Archive for the ‘Cinema Classics’ Category

  • 11 Jun

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    DVD Review: Ozu – Three Melodramas

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    Ozu – Three Melodramas is, you guessed it, a DVD collection containing three fine examples of Yasujiro Ozu’s work within the genre he was most synonymous with, melodrama. I use that term lightly, as his subtle touch doesn’t seem to fit the mould, more just the subject matter of much of his work. Included in the set is an early silent film, Woman of Tokyo (1933), and the two films he made after Tokyo Story, Early Spring (1956) and Tokyo Twilight (1957). Below I give brief reviews of each feature and look at the set as a whole.

    Woman of Tokyo

    Director: Yasujiro Ozu
    Screenplay: Kogo Noda & Tadao Ikeda
    Starring: Yoshiko Okada, Ureo Egawa and Kinuyo Tanaka
    Country: Japan
    Running Time: 45 min
    Year: 1933

    (3.5/5)


    Produced not long after Where Now Are the Dreams of Youth, Woman of Tokyo is one of Ozu’s later silent films and, like the former, isn’t quite as refined and perfect as his later, more popular work, but is nonetheless beautifully made and can be recommended to fans of the director.

    Woman of Tokyo tells the story of Ryoichi (Ureo Egawa) and Chikako (Yoshiko Okada) who are brother and sister and share an apartment in Tokyo. Ryoichi is a student and relies on Chikako to pay his way with her office job. Ryoichi’s girlfriend Harue (Kinuyo Tanaka) however, hears a rumour through her policeman brother that Chikako actually moonlights at night as a prostitute to make ends meet. When Ryoichi finds out he doesn’t know how to react to this shocking revelation.

    Being a short ‘semi-feature’ at only 45 minutes and having actually been produced very quickly (in 8 days), Woman of Tokyo does feel quite rushed when compared to Ozu’s more well known work. It has many early examples of his great use of cutaways, but here they are often used over scenes playing out rather than to break things up. There are some wonderful match cuts though, such as when a scene of Chikako heading off on her latest ‘job’ ends on a street lamp then cuts to Ryoichi’s room light to signify that he’s been waiting up all night for her. Of course it looks fantastic too as Ozu had settled into his signature style by this point.

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  • 10 Jun

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    Happy Birthday, Judy Garland

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    Back when I was a Hollywood musicals-obsessed kid, Judy Garland was understandably one of my favorite stars. By the time I was 15, I could count the number of her films I HADN’T seen on one hand. As a youngster with lots of time and parents who encouraged my classic film obsession, I made many attempts to form marathons to watch favorite stars’ films on their birthdays, but the Judy Garland one is the only one I stuck with for years in a row – even today, when I see June 10th looming on a calendar, her name immediately springs to my lips, as if an old childhood friend’s birthday was once again right around the corner.

    As I grew older, my appreciation for her bigger-than-life talent and her courage in the face of personal hardship only grew as well, along with an unshakeable sense that not only was she a great singer (undeniable by anyone who’s ever heard her sing), but she was also an underrated actress, as evidenced not only by her perfect control of emotion while singing, but also in her few purely dramatic roles like The Clock and Judgement at Nuremberg, and a gifted comedienne, as evidenced by her comic timing in most every film, and her satirical performance in numbers like “A Great Lady Has an Interview” in Ziegfeld Follies (watch). In short, Judy was the consummate performer, managing to be relatable and awe-inspiring at the same time, and we haven’t seen anyone to match her since.

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  • 07 Jun

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    Blu-Ray Review: This Happy Breed

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    Director: David Lean
    Screenplay: Anthony Havelock-Allan, David Lean & Ronald Neame
    Based on a Play by: Noel Coward
    Starring: Robert Newton, Celia Johnson, John Mills, Stanley Holloway
    Producer: Noel Coward
    Country: UK
    Running Time: 110 min
    Year: 1944
    BBFC Certificate: U

    (3.5/5)


    David Lean is one of Britain’s most well respected directors, responsible for such undisputed classics as Lawrence of Arabia, The Bridge on the River Kwai and Great Expectations to name a few. Starting his career as an editor, he got into directing through working with the renowned playwright and actor (among other talents) Noel Coward on four films, In Which We Serve, Blithe Spirit, Brief Encounter and this, his first solo directorial credit, This Happy Breed (In Which We Serve came first, but was co-directed with Coward).

    This 1944 film is being re-released at a perfect time with the Queen’s Jubilee fresh in our minds as it’s full of unabashed patriotism and is a film that openly celebrates ‘true Britishness’. Made at the height of the Second World War, This Happy Breed is a clear attempt to drum up a ‘stiff upper lip’ attitude on our green shores by telling the story of a supposedly average family, the Gibbons’. The film begins just after the end of the First World War and spans the trials and tribulations of a married couple (Robert Newton & Celia Johnson), their three children and their mother and spinster sister that live with them all the way up to the eve of the following war in 1939. The first half is all peaches and cream with friends being made, romances blossoming etc. but the second half puts many hardships onto the family which they battle through with poise and strength.

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  • 17 May

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    For the Love of Film Blogathon: The White Shadow

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    [I'm reprinting this article I posted on The Frame yesterday in support of the For the Love of Film blogathon and fundraiser, which continues until tomorrow. This year, hosts Marilyn Ferdinand, Farran Smith Nehme and Roderick Heath have dedicated the week to Alfred Hitchcock, whose early (non-directorial) work The White Shadow will be the beneficiary of any money earned during the event, to support the National Film Preservation Foundation's desire to stream the film online for free. Be sure to donate so you can see this very-nearly lost film yourself!]

    We excitedly gathered on the sidewalk, anticipating being let into the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences’ own screening room, the Samuel Goldwyn Theatre in Beverly Hills. VIPs slipped by, headed toward the bar or lounge in their finery, while the rest of us waited, patient but anxious to begin the evening’s entertainment. Any screening at the Samuel Goldwyn Theatre is a treat, a step into a more opulent past presented by the self-appointed guardians of Hollywood history, but this was no ordinary screening. This was the very first appearance of an early, long-thought-lost Hitchcock film pretty much since its original release in 1924. Well, technically Hitchcock was the Assistant Director on the film (and he tended to get in on every part of production he could in those early days, so likely he was doing much more), the second of two collaborations with director Graham Cutts and actress Betty Compson, apparently rushed into production to capitalize on the popularity of the first, Woman to Woman. According to producer Michael Balcon, “it was as big a flop as Woman to Woman had been a success.” But Woman to Woman remains a lost film, and in any case, The White Shadow could’ve been a terrible movie and we still would’ve been ecstatic to see it.

    Our excitement was first of all out of curiosity to see if we could see any glimpses of Hitchcock in the film’s style, but also simply because here’s a film that has been thought lost for decades, turned up (partially at least) in an archive in New Zealand, along with a bunch of other long-lost films. If we can still locate treasure troves like this in 2011, what else might still be out there, waiting for intrepid archivists to find it, figure out what it is, and restore it so the world can rediscover it?

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  • 30 Apr

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    Cinema Classics: Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

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    [Originally published on The Frame as part of a Blind Spots series addressing films on my List of Shame]

    This has been an extremely difficult review to sit down and write, largely because this film elicited such strong and conflicting reactions from me both while viewing it, and thinking back on it afterwards. I have never felt so in turmoil about a film, even while in the midst of watching it, my thoughts and emotions swirling back and forth even within the same scene. Loving it, hating it, sympathizing, being repulsed, being moved, understanding, feeling detached, exasperated, annoyed, intrigued, heartbroken, unresolved. Of course, maybe that’s utterly appropriate, given that the film is about a couple constantly at each other’s throats, except when they’re in each other’s arms, who drag a younger couple along with them on a night of “fun and games.” But what is the game, and what are the rules, and who’s having fun? The answers to those questions shift as often as my emotions did, and with as little warning or explanation.

    George and Martha are a middle-aged academic couple, respectively a professor in history and the daughter of the university’s long-time president. As the film opens, they’re wending their way home after a university party, chatting quietly while lovely and calm background music plays. But even at this most peaceful point in the movie, they quickly fall into a rhythm of argument, clearly their default mode of interacting with each other. As they return home, Martha quotes one of Bette Davis’s campiest characters, proclaiming “What a dump,” then hounding George to tell what movie it’s from. At this point, the movie was already grating on me pretty badly, and it’s only getting started!

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  • 21 Mar

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    Rep Cinemagoing: Modern Times

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    The thing that makes me happiest in the world is seeing audiences respond to classic films with joy and wonder, and that’s exactly what I saw last week when Cinefamily screened Modern Times to a nearly full audience. First off, it’s awesome that 150 people will choose a Chaplin silent film over the hoards of other entertainment options in this city, but it’s proven to me again and again that Chaplin (or Keaton) will still pack them in at Cinefamily, as they run these films every year or so to delighted audiences. Last time they ran Modern Times, though, I think I wasn’t able to go. This time it coincided with my volunteering night, so once I finished taking tickets, seating people, and clearing up a minor popcorn vs gravity issue, I settled in just as the credits finished to watch my favorite Chaplin film with a wonderfully receptive audience.

    I’ve seen Modern Times probably five or six times, but never before with an audience, and it added an awful lot to the experience. The film itself is incredible, and falls squarely within my top twenty of all time. Chaplin’s tramp starts off as a cog in the machine (literally, at one point) of a steel factory, spending his days tightening bolts on an endless stream of conveyor-belt carried steel plates. Slowing down piles him into the workers further down the assembly line, and stopping (for lunch) puts him into spasms as his muscles try to continue the tightening motions. After being put into an automatic lunch machine to test it – with hilarious results – he ends up having a nervous breakdown, losing his job, getting arrested by accident, meeting up with an orphan waif from the docks, trying to find a job to support her and protect her from the child services authorities, etc.

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  • 05 Dec

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    Fighting for 35mm…and Our Cinematic Heritage

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    There’s no doubt that the future of cinema is going to be digital rather than film (as a physical format). Theatres are converting to digital projection right and left, with fewer and fewer 35mm film prints struck all the time, and the major camera manufacturers are ceasing production of film cameras to focus solely on digital cameras instead. It’s where the demand is. But this shift to digital doesn’t only affect new films, which are likely to be shot, edited, and projected digitally, never spending any phase of their creation on physical film – it also affects older films, which were shot on 35mm and meant to be projected on 35mm. Many Hollywood studios have declared their intention to stop producing 35mm prints of older films for use in repertory cinemas, museums, film forums, universities, etc, instead presenting those films only in digital formats as well.

    On the one hand, it’s easy to see why this makes sense to them. Digital copies are much easier and cheaper to store and transfer to theatres than bulky 35mm film prints. And many people will argue that digital looks better anyway, or at least consumers won’t be able to tell the difference. I heartily disagree with that – I love the tactile, physical look that 35mm has vs. the sterility of digital. But my point of view is quickly labeled romantic and old-fashioned in a world where cinema is a business and 35mm is antiquated technology. To some degree, it is a romantic perspective. I certainly get a rush of emotion every time I walk into the Silent Movie Theatre and see the film canisters sitting there, ready to be lovingly threaded through the projector by the seasoned projectionist for the evening’s screening. I smile when I see the cigarette burns signalling a reel change. I feel a connection to other audiences when a print is flawed through its many uses in other cinemas, screened for other audiences in other places. But what do my emotions, certainly the emotions of a minority of cinemagoers, matter in this equation?

    I’m definitely not alone in my love for seeing films projected on 35mm (or 70mm or whatever format was originally used to shoot them) – Julia Marchese of Los Angeles’s New Beverly Cinema, one of the foremost repertory cinemas in the country and one that would certainly feel the loss of 35mm prints, has started an online petition to Fight for 35mm. It currently has nearly 6,000 signatures of a hoped-for 10,000. Here’s the bulk of her plea:

    I firmly believe that when you go out to the cinema, the film should be shown in 35mm. At the New Beverly, we have never been about making money – a double feature ticket costs only $8. We are passionate about cinema and film lovers. We still use a reel to reel projection system, and our projectionists care dearly about film, checking each print carefully before it screens and monitoring the film as it runs to ensure the best projection possible. With digital screenings, the projectionists will become obsolete and the film will be run by ushers pushing a button – they don’t ever have to even enter the theater.

    The human touch will be entirely taken away. The New Beverly Cinema tries our hardest to be a timeless establishment that represents the best that the art of cinema has to offer. We want to remain a haven where true film lovers can watch a film as it was meant to be seen – in 35mm. Revival houses perform an undeniable service to movie watchers – a chance to watch films with an audience that would otherwise only be available for home viewing. Film is meant to be a communal experience, and nothing can surpass watching a film with a receptive audience, in a cinema, projected from a film print.

    I feel very strongly about this issue and cannot stand idly by and let digital projection destroy the art that I live for. As one voice I cannot change the future, but hopefully if enough film lovers speak up, we can prove to the studios that repertory cinema is important and that we want 35mm to remain available to screen.

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  • 09 Nov

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    AFI Fest 2011: Le cercle rouge (1970)

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    (5/5)

    Usually I skip repertory screenings at festivals to focus on the newer stuff that I might not be able to see elsewhere, but when I saw that Artistic Director Pedro Almodóvar had programmed Jean-Pierre Melville’s crime drama Le cercle rouge, I couldn’t resist. I’ve been meaning to see this film for quite a while, ever since I saw and loved Le samourai, but despite a nice Criterion release and it even being on Instant Watch for a while, I didn’t get around to it. Seems like when that happens, I end up with the perfect opportunity to see it on a big screen in a great place like the Egyptian Theatre. Melville is quite simply France’s master of crime dramas (no disrespect to Chabrol or Clouzot, who tended a bit more toward the mystery/thriller aspect anyway), and this film combines elements of crime drama, police procedural, and heist film together perfectly into an intricate slow burn building to its inevitable climax.

    Initially, there are two major strands of story. Detective Mattei (André Bourvil) is escorting a suspect, Vogel (Gian-Maria Volonté), on a train when Vogel manages to escape. Meanwhile, Corey (Alain Delon) is being released from prison, but not before being tipped off by a corrupt prison guard about a really great potential job. Corey shakes down a mob friend of his for some money, which sets the rest of the mob on his tail. Vogel happens upon Corey’s car as he’s trying to evade the police dragnet and gets in the trunk, which Corey notices but protects him. The two decide to work the tipped-off job together, bringing in former police sharpshooter Jansen (Yves Montand) as well. So the mob is after Corey, Mattei and the police are after Vogel, the internal affairs department is after Mattei for letting Vogel escape, Jansen is recovering from the DTs, they’re all harrassing a nightclub owner who has mob connections as well as ties to Vogel, and in the midst of all this, Corey, Vogel, and Jansen are planning a major jewel heist. Yes, it’s really complicated, but never once was anything confusing.

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  • 04 Oct

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    Finite Focus: Battling the Elements for 116 Years [Buster Keaton]

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    Well, not quite 116 years. Buster Keaton would’ve turned 116 today, and his films have been delighting audiences for 94 of those years. One of the three great silent comedians (along with Charlie Chaplin and Harold Lloyd), Keaton’s name doesn’t always strike the immediate recognition among mainsteam audiences that Chaplin’s might, but for me, and for many who have seen his films, Keaton’s particular brand of stone-faced endurance against any and all elements that would seek to do him in – from enemy soldiers to angry fathers to hordes of cops to nature itself – can hardly be beat.

    Keaton was a genius at physical comedy, and though Chaplin practically has a patent on the word “pathos,” Keaton’s stoicism manages to get just as much or more true emotion. You feel for him because he refuses to ask for your empathy. Meanwhile, he was busy working through some of the most incredible stunts ever put on film, which he did all himself. The first “whoa” moment watching a Keaton film is always “whoa, they did this before they had computers and stuff,” and the second is always “whoa, he’s doing this himself without stunt double to fill in.” Chaplin did this too, don’t get me wrong, and I love Chaplin to bits, but I get a sense of real danger with Buster that’s quite exhilarating without ever failing to be funny.

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  • 14 Sep

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    DVD Review: The Iron Horse

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    Director: John Ford
    Screenplay: Charles Kenyon & John Russell
    Starring: George O’Brien, Madge Bellamy, Fred Kohler, Cyril Chadwick
    Producer: William Fox
    Country: USA
    Running Time: 150 & 133 min
    Year: 1924
    BBFC Certification: PG

    (4/5)

    The Iron Horse was John Ford’s breakthrough film. At the tender age of 29 Ford had already directed around 50 films (most of which were shorts), but it was his involvement in this, one of the earliest blockbusters, that gave his name clout in Hollywood and set him on his way to becoming one of, if not the most famous and celebrated of American directors. I must admit, despite the pedigree I was a little hesitant to sit down and watch The Iron Horse. As open-minded as I am in my film-viewing, a two and a half hour silent film about building a railway sounded a bit dull. I was expecting to appreciate watching some big epic visuals but grow tired of a dated, slow narrative. In actual fact what I got was pretty much the opposite.

    The film charts the construction of America’s first transcontinental railway from a mere dream to Abraham Lincoln’s signing of the bill to start work, all the way to the last nail being hammered in as the Union Pacific and Central Pacific lines meet in the middle. Of course, simply watching the rails getting laid wouldn’t make much of a movie though, so the massive achievement is used to frame a classic love story. Davy Brandon’s father dreams of the day East and West were linked and takes his son West to fulfil this, leaving behind the boy’s best friend Miriam Marsh. On the way Brandon senior is killed by a group of Cheyenne, led by a two-fingered white man, but Davy escapes. We jump forward several years to the start of work on the tracks where we follow a now grown up Miriam (Madge Bellamy) who lives with her father and fiancé, working on the Union Pacific line. Deroux (Fred Kohler), a nasty piece of work, wants to persuade Miriam’s father to take a longer route through land that he owns, which seems to be the case until Davy (George O’Brien) shows up out of the blue. Through his travels with his father he found a shortcut through the mountains. This of course causes problems for Deroux and Jesson (Cyril Chadwick), his right hand man and fiancé to Miriam. These two therefore plot out numerous ways put a stop to the righteous Davy.

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  • 13 Sep

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    DVD/Blu-Ray Review: Harakiri (a.k.a. Seppuku)

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    Director: Masaki Kobayashi
    Screenplay: Shinobu Hashimoto
    Starring: Tatsuya Nakadai, Rentarō Mikuni, Akira Ishihama, Shima Iwashita
    Producer: Tatsuo Miyajima
    Country: Japan
    Running Time: 133 min
    Year: 1962
    BBFC Certification: 15

    (5/5)

    I’ve been enjoying my own personal samurai renaissance recently with 13 Assassins greatly impressing me last month, followed by my first viewing of Harakiri (a.k.a. Seppuku), which simply blew me away. Both take quite different approaches to the genre. They share a similar rhythm of having a slow initial two acts followed an explosive finale, but where 13 Assassins‘ first hour and a half is all build up to an inevitable epic showdown, Harakiri is a much more measured affair, slowly playing it’s cards in an engrossing, bitter tale of the nature honour through poverty and hardship. It’s violent conclusion was almost unexpected, making it all the more powerful.

    Let’s backtrack a bit though. Harakiri opens with Tsugumō Hanshirō (Tatsuya Nakadai) arriving at the home of the Iyi clan. He is a masterless samurai due to the dissolution of the private warriors of the daimyō (local warlords) and the Iyi are a group that had made peace with the ruling Tokugawa clan, thus retaining their samurai army. Tsugumō meets with the house’s masters and requests if he may have the honour of committing harakiri/seppuku (ritual suicide) in their courtyard in a manner befitting a former samurai.

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  • 11 May

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    TCM Film Festival: 1930s Rarities

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    Though of course it’s great getting the chance to see any older film on a big screen, there’s a special thrill that comes with seeing things that you know aren’t easily available elsewhere or that haven’t been seen for a long time. That’s the case with all three of these films, early 1930s films that have been out of circulation for over seventy years, pretty much only seen in the interim by scholars, archivists, and collectors with bootleg copies. Even though I rate all of them as three or three and a half stars, which is generally not that great a rating from me, that’s mostly because I doubt the films will hold that much interest for people who aren’t massive ’30s film buffs. But for those of us who are, getting to see them with a theatre full of like-minded ’30s film buffs was a real treat, and had an extra edge of rediscovery that was almost palpable in the air. And, as Robert Osborne said when introducing Night Flight (which he admitted he’d only seen in bootleg copies and didn’t think entirely worked as a film), “it may not be that good, it might even be bad, but when you’re a film buff, you can’t have a movie with Myrna Loy, two Barrymores, and Clark Gable in it and not look at it.” The 500 people filling up the theatre agreed vociferously.

    This is the Night (1932)

    (3.5/5)

    A fifth-billed Cary Grant makes his first screen entrance walking up the stairs to his lavish apartment singing and carrying a quiver full of javelins – he’s an Olympic javelin thrower whose wife (Thelma Todd) is stepping out on him with Roland Young. That in itself is kind of a ludicrous proposition, but somehow the cast makes it work. When a ticket delivery mixup (caused by the very funny and flustered Charles Ruggles) results in Grant getting suspicious, Young makes up a wife, then hires actress Lily Damita to play his wife as they all go on a holiday together in Venice. Where things get even more confused.

    Of all these names, only Grant is well-known now, but at the time, these were all fairly major stars, and their collective sense of comic timing makes this farce extremely enjoyable to watch. Made in 1932, the film is pre-Code, relying a lot on naughty suggestions (one repeated gag is Young’s chauffeur repeatedly closing doors on Todd’s dresses, causing them to fall off, leading to the patter song “Madame Has Lost Her Dress”) and double entendres – Grant’s not carrying around javelins for no reason. Damita gets a bit too wishy-washy at times and the ending is far too pat, but the comedy bits are extremely winning. This was pretty easily the most pleasant surprise of the festival for me – I expected to only watch it for the historical value of Grant’s debut, but ended up enjoying pretty much everything about it.

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