August 25: High and Low/Tengoku to jigoku (1963 -- Akira Kurosawa)

★★★★★
This is the second time I’ve watched this movie but the first time I’ve really gotten it.  What mastery.  Kurosawa manages a wide range of characters here, all the while maintaining big stakes for everyone.  High and Low is theatrical, cinematic and even novelistic.  It’s among my favorites of his.

More than previously, I was impressed by the way Kurosawa uses the tools of the cinema here.  You have to watch the whole frame to get what’s happening in most scenes.  For example, when Gondo is talking with his evil assistant, the camera isn’t on the two faces in the conversation but on the scene, so you can see how the police, the wife and the chauffeur are reacting to the conversation.  That’s theatrical, but also very cinematic since the frame is communicating a lot of information about several characters at the same time.  I think of this in Altman or PT Anderson.  Or Renoir. I didn’t realize this technique was part of Kurosawa’s style.   One of the phone conversations is another great example of cinema economy.  The scene starts with Gondo talking on the phone, and the soundtrack continues with the conversation while the visuals cut from an image of Gondo on the phone to an image of everyone listening to a recording of the conversation.  Again, we can see how the conversation is affecting everyone in the movie with the screen full of characters.

High and Low also builds and builds the stakes until they are so high that you can’t imagine things could ever work out.  Not only is the kidnap victim at risk, but so is Gondo’s career.  And Kurosawa uses the Japanese culture of honor to raise the stakes even more, and to use this single kidnapping situation to question the entire economic development that Japan has undergone since the end of the war.  Early, the question is whether the corporate types will throw away quality and integrity in order to do business.  We learn that they will do so through the actions of Gondo’s assistant and through Gondo’s refusal to compromise on quality.  But the story then shifts to the question of whether Gondo will sacrifice his own material well-being for the life of the chauffeur’s son.  And when that’s decided, a large social question emerges; Will society respect and reward honor?  Throughout High and Low, we feel that nothing less than the culture of Japan itself is under stress, whether traditional values will bend to the demands of capital or not.  There’s a Shakespearean quality to the questions here as well as to the scope of the inquiry.

I like the range here, too, another Shakespearean element that makes even episode-based movies like High and Low feel epic in scope.  As the title implies, there is intrigue and conflict among those high on the hill, and there is grunt work, both among the police and the criminals, among those in the lower parts of the city.  In one compelling sequence, the police tail a suspect through honky-tonk bars and drug dens.  In this film, Kurosawa takes his camera through a big range of environments.

I also always respond to the humanity in Kurosawa, too, which can border on cute but which doesn’t  lapse into maudlin.  In the sequence on the train, the little aside when the policeman nods off captures both Kurosawa’s humanity as well as his use of comic touches to lighten the action.

I really liked this movie on the second viewing, and I’m sure it will hold up under subsequent.

August 21: Pale Flower/Kawaita hana (1964 -- Masahiro Shinoda)

★★★★★


Another great cinema experience here.  Pale Flower ranks with the beautiful films of bored existentialism from early 60s Antonioni, who deals with Europeans facing the same malaise as Muraki and Saeko here.  This Japanese pair see life as bland and uninteresting and seek thrill experiences to authenticate their existence. 

The thrills they seek include ever-higher gambling stakes as Saeko becomes used to risk and must wager more for excitement.  In fact, we learn that her intensity of living is so strong that even the other card players feel more alive when she’s there and look forward to her being in their game.  She also does a wild highway race with another sports car down Tokyo interstates in the middle of the night; the race ends when the driver of the other car stops and comes over to the couple, laughing hysterically.  He, too, had needed a thrill to feel authentic, and Saeko had shared that with him.  She even tries drugs as a way to feel, too, though we don’t see that scene.  I guess that if Masahiro Shinoda’s studio thought the card games were too graphic, they’d have definitely frowned on drug use. 

 Muraki is as bored as Saeko, as he says in voiceover at the film’s opening, but he’s experienced the intensity of truly living in killing another man; he explains to her that the feeling at the moment of killing is deeper and more authentic than any other thrill experience.  He feels some draw towards Saeko’s quest, but having felt intensely alive as he murdered the man, Muraki often doesn’t participate in Saeko’s seeking with the relish she does.  Having lived so intensely in doing his first killing, he finds that other thrills lack intensity, so he ultimately volunteers to do a hit for his gang even though he’ll return to jail because of it.  But before he kills his target, he seeks out Saeko so he can invite her share in the intensity of his moment.  It’s the climax of the film.

I like the ending of Pale Flower, too, sad and ironic as it is.  Muraki is in jail by then and unlikely to again feel authenticating thrill, while Saeko is dead, murdered in a scene which we hear involved sex and drugs; she was evidently continuing to seek intense thrill with the junkie Muraki had feared would lure her to her death.  We also see Muraki’s protégé show up at a card game in the suit that Muraki had given him, but the kid’s open face and body language tell the viewer that he has none of the depth of the man who'd previously worn the suit.  The young guy doesn’t understand what had been going on around him.

And layered on the philosophy, Pale Flower has gorgeous cinematography.  Shinoda uses intense blacks and whites and frequent strong composition in the frame, both two-dimensionally and leading into deep background.  The scenes of the (obscure-to-me) card games are tense and riveting even though a western viewer probably doesn’t understand the rules.  The films interiors are full and lit theatrically; its exteriors tight, creating the feel of characters trapped in a maze.  Even the clothes are remarkable with their elegance.  

Without the compelling characters and theme, I’d want to watch this movie just for its visuals.  With all of these elements together, Pale Flower if a great experience for the brain, the eye and the heart.

August 20: Topsy-Turvy (1999 -- Mike Leigh)

★★★★★

August 20: The Mikado (1939 -- Victor Schertzinger)

★★★

August 19: A Colt is my Passport/Koruto wa ore no pasupooto (1967 -- Takashi Nomura)

★★★★

This is the last in the Nikkatsu Noir series, and it’s a very fun time.  It drew a lot of things together for me.  The opening credits have music that is a western theme played by harmonica, and the blurry image behind the lettering appears to be a group of cowboys, though the distortion is so strong it’s hard to make out what you’re looking at.  And that would describe the movie as a whole.  It’s a western, with the hero taking care of his buddy, facing down the bad guys against overwhelming odds, and not expressing his love to his woman.  When I see the western-inspiring Yojimbo and Seven Samuri again, I’ll have a better understanding of how the flow in influences works.  Passport fills out a circle of influence, samurais going west, westerns heading east.  But Takashi Nomura doesn't see westerns as Americans do.  The western is history to us; in Japan (and most other places in the world), it’s a formal narrative pattern.  Now I get why it was possible for some directors to draw from the western and translate its elements into their own cinema.  I have to wonder if the opening music and image from Passport is a metaphor for how Nomura is using the western here.  You can’t easily make out the western elements in Passport since it’s a gangster film, but the outlines are there nevertheless.

And I get what mukokuseki film is about now, too.  This movie is a western (the dusty showdown ending was a by-the-numbers shootout), but it’s also a film noir with the strong shadows and contrasts, the threatening tone, and the overwhelming omnipresence of menace.  It’s hard not to imagine that the film is going to end badly.  And there’s a lot of stylized, over-the-top violence like you’d see in post-American New Wave film.  I think mukokuseki means blending genres, and Passport certainly does that.  And to very satisfactory ends.

There are even some sharp, self-reflexive elements in the film.  When the guys are casing the gangster in the opening of the film, they go through a series of scenes that are visual or cinematically noteworthy.  In each scene, you see the two men.  In the next sequence with Kamimura setting up the hit, the camera goes through the exact same shots, but there is no one in the shot.  This smart move not only gives the info that Kamimura is not planning an obvious hit, but it also makes us aware of the film’s composition and camera movement since we recognize all the cinematic elements on the second go-round.  Later, actors will look right at the camera, too.  Such breaking-the-fourth-wall gestures feel French New Wave to me.  As does the stylized, formal composition of many shots.

 This is the second film I’ve seen with Jo Shishido, and I think he’s an interesting presence on screen.  He’s long-legged tall, and his surgically-altered cheekbones make him distinctive.  He’s not handsome, but there’s always something appealing about him when he’s in front of the audience.  I’m looking forward to seeing him in other roles.

It’s also a little bit of a breakthrough for me to see these films and get an idea of where Tarantino is coming from.  I’ve thought for some time that Tarantino is doing a reverse Kurasawa; while Kurasawa takes western film language and uses it for Japanese cultural expression, Tarantino takes Asian and uses it for an American public.  Watching these Nikkatsu films, I’ve gotten a much stronger understanding of the material Tarantino draws from, and I find his work more accessible.

A Colt is My Passport is a fun film.  It might not be award winning (the exposition at the beginning is almost embarrassing), but it’s interesting to see how elements of styles that I think of as profoundly American can be appropriated for a different cultural expression.  What fun!

August 19: Cruel Gun Story/Kenjû zankoku monogatari (1964 -- Takumi Furukawa)

★★★★

This is a suspenseful, complicated, dark, existential caper film.  And the one in the Nikkatsu Noir collection that looks most familiar to my American eyes.  It’s got a lot of noir style — single-source lighting, low camera angles, contrasts, highlights and silhouettes.  And the settings of desolate environments like the abandoned American military base are appropriate for the dark mood.

I think it’s the mood here that feels most familiar to me.  Craggy-faced Togawa is a man of honor.  He’s been in jail for avenging a crippling injury to his sister, but he has a strict code of honor that inspires loyalty in those who know and have worked with him.  He can be ruthless – like when he guns down the two security guards – but this only comes out when he has to be so in the line of duty.  Otherwise, he’s a straight-up, honorable professional who does what he says, though as a professional, he doesn’t trust people and tries to cover all the angles.  And his main motivation is to get help for his sister.

But the world of Cruel Gun Story isn’t a world where honor is an advantage.  Nearly everyone here is involved in betrayal to some extent:  Togawa by his gangster boss, the boss by Togawa’s handler, Togawa by his  crew.  And Cruel Gun Story moves to dark ending where everyone, honorable and dishonorable, perish.  All have sinned in this film, and all suffer. 

A last element I like here is the suspense.  When the robbery occurs half way through the film, we know that the focus isn’t going to be on the heist but on what happens afterwards.  And the engaging story takes us into many different situations and contexts with unexpected twists and suspenseful coincidences.  Cruel Gun Story has a strong story.

This movie is one of the most enjoyable of the Nikkatsu Noir set.  I liked the familiarity of so many noir elements, and I enjoyed seeing them applied to the context of Japan, a different environment and culture that highlights the noir elements.  What a pleasure this film is.

August 18: Take Aim at the Police Van/Sono gososha o nerea (1960 -- Seijun Suzuki)

★★★★

Director Seijun Suzuki  is known for outlandish visuals and hipness in his films, and if I hadn’t known that, I’d have gotten it very quickly in this movie.  Take Aim is one fabulous, outrageous visual after another.  It starts with the sharpshooter firing into a police van in a jump cut ambush that is as riveting as anything at the beginning of an Indiana Jones movie, and it concludes with a nighttime shootout in a rail yard as clouds of brightly-lit steam pour out of engines.  In between, the hero and heroine are tied in the cab of a gas truck that is pushed down a hill side after the bad guys have opened the gas valve on the back.  The gangsters light the trail of gasoline, and a line of fire follows the truck across the countryside, down the hill and over a bridge, releasing a wall of smoke as the protagonists struggle to free themselves.  Oh, and a stripper is shot through the breast with an arrow elsewhere.  I’d have to agree with the description of Suzuki as visually “delirious.”  Films like this give me some insight into what Tarantino sees in Asian film.

But like in the other two Nikkatsu Noir films, I see a lot of French sensibility here.  When the cool Shoko is standing by the juke box, jivin’ with her friends, I see Nana from Vivre Sa Vie and Marianne From Pierrot le Fou.  Yuko is even listening to French accordion music at one point when she tells her maid to turn it off.  Whatever vibe Godard was picking up on, Suzuki was in tune.

Take Aim’s editing, with its contrasts and gaps, harkens to the editing that is coming in French New Wave, too.  In fact, the story itself is densely convoluted, so much so that Suzuki resorts to a voice-over to keep the viewer somewhat on target with what’s going on and why.  Those moments are not Suzuki’s best cinema, but he’s more interested in smoking lines of flame going across the countryside than in his story anyway.  The story here is a thin excuse to get from one striking visual to the next.

You can already see Suzuki’s attraction to cool in this film, too.  His bad guy wears sunglasses at night, and his sharpshooter puts his gum on the spotter scope before he starts shooting.  Bad guys are dressed immaculately in fashionable clothes, and hipsters pack into cars in their hippest.  The only unfashionable people here are the hero and the police, who are very square.

Take Aim is still noir.  The black-and-white contrasts and conspicuously low camera angles point to the source for at least some of the filmmaking, and there is (finally) a femme fatale here.  But the femme fatale is an unintentional problem-maker, and like the other Nikkatsu noirs, this film is aiming not only at a police van but also at a social goal, to protect young women from prostitution.  The social message is not something I find in American noir, but it’s in these Nikkatsus a good deal.  Even though Suzuki gives it short shrift in his pursuit of the cool and of arresting images.