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SCREENING LOG
-1/19-1/25, 2004
Back to 2004 Index
I watched THE WEDDING MARCH, MOROCCO, THE LAST COMMAND, SHANGHAI
EXPRESS, PICCADILLY, YOJIMBO and TOKYO STORY.
Josef von Sternberg x3:
Having furthered my expedition into Sternbergland, he has
now vaulted into my personal pantheon of favorite directors.
Frankly I don't understand why he isn't more renowned and
revered among serious film critics and historians. Bresson,
Fassbinder, Hawks, Leone, Lynch, Ozu, Wong Kar Wai... you
can find shared virtues if not outright influences on their
work in Sternberg. Is it that he's too "campy" or "fake"?
Hell, what in Hollywood isn't? That's what all movies are
about in a sense: fakeness, artifice, surface -- and moreover,
the dangerously real feelings and desires they encode. And
not everyone encodes their feelings with such a level of investment,
so that every look, gesture, shadow and prop rings with significance
and a sense of beckoning to the audience, "look at what's
been placed in front of you, and savor it for what it is before
you ask what it means." I can't wait to see these films again,
I could watch them on an endless loop.
The Last Command (1928) second viewing
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0019071/
An odd early career masterpiece that doesn't quite fit the
mood and style of a typical Sternberg film, but certainly
works in more conventional terms of robust epic storytelling
with sweepingly dramatic twists of fate. Jannings, in his
first collaboration with Sternberg (followed up by THE BLUE
ANGEL), is memorable as a Russian general who loses everything
in the Revolution and resurfaces as a Hollywood extra. It
makes sense that Emil Jannings was the first to win a Best
Actor Oscar, as he pioneered the Oscar-mongering school of
distressed acting, brandishing an arsenal of physical tics
and wide eyed, apoplectic expressions. Sternberg would never
be as permissive with his actors in subsequent films, concentrating
their behaviors into far more simplified and knowing gestures.
Thematically the film resonates with his later works in dealing
with an individual's crisis of faith in the face of cataclysmic
change, a hard-edged but oddly touching depiction of the redemptive
power of love (a female Bolshevik spy becomes Jannings' savior),
and most striking of all, the transformation of reality and
history by the Hollywood Dream Machine, as realized in the
stunning climax. The film serves as an entertaining and intriguing
blueprint for the ideas that Sternberg would use to create
his own unmistakable idiom. #7 for 1928 between THE CIRCUS
and THE WEDDING MARCH
Morocco (1930)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0021156/
Marlene Dietrich dresses in top hat and tails, woos two
men while kissing a woman, and ends up giving it all away
to wander barefoot in the African desert in this glorious
dream that's much too fun to be taken seriously, yet too serious
to be taken lightly. Amidst a thick jungle of light and dappled
shadows, Dietrich gains the awe of all Morocco in a legendary
cabaret act, then spends the rest of the film figuring out
her next move -- to marry a intelligent and wealthy playboy
(Adolphe Menjou) or run off with a boyish, no-good French
Legionnaire (Gary Cooper before he went proto-Tom Hanks, conveying
mucho sex appeal and a touch of existential poignancy with
his silly, irreverent salutes -- an inadvertently positive
result of his displeasure with the production). The languid
conflict becomes an occasion to reflect on the getting and
letting go of power; how the quest to retain power becomes
a kind of enslavement; how self-possession is achieved in
letting go. These characters live moment by moment and because
of that they occupy each flickering frame to the fullest.
#2 for 1930 between EARTH and THE BLUE ANGEL
Shanghai Express (1932)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0023458/
A train full of foreign expatriates and Chinese passes through
a dark sumptuous fog of light and shadow known as pre-revolutionary
China, Hollywood Style, which becomes a swirling vortex of
treachery and violence through which they must climb their
way out. Sternberg by now has fully mastered the kinds of
showdowns between people conveyed in the mere looks between
people, how a single glance by Dietrich at a stranger conveys
waves of activity going on inside her brain, and later on,
the "I know that you know that I know" kinds of looks that
people exchange such that dialogue seems almost superfluous
(and would prove to be in later Sternberg films). Everyone
in the ensemble is first rate as their characters negotiate
tentative alliances while contending with a common enemy (it
comes as little surprise that Howard Hawks worked on the script).
Most alluring is the bond forged between Marlene Dietrich
(as Shanghai Lily) and Anna May Wong as a Chinese prostitute
trying to start her life over -- while hardly speaking with
each other, they form a solidarity of scarlet woman that is
mysterious and touching, not to mention sexy as hell. #3 for
1932 between SCARFACE and VAMPYR
Anna May Wong encore:
Piccadilly (1929, E.A. Dupont)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0020269/
Anna May Wong, spurned in Hollywood for want of ethnic roles,
became a European sensation in this masterpiece by outdoing
Louise Brooks as a more streetwise but no less sexual ingenue
who dares a dalliance with her manager (Jameson Thomas) in
this exciting look at backstage intrigues that cast a documentary-like
shadow on prevailing social conditions, much in the manner
of King Vidor. A stellar cast (especially Gilda Gray, who
introduces the world to the shimmy while casting a jealous
eye on Wong; Charles Laugton in a gluttinous cameo; and King
Ho-Chang who, next to Joe Pesci, gives the best performance
by a restaurant owner-turned-thespian), combined with Dupont's
virtuoso camera tricks, add plenty of showmanlike oomph to
the melodrama. This is a great film in serious need of rediscovery,
one that should figure in a history of British cinema for
its unique multicultural view of London life, not to mention
its cinematic excellence. #3 for 1929 between UN CHIEN ANDALOU
and PANDORA'S BOX
Tokyo Story (1953, Yasujiro Ozu) fourth viewing
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0046438/
I finally got my hands on the recently released Criterion
DVD, and it was worth the wait. The transfer print isn't perfect
but still luminous and sharp. The commentary by David Desser,
author of OZU'S TOKYO STORY, is highly informative and perceptive
in describing Ozu's innovative approach to story and composition
scene-by-scene. His commentary is highly recommended, especially
for those who don't feel they "get" what Ozu is up to but
are still curious. One issue that Desser raised that I'm still
thinking about is that of the perceived didacticism of the
film, esp. concerning Ozu's depiction of Shige, the unsympathetic
older daughter. She seems to stand in for every detestable
value in contemporary Japanese: selfishness, manipulation
of others, and insensitivity to others' problems. Even when
she seems to express grief and sorrow, it's unclear whether
to take it as genuine or as how she is expected to behave.
Desser doesn't seem to mind this so much and finds it to be
a kind of ironic in-joke between Ozu and the actress Haruki
Sugimura, as she played far more endearing characters in other
Ozu movies. Whatever the case I don't think an understanding
of her character or the film as a whole is complete without
reflecting on the last scene between Setsuko Hara and Chishu
Ryu, in contemplating what Ozu is trying to say about the
ever-shifting roles played between parents and children, and
how people are to respond in the face of these ineffable changes.
#1 for 1953
The second disc features the invaluable two-hour documentary
I Lived, But... (1983, Kazuo Inoue) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0326963/
, a candid and insightful overview of Ozu's life and a film-by-film
account of his career, with a generous sampling of interviews
with his old cast and crew members as well as esteemed film
scholars such as Tadao Sato and Donald Richie. Two issues
raised by the film that piqued my interest while not discussing
them exhaustively were: a) Ozu's military experience and how
it affected both him and his films; and b) Ozu's relationship
with his mother, with whom he lived nearly all his life as
a bachelor. The film brings up the concept of "mu" (nothingness),
the single word etched on Ozu's gravestone, but doesn't really
delve into how this concept was developed over Ozu's career.
These minor qualms aside, the film is a treasure trove of
interviews and biographical background.
Also included is the 40-minute piece Talking with Ozu, a
collection of interviews from 1993 with several filmmakers:
Stanley Kwan, Aki Kaurismaki, Claire Denis, Lindsay Anderson,
Wim Wenders, Paul Schrader and Hou Hsiao Hsien. Kwan's struck
me as being the most personal and affecting, as he compared
Ozu's films to his own relationship with his father. Kaurismaki
was typically coy and self-deprecatingly funny while managing
to convey a world of gratitude to his "mentor." Wenders affectionately
recalls his own encounters with Ozu's friends while filming
his own Ozu documentary. The rest are less obviously personal
and more reflective on Ozu's artistic significance -- Schrader's
is stultifyingly dry, and it's curious why Hou Hsiao Hsien
is even included as he seems to imply that he had watched
Ozu's movies only recently and is being asked to comment on
a filmmaker with whom he as become associated with regardless
of familiarity or influence.
The Wedding March (1928, Erich von Stroheim) second
viewing
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0019558/
Another frustratingly unfinished film by von Stroheim that
has many great moments and hints at greater ones that have
been consigned to oblivion. Stroheim plays an unlikeable,
profligate aristocrat who improbably falls in love with a
commoner (an enchanting and haunting Fay Wray), only to throw
his love away in order to mary a rich invalid (Zasu Pitts
equally enchanting and haunting). Stroheim is an interesting
but daunting director to defend, whose vision is invariably
compromised from film to film. Stroheim was the Quixotic champion
of the impossible movie, who tried to stretch the cinematic
experience to fit the space and time of the world. It sounds
absurd yet there's nothing quite like what he does,and in
this particular film it probably shouldn't work as well as
it does -- the characterizations are broad and the moral development
of the story rather clockwork, and then there's von Stroheim's
notorious tendency to stretch his scenes to lengths that would
drive most studio execs (and audiences) up the wall (and so
it was with Irving Thalberg). But the duration of the scenes
have a way of imposing the world on the viewer, as if to say,
"Take it easy, live in the moment, soak up the scene and let
it move you." This works wonderfully in the scene where we
Stroheim on horseback first meets Wray while both observe
a ceremony -- the cuts back and forth between them emphasizes
their class differences and the impropriety of any conversation
between them, and yet create mounting erotic tension between
them until finally Stroheim loses control of his horse and
it rears up, knocking Wray unconscious . And then there's
the romantic interlude amidst an impossibly beautiful bough
of apple blossoms, a scene that seems to go on forever and
could have for all I cared. It makes the subsequent, impending
sense of dread and doom that pervades the last half hour all
the more poignant and crushingly felt. #8 for 1928 between
THE WEDDING MARCH and STREET ANGEL
Yojimbo (1961, Akira Kurosawa)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0055630/
Kurosawa re-envisions the battle against the scourges of
greed and corruption explored in THE BAD SLEEP WELL, this
time as a cunning genre exercise, a potent blend of sneaky
film noir, chambara swordplay and showdown western. The story
is based on a Dashiell Hammet novel and Mifune's ultra-cool,
double-crossing samurai shares a number of characteristics
with Hammett's nobly treacherous Sam Spade while also working
as a less conflicted and more enjoyably badass version of
Hamlet (the inspiration for BAD SLEEP WELL). Lots of posturing
and gimpy expressions by the Kurosawa stock company give the
film a light comic touch that makes the film more accessible
and palatable to most viewers, while diminishing any possible
questions about the dubiousness of the acts committed on behalf
of Good against Evil. In terms of his re-envisioning three
genres and weaving them into a riveting narrative, Kurosawa's
formal brilliance is highly evident, fashioning a seductively
sardonic and even sadistic brand of cool, though I can't say
I'm entirely pleased that this has proven to be one of his
most influential legacies carried on by mainstream filmmaking.
I also wonder if it's hypocritical to say that I prefer Leone's
THE GOOD THE BAD AND THE UGLY over this, esp. since Leone
owes much to Kurosawa, and the virtues of both films rest
on sexing up the unpleasant notion of life as a brutal, cutthroat
battle of deterministic survival. I'd argue that unlike TGTB&TU,
YOJIMBO doesn't give proper care to its villains, so that
it becomes an easy set 'em up and cut 'em down procedural;
furthermore it doesn't really explore the darkness of its
hero or comment critically on the cruelty he inflicts as Leone
does with Eastwood. Of course this is not to say that most
viewers would not notice much less care about such a distinction,
but for now it gives as good a rationalization for my gut
reactions as any. #7 for 1961 between THE HUSTLER and THIRD
SISTER LIU
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