Philliber; George Anderson (scenes deleted), Al Bridge (scenes deleted), Edward Hearn (scenes deleted), Boyd Irwin (scenes deleted), George Melford (scenes deleted), William O’Leary (scenes deleted), Lee Shumway (scenes deleted)

Music: Miklós Rózsa, Victor Schertzinger

Cinematography: John F. Seitz

Distribution: Paramount Pictures

Release Date: April 24, 1944

Running Time: 107 min

In today’s world of TruTV, Dateline NBC, Forensic Files, and 48 Hours Mystery it seems highly unlikely, even shocking that a movie like Double Indemnity was at one point considered scandalous. But then again it was 1944, in just over a year the G.I.’s would be returning home, and America would be receding into the sheltered suburbia that defined the fifties, and it’s no wonder because Billy Wilder would build his career off of scratching America where it itches. Working with a script co-written by Raymond Chandler and from a novel by James M. Cain, Wilder crafted a film that drew in and shocked audiences, and while the shock factor may have worn off in the close to seventy years since the release of Double Indemnity, it’s a film that continues to draw in audiences, and for good reason.

Double Indemnity follows insurance salesman Walter Neff (Fred MacMurray) who leads a successful, but uninteresting life. All this changes when he meets the smoldering Phyllis (Barbara Stanwyck), the wife of an oil man who convinces Neff to help her murder her husband so that they can be together and collect the insurance money. Their plan works, but they’ve attracted the attention of Neff’s best friend Barton Keyes (Edward G. Robinson) who just happens to be the claims investigator for the insurance firm Neff works for, and the whole scheme begins to unravel.

Raymond Chandler supposedly showed up drunk and without any knowledge of writing a screenplay. He and Wilder didn’t get along, and there was plenty of conflict. One thing Chandler knew well was how to write dialogue, and the dialogue in Double Indemnity is akin to that of hard-boiled poetry laced with innuendos. What Wilder knew was how to write, and bring to life a story driven by characters. The characters in Double Indemnity are archetypes, but they’re interesting archetypes. Their stories are wrapped in mystery, and Wilder holds back telling us everything about them to keep things more interesting. The film has a heightened level of suspense, once they carry out their crime viewers will be on their seat’s edge with excitement to see how it all unravels. It’s a superb story, told fantastically.

Fred MacMurray and Barbara Stanwyck have a great screen chemistry, their scene’s together are steamy, but at the same time have a certain chill to them. MacMurray turns himself into a complete ass hole, he delivers his dialogue in a wonderfully hard-boiled manner, but he’s just as adept at acting with his face, subtly showing us the breakdown of his character. Barb Stanwyck dominates her suburban castle with the force of an icy feline, and save for the garish blonde wig, her role of Phyllis remains one of the screen’s most seductive femme fatales. Edward G. Robinson makes a great supporting role turn as Keyes, the private investigator; he’s likeable and brings a dose of humanity to the film.

Billy Wilder was never a director known for flashy visuals, but like many of his mentor Ernst Lubitsch, there’s a certain visual quality to Wilder’s work. Being a film noir Wilder brings out this quality more here, he favors using the depth of space and a more subtle use of film noir’s trademark shadows. Wilder’s camerawork is perfect on so many levels, and Double Indemnity has a very distinct look. The brooding score is fantastic, and is a total original. Double Indemnity is a film directed with a certain sophistication and style that could only belong to Wilder.

Double Indemnity is one of the greatest of all film noirs, tough a cynical, but with a touch of humanity, it still works today because all its various elements come together so perfectly.

The Classics Corner #6: The Wild Bunch

Genre: Action/Western

Director: Sam Peckinpah

Producer: Phil Feldman

Writers: Walon Green (story) and Roy N. Sickner (story); Walon Green (screenplay) and Sam Peckinpah (screenplay)

Cast: William Holden, Ernest Borgnine, Robert Ryan, Edmond O’Brien, Warren Oates, Jamie Sanchez, Ben Johnson, Emilio Fernandez, Strother Martin, L.Q. Jones, Albert Dekker, Bo Hopkins, Dub Taylor, Paul Harper, Jorge Russek

Music: Jerry Fielding

Cinematography: Lucien Ballard

Editing: Lou Lombardo

Distribution: Warner Bros.-Seven Arts

Release Date: June 18, 1969

Running Time: 145 min

In choosing the first western to review for The Classics Corner I was faced with a tough choice, I could backtrack and review a John Ford film, or take a look at one of Sergio Leone’s flicks, but in the end I decided after re-watching The Wild Bunch this afternoon it was a good place to start. Here is a film which after forty years still stirs controversy; the level of violence in the final shoot-out is enough to make Quentin Tarantino cringe. However The Wild Bunch is more than an action western, it’s an almost poetic take on the myth of the old west and electrifying cinema of the highest order.

Sam Peckinpah is an interesting filmmaker; he got his start in the sixties with a string of successful revisionist westerns that quickly established him as one of Hollywood’s most creative and bloody filmmakers, though he found most of his success in Europe. Peckinpah however was not an easy man to work with, he was a drug addict, an alcoholic and had a violent temper and by 1967 he was out of work. He took on The Wild Bunch out of desire to return to filmmaking. He was inspired by Arthur Penn’s Bonnie and Clyde and wanted to infuse the western with a realism not yet seen all while taking on the Vietnam War. Naturally the film was a hit with the young audiences who were flocking to see the films of the New Hollywood directors. After The Wild Bunch Peckinpah began to fall from grace and though he made many more great films it wasn’t until his rise as a cult figure years later that he got the respect he deserved.

The Wild Bunch follows a gang of outlaws led by Pike Bishop (William Holden) in 1913 at the end of the era of the old west. They sense that their world is coming to an end, and after a botched job that leaves them on the lam the gang heads to Mexico where they find they’re being trailed by their old accomplice Deke Thornton (Robert Ryan) who is working for the law as a way to escape prison. In Mexico the bunch finds themselves caught up in the Mexican Revolution and in the employment of a corrupt Mexican general that they’re going to rob arms for. However their past is about to catch up with them in a final bloody confrontation that leaves none spared.

The Wild Bunch is told in a dry manner, the characters we meet are the slow to burn masculine men that Hollywood loves, but instead of what we get today in film the bunch is the real deal. The film has a nostalgic undertone, the world of the bunch is being eaten away by modernity and as an audience we get the feeling that these people have been places, they’re tough battle hardened men, but they’re also three-dimensional characters. The two most fascinating are Pike and Thornton, and the conflict between them. Pike is a man sick of the life he’s living but finds it too difficult to leave, and Thornton is a man that wants to bad to return to the life he once lived but the law has choked the life out of him. There are also plenty of supporting characters as well each with their own conflicts, but the most fascinating is Angel, a Mexican who wants so bad to liberate his people from the dictatorship. Then there’s the dialogue which has something of a poetic quality to it. It’s always blunt and to the point. The film has some memorable lines such as “If they move… kill e’m!” The story is dramatic, complex, funny, and exciting, it’s what filmmakers strive for today but can’t find.

The acting from all parties is fantastic. William Holden clearly understood the part of Pike Bishop and plays him well capturing a wide range of emotions. He has a sad look to his face that fits the role of Pike well. He gives us the impression of a rugged man who’s seen it all. There’s so much we learn just from Holden’s facial expressions and the way he talks with that melancholic tinge in his voice. The supporting cast is great as well; Ernest Borgnine is great as Pike’s right hand man and Robert Ryan as Thornton. The other actor that impressed me was Jamie Sanchez as Angel, he doesn’t give a fantastic performance per say, but he does his job well as the character we can emotionally link to without being overly melodramatic. The acting all around is great, and works on many levels.

The aesthetics in The Wild Bunch was groundbreaking for its time. Consider the famous twenty minute opening sequence as the bunch rides through town disguised as army officers. We have a great score playing to immediately add to the mood. The bunch rides past children at play, they seem innocent at first but when we cut over we see they are torturing scorpions. The build-up to the raid is filled with suspense. We witness the action at several different angles, and Peckinpah avoids using much dialogue for the opening allowing the camera to tell the story for him. When all hell breaks loose, all hell breaks loose. The action is bloody, but Peckinpah never lets up, his use of multi-angled editing and slow motion come in to play even more here. Words cannot describe just the opening scene; it must be seen to be believed. There are other great moments, the widescreen cinematography is used both to give us a feeling of the open spaces, but also works in more intimate moments where the lighting is always just the right tone of red. The score by Jerry Fielding is fantastic, it isn’t Morricone class, but it fits the tone of the film well. The Wild Bunch is as tightly directed as a film can get.

Overall The Wild Bunch may very well be one of the greatest westerns, it tells a great story, has a great cast, and plenty of great scenes. I’m ZGDK, and they sure don’t make ‘em like they used to.

The Classics Corner #5: Vertigo

Genre: Crime/Mystery/Romance/Thriller

Director: Alfred Hitchcock

Producer: Alfred Hitchcock (uncredited)

Writer(s): Alec Cooper (screenplay) & Samuel A. Taylor (screenplay) (as Samuel Taylor); Pierre Boileau (novel “D'Entre Les Morts”) & Thomas Narcejac (novel “D'Entre Les Morts”); Maxwell Anderson (contributing writer) (uncredited)

Cast: James Stewart, Kim Novak, Barbara Bel Geddes, Tom Helmore, Henry Jones, Raymond Bailey, Ellen Corby, Konstantin Shayne, Lee Patrick

Music: Bernard Hermann

Cinematography: Robert Burks

Editing: George Tomasini

Distribution: Paramount Pictures (1958-1982), Universal Pictures (1982-Present), United International Pictures (Non-USA 1996)

Release Date: May 9, 1958

Running Time: 128 min

It’s hard to believe that this being the fifth Classics Corner Review, it’s taken us this long to review a Hitchcock film, but better late than never, no? Vertigo is as my great-uncle has described it so frequently a peculiar film. I remember watching it for the first time in middle school and being both put off by it and at the same time fascinated with the film. Still though there was a seed planted into my mind, and Vertigo refused to leave. I’ve watched the film several times since my first viewing and it still manages to produce that feeling of awe and wonder. It is no wonder that audiences in 1958 were put off by Vertigo; it’s a challenging film, but also an entertaining one and the crowning achievement of cinema’s greatest practitioner.

Vertigo stars Jimmy Stewart as John “Scottie” Ferguson, a cop recently retired after his acrophobia caused a fellow officer to fall to his death. Scottie is naturally plagued by guilt and trauma. He spends most of his day with his ex-lover Midge (Barbara Bel Geddes) who seems to be the only person he can really connect with. When an old college friend contacts him about a job trailing the man’s wife Scottie is reluctant, but accepts. His wife is an icy, slinky blonde named Madeline (Kim Novak) who captivates Scottie, and it isn’t long before Scottie is heading down a dark road.

Scottie is a fascinating character, and his development throughout the film is often quite frightening. There’s a certain ambiguity to a lot of his character, though, and by keeping certain details from the audiences the writers make that transformation more disturbing. All we know is that Scottie seems to be an everyman with dark issues. The actual mystery is very easy to figure out, but it fails to disappoint because of the way the story is delivered. The mystery starts out gripping, but by the middle when the denouement comes our interest has shifted to other plot points. The transition is smooth, and Hitch’s direction of the script is tight and engaging. The dialogue is also fantastic with characters speaking in an ambiguous, mysterious manner that predates films such as Last Year at Marienbad. Even down to what is being said Vertigo is a mystery.

The acting in the film is fantastic, and Jimmy Stewart gives a stunning lead role. Hitch liked to use Stewart because of his everyman qualities, and Stewart plays off that idea well in the first half of the film. Like so many of his roles, he’s a likeable guy in Vertigo and when he begins to change it gives viewers the chills because Stewart is the all-American boy down the street that’s hard not to like. Then there’s Kim Novak, the icy femme fatale. SPOILERS BEGIN HERE [Novak is essentially playing two roles in the film, there’s Madeline and then there’s Judy. As Madeline she acts like an enigma, walking and talking in a very mysterious manner, and as Judy she’s a tough talking waitress. What’s so great about her performance is the way she’s able to blend the two personas together. It’s a resounding performance, and she and Stewart light up the screen together. ] SPOILERS END HERE The supporting performances a great, especially Barbara Bel Geddes as Midge, who provides another nice foil for Stewart.

The aesthetics of Vertigo are undoubtedly pleasing to the senses. Painted in glorious Technicolor, Vertigo has an otherworldly feel to it. Couple this with Bernard Hermann’s score and you’ve got a film seeped in atmosphere. Every shot is masterfully staged, and Hitch directs with a certain restraint to keep the atmosphere just right. There are few films that use color in such a fantastic manner. Pierrot le Fou was one of them, and Akira Kurosawa’s Ran is another. Here Hitch paints in softer colors such as yellow, orange, and brown and the on location shooting of San Francisco gives an added touch. Hitch uses soft focus to give everything an other worldly and dreamlike aura. It’s a beautiful film that pleases the senses.

Vertigo is a classic; it’s a film that anyone even remotely interested in film should see. The writing, acting, and direction are all superb and it’s one of the few films where everything works. If I was to try to find flaws with Vertigo I’d just be being a bastard.

The Classics Corner #4: His Girl Friday

Genre: Comedy/Drama/Romance

Director: Howard Hawks

Producer: Howard Hawks

Writers: Charles Lederer (screenplay), Ben Hecht (play “The Front Page”) and Charles MacArthur (play “The Front Page”)

Cast: Cary Grant, Rosalind Russell, Ralph Bellamy, Gene Lockhart, Porter Hall, Ernst Truex, Cliff Edwards, Clarence Kolb, Roscoe Karns, Frank Jenks, Regis Toomey, Abner Biberman, Frank Orth, John Qualen, Helen Mack

Music: Sidney Cutner, Felix Mills

Cinematography: Joseph Walker

Distribution: Columbia Pictures

Release Date: January 18, 1940

Running Time: 92 min

So far the films I’ve been showcasing on The Classics Corner fall into the "high art" , whatever that is. Aguirre, the Wrath of God, Rashomon, and Pierrot le Fou showcased the side of art associated with larger than life themes, heavy experimentation, and just a dose of pretentiousness that with film being the sensational medium it is that’s usually impossible to avoid. However I recognize these films may not be for everyone, and part of my goal of writing this series is to help bring the classics to people with just a passing curiosity in film. That's why today I'm going to take a look at a different side of the art of film; the kind of art that tells a great story, which is something today Hollywood seems incapable of. I’m not sure why the ability to write and direct a great film has become a lost art today, but back in 1940 it wasn’t and directors like Howard Hawks were turning out quality material. That’s why today we’re going to look at one of the maestro’s best films: His Girl Friday.

His Girl Friday stars Rosalind Russell as Hildy Johnson, the ace reporter of a major Chicago newspaper who has decided to leave the corrupt world of reporting and domesticate herself by marrying insurance agent Bruce Baldwin (Ralph Bellamy). However the editor in chief of her paper Walter Burns (Cary Grant) happens to be her ex-husband who is still in love with her. Burns concocts an elaborate scheme to win Hildy back that after several plot twists later a murderer is on the run and Bruce is in prison with Hildy juggling to keep everything together.

His Girl Friday has one of the best scripts written, the characters are all wonderfully written with their own story arcs and complexities. It is fun to watch their traits play off of one another as they interact using some of the most brilliant dialogue yet written for the screen. Speaking of dialogue, His Girl Friday sparkles with one liners and word play that fly at you at an alarming rate. From the first minute of the film to the last there isn’t a moment of silence to be had. The writing is just so sharp and so witty it’s a thing of beauty.

Of course all this brilliant writing would be nothing without strong acting, and there’s plenty of that in this film. Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell have a strong chemistry with one another and since they’re together most of the time it gives the film a strong edge. Grant is excellent as usual, and manages to be both sleazy and charming at the same time. The scenes where his character works to concoct plans are especially amusing to watch because he always carries a sense of class with him even when his character is doing quite classless acts. The casting of Rosalind Russell was a bold choice on Hawks’ part. She has a certain feminity to her, but also a strong, driven side that many actresses of the time didn’t have. The supporting players are all strong as well most notably Ralph Bellamy as Bruce.

His Girl Friday is a very theatrical film, and Hawks does a strong job directing. Hawks was a great director of actors as we’ve already covered, but perhaps one of the biggest contributions he made to the film was the way the dialogue played out. Hawks spent a good amount of time experimenting with the sound to tweak it just right so it would sound like the chatter of a newspaper room. There are also a few great shots in the film, but cinematography is second to character and story here.His Girl Friday is a wonderfully funny film, propelled mostly by its brilliant script, top notch acting and strong direction from Hawks. It reminds us that there was a time when Hollywood made films for grown-ups, and perhaps with the right elements they still could if they tried.

The Classics Corner #3: Pierrot Le Fou

Genre: Crime/Drama/Romance

Director: Jean-Luc Godard

Producer: Georges de Beauregard

Writer: Jean-Luc Godard

Cast: Jean-Paul Belmondo, Anna Karina, Graziella Galvani

Music: Antoine Duhamel

Cinematography: Raoul Coutard

Distribution: DeLaurentiis, Rome-Paris, SNC

Release Date: November 5, 1965 (France), January 8, 1969 (USA)

Running Time: 110 min

Jean-Luc Godard is a filmmaker who has never been afraid to flout controversy, and indeed his reputation in cinema history has been the source of much controversy. As of right now he stands at the #10 spot on They Shoot Pictures Top 100 Directors list, but at the same time there are many who loathe him, even among my fellow film snobs, and there was even a user on IMDb who in a polite manner wished death upon Monsieur Godard. There appear to be several reasons for the hate, the first is simply his style of filmmaking, while not as radical as it was back in the sixties Godard has always been one to throw aesthetic and narrative curveballs. There’s no telling what to expect when you pop one of his films into the DVD player. The other reason may his politics, Godard was at one point a die-hard Marxist, and while I do have Marxist sympathies the political overtones of some of his films like Week End can appear quite obnoxious. Godard, however is an important figure in cinema history, and so instead of explaining why Pierrot Le Fou is such a great film (which it is), I’m going to instead explain why it is a film worth watching even if you may not enjoy it.

Pierrot Le Fou follows Ferdinand (Jean-Paul Belmondo) a man living a vapid bourgeois life with his rich Italian wife. After ditching a party, Ferdinand meets up with his old girlfriend Marianne (Anna Karina) who has been babysitting their child. Ferdinand (or as Marianne calls him Pierrot) decides to run off with Marianne to the south of France. However Marianne has gotten herself caught up with a gang of Algerian gun-runners. The couple embarks on a series of adventures that ends in an explosive finale.

Pierrot Le Fou plays out in an interesting manner, the film is very episodic, and there’s very little consistency throughout. Ferdinand and Marianne are constantly shifting characters. They engage in random song and dance numbers, talk to the camera, have sex, and kill people. One moment Marianne is one person and another moment she seems like an entirely different character. The same goes for Ferdinand. Godard clearly has fun with his loose narrative structure which allows him to throw together random genres and see just what comes out. Most of the time his style works, and it makes for some outrageous cinematic moments, but the middle portion of the film tends to lag a bit. I don’t think further editing would have done much, the film is perfect length, perhaps it’s because the middle is in many ways different from the rest of the film. I’m nitpicking though, Pierrot le Fou maintains its offbeat pace throughout the film, and in some strange way it works.

The acting from both Belmondo and Karina is superb. Belmondo spends a lot of time brooding, and he’s very good at brooding. His performance is both subtle and slightly over-the-top at the same time, though it’s Godard’s (then) wife and muse Anna Karina who makes the film. Karina is beauty personified, a sort of strange femme fatale out of an Andy Warhol painting. Karina does a great job shifting the multiple personalities Marianne takes on, she’s both innocent and helpless and at the same time corrupt and driven. Karina seems to find a middle ground between these two sides of her character, and it works. The rest of the performances from the supporting players are playfully over the top, and represent their character’s stereotypes quite well.

The cinematography of Pierrot Le Fou is stunning; Godard paints his film in bright, primary colors that pop off the screen in a whirlwind of beauty. This is pop art in motion. Godard like with every other aspect of the film is clearly having fun with his visuals here, there is very little that isn’t in bright pigments, but there are moments in this film of true beauty, there is one exquisite shot after another, and coupled with the jazz-like score the aesthetics of Pierrot Le Fou are most certainly pleasing to the senses.

Overall Pierrot Le Fou is a challenging film, it’s one that should be seen, and is worth the two hours. There’s no denying Godard’s place in cinema history, but whether you come out liking the film or not is up to you.

The Classics Corner #2: Rashomon

Genre: Crime/Drama/Mystery

Director: Akira Kurosawa

Producer: Minoru Jingo

Writers: Ryunosuke Akutagawa, Akira Kurosawa, Shinobu Hashimoto

Cast: Toshiro Mifune, Machiko Kyo, Masayuki Mori, Takashi Shimura, Kichijiro Ueda, Fumiko Honma, Daisuke Kato, Minoru Chiaki

Music: Fumio Hayasaka

Cinematography: Kazuo Miyagawa

Editing: Akira Kurosawa

Distribution: Daiei (Japan), RKO Radio Pictures (US)

Release Date: August 25^th, 1950 (Japan); December 26^th, 1951 (USA)

Running Time: 88 min

Rashomon is one of those towering classics of world cinema that’s impossible to gloss over when studying film. Over a year ago when I started seriously looking at film and getting my blog together it was one of the first films I watched. From the first frame the film’s sensual power overwhelmed me and didn’t let go. Rashomon remains one of my favorite films to this day. It’s also important for helping to open Japanese cinema to the western world along with Kenji Mizoguchi’s Ugetsu and Yasujiro Ozu’s Tokyo Story, and it was also the film that made Akira Kurosawa a household name. For these reasons alone it seems essential that Rashomon be the second film we take a look at here on The Classics Corner.

Rashomon is a series of flashbacks within flashbacks. The film starts with The Woodcutter (Takashi Shimura) and The Priest (Minoru Chiaki) seeking refuge in the Rashomon Gate from a torrential rainstorm. When a Commoner (Kichijiro Ueda) joins them, The Woodcutter and The Priest begin to recount a tale from earlier in the day. The film flashbacks to a court where several strangers who all witnessed the same crime (the rape of a woman and her husband’s murder), each person recounts the tale from a differing point of view, and it isn’t long before emotions run high.

Though Kurosawa wasn’t the first to use a fragmented narrative to deliver his tale, nobody else had really explored the potentials of using a fragmented narrative that deeply until Kurosawa. The narrative device isn’t used as a gimmick here, but rather to enhance the tail. The viewer is thrown right into the middle of the action and feels just as disoriented as the characters are. Still Kurosawa makes room for strong human drama, and the characters while not fully developed still convey strong human emotions. The acting is on the melodramatic side, but those used to Japanese films of the period will have no problem here, and the film boasts a strong performance by Toshiro Mifune as the bandit. Mifune brings humor, arrogance, and humanity to his role.

Kurosawa’s direction is sublime, and almost transcends the boundaries of cinema. From the opening shot of the rain soaked temple to the lush forest environment Kurosawa directs with a sensuality that never lets up. The scenes of the sun shining through the canopy as the wood cutter walks through the woods juxtaposed with the horror of the corpse’s hands is sublime. The swordfights in the forest are directed with a gritty, in your face style that directly opposes the stylistic beauty of Kurosawa’s other samurai films such as Seven Samurai and Ran, but in no way diminish the director’s eye for a strong action sequence.

Overall Rashomon is a great film; moving, exciting, and even funny at times it was the first masterpiece from a great filmmaker. Those uninitiated to the world of classic foreign film will also find Rashomon to be a strong starting point as it includes many familiar elements we see in the movies today. A fantastic film and a masterpiece on every level.

The Classics Corner #1: Aguirre, the Wrath of God

Genre: Adventure/Biography/Drama/History

Director: Werner Herzog

Producers: Werner Herzog, Hans Prescher

Writer: Werner Herzog

Cast: Klaus Kinski, Helena Rojo, Ruy Guerra, Del Negro

Music: Popol Vuh

Cinematography: Thomas Mauch

Editing: Beate Mainka-Jellinghaus

Distribution: Werner Herzog Filmproduktion

Release Date: December 29, 1972

Running Time: 100 min

Where to begin with this one? Where to begin? Aguirre, the Wrath of God was above all the love-child of two madmen named Werner Herzog and Klaus Kinski. The director and star went out into the Peruvian Jungle with a budget of about $370,000 and a stolen camera and returned with a classic. There are legends surrounding the making of the film, the numerous fights between Herzog and Kinski which culminated in Herzog *supposedly* pulling a gun on his star, the difficulty of the on-location shooting, the list goes on. What exactly is it about Aguirre, the Wrath of God though that makes the film classic? Let’s take a look.

The setting is Peru of the sixteenth century, and Pizarro’s men have just conquered the Incan Empire, now they set their sights of finding the mystical city of gold known as El Dorado. A party led by the insane Don Lope de Aguirre (Klaus Kinski) is sent upriver in search of the gold, but it’s not long before the nightmare begins as the forces of nature and an unseen enemy begins to pick off the party one by one and Aguirre begins to descend further into madness.

Herzog delivers the tale of Aguirre and his failed expedition in a dream-like, guerrilla style. There plot doesn’t move in the traditional sense of the word, instead what we get is a series of events that play out like a nightmare. The centerpiece here is Aguirre’s “descent” into madness. His insanity is like a virus that slowly infests the film until it builds up to an unforgettable conclusion where we see Aguirre “naked” to the world. Of course this wouldn’t be possible without a strong central performance from Kinski who does a fantastic job of building up the suspense. Most of the film we see Kinski walking and glaring, when he speaks it’s always in this strange, poetic way, and when he explodes well, he’s really exploding. It’s all very powerful stuff.

Herzog’s direction is sublime, his guerrilla approach to filmmaking coupled with the on-location shooting really lend to the enhancement of the atmosphere. The film is drenched by the lush, foreboding jungle. The film is breathtaking in its beauty, you could turn off the sound and just sit back and look at the cinematography and it would be no less amazing. The scenes only increase in grandeur and scope as the film carries on, the attack on the native village is sublime in its mixture of horror and beauty, and the final shot is devastating but amazing, a visual treat on every level.

Aguirre, the Wrath of God is a landmark of cinema, it’s a film which has influenced many others, even Apocalypse Now, and may even have been bested, but it’s still a masterpiece and a film to keep returning to.