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Sansho the Bailiff (Mizoguchi)
The Green Ray (Rohmer)
Mirror (Tarkovsky)
Alice in the Cities (Wenders)
North by Northwest (Hitchcock)
Abraham Valley (Oliveira)
Some Like it Hot (Wilder)
Rules of the Game (Renoir)
Sunrise (Murnau)
Andrei Rublev (Tarkovsky)
Maborosi (Koreeda)
Paris, Texas (Wenders)
Celine and Julie go Boating (Rivette)
The Band Wagon (Minnelli)
Pather Panchali (S.Ray)
Seven Samurai (Kurosawa)
Hiroshima mon Amour (Resnais)
Vertigo (Hitchcock)
Mulholland Dr (Lynch)
Casablanca (Curtiz)
Tale of Tales (Norstein)
L'Avventura (Antonioni)
Lists
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Welsh Actors and Actresses
1000 Treasures of Film and TV
Reviews
The ABC Murders (2018)
A brooding, politically relevant masterpiece
Set aside cosy expectations. Ignore the objections to Malkovich's accent, his morose Poirot, the swearing, grim settings, liberties taken with plot and Christie's usual style. Rather than follow the well trodden path or try to outdo the impeccable Suchet, this series has other fish to fry.
What we have here is an antidote to what Poirot himself calls "vapid nostalgia for the gentle past". It is a necessary and timely reminder of the racism and rise of fascism in the 30s, so often brushed over in period adaptations. It is also haunted by war. "Cruelty is nothing new"; indeed, and we must learn from it. The series takes a stand on behalf of integrity and humane values in a dark, murky, dangerous world of not only murder but also lynch mobs and rabble-rousing media.
This ABC Murders is not superficially arty or pretentious but artful, persuasive and deep; radical, visually striking, atmospheric and engrossing, with revelations worth waiting for. So don't be deterred by the naysayers and those who came here prematurely after one episode or less; it succeeds admirably, and on its own terms, with mystery turning to Poirot himself.
It towers over the dross on hundreds of channels. I only wish it had been longer.
Aien kyo (1937)
Hidden treasure on the struggles of a young woman
Made at the Shinko Kinema studios, Straits of Love and Hate/Aien Kyo (1937) was based partly on a work by Kawaguchi Matsutaro, a Shinpa tragedy writer and performer. It also encorporates Tolstoy's Resurrection, a much read book in Japan, and was scripted by Yoda Yoshikata, who was to become Mizoguchi's regular scriptwriter, here working on his third Mizoguchi film.
Rarely seen, the film is in need of restoration. With very sparing use of close-ups and quite dark settings with indistinct figures it can be sometimes hard to follow. The viewer has to work, but careful attention is well rewarded! As other Mizoguchi films from that time have been lost, we are lucky to have it at all.
As often in Mizoguchi's career we have a tale with elements of Shinpa melodrama. Ofumi, a servant at an inn in the Northern province of Shinsu, is impregnated by the inn-keeper's son Kenkichi (Shimizu Masao) with whom she is temporarily infatuated and forced to elope in the face of family, especially paternal, disapproval. Kenkichi, however, proves to be a hopeless breadwinner, and Ofumi is forced into prostitution to care for the new baby. Kenkichi lacks the character to stand up to his father who visits, and returns home.
After a period as a waitress and turning to drink, while using a wet nurse to care for the baby, Ofumi joins a troupe of comic Manzai travelling players in which she strikes up a relationship with fellow performer Yoshitaro (Kawazu Seizaburo)
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Aien Kyo continues Mizoguchi's interest in theatre. And as elsewhere (e.g Story of the Late Chrysanthemums) the theatrical performance bears relation to and comments on offstage events- later in the film, the watching Kenkichi is filled with remorse. His voyeuristic peeping is a common feature of Mizoguchi films, here reminding me of the final shot of both Street of Shame and Mizoguchi's career.
I admire the daring formal devices, which to me more than compensate for any loss of close physical association with the characters. At times, we are placed almost as documentary fly on the wall observers looking past people in the foreground and characters with their backs turned.
I'm also very taken with the smooth camera movement, the beauty of compositions, the lovely wintry settings, and not only the film's sounds but also quieter moments, creating an atmosphere that is natural and yet distinctive.
Following on from Mizoguchi's experiments in deep staging in Osaka Elegy and Sisters of the Gion the previous year, Aien Kyo makes remarkable use of different planes of interest, with comings and goings in foreground and deep background- for example, in the scene in which Kenkichi is conversing with the troupe manager, they leave and the distance reveals a further room from which Ofumi and Yoshitaro emerge.
There are beautiful moments of stillness, wisps of steam reminiscent of Ozu and the more recent masterpiece Maborosi in which, like Straits of Love and Hate, close ups are few and so all the more precious. At the time of making the film, Mizoguchi disliked close-ups but later appreciated their value more.
Yamaji Fumiko gives a very striking and convincing performance, her first for Mizoguchi, as Ofumi. Shindo Kaneto, a young Art design assistant on the film, went on to a very long career in directing, most notably Onibaba and Naked Island. He was so impressed with Mizoguchi's work and transformation of the actress he became what has been called a disciple of Mizoguchi and later made a film about the great man.
Whereas Kenkichi is a typical weak and vacillating Mizoguchian male (others, especially fathers, are often oppressive), Ofumi has spark; by the time she meets up with him later in the film, toughened by her experiences of hardship, she can call the shots. At one point, he is remorsefully and haplessly kept waiting for her reply as she calmly taps her cigarette before smoking. Mizoguchi heroines are certainly not all shrinking violets or self-sacrificing angels, but often strong, resilient and here, as in The Love of Sumako the Actress, My Love has been Burning and the memorable ending of Osaka Elegy, also spirited and independent.
Kenkichi however comes across as quite an anaemic character- maybe a weakness of the film, as with one or two others by Mizoguchi, is this relative lack of colour to the central performance as a feeble and unreliable male.
Yoshitaru is a stronger and more grounded personality. His attack on Kenkichi is apparently not the result of vulgar jealousy but selflessly encouraging Ofumi to return to the father of her child, and likely security. But it turns out the respective weakness and faults of Kenkichi and his snobbish domineering father have not been dispelled.
In Tolstoy's Resurrection the male central character, whose initial impetuosity causes difficulties for a young woman, has a greater nobility than Kenkichi. Mizoguchi had a less rosy outlook on the potential ideal humanism of the upper and richer classes. Here, the film's ending i think strikes some sort of balance between regret over lost possibilities and an undaunted front in the face of a testing future. We are left with faith in the heroine.
Sleep Furiously (2008)
An excellent meditative documentary of Welsh rural life
Sleep Furiously is a documentary that's something of a labour of love for Welsh rural way of life in a changing world. Liverpool-born director Gideon Koppel is the son of Jewish refugees who settled in the Trefeurig community, consisting of a few villages/hamlets in West Wales, where he was brought up as a child. His father had been a well-known painter in South Wales, and his mother appears in the film.
Although not far from the main route to the sea for holidaymakers from Birmingham and the English West Midlands, Trefeurig is quite off the beaten track, in one of the least populated patches of England and Wales. This is not a film the Wales tourist board might come up with; it concentrates on the simple daily lives among the relatively austere, often bald hills, rather than more spectacular and crowd-pulling spots like the waterfalls at nearby Devil's Bridge/ Pontarfynach, or the coastline. Nor do we see the abandoned nearby lead and other mineral mines. Oh, this is the area too of the great (Welsh language) medieval poet Dafydd ap Gwilym , who wrote of courtly love, animals and nature, and some more bawdy goings on, including in praise of the penis. This film has conjured up in some critics' minds comparisons with another (lesser) poet Dylan Thomas' Under Milk Wood, but Thomas' view of Welsh life is more comical and satirical, set on the coast further South.
The film's title comes from a Noam Chomsky phrase "colorless green ideas sleep furiously"- that is one of its contrasts, as is its green-ness compared with greys too. With the beautiful and artful shots, it's more than a straightforward fly on-the-wall documentary- while unobtrusive and without voice-over, the director's character comes through. It's not so much a Wiseman film as a the film of a wise man, i'd say. Koppel has been employed teaching on films at Aberystwyth university, several miles from the film's setting. I like the way the static camera allows movement onto and off screen, generally resisting temptation to follow, and so increasing the sense of off-screen space
Sleep Furiously encourages contemplation. It quietly takes its time, mixes numerous (relatively) long takes with some shorter scenes and "timelapse", long shots with close details, mainly static camera with occasional movement, low shots e.g of hooves, with higher rural views. It could be considered a tapestry, interested in patterns, textures and effects of light, and also in the seasons and elements. The wind rustles the grass, blows clean white sheets on a line. The wind makes mischief with a new signpost, turning it in wrong directions- we may not need the accompanying ditty from a local to see how modern ways aren't always the most practical. The camera dwells on rocks, stones, tools, the light falling on a moth's wings, a pig's curly tail, while the sheep make memorable patterns in a landscape that would bring a knowing smile to Kiarostami.
Considered lyrical and poetic, it's unpretentious as the lives it portrays and the sponge cake we see being prepared. At its heart is the mobile library, a means for chat and for the outer world to penetrate the local consciousness. We see machines alongside older ways, mention of computers with sheep dog trials (a practice run), jams and vegetables, children dancing and making music. Although the school and future of the community may be under threat, alongside yawning, tea-making, rambling elders, we are reminded of youthful potential- fireworks a short exuberant contrast to the slowness of the pace and land.
There are pleasures to be gained from small contrasts: birth, death, vegetarian cookbook, mention of a pig's future fate
. Seek them and ye shall find. Trefeurig is part of Welsh-speaking Wales (the strongholds of the ancient language are mainly in the West), but there are English voices too. The general impression remains one of communal harmony. Roger Ebert found the film lovely but too complacent. Its soul is good and i think he's wrong on the second count. It was a worthy Sight & Sound film of the month.
It's a film for animal lovers (sheep, ferret, dogs, cat, cows, fish
count them!), taxidermists, tree lovers (one fine noble tree stays in the mind), tool-makers, agricultural students, anthropologists, cloud-watchers, tao-ist meditators, cultural historians, admirers of scenery and cinematography, as well as linguists. Approach it as you want, but watch in the right frame of mind, immersed in its gentle rhythms, and it should be very rewarding.
Sanshô dayû (1954)
The peak of cinema
Drawing on a traditional tale and a 1915 novella by Mori Ogai, Mizoguchi's Sansho the Bailiff is a historical drama concerning the cruel misfortune befalling the wife and children of a humane provincial governor exiled in ancient Japan.
Few films can match the feeling for the beauty of nature, the painterly eye and captivating silvery luminosity. The great cinematographer Miyagawa Kazuo does a magnificent job. With his preference for long takes, Mizoguchi is renowned for serene fluid camera moves (masterly yet unobtrusive tracking and crane shots are a trademark), but he also knew when stillness was required, as in the central, heart-rending scene i'll call Anju's ripples. There's more impact in her few ripples than a Hollywood tidal wave.
Water features strongly in the film. Mizoguchi was not one to blatantly point up symbolism, but here water is involved with separation, beauty, purity, self-sacrifice, danger, aching longing, suffering, continuity, and at the end the eternal. Water is counterpointed by fire, male balanced with female.
Sansho the Bailiff was the third consecutive Mizoguchi film to win a major prize at Venice (the Silver Lion), in a vintage year. Mizoguchi was an extremely driven, competitive director. It was the success of Kurosawa's Rashomon at Venice in 1951 that spurred him on to the heights of his string of late masterpieces. International recognition came late for him- he died of leukaemia in 1956, at the age of 58- but his epitaph rightly bears the words "the world's greatest film director."
I doubt any film matches Sansho the Bailiff's sense of the aching pain of family separation, of longing to be reunited. Mizo was strong on issues of identity. Here we have Zushio's name changed more than once, and other repetitions of scenes and motifs: wood being chopped by the children then- a crucial moment- as adults. Providing an ironic sense of justice, Sansho is exiled, just as the governor had been exiled. The film makes striking use of sounds and song, carried and echoing across time and space. With its message that "without mercy man is like a beast", it's a film full of compassion and humanity.
The film has clear links with Mizo's own life: the main female characters, sister Anju (Kagawa Kyoko) and mother Tamaki (Tanaka Kinuyo) are paragons like Mizo's own mother and sister. Female suffering in an oppressive patriarchal world is often central in his films. Here the main character may be Zushio and the title character also male, but my feelings go out more for sister Anju. Mizo's mother died in his teens and there may be something of his own yearning in Zushio's search. On the other hand, Mizo thought none too highly of his dad, whereas in the film the father is also a paragon of virtue and wisdom to be guarded and passed on. But then, the tyrant Sansho himself- memorably played by Shindo Eitaro- may stand for the father Mizo despised as ripe (or rotten) for overthrow. Sansho's own son rejects his ways and turns to Buddhism.
Mizoguchi aimed high and often behaved tyrannically on set but although something of an aesthete his films are not mannered or pretentious. He aimed for balance between realism and heightened emotion, giving discreet dignity and distance to emotions without blunt manipulation. Melodrama in his hands reaches a sublime level of refinement. He avoids self-serving diversions that will harm the narrative: there is an underlying integrity. He has his own distinct style without fitting so neatly the auteur model as, say, Ozu and Bresson. In Sansho the Bailiff the average shot length is shorter than the earlier extremes of Story of the Late Chrysanthemums (1939) and Loyal 47 Ronin (1941), and gone is Mizoguchi's abhorrence of close-up evident in Straits of Love and Hate (1937): though still used quite sparingly, emotional connection between viewer and characters is strengthened.
The film stresses family unity and an idealised patriarchal wisdom- in competition with a brutal version of male power. Mizo supports the overthrow of tyranny and the revolt by the enslaved. His sympathies are with the underdogs and dispossessed. He was consistently opposed to injustice, as recognised by the leftist Yoda (whose torture by the establishment in the 30s may add relevance to Sansho's brutal tortures), and in the film gives Sansho a tougher fate than does Mori Ogai, though without resorting to vengeful sadism. Mizo was often authoritarian, petulant and even abusive, and for all his concentration on the suffering of women he was very far from saint-like in his own dealings with them. Yet the humane qualities that shine through films like Sansho the Bailiff are clearly genuine.
The power of the wonderful ending, often described as transcendental, may also be partly indebted to the Buddhism which Mizo developed late in life. Sansho the Bailiff has been picked by one organisation among the top 100 spiritual films, but the Vatican missed it and Mizo out of their 45 recommendations.
Mizoguchi and Yoda made several changes to the original sources, for the purposes of greater realism and social message. The siblings' age seniority is reversed, their young adulthood rather than simply childhood is portrayed and miraculous occurrences of a fairy-tale like story are ditched. The film also provides a reason for the governor's exile, to reinforce solidarity with the people in the face of unjust authority. Mizoguchi no doubt rightly jettisoned the miraculous cure of Tamaki's blindness in Mori Ogai's novella.
Some consider the film too harrowing and pessimistic. For me it finds a poignant balance between suffering and beauty, cruelty and love, imprisonment and freedom, pain and redemption, loss and comfort, aesthetic value effectively joined with political anger. A film to love and cherish, the exquisite peak of cinema.
La perle (1929)
A lightly erotic surreal silent pearl
Directed by the little known Belgian aristocrat Henri d'Ursel,The Pearl (1929) is a lightly erotic silent masterpiece, over 30 minutes long, that links Celine and Julie go Boating, Jean Vigo, Man Ray, Maya Deren and the early crime serials (or should that be surreals?) of Louis Feuillade, which were much admired by the surrealists. In The Pearl, the body-hugging costumes of Musidora in Vampires are brought to mind, by a vampish sexy pearl thief, played by the suitably named Kissa Kouprine, whose mischievous allure and stocking tops entice a young man from fidelity to his fiancée, who is enjoying a languorous idyllic summer setting. The film moves easily between lush meadows, woods, waterways, Parisian rooftops, corridors and bedrooms, with an eye for an image as impressive as the beguiling atmosphere.
The Other Side of the Underneath (1972)
A female director's powerfully expressive and personal exploration of mental health issues.
Apparently the only British film directed solely by a woman (Jane Arden) in the 1970s, The Other Side of Underneath is quite harrowing and claustrophobic, taking us into the minds of female psychiatric patients in Wales, with discordant screeching sounds and strange searing and hallucinatory images. It seems to subvert not only polite society but also the repression of sexuality; late in the film we have a relative, almost idyllic sense of freedom, with an open air coupling. There's something of Max Ernst and Edvard Munch about the film, but this is very much from a female perspective, implying that society for too long has damagingly frowned on female sexual feelings as unclean. Scenes with Romanies and a few black children are telling, underlining the shared status of unwanted powerless outsiders. Alongside almost infernal visions, the film also questions attitudes to religion and neglect of a more natural life.
Maybe wretchedly self-indulgent, relentless and disgusting to some, for me it's a serious, persuasive and emotion-churning examination of "mental illness", one of the boldest films to emerge from the UK, but one from which i was relieved to step out into the warm sunlight.