A Criterion Channel journey, films #131-140

This is the 14th entry in my series of thumbnail reviews of films I’ve been watching on the Criterion Channel streaming service since September 2021. I watched this set of ten films in August 2022.

This latest set of films include Mira Nair’s hit from 1991 starring Denzel Washington, a comedy/spy-thriller from the 1960s starring Gregory Peck and Sophia Loren, a couple of classic American comedies starring the dazzling on-screen pairing of William Powell and Myrna Loy, a poignant film about the tragedy of war by Italian master Vittorio De Sica, a searing portrait of social decay by Argentinian director Lucrecia Martel, a biopic of American boxing champion Jim Corbett starring Errol Flynn, and three engrossing films by British humanist director Mike Leigh.

Mississippi Masala (1991): Indian-American filmmaker Mira Nair‘s sophomore feature is a romantic drama, starring Denzel Washington and Sarita Choudhury as a young interracial couple in love, who struggle to overcome prejudices from their respective communities. The cast is peppered with an impressive array of American, British and Indian actors including Roshan Seth, Sharmila Tagore and Charles S. Dutton. But it’s Sarita Choudhury, in her film debut, who steals the show as the sexy and fiercely strong-willed daughter of Indian immigrants, who like many second-generation youngsters, seeks to break away from the shackles of her community. The film was nominated for a Golden Lion at Venice, building on the Oscar nomination Ms. Nair received for her 1988 debut film, Salaam Bombay!; she would go on to win the Golden Lion for her 2001 drama, Monsoon Wedding.

Denzel Washington and Sarita Choudhury in Mira Nair’s *Mississippi Masala* (1991)

Arabesque (1966): Stanley Donen made his name directing some of Hollywood’s biggest musicals like On the Town, Singin’ in the Rain and Seven Brides for Seven Brothers in the 1950s, then graduated to big-budget romantic comedies like The Grass Is Greener and Charade. Following in the same Hitchcockian vein as Charade, this comedic spy-thriller featured two of the biggest box office draws of the era – Gregory Peck and Sophia Loren. Peck plays Prof. David Pollock, an unassuming professor of Egyptology at Oxford University, who is drawn into an international web of intrigue involving a message written in hieroglyphics that different parties want to get their hands on. Sophia Loren plays the glamorous femme fatale whose loyalties are initially unclear. There are plenty of twists and turns to the plot before it reaches a satisfying conclusion. The score by Henry Mancini was nominated for a Grammy, and is reminiscent of his Pink Panther theme from three years earlier.

After the Thin Man (1936): Myrna Loy and William Powell were among Hollywood’s most successful onscreen couples, appearing in 13 movies together. They were particularly well-known for the Thin Man series of films, one of the earliest movie franchises in Hollywood history. Dashiell Hammett’s novel about Nick and Nora Charles, a retired private detective and his whip-smart socialite wife, was first adapted to the screen in 1934 and audiences fell in love with Loy and Powell’s witty banter and natural comic timing. This sequel features more of the same blend of comedy and mystery…the plot is almost immaterial, as the entertainment value comes mainly from Loy and Powell’s on-screen chemistry. The film received an Oscar nomination for Best Screenplay and four more sequels followed over the next 11 years, although with diminishing box office returns.

I Love You Again (1940): W.S. van Dyke directed the first four Thin Man films and after the third, he reteamed with stars Myrna Loy and William Powell in yet another comedy of manners built around their celluloid charm. The plot revolves around Powell’s character, who experiences amnesia, causing him to switch between two diametrically different characters. Throw in a love triangle and a real-estate scam, and you have the recipe for a laugh-a-minute movie-watching experience.

Sunflower (1970): Sophia Loren and Marcello Mastroianni star as ill-fated lovers separated by World War II (shades of The Cranes Are Flying) in this international co-production directed by Italian master Vittorio De Sica. Antonio, a soldier posted in Naples during World War II, falls in love with a local girl, Giovanna. In spite of his best efforts to avoid being sent to the frontlines, Antonio is dispatched to the Russian front, leaving Giovanna behind to wrestle with loneliness and anxiety. After the war ends, she is among the thousands of women waiting to learn the fate of their beloved. Is her husband dead or missing in action? Sophia Loren brings pathos to her role as the presumed war widow, seeking closure while clinging to the memory of those few days of joy in the distant past. A sombre and at times, heart-rending film, this is considered one of director De Sica’s lesser efforts when held up against his body of work. A few months after its release, De Sica released another war-themed film, The Garden of the Finzi-Continis, which went on to win the Oscar for Best Foreign Film.

La Cienaga / The Swamp (2001): Several years ago, I watched Argentinian director Lucrecia Martel‘s highly acclaimed 2008 film, The Headless Woman. I struggled to get through it and couldn’t understand what all the fuss was about. I am happy to say that I had a very different experience with Ms. Martel’s debut film La Cienaga. This tale of ennui and spiritual decay, depicts the comings and goings of a wealthy family vacationing at their country estate during a hot and humid summer. Like watching a car crash in slow motion, the slow-burning narrative strips away the family’s thin façade of respectability to reveal the baseness of their human needs and wants. The film was nominated for the Golden Bear at the Berlinale and won several awards in its native Argentina.

Gentleman Jim (1942): Prolific American director Raoul Walsh brings to the big screen this biopic of boxing champion “Gentleman Jim” James Corbett, with the title character played by the charismatic Errol Flynn. The film picks up the narrative during Corbett’s days as a bank teller when he was introduced to boxing during its emergence as an organized professional sport. As with all sporting biopics, the film follows Corbett’s battles both on and off the sporting stage, the latter being his attempts to win the heart of Victoria, a young upper class woman who is in equal parts, annoyed and attracted to the brash young man. The film was among the last of Flynn’s big hits, with his star starting to fade towards the late 1940s. Director Raoul Walsh made over 150 films, including classics like High Sierra (1941) with Humphrey Bogart, White Heat (1949) with James Cagney and Captain Horatio Hornblower (1951) with Gregory Peck.

High Hopes (1988): Mike Leigh was the featured director on Criterion in August 2022, and I ended up watching a bunch of his films at one stretch. High Hopes was his first film to receive wide theatrical distribution, and is a bittersweet comedy chronicling the ups and downs in the lives of a working-class couple living in central London. The film is an exploration of relationships – between partners, with siblings, an elderly parent, and with friends and neighbours. It is also a subtle commentary on the impact of Margaret Thatcher’s economic policies in the 80s. All of this is delivered in a matter-of-fact style, through everyday mundane events and the interactions of the soft-spoken, unassuming protagonists, played by Philip Davis and Ruth Sheen. The international film community sat up and took notice, with the film being nominated at festivals in London, New York and most importantly, at the Venice Film Festival.

Life is Sweet (1990): Mike Leigh’s first major commercial success was also the breakthrough film for many of its cast members, who would go on to sterling careers – Alison Steadman (the excitable Mrs. Bennett in the 1995 BBC hit Pride and Prejudice), Jim Broadbent (Oscar winner for Iris in 2001), Timothy Spall (Wormtail in six Harry Potter movies), Stephen Rhea (Oscar nominated for 1992’s The Crying Game) and David Thewlis (nominated at Cannes in 1993 for Naked). Andy (Jim Broadbent) and Wendy (Alison Steadman) are a working class couple living in North London with their twin twenty-something daughters; the film follows their lives over the course of a summer, covering events that are humorous, disturbing, heart-breaking and bittersweet. David Thewlis plays the lover of one of the twin daughters, and Timothy Spall is hilarious as a slightly unhinged family friend with delusions of grandeur.

Secrets & Lies (1996): Mike Leigh’s most commercially successful film features yet another memorable ensemble performance from some of Britain’s most talented actors. Brenda Blethyn is extraordinary as an emotionally fragile middle-aged woman who is contacted by the illegitimate daughter who she had given up for adoption at birth. Her instinctive reaction is denial, but eventually she accepts the reality and they start meeting in secret, getting to know each other. There are subplots involving the other members of her dysfunctional family – her kind-hearted son (Timothy Spall), snobbish daughter-in-law (Phyllis Logan, the housekeeper from Downton Abbey), her rude and discontented daughter (Claire Rushbrook). The bombshell final act brings the entire cast of characters together who react with disbelief, resentment and anger at the revelation. Actress Marianne Jean-Baptiste navigates a difficult role as the birth daughter who maintains her poise amidst all the family hysterics. The film won the Palm d’Or at Cannes, was nominated for five Oscars and 7 BAFTAs, deservedly winning the BAFTA for Best British Film and Best Screenplay. Mike Leigh works at the peak of his powers and handles a difficult topic with great sensitivity and empathy.

Here are the links to the previous thumbnails: #1-10, #11-20, #21-30, #31-40, #41-50, #51-60, #61-70, #71-80, #81-90, #91-100, #101-110, #111-120 and #121-130.

A Criterion Channel journey, films #111-120

This is the twelfth entry in my series of thumbnail reviews of films I’ve been watching on the Criterion Channel streaming service since September 2021. I watched this set of ten films from the end of May till mid June 2022.

This latest set of films includes a British drama from 1940 starring Laurence Olivier, a 1975 action film featuring blaxploitation queen Pam Grier, an American romantic drama scripted by Billy Wilder, provocative French director Louis Malle’s debut film, an American noir film starring Ida Lupino as an unhinged femme fatale, a British period drama with a narrative built around popular songs of the time, a beautifully shot biopic of American poet Emily Dickinson, and three WW2 films – an extraordinary thriller set in Northern Africa, a romantic comedy set in post-war Berlin, and a propaganda piece starring Humphrey Bogart.

21 Days (1940): I usually associate British thespian Laurence Olivier with heavy-duty dramatic roles. But during the same period that he was making a name for himself with big-budget Hollywood films like Wuthering Heights, Rebecca and Pride and Prejudice, he also starred in this modest British thriller. Given that the film’s script was co-written by famed novelist Graham Greene, featured an extra-marital affair and a murder, and starred Vivien Leigh and Olivier, this should have made for compelling viewing. Unfortunately, I found it rather tedious, but thankfully was saved by the short running time of 72 minutes. This was Basil Dean’s final film as a director, and thereafter with the onset of WW2, he was appointed as the director of the entertainment branch of the British armed forces.

Friday Foster (1975): A-list African-American actors Pam Grier and Yaphet Kotto headline this film about a photographer who gets caught up in a conspiracy to murder the leading figures in African-American politics. As a key entry in the blaxploitation film genre, it delivers exactly as advertised, with the usual diet of nudity (just a few seconds, but highly anticipated in the days before online porn) and action, intertwined with commentary on the race and gender issues of the day. Singer Eartha Kitt and actor-musician Scatman Crothers make appearances, and Carl Weathers can be seen in one of his earliest big-screen roles. Director Arthur Marks is recognized by film historians for his contributions to blaxploitation, with the last half dozen of his films made in this genre; Quentin Tarantino supported a 1998 theatrical re-release of his 1973 film, Detroit 9000.

Hold Back the Dawn (1941): Charles Boyer and Olivia de Havilland make for a captivating screen couple in this critically acclaimed romantic drama from prolific director Mitchell Leisen. Boyer plays a European man trying to cross over to the US from a Mexican border town, who pretends to fall in love with a naive American school teacher, so that he can marry her and obtain a US citizenship. Naturally, various developments come in the way of him carrying out his cunning plan, not unlike the Sandra Bullock-Ryan Reynolds immigration dramedy The Proposal. The onscreen charm of the two stars make this an engaging watch, in spite of the implausible plot. Billy Wilder co-wrote the script, and it was amongst his last credits as a screenwriter before he launched his celebrated career as a director. The film received six Oscar nominations, including for Best Picture, Best Screenplay and Best Actress.

Elevator to the Gallows / Ascenseur pour l’échafaud (1958): Louis Malle was just 24 years old when he made his feature debut with this noir-inspired crime thriller. His cinema verite approach, honed after three years of documentary filmmaking with naturalist Jacques Cousteau, foreshadowed the French New Wave which officially kicked off a few months later with the release of Claude Chabrol’s Le Beau Serge. Malle directed actress Jeanne Moreau without make-up, revealing her true beauty and bringing her international stardom after years on the fringes. Moreau and Maurice Ronet play lovers who plot to kill the woman’s husband; the title of the film refers to the role played by an elevator in the unraveling of their carefully laid out plans. The film is noted for its desolate jazz score by Miles Davis, which he improvised and recorded in the studio while the film footage was screened for him. I fell in love with the photography and the lighting (particularly the interior scenes later in the film), although I’ve never been enamoured by Moreau as a leading lady. Malle went on to a storied filmmaking career, equally adept across thrillers, romances, comedies and dramas.

They Drive By Night (1940): Prolific director Raoul Walsh directs this intense film noir headlined by 30’s and 40’s leading man, George Raft, with Humphrey Bogart playing a key supporting role, just before his big breakthrough with High Sierra and The Maltese Falcon. Set in the world of commercial trucks, the script shines a light on the exploitation of truck drivers and the unsafe conditions they were asked to work under. Raft and Bogart play trucker siblings; one wants to move up the food chain and get into big business, while the other wants to stick to his roots and remain self-employed. Their onscreen chemistry works well, highlighting their different personalities but also their unshakeable bond. But the real star of the movie is British actress Ida Lupino, who plays a psychotic femme fatale who will do anything to get what she wants, not unlike Jean Simmons’ character in Angel Face a decade later. The powerhouse cast and compelling, twisty plot makes for quite a ride. Raoul Walsh’s next film was the acclaimed film noir, High Sierra, which reunited him with Bogart and Lupino.

Distant Voices, Still Lives (1988): As I write this blog, I’ve just read the news that the film’s director Terence Davies has passed away at the age of 77. All obituaries refer to this semi-autobiographical film as one of the high points of his career. It is set in his native Liverpool and stars the incomparable Pete Postlethwaite as an abusive, controlling father ruling over a working-class family in the 1940’s and 50’s. Much of the film’s slice-of-life narrative is built around how families and communities spent time together, inevitably at pubs and frequently entertaining themselves by singing the most popular songs of the day; with so many of these set-pieces, the film could technically be classified as a musical. Unfortunately, as a viewer who is neither from that era nor that region, I could not appreciate this film nearly as much as a native Britisher. What does come through is how desperate the hopes and dreams of women and young people are in a patriarchal society, when the man of the house had the power to give and to take away.

A Quiet Passion (2016): I followed up right away with another Terence Davies masterpiece, an impeccably mounted period drama set during the mid-19th century, which follows the life of reclusive American poet Emily Dickinson. It stars Cynthia Nixon (best known as Miranda from Sex and the City) as the poet, and the luminous Jennifer Ehle as her younger sister. There is also a pleasing supporting turn from veteran Keith Carradine as their strict but supportive father. The film tracks Dickinson’s life from a relatively normal and carefree youth to an increasingly severe, bitter and reclusive middle age, wracked by various personal tragedies, both overt and hidden. Cynthia Nixon is the very embodiment of the character and sadly this performance was not sufficiently recognized during the awards season.

Cynthia Nixon (left) and Jennifer Ehle in Terrence Davies’ *A Quiet Passion* (2016)

Five Graves to Cairo (1943): I thoroughly enjoyed this entertaining WW2 film set in a small town in Northern Africa during the desert campaign of German Field Marshal Erwin Rommel (a scene-chewing performance by Austrian director-turned-actor Erich von Stroheim). Franchot Tone is perfectly cast as Corporal Bramble, the sole survivor of a British tank crew, who seeks shelter in the hotel only to find it taken overrun by the Germans preparing for the next phase of their campaign. With only the hotel owner and a French chambermaid as his protectors, Bramble must use his wits and his luck to escape…and perhaps thwart the German onslaught in the process. Anne Baxter is thoroughly entertaining as the saucy and somewhat unreliable chambermaid, while Armenian actor Akim Tamiroff uses his distinctive natural accent to great effect as the Arab owner Farid. This was Billy Wilder’s second film as a director and a year later, he shot to fame with his next effort, the crime/noir thriller, Double Indemnity.

A Foreign Affair (1948): I moved on right away to one of Billy Wilder’s best known films, a cynical comedy-drama set in post WW2 Berlin. A highly principled Congresswoman (played by Jean Arthur) arrives in Berlin as part of a congressional committee to review how US troops are operating in peacetime Europe. She is shocked to hear rumours that a possible Nazi sympathizer is freely operating as a cabaret singer (played by Marlene Dietrich) under the protection of a US Army officer. She sets out to uncover the truth and gets caught up in a comedy of errors. The film was essentially a face-off between two screen legends at the tail end of their careers as leading ladies. Like all Billy Wilder products, the film has charismatic characters delivering snappy dialogue and memorable comedic set-pieces. This is definitely one to watch for all cinephiles.

Action in the North Atlantic (1943): This film was conceived as a tribute to the Merchant Marines, the civilian naval arm of the US government, which played a key role transporting war supplies during WW2. Imposing character actor Raymond Massey and Humphrey Bogart (fresh off the success of Casablanca) play the captain and first officer respectively of a Merchant Marine cargo ship. Tasked with carrying supplies to the Soviet port of Murmansk within the Arctic circle, the crew must rely on their courage, wits and experience to survive a cat-and-mouse pursuit by German U-boats. This by-the-numbers wartime propaganda film benefits from authentic war footage provided by the US government, and the screen presence of its stars.

Here are the links to the previous thumbnails: #1-10, #11-20, #21-30, #31-40, #41-50, #51-60, #61-70, #71-80, #81-90, #91-100 and #101-110.

A Criterion Channel journey, films #91-100

This is the tenth entry in my series of thumbnail reviews of films I’ve been watching on the Criterion Channel streaming service since September 2021. I watched these ten films in April 2022, which means I a a year behind in writing about them! Whereas the majority of films I’ve watched on Criterion have been from the mid-twentieth century, there were coincidentally a number of contemporary films in this set.

The films include a French-Belgian comedy-drama, a Japanese anthology about love, a Danish drama that won the Oscar for best foreign film, a Mexican film that delves into the little-known lives of hotel maids, the 1978 adaptation of a famous Agatha Christie novel, the sequel to one of the best-known blaxploitation films of all time, an early directorial effort by celebrated Italian screenwriter Pier Paolo Pasolini, a classic American romantic drama from the pre-Code era, a Palm d’Or winner from Romania, and the screen adaptation of a classic Jack London novel.

My Worst Nightmare / Mon pire cauchemar (2011): If you are looking for a lightweight film featuring heavyweight actors, this movie is worth your time. 16-time Cesar nominee, Isabelle Huppert, pairs off with Belgian multi-hyphenate, Benoît Poelvoorde, in this pleasing but formulaic comedy-drama. It seems to me that Huppert typically choses to portray characters who are stern, cold or uptight, and that’s certainly the case here, as she plays a perfectionist art dealer Agathe, who lives with her son and her partner in a wealthy Parisian district. Into their lives arrives Patrick (played by Poelvoorde) a fun-loving, skirt-chasing, building contractor whose irreverence and free-thinking approach upends Agathe’s orderly lifestyle. Director/co-scriptwriter Anne Fontaine introduces some twists and turns to keep this typical “clash of the classes” romance from becoming too predictable. Fontaine previously worked with Poelvoorde in the 2005 drama In His Hands and more recently, was widely celebrated for the 2016 film, The Innocents.

Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy / Gūzen to Sōzō (2021): Director Ryusuke Hamaguchi hit the headlines in 2021 for his slow-burning and thoughtful Oscar-nominated drama, Drive My Car. It was actually his second feature release that year, with the first being this engrossing three-part anthology spotlighting three different female characters experiencing intensely emotional interactions with other people. In Episode 1, Kotone Furukawa plays a model who discovers that her best friend is in love with her ex-boyfriend. In Episode 2, Katsuki Mori plays a woman who agrees to participate in a deception to help out a friend, but her actions have unintended consequences. In Episode 3, Fusako Urabe plays a woman who is at a train station and has a chance encounter with an old school classmate; their reminiscing leads to the unexpected dredging of long-buried, unresolved feelings. Hamaguchi does not take sides in his storytelling, his lens is an objective watcher of people, using a filmmaking style hewing closely to Dogme 95, the now discarded Danish filmmaking movement which eschewed the use of props, background score or artificial lighting in films. It allows us to focus entirely on the conversations and emotions of the characters; well worth the effort of a patient viewer.

In a Better World / Hævnen (2010): Celebrated Danish director Susanne Bier won the Oscar for Best Foreign Film for this fascinating story that straddles two worlds connected by its pacifist protagonist’s response to violence. Anton (played by Mikael Persbrandt) splits his time between a Sudanese refugee camp and his native Sweden. He witnesses unimaginable horrors inflicted by Sudanese warlords on innocent civilians, but is compelled by his principles to offer his services to both victims and perpetrators. His furloughs home are not stress-free either, as his young sons find it difficult to reconcile their father’s pacifism to their first-hand experience of bullying. From this helpless situation, Susanne Bier and her frequent writing collaborator Anders Thomas Jensen, bring Anton’s narrative threads together to a satisfying resolution. Jensen incidentally directed the entertaining 2020 revenge drama Riders of Justice starring Mads Mikkelsen. In the past decade, Bier has expanded her footprint into some impressive English-language thrillers including the post-apocalyptic Bird Box and two mini-series, The Night Manager and The Undoing.

The Chambermaid / La camarista (2018): Much as the maid Cleo occupied the moral and narrative center of Alfonso Cuarón’s award-winning Mexican drama Roma in 2018, another film from the same country in the same year took the audience on an insightful journey into the life of a hotel housekeeper. Lila Avilés graduated from small acting roles to directing short films to this extraordinary feature directing debut. The film could easily be a companion-piece to HBO’s The White Lotus anthology series, as it lays bare the lives of the privileged as seen through the eyes of the hotel support staff. Gabriela Cartol portrays housekeeper Eve, toiling to cater to the exacting whims of the hotel management and its wealthy customers, while striving to make incremental improvements in her own life during her off-duty hours, many of which are spent in the bowels of the hotel; one can’t help but think of the Eloi and the Morlocks in H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine. With absolutely no melodrama, Cartol’s stoicism quietly tugs at your heartstrings; well worth the watch.

Death on the Nile (1978): I am an unabashed fan of actor-director Kenneth Branagh‘s two sumptuously produced Agatha Christie adaptations – 2017’s Murder on the Orient Express and 2022’s Death on the Nile. Having watched the latter upon its release on Netflix in early 2022, I was curious to know how the 1978 version compared. As with all Agatha Christie adaptions past and present, this film too boasts an all-star cast, with Peter Ustinov playing Poirot, supported by Mia Farrow, David Niven, Bette Davis, Maggie Smith, Angela Lansbury and cultural icon Jane Birkin. The only characterization that I found annoying was Indian actor I.S. Johar’s portrayal as the obsequious Mr. Chaudhury. Of course, with source material of this calibre, the film is wholly serviceable, but I must admit that the eye-popping production design of Mr. Branagh’s modern adaptation (along with the equally noteworthy cast) has an advantage, and its his version which pops up in my visual memory when the name comes up. The 1978 version was directed by John Guillermin, one of the go-to directors for big-budget adventure films of that era, having helmed The Towering Inferno and the King Kong remake in the preceding four years.

Shaft’s Big Score (1972): Confident in the success of Shaft, their seminal 1971 blaxploitation film, MGM had already contracted writer Ernest Tidyman, director Gordon Parks and star Richard Roundtree to return a year later with another adventure featuring the tough-talking, hard-loving private detective, John Shaft. The result is Shaft’s Big Score, which like all sequels has more of everything, but naturally loses the spontaneity of the original. However, the film delivers on the strength of Roundtree’s charisma, the action set pieces (cars, boats, helicopters), the big brassy 70s score and of course the obligatory nudity; in fact, the character was marketed as a brash American version of James Bond. In between the two Shaft films, writer Tidyman had won an Oscar for best adapted screenplay for The French Connection, with which the Shaft sequel shares a few action beats. One year later, John Guillermin directed the next entry, Shaft in Africa, after which the character moved to the small screen with a TV series and TV movies.

Mamma Roma (1962): Pier Paolo Pasolini was a giant of Italian 20th century art and politics, with a body of work that spanned novels, poetry, essays, theatre and film. He co-wrote the screenplay for the Fellini classics, Nights of Cabiria and La Dolce Vita, and other well-regarded dramas such as Il bell’Antonio and Girl in the Window, before launching his own directorial career in the early 60’s. I had read so much about Pasolini and enjoyed watching the aforementioned films which he had written, so I was looking forward to watching something directed by him. I had also heard a lot about the film’s star, Anna Magnani, known for portraying boisterous, earthy characters. That’s certainly the case in Mamma Roma, in which she plays a prostitute who leaves her profession so that she can bring up her teenage son in a more wholesome environment. As with most Italian neorealist films, one shouldn’t expect a happy ending. Honestly, I was a bit underwhelmed by the film with the unsympathetic characters (particularly her son) and the depressing subject matter putting me off, which was surprising, given I’ve felt intense empathy while watching many other neorealist tragedies.

Morocco (1930): Marlene Dietrich shot to fame with The Blue Angel directed by Josef von Sternberg in 1930. The film’s success in Germany brought her to the attention of Paramount studios, who put her under contract, and quickly paired her opposite Gary Cooper in Morocco, with the same director. Morocco thus became the first Marlene Dietrich English language film released in the US in 1930, and created the famous on-screen Dietrich persona of an exotic and daring femme fatale (the English language version of The Blue Angel was released in the US the following year). Dietrich was cast as a night club singer in both these films, giving her the opportunity to show off her singing and performing talents. In particular, the night club sequence in which Dietrich performs wearing a man’s formal evening attire and kisses a female member of the audience was considered scandalous for its time (this was before the Hays Code of self-censorship was adopted by Hollywood in 1934). The film is set during the late 1920’s in Morocco and focuses on a unit of the French Foreign Legion, coming into town after a military campaign. Gary Cooper plays a hard-living, womanizing soldier in the unit, and needless to say, sparks fly when he meets Dietrich’s character at a local night club. Their relationship is complicated by romantic entanglements that each of them has with other partners on the side. Various twists and turns ensue putting their relationship in jeopardy before the inevitable melodramatic ending.

Gary Cooper and Marlene Dietrich in Joseph von Sternberg’s *Morocco* (1930)

4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days / 4 luni, 3 săptămâni și 2 zile (2007): I have had this film on my watchlist for years, ever since it won the Palm d’Or at Cannes. The film is set in an unnamed Romanian town in 1987 during the period of communist rule; at this time, the country had an abortion law, Decree 770, that made it very difficult to get a legal abortion. Naturally, a black market emerged for illegal procedures, resulting in medical complications and thousands of fatalities over the years. These are the circumstances under which a young woman Găbița (played by Laura Vasiliu) finds herself pregnant, and enlists the help of a close friend Otilia (played by Anamaria Marinca) to find a doctor willing to perform the abortion. The two women then enter a downward spiral involving bad luck and bad people. I struggle to find the right words to describe their harrowing experience, and the uncaring social underbelly that exploits their need. This hard-hitting drama is more relevant today than ever before, and a must-watch for any cinephile or student of the human condition. Director Cristian Mungiu‘s career will probably be defined by this film, although he has continued to win awards for his subsequent efforts like Beyond the Hills (2012), Graduation (2016) and R.M.N. (2022).

The Sea Wolf (1941): Jack London’s classic 1904 adventure story got its fifth screen adaptation, this time helmed by Michael Curtiz for Warner Bros. studio. Powerhouse actor, Edward G. Robinson, is aptly cast as sadistic boat captain Wolf Larsen, a learned man with the heart of a beast, who makes life hell for his crew. Larsen’s boat picks up a man and a woman from a sinking ship, and the captain incorporates them into his on-going psychological games, driving his crew further to the edge of mutiny. British actress Ida Lupino and character actor Alexander Knox play the two hapless rescuees, Ruth Webster and Humphrey Van Weyden, while John Garfield switches on his standard on-screen brooding persona as George Leach, one of the mutineers. The film adaptation deviates from the original novel to dial up the adventure angle, and creates a romantic relationship between Ruth and George, whereas none exists in the novel. I can’t say that I “enjoyed” the film, as there was a bit too much melodrama and negativity for my liking. Director Curtiz had previously delivered several Errol Flynn hits such as Captain Blood, The Charge of the Light Brigade and The Adventures of Robin Hood and his next film Casablanca, would make him a Hollywood legend for all time.

Here are the links to the previous thumbnails: #1-10, #11-20, #21-30, #31-40, #41-50, #51-60, #61-70, #71-80 and #81-90.

A Criterion Channel journey, films #61-70

This is the seventh entry in a series of thumbnail reviews of films I’ve watched on the Criterion Channel streaming service, starting in September 2021. I finished off this set of 10 films during December and early January 2022. This lot includes two early French New Wave films, one Hitchcock thriller, a “railroad” Western, a post-WW2 drama, a fictionalized account of a real-life scam, a film noir, a crime docudrama, a drama set in the Aussie outback, and an Italian drama from the late-neorealist period.

Till the End of Time (1946): Guy Madison and Robert Mitchum star as US Marines who return home to Los Angeles after the end of WW2 in 1945. Both face challenges settling back into civilian life, as they re-engage with family and friends, meet other ex-servicemen, and make new acquaintances. Dorothy McGuire, fresh off her acclaimed performance in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, headlines the movie, playing a war widow who falls in love with Madison’s character. Although a reasonably well made film, it doesn’t have the emotional depth of the similarly themed The Best Years of Our Lives, which was released around the same time. Robert Mitchum became a genuine star a year later with the release of the film noir classic, Out of the Past. Director Edward Dmytryk continued to make well-regarded films with big movie stars for another two decades, including The Caine Mutiny (Humphrey Bogart), The End of the Affair (Deborah Kerr), Raintree Country (Montgomery Clift and Elizabeth Taylor), The Young Lions (Clift and Marlon Brando) and Shalako (Sean Connery and Brigette Bardot).

The Baron of Arizona (1950): Samuel Fuller’s second directorial effort is the highly fictionalized account of a real-life scam which made headlines in the late 19th century. Vincent Price is compelling as the fraudster, James Reavis, a real-estate agent who concocted an audacious scheme in the 1870’s, using forged documents to lay claim to about 19,000 square miles of land across Arizona and New Mexico. The story becomes progressively more bizarre and sordid, as Reavis builds layer upon layer of falsehood to shore up the legality of his claim. Famed cinematographer James Wong Howe infuses even the daytime scenes with a sense of darkness, in keeping with the subject matter. Given the period and location, the film is sometimes classified as a Western, although not with the usual tropes of that genre. Fuller followed up with the progressive-minded war film Steel Helmets (covered in #11-20 in this series), thereby setting a pattern of war, westerns and noir as his preferred genres.

His Kind of Woman (1951): Australian director John Farrow (father of actress Mia Farrow) directs this unconventional film noir set at an upscale resort in Baja California. “Noir king” Robert Mitchum plays a professional gambler, who is offered $50,000 to complete a mystery assignment at a retreat for the rich and famous; Jane Russell brings her typically sassy screen persona to the role of the femme fatale; Vincent Price delivers a shamelessly over-the-top performance as a hammy Shakespearean actor, also a guest at the resort. Mitchum’s character soon discovers that there is more to the assignment than he has been told, and has to use his wits and new-found allies to survive. The release of the film was delayed after studio owner Howard Hawks took control away from the director, and added reshoots to incorporate additional story elements and a recasting of a key role. Given the added costs, it wasn’t a surprise that the film lost money at the box office. However, audiences enjoyed the on-screen chemistry between Mitchum and Russell (as did I), and they were immediately cast by the studio in the entertaining noir thriller, Macao. Director John Farrow survived the mistreatment and went on to win an Oscar a few years later for co-writing the screenplay of Around the World in 80 Days.

Robert Mitchum and Jane Russell in John Farrow’s *His Kind of Woman* (1951)

Boomerang! (1947): Elia Kazan’s third feature film was shot in a factual, semi-documentary style, and tells the true-life story of a high profile murder case in Connecticut in the 1920’s. Square-jawed leading man Dana Andrews, brings his grim-faced, no-nonsense acting approach to the role of the State Attorney, who comes under relentless pressure from local politicians to close the case quickly, in the face of mounting public anger. The Attorney is determined to see that justice is done, rather than just push through a convenient prosecution. Jane Wyatt plays his wife, who also is targeted by vested political interests to make her husband toe the line. This was the first of Elia Kazan’s films to garner him awards for directing (winner of the National Board of Review and New York Film Critics Circle Awards); he also got a nomination at Cannes. His next film, Gentleman’s Agreement, would win Oscars for Best Director and Best Picture, besides a host of other nominations.

Le Beau Serge (1958): Claude Chabrol’s debut effort as director is considered to be the first film of the French New Wave. Chabrol was the first of the contributors to the film magazine Cahiers du Cinéma, who went on to become a director and along with other critics-turned-directors, Éric Rohmer, Jacques Rivette, Jean-Luc Godard and François Truffaut, changed the course of French and world cinema. Le Beau Serge starts off with a young man, François (played by Gérard Blain), returning to his village in central France, to rest and recuperate after a recent illness. He seeks out old acquaintances, and discovers that his close friend, Serge (played by Jean-Claude Brialy), has become a bitter alcoholic in the intervening years. The film narrates François’ efforts to navigate the social fabric of the village, where everyone appears to be discontented and resentful. In terms of tone, the film is grounded and austere, compared to the irreverence and spontaneity of subsequent French New Wave films…nevertheless, shooting on location with no props and no movie stars gave Chabrol’s film the authenticity that was the hallmark of the La Nouvelle Vague movement. It was a low key start, and in fact, it was only after the release of Chabrol’s second film, Les Cousins, and Truffaut’s The 400 Blows, a few months later, that the movement became recognized as such. Chabrol was just 27 years old when he made this film, and he would go on to direct a film a year for the next half century, in addition to documentaries and TV shows!

The Sundowners (1960): This engaging and well-made drama, adapted from Jon Cleary’s 1951 novel of the same name, is set in the Australian outback in the 1920s. The term “sundowners” refers to transient laborers who would travel from farm to farm for work. Robert Mitchum and Deborah Kerr bring great heart and warmth to their roles as the Irish-Australian couple, Mr. and Mrs. Carmody, traveling with their son Sean through rural Australia. Mr. Carmody loves the nomadic life, whereas Mrs. Carmody and the boy dream of buying a place and settling down. The story takes us through various episodes in their lives, and the interesting characters they meet, particularly an Englishman played by Peter Ustinov. It’s a touching story, let down by a somewhat unsatisfactory ending (not to mention Mitchum and Kerr’s dodgy Aussie accents!). Although nominated for five Oscars, including Best Picture and Best Director, it is less well-known compared to director Fred Zinnemann’s classics High Noon, From Here to Eternity and A Man for All Seasons.

Les Cousins (1959): By the time Claude Chabrol had the financial wherewithal to release his debut film Le Beau Serge, he had already finished his follow up, Les Cousins, featuring the same two actors Gérard Blain and Jean-Claude Brialy. There is a symmetry to these two films – Le Beau Serge is set in the countryside and showcases village residents bitter and resentful about their lot in life; Les Cousins is set in Paris and chronicles the cynical, devil-may-care lifestyles of the young urban set, who lived for the day and couldn’t care for tomorrow. In Les Cousins, studious and earnest Charles (played by Blain) comes to Paris to study law; he stays with his cousin Paul (played by Brialy), who is Charles’ diametric opposite in terms of value systems and behaviour. We follow Charles’ wide-eyed introduction to Paul’s wild life in the big city – the women, the parties, the booze – and the inevitable impact that Paul’s decadent lifestyle has on him. The film won the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival. Ironically, although he kick-started the movement, Chabrol was perhaps the most restrained and least experimental of the French New Wave directors, which makes his films more accessible to the casual viewer.

Rope (1948): I went through a phase about 15 years ago, when I diligently watched a dozen of Alfred Hitchcock’s most well-known movies. Given how prolific he was, there are several remaining on my watchlist that I tick off from time to time, with Rope being one that I was happy to find on Criterion. Two privileged young men (played by John Dall and Farley Granger) plan and execute a “perfect murder” in their penthouse apartment, confident they won’t get caught. James Stewart plays their former prep school housemaster, who is unwittingly responsible for their convictions of intellectual superiority, and may be the only person who can bring about their downfall. The film is notable for its long takes, with the entire narrative taking place in the apartment in real time. This required an extraordinary degree of on-set choreography, leaving many critics of the view that the technical challenges distracted from the storytelling. The film was not well received by the public either, perhaps because none of the characters are particularly likeable (in fact, some are downright unpleasant) and because of the homosexual subtext. I found it to be a gripping viewing experience and was completely drawn in by the dialogue and the suspense. Granger reappeared three years later in Strangers on a Train, and these two Hitchcock films remained the highlights of his career. John Dahl had further success as the lead in the 1950 film noir, Gun Crazy, and a key part in the 1960 historical epic, Spartacus.

Girl in the Window / La ragazza in vetrina (1961): The 1940’s heralded the era of neorealism in Italian cinema, but by the early 50’s, audiences started resenting these soul-crushing stories of poverty and destitution; filmmakers responded by including comedic elements into these films, giving rise to the term “pink neorealism”, which then morphed into the commedia all’italiana, or “Italian style comedy” genre of the 60’s. The Girl in the Window is considered an example of pink neorealism, although there is nothing intentionally comedic in the narrative. It was an early starring vehicle for Italian acting icon Lino Ventura, as well as for striking French actress Marina Vlady. Ventura plays a seasoned Italian coal miner, working in a mine in the Netherlands, who takes a newcomer (Bernard Fresson) under his wing and shows him the ropes. The first half of the film puts the audience into the heart of the black seams underground, while the second half sees the two men let off steam during a night out on the town. Given the daily hazards the men experience at work, one can understand their almost childlike need for entertainment and companionship. Overall, I would describe the film as informative and insightful, rather than entertaining. This is not surprising, given that director Luciano Emmer was known primarily for his documentaries, although he did make a few well-regarded comedies. Remarkably, he continued to work until just before his death in 2009, at the age of 91.

Denver and the Rio Grande (1952): This American “railroad Western” is a fictitious retelling of an armed confrontation that took place in the late 1870’s, between two competing railroad companies for “right of way” through a pass on the Colorado-New Mexico border. Edmond O’Brien and Sterling Hayden play the chief antagonists representing the two railroads; character actor O’Brien is cast as the conscientious engineer, Jim Vesser, while Hayden brings his signature tough guy act to the character of McCabe, a bully who must win at any cost. The story is packed with gunfights, legal battles, corporate espionage and even a spectacular train crash, although the obligatory love interest subplot feels a bit forced. It’s a watchable movie, but Edmund O’Brien did not really tick the box for me as a charismatic leading man. Director Byron Haskin had previously directed the excellent noir, I Walk Alone, which I covered in #21-30. He does a good job managing the large-scale action in this movie, and this experience probably helped when he graduated to big-budget sci-fi films like The War of the Worlds (1953), From the Earth to the Moon (1958) and Robinson Crusoe on Mars (1964).

Here are the links to the previous thumbnails: #1-10, #11-20, #21-30, #31-40, #41-50 and #51-60.

A Criterion Channel journey, films #51-60

This is the sixth entry in a series of thumbnail reviews of films I’ve watched on the Criterion Channel streaming service. I finished off this set of 10 films during the second half of November of 2021. Given this is now September 2022, it’s pretty clear how much I’ve fallen behind in posting these, with the original intent having been to do so at the same pace as my viewing. I also realize just how many movies I powered through during those first few months of the subscription, driven by the sheer thrill of being able to access this amazing library of films. In twelve months, I’ve watched a total of 142 films on Criterion, so I still have another eight thumbnails to post in order to get to #131-140…by which time, I would have seen a few more! It’s a good problem to have. For the moment, let’s go through this set of #51-60, which includes one mystery thriller, a Japanese monster movie, a Japanese crime film, three noirs, one WW2 submarine thriller, one romantic comedy, one social drama and one literary adaptation.

The Grass is Greener (1960): Director Stanley Donen exemplified the golden age of Hollywood, starting off with big budget musicals before moving on to romantic dramas and comedies, invariably with the biggest stars of the day. The Grass is Greener is a “love quadrangle”, set in England, starring Cary Grant, Deborah Kerr, Robert Mitchum and Jean Simmons. It’s always fun to watch a movie packed with A-list stars, and in this particular case, having Mitchum cast against type as a lovesick oil millionaire. Watching the film, I got the sense that this must have been a relatively relaxed film shoot; for one thing, the actors had all worked with each other previously and enjoyed a real-life camaraderie; and secondly, most of the proceedings take place within a sumptuously furnished English country house. Having said that, I could not quite reconcile the very adult theme of the story with the lighthearted tone of the film, and came away feeling rather disappointed. The film was not a major success at the time of its theatrical release, but given its star wattage, it has enjoyed a lengthy second life on cable channels. Stanley Donen ventured into Hitchcockian territory with his next two films, Charade and Arabesque, both of which enjoyed box office success with an entertaining package of mystery, romance and humour.

The Enemy Below (1957): The submarine thriller is a specific sub-genre of war film, which if well made, can make for a tense and claustrophobic viewing experience. They typically involve a cat-and-mouse game between the captains of a ship and a submarine, or two rival submarines. The Enemy Below ticks all the boxes, and benefits from some fine acting by Robert Mitchum, as captain of an American Destroyer escort, and Curd Jürgens, as captain of a German U-boat. While some films choose to portray one or the other captain as evil or sadistic, The Enemy Below portrays both as honorable men, doing a job, but not intent on unnecessary killing. The film is directed by Dick Powell, who had a successful career as an actor in both comedies and detective films, before making the jump to directing. Other notable films in this sub-genre include Run Silent Run Deep (1958), The Bedford Incident (1965), Das Boot (1981), The Hunt for Red October (1990), The Wolf’s Call (2019) and Greyhound (2020).

Ace in the Hole (1951): This sordid tale of greed evoked strong reactions from critics when it was released, with terms like “grotesque”, “distorted” and “absurd” being used to describe the premise and the plot. As society itself has turned more cynical in subsequent years, the film has won the respect of many modern-day critics, with Roger Ebert including it in his The Great Movies series of publications. Kirk Douglas plays Chuck Tatum, an ambitious but combustible journalist, whose career has fallen on hard times due to arrogance and alcoholism. One day, he chances upon an accident scene – a man has been trapped in a cave-in while exploring a Native American cliff dwelling. As rescuers frantically work to get him out, Tatum realizes this has the makings of a national human interest story – provided he can prolong the rescue effort and control the narrative. Thus begins the journalist’s slide into a quagmire of deception, from which he cannot escape. Douglas excelled at playing flawed characters who come to tragic ends, and this ranks as one of his great performances. The film is sometimes classified as a film noir, with Jan Sterling, who plays the trapped man’s wife, fulfilling the role of femme fatale. Director Billy Wilder received an Oscar nomination for co-writing the script. Mr. Wilder was clearly in the midst of a purple patch at the time – he had received Oscar nominations for his previous two films (A Foreign Affair and Sunset Blvd.) and would garner writing and directing nominations for his next two efforts (Stalag 17 and Sabrina).

A Colt Is My Passport (1967): While Toho studios captured the imagination of international audiences during the 50’s and 60’s with the Godzilla films and the acclaimed works of Kurosawa and Ozu, it was Nikkatsu, Japan’s oldest studio, that targeted local audiences, particularly Japanese youth, with their highly stylized mukokuseki akushun (“borderless action”) films of the 60’s. Five of these were compiled by Criterion in 2009 into a box set titled Nikkatsu Noir, which includes A Colt is my Passport. It was directed by Takashi Nomura, who was strongly influenced by French crime films and Italian spaghetti westerns. Nomura’s visual style, choice of music score and having a cold and calculating killer as a protagonist certainly do evoke the mood of Sergio Leone’s films. Leading man Joe Shishido was notable for his cosmetically enhanced cheeks, which gave him a chipmunk-like look that I found equal parts ridiculous, unsettling and distracting. But it helped create a visual identity for the actor, which he leveraged into a successful career in Nikkatsu action films, such as Rusty Knife, Detective Bureau 2-3: Go to Hell Bastards!, Gate of Flesh and Branded to Kill, many of these directed by B-movie maestro Seijun Suzuki.

Jerry Fujio and Joe Shishido are contract killers on the run in Takashi Nomura’s *A Colt Is My Passport* (1967)

Destroy All Monsters (1968): As a big fan of “creature features”, it’s no surprise that Godzilla movies have always been on my watchlist – both the Japanese originals as well as the various modern incarnations. Having said that, one must admit that many of these have been average to mediocre; it’s almost like the idea of a Godzilla film is better than the experience of actually watching one. That was my impression of Destroy All Monsters, the ninth entry in the original “Shōwa era” series, which ran from 1954 to 1975. On paper, it was a no-brainer, as it featured an all-star kaiju team-up and had the original director Ishirō Honda returning after a gap of two films. The opening exposition tells us that it’s the year 1999, the world is at peace, and all the kaiju have been confined to an island research facility. But then an alien race, bent on the conquest of Earth, release the kaiju and using mind-controlling technology, unleash them upon the major cities of the world. If I had watched this film in my childhood, I would have thoroughly enjoyed it, but the dated visual effects and the wooden acting were too much to take, and I had to will myself to sit through it to the end. Still, if you want to see Godzilla, Rodan, Mothra, King Ghidorah, Gorosaurus, Anguirus, Baragon, Manda and the incredibly annoying Minilla together on screen, this is the movie for you. Although director Honda was celebrated for the Godzilla series and other sci-fi films, it is equally impressive that he came out of retirement in the 80’s to work for his friend Akira Kurosawa as an assistant/consultant on the master’s last five films, including Kagemusha, Ran and Madadayo.

Hangover Square (1945): I was able to erase the bad memories of Destroy All Monsters with this extraordinary crime noir film, featuring Laird Cregar, an actor that I had not heard of previously. The film is set in London in 1903 and tells the story of George Harvey Bone (played by Cregar), a successful music composer, who suffers from spells of short term amnesia, triggered by stress and discordant sounds. Concurrently, there are unsolved crimes in the neighborhood which may or may not be connected with Bone’s brief periods of unexplained absence. Throw in a wealthy fiancé, a suspicious Scotland Yard criminologist and a manipulative nightclub singer, and we have the makings of a melodramatic thriller. Most of the narrative takes place in Edwardian London nighttime, allowing acclaimed cinematographer Joseph LaShelle to use lamplight and fog to create a starkly lit noir masterpiece. Laird Cregar was on a crash diet during the making of the film (an attempt to slim down for more romantic roles), which created severe health problems and resulted in his death at the age of 31, just two months before the film’s release. I can therefore imagine there was some verisimilitude to Cregar’s performance of the tortured artist living on the edge of sanity. German director John Brahm also directed the well-regarded horror films The Undying Monster and The Lodger (also starring Cregar).

I Wake Up Screaming (1941): I couldn’t get enough of Laird Cregar, so I promptly followed up with another one of his pictures, although he wasn’t the lead in this one. Square-jawed leading man, Victor Mature, plays New York sports promoter Frankie Christopher, who we see at the start of the film being questioned about the murder of an up-and-coming actress he was mentoring. Although he protests his innocence, police detective Ed Cornell (Laird Cregar) is determined to put Frankie behind bars. Caught in between is the dead actress’s sister Jill, who doesn’t much care for Frankie, but doesn’t think he is guilty either. Although Mature plays the leading man, it’s Laird Cregar who delivers the narrative tension with his menacing on-screen presence. The film plays out like a real whodunnit with the guilty party not revealed right till the end. This was director H. Bruce Humberstone’s best known film, although he was a prolific filmmaker who worked on a wide range of genres, including four films in the Charlie Chan detective series and three Tarzan films.

The Last Tycoon (1976): Famed director Eliza Kazan’s final film featured a powerhouse cast, including Robert DeNiro, Robert Mitchum, Jack Nicholson and Tony Curtis. It is set during the Golden Age of Hollywood and tells the story of a successful young studio chief, Monroe Stahr (DeNiro), who falls in love with a young actress he fleetingly sees on a movie set. Being a man accustomed to getting what he wants, he tries to woo her, while his life is pulled in various other directions by the demands of his job. Sadly, in spite of the stellar cast, the pacing is lethargic and the film just seems to go nowhere. It’s a rare misfire for DeNiro at a stage of his career when he was in films such as Taxi Driver, 1900 and The Deer Hunter. Likewise, it was an unfortunate coda to Kazan’s storied directing career that saw him win Oscars for Gentleman’s Agreement and On the Waterfront, and receive nominations for A Streetcar Named Desire and East of Eden.

Angel Face (1953): There were a couple of moments while watching Angel Face, when I physically jumped in shock, that’s how unexpected the twists and turns in Otto Preminger’s film noir are. Ambulance driver Frank Jessup (Robert Mitchum) responds to an emergency call at a large mansion. It turns out to be a false alarm, but while he’s there, Frank strikes up a conversation with heiress Diane Tremayne (Jean Simmons). In due course, Diane and her wealthy parents have taken a liking to the industrious young man and offer him employment to support his ambitions of opening his own car repair shop. I wouldn’t want to reveal any more about the plot but suffice to say that things don’t end well. Preminger keeps everything calm on the surface, adopting the tone and pacing of a regular social drama, and then springs a surprise on the viewer from time to time. Angel Face was made midway through Preminger’s illustrious career, eight years after he was Oscar nominated for Laura and seven years before Anatomy of a Murder.

Black Widow (1954): This well-made mystery film is shot on Cinemascope in vivid colour, rather than in B&W or the grungy tones associated with noirs and thrillers. The legendary Ginger Rogers, who made her name starring in wholesome musicals with Fred Astaire, gets top billing here, cast against type as a haughty and viciously gossipy actress, Lottie Marin. Lottie and her husband live in the same New York apartment building as their friends, Broadway producer Peter Denver (played by Van Heflin) and his vivacious actress wife (played by the vivacious Gene Tierney). Into their high society lives enters Nancy Ordway, an aspiring young writer dreaming of making it big in the Big Apple, and then things start to go horribly wrong. The film received only middling reviews upon its release, but was popular with audiences, and likewise I too found it entertaining. Director Nunnally Johnson was better known as a scriptwriter, with writing credits including the Oscar nominated Grapes of Wrath, and hits like How to Marry a Millionaire and Mr. Hobbs Takes a Vacation. His most celebrated directorial effort was The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit, starring Gregory Peck, which received a Palm d’Or nomination at Cannes.

Here are the links to the previous thumbnails: #1-10, #11-20, #21-30, #31-40 and #41-50.

A Criterion Channel journey, films #41-50

This is the fifth entry in my series of thumbnail sketches of films I’ve watched on the Criterion Channel streaming service, since starting a subscription in September 2021. This set of 10 films was watched from late October to early November of 2021. Looking back, I can see that from mid-October till December, I was on a predominantly English-language viewing streak on Criterion, and therefore, all except one of the ten films in today’s list were made in the USA.

Chan is Missing (1982): This was Chinese-American auteur Wayne Wang‘s first independently directed feature film, having co-directed a largely forgotten crime drama seven years earlier. Chan is Missing heralded the arrival of a unique voice representing the Chinese disapora in the US. It is technically a whodunnit, chronicling the efforts of Jo, a taxi driver from San Francisco, who enlists the help of his nephew to search through Chinatown for his friend, Chan, who has gone missing with some of Jo’s money. Wang uses this plot device to showcase the lifestyles and mindset of Chinese Americans, particularly their struggles with identity and racism in their adopted home. It was probably the first time that Asian Americans were not represented on screen as gangsters or as sidekicks to a white protagonist. I personally found the film only mildly entertaining, but it is an important piece of American indie history and therefore worth the investment of 76 minutes. Wang went on to greater mainstream success with his adaptation of Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club in 1993, although his forays into Hollywood rom-com territory in the 2000’s with films like Maid in Manhattan and Last Holiday received mixed reviews.

I am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang (1932): Veteran director Mervyn LeRoy scored one of his earliest critical and commercial hits with this heartbreaking drama, featuring five-time Oscar nominee Paul Muni, as a decorated soldier-turned-civilian James Allen, whose life is turned upside down due to one unguarded moment. The film is based on a memoir published by Robert Elliot Burns, although ironically Burns’ true life story had a happier ending than the movie did. The memoir and the film are widely credited with mobilizing public opinion against “chain gangs”, and leading to their eventual phasing out over the following two decades. Muni is convincing as an earnest, well-meaning man, who just can’t catch a break; his resignation to his fate at the end of the film is chilling. Director LeRoy went on to a distinguished career, including being the producer (and uncredited director) on The Wizard of Oz, directing the 1949 adaptation of Little Women (starring Janet Leigh and a teenage Elizabeth Taylor), and the 1951 biblical epic Quo Vadis.

Reflections in a Golden Eye (1967): One of the most extraordinary films I have seen in recent times, this tour de force from director John Huston, features the powerhouse pairing of Marlon Brando as Major Penderton, and Elizabeth Taylor as his wife Leonora. This sordid drama, which takes place on a US Army Post, is notable for its one-of-a-kind post-production process that rendered the finished film in a tint of gold. The breathtakingly beautiful visuals are in stark contrast to the ugly behaviour of the two protagonists, whose relationship is marked by repressed desires, infidelity and emotional abuse. The film bears an uncanny thematic similarity to Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, the Oscar darling from the previous year. In both films, Elizabeth Taylor’s character is married to a man whom she compares unfavorably with her own powerful/influential father, with her contempt for her husband’s lack of ambition and career progression leading to bitterness, vitriol and emotional emasculation. The story is built around a small cast of characters, all flawed or emotionally damaged in their own way; of particular note is the performance by Filipino actor Zorro David as the effeminate houseboy Anacleto, who appears to be the only person truly comfortable in his own skin, and in control of his destiny. I was disappointed to read that the film was poorly received by critics and audiences upon release; in fact, I would highly recommend it for fans of the actors and the director. Interestingly, Montgomery Clift was the original choice to play Major Penderton, but died before production began. As much as I’m a fan of Clift, I personally think Brando did great justice to the role and can’t imagine anyone else having played it.

(from centre to right) Marlon Brando, Elizabeth Taylor and Brian Keith in John Huston’s *Reflections in a Golden Eye* (1967)

Freud (1962): Speaking of Montgomery Clift, he plays the titular role in this biopic that chronicles Sigmund Freud’s controversial early years, his use of hypnotism as a diagnostic tool, and his relationships with fellow doctors and patients. This film was directed by John Huston five years before Reflections in a Golden Eye, and coincidentally, covers the same territory of repressed sexuality, although from a medical perspective. I found the film fascinating, for its chronicle of the debates linking sexual desires and mental health. It’s an intense, somewhat depressing drama, appropriately shot in B&W by cinematographer Douglas Slocombe. It was the last film released during Clift’s lifetime (one more came out posthumously in 1966) and followed up his noteworthy performances in The Misfits and Judgment at Nuremberg, all of which ironically came just as his career was winding down due to a reputation as a difficult actor (partly brought on by substance abuse following injuries suffered in a horrific car crash in 1956).

The Secret of NIMH (1982): Until the 90’s when Dreamworks, Sony and other studios entered the feature animation fray, Disney was as synonymous with animation as Google is with Search today. There was a brief period in the 80’s however, when ex-Disney animator Don Bluth independently directed four highly acclaimed animation films, two of them (An American Tail and The Land Before Time) in association with Steven Spielberg. The Secret of NIMH was the first of Bluth’s films and provided a darker alternative to Disney assembly line fare (which itself ran dry around this time, before its own resurrection in the late 80’s with The Little Mermaid). Based on the award-winning 1971 children’s scifi/fantasy novel, Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH, it featured the voice talents of several respected stage and film actors, including John Carradine, Derek Jacobi, Peter Strauss and Dom DeLuise. A gripping story and a must-watch for animation aficionados, who would appreciate the “depth” of it’s 2D traditional cell animation.

Irma Vep (1996): This French arthouse film has become a cult classic over the years, to the point that it has spawned a TV miniseries this year, created by Olivier Assayas, who directed the original. The original helped to launch the international career of Hong Kong martial arts star Maggie Cheung, who actually plays the role of a Hong Kong martial arts star named Maggie. Irma Vep chronicles the ill-fated attempts of a somewhat incompetent French director (played by beloved acting legend Jean-Pierre Léaud) to direct a remake of the classic French thriller serial film Les Vampires, the name being a reference to an underground criminal gang. I actually didn’t find the film to be particularly entertaining, and I suspect its popularity was mainly due to the prospect of seeing Maggie Cheung in a black latex catsuit! Assayas has directed several well-regarded films in recent years such as Clouds of Sils Maria, Personal Shopper and Non-Fiction, but personal favourite is his three-part miniseries, Carlos (which I reviewed in 2012) , starring Edgar Ramirez.

Wild River (1960): This film was an unexpected find, since I had never heard of it before, being one of director Elia Kazan‘s lesser known films. Montgomery Clift delivers a low-key, compassionate performance as Chuck Glover, a government agent responsible for acquiring land for the Tennessee Valley Authority hydroelectric project. The narrative centers around a battle of wills between Glover and Ella Garth, a feisty old woman who lives on an island on the Tennessee River, with her extended family and Black farm hands, and who is determined not to sell to the TVA. Actress Lee Remick plays Ella Garth’s widowed granddaughter, the only person in the family with an interest in getting off the island, but too reserved to speak her mind. This is a typical “outsider vs. the village” narrative and follows established story beats, but nevertheless is an engaging film, on account of the intense performances, particularly from Jo Van Fleet as Ella Garth.

No Way Out (1950): This was the first of three consecutive films I watched, starring Richard Widmark, one of the finest character actors of the 50’s and 60’s. It is also notable as Sidney Poitier‘s debut film and fittingly showcases a hard-hitting depiction of racial hatred. Writer-director Joseph L. Mankiewicz received an Oscar nomination for the screenplay, but lost out to himself, when his Oscar juggernaut All About Eve swept up multiple awards that year. Poitier plays a young Black doctor who has to treat two brothers who are brought into a prison hospital ward, after they were apprehended during an attempted robbery. This set up leads to a sequence of events that unleashes the pent-up racial tensions in the city. Widmark as absolutely believable as the bigoted, petty criminal, who cannot bear to even be touched by an African-American doctor. This landmark film also features two African-American acting giants and civil rights activists, Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee, in early uncredited roles. The early 50’s was a period of extraordinary success for director Mankiewicz, who followed up this film with 5 Fingers (best Picture nominee), Julius Caesar (best Picture nominee) and The Barefoot Contessa (best Screenplay nominee).

Sidney Poitier and Richard Widmark in *No Way Out* (1950)

Pickup on South Street (1953): This extraordinary Cold War spy film with film noir undertones features a crackling performance by Richard Widmark, as pickpocket Skip McCoy. McCoy steals a women’s wallet on a crowded subway train and inadvertently gets caught up in an international espionage conspiracy. The plot is quite complex with plenty of twists, turns and double crossing involved, so one has to pay close attention. Widmark delivers the sort of raw, edgy performance that he became famous for, and veteran actress Thelma Ritter plays a key role as a police informant who tries to play both sides. Director and screenwriter Samuel Fuller always operated on the edge of mainstream fare and was well known for depicting the more violent and seedier aspects of life, which made him a favourite of French New Wave directors in the 60’s.

Panic in the Streets (1950): This thriller from Elia Kazan hasn’t aged one bit and is perhaps even more relatable today in the Covid era. Richard Widmark plays Clinton Reed, a US Public Health Service officer in New Orleans. After discovering pneumonic plague in the blood of a murder victim found near the docks, Reed has to convince a skeptical city bureaucracy that a pandemic is imminent unless they can trace everyone who came in touch with the victim and have them inoculated. And so begins a race against time, of the sort we have seen in similarly themed modern day thrillers like Outbreak and Contagion. The cast includes likeable character actor Paul Douglas, celebrated stage actor Zero Mostel, and Jack Palance in his screen debut as a gangster named Blackie. The city of New Orleans is another key character – the streets, back alleys and docks through which Clinton Reed chases down the source of the infection, add to the atmosphere and texture of the story. Overall, this is an immensely gripping and watchable film, and highly recommended. The film won an Oscar for Best Screenplay and garnered Kazan a Golden Lion nomination at the Venice Film Festival. Thereafter, Kazan went from strength to strength, directing the classics A Streetcar Named Desire, Viva Zapata!, On the Waterfront and East of Eden over a five-year period.

Here are the links to the previous thumbnails: #1-10, #11-20, #21-30 and #31-40.

A Criterion Channel journey, films #11-20

Here’s the second part in my series of thumbnail sketches of the films I’ve watched on the Criterion Channel streaming service. These 10 films were viewed over the 2nd half of September and early October.

Ganashatru/Enemy of the People (1989): Ganashatru, an adaptation of a 1882 Henrik Ibsen play, was one of only five films by Indian master Satyajit Ray that I had not yet watched, so I was naturally thrilled to find it on Criterion. It features two Bengali acting stalwarts, both of whom started their careers in Ray films – Soumitra Chatterjee made his debut in Apur Sansar (1959) and Dhritiman Chatterjee in Pratidwandi (1970). Soumitra C. plays a doctor in a small town who observes an increase in jaundice cases, gets the local drinking water tested and discovers it is contaminated, possibly from old sewage pipes. A popular temple is in the same locality and his discovery implies that the temple’s “holy water” is also contaminated. This brings the doctor into conflict with the temple trustees and his own brother, the municipality chairman (Dhritiman C.), who are concerned that his “theory” will scare away devotees who visit the town (Peter Benchley borrowed this Ibsen plot device for Jaws). These vested interests launch a slander and misinformation campaign, which results in the doctor being branded an “enemy of the people”. This film really resonated with me, as I found strong parallels with the way politicians and special interest groups use media to spread misinformation today, be it regarding Covid or climate change or elections.

The Steel Helmet (1951): I’ve read quite a lot about Samuel Fuller, the independent American filmmaker, but had never had access to his work. Luckily Criterion has half dozen of his films and I started off with The Steel Helmet. It was the first American film to tackle the Korean War (which had started a few months earlier) and was made on a shoe-string budget in under two weeks. The film showcases the underlying racism in the US military directed against its own African-American and ethnic Japanese soldiers, and also towards the Koreans that the Americans were defending. It’s a gritty film, not easy to watch and very much devoid of any heroic war scenes. In fact, the war setting is essentially a vehicle for the message and it remains one of Fuller’s most acclaimed films.

Vampyr (1932): Another director I’ve read about a lot, but never watched is Carl Theodore Dreyer, the Danish master whose work spanned nearly half a century. His horror film Vampyr was considered a low point of his career when released, but has gained appreciation over time. In the film, a young man named Allan Gray arrives at a village and decides to spend the night at the local inn. He soon gets caught up in some mysterious occurrences through the night, perpetrated by the local village doctor and an elderly woman who turns out to be undead. Ultimately, Gray kills the woman by driving an iron stake through her corpse and the doctor dies by suffocation when flour is emptied into the chamber of the flour mill he is hiding in…a truly gruesome scene. The film is also known for the famous dream sequence in which Allan Gray sees himself looking at his own dead body in a coffin. Dreyer placed a piece of gauze in front of the camera lens, which creates a fuzzy, “found footage” look to the entire film. Overall, I wouldn’t say it’s entertaining in the conventional sense, but is certainly required viewing for anyone interested in the history of cinema.

The Idiot (1951): I am a fervent devotee of Akira Kurosawa’s films, but there are a few like Dodes’ka-den and I Live in Fear that I haven’t been able to appreciate. Unfortunately, I have to add The Idiot to that list. Although based on Dostoevsky’s literary classic, and filled with the biggest names in Japanese cinema (Toshiro Mifune, Setsuko Hara, Takashi Shimura, Minoru Chiaki, Chieko Higashimaya), the storyline and in particular, the acting of Masayuki Mori as “the idiot” just irritated me no end. At nearly three hours in length, the film just kept going on and on, with its convoluted relationships and repetitive hand-wringing by many of the characters. I guess I just wasn’t in the mood for an overdoes of existential angst, and in that sense, it has probably cured me of any desire to read the Russian classics.

Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison (1957): Yet another masterwork by John Huston, this film features the powerhouse pairing of Deborah Kerr AND Robert Mitchum, in what is essentially a two-hander that could even have become a stage play. The film is set in the South Pacific in 1944, with Mitchum playing a US Marine who escapes from a Japanese attack and is washed up on an island. He finds an abandoned settlement and just one resident, Sister Angela, a novitiate nun who arrived a few days earlier with another priest, who died soon after. The first part of the film plays out like a relationship drama, with the two very different types of individuals learning to work together to survive. The second half transforms into a thriller, with the arrival of Japanese troops on the island, forcing Corp. Allison and Sister Angela to go into hiding. There are many twists and turns, and I genuinely feared that there would be a tragic ending, but fortunately the US Marines save the day. The core of the film is the relationship between the brash but good-hearted corporal and the prim but feisty nun. Deborah Kerr received the fourth of her six Best Actress Oscar nominations for this picture, which was also nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay.

Mustang (2015): One of the most powerful movies I have seen in recent years, this Turkish language film which was nominated for a Best Foreign Film Oscar and dozens of other awards, tells the story of five orphan sisters trapped in a conservative, patriarchal society and their attempts to break free. The girls are virtual prisoners in the home of their uncle, while their grandmother attempts to marry them off one by one. The narrative is presented from the perspective of Lale, the youngest of the girls, played by Güneş Şensoy. I was strongly affected by the injustice and the hypocrisy portrayed in the film, as well as the realization that there are hundreds of these real-life stories taking place around the world every day. This was Turkish-French director Deniz Gamze Ergüven’s debut film and one not to be missed.

Güneş Şensoy (center) plays Lale, the youngest of the five sisters trapped in a rural patriarchal society in Deniz Gamze Ergüven’s 2015 film *Mustang*. The other sisters are played by İlayda Akdoğan, Tuğba Sunguroğlu, Elit İşcan and Doğa Doğuşlu.

The Black Cat (1934): This was the first of several horror films produced by Universal Pictures to leverage the popularity of Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi, following their instant stardom in 1931 with Frankenstein and Dracula respectively. The film combines elements of revenge thriller, psychological horror and even some science fiction. For audiences who only associated Karloff with the brutal monster in Frankenstein, it’s quite a revelation to see him here as a suave and brilliant architect, the owner of a futuristic home in the mountains of Hungary. Bela Lugosi is a local doctor who returns to the area after 15 years in a prisoner-of-war camp, seeking vengeance on Karloff’s character for his betrayal during World War I. A young couple on a holiday become the unwitting pawns in the cat-and-mouse game of intrigue between the two enemies. The film ends in a grand climax, which includes a satanic cult and some pretty gruesome scenes.

Supermarket Woman (1996): This breezy comedy is the second last of the 10 collaborations between director Juzo Itami and his wife Nobuko Miyamoto, before his untimely and mysterious death (ruled a suicide, but suspected murder) in 1997. It’s very much in the vein of A Taxing Woman and its sequel, with Miyamoto-san’s character Hanako helping her friend, the owner of a struggling supermarket, to revitalize his business and take on an unethical rival around the block. There are plenty of heartwarming and inspirational scenes, as the gutsy, never-say-die Hanako inspires the different department heads of the supermarket to change their outdated practices and become more competitive and customer-friendly.

The Raven (1935): Another Karloff-Lugosi pairing from Universal Pictures, this one is named after an Edgar Allan Poe poem, and the plot has a macabre connection to the works of Poe. Bela Lugosi plays brilliant but megalomaniacal surgeon Dr. Vollin, who becomes romantically obsessed with a young woman after performing an emergency operation to save her life. When the woman’s father asks Dr. Vollin to keep out of his daughter’s life, the surgeon concocts a diabolical scheme to murder the father. To achieve his objective, he takes advantage of an escaped murderer Bateman (played by Karloff) who arrives at his door one night asking to have plastic surgery performed to alter his features. Frankly, it’s a contrived plot, with the purpose being to showcase some grotesque make-up on Karloff and to set up a climax in Dr. Vollin’s secret chamber filled with torture devices inspired by Edgar Allan Poe’s stories. Although not as graphic as contemporary horror films, the implied violence and twisted mentality are disturbing enough. With a running time of just one hour, it’s a watchable oddity from the Universal Pictures horror library.

The Valachi Papers (1972): Although an English language film, The Valachi Papers is actually a Dino De Laurentiis production with a predominantly European cast and crew, with the exception of American star Charles Bronson. And Bronson himself was a big name on the continent at that point, having appeared in a number of popular European films including Once Upon a Time in the West, Rider on the Rain and Red Sun. Bronson plays Joe Valachi, the real-life mafioso who became a government witness in 1963 and whose revelations about the American mafia form the basis of most of what is known about them by the general public. The film covers a 40-year period, from Valachi’s induction into the mafia ranks as a teenager to the events which led to him becoming an informant. Bronson of course, is known for his screen presence, but I was captivated by the performance of the supporting cast, including veteran actor Lino Ventura as mafia boss Vito Genovese, Guido Leontini as Genovese’s capo Tony Bender, Angelo Infanti as Genovese’s partner-in-crime Lucky Luciano and Joseph Wiseman as Salvatore Maranzano, the first of the American mafia “Godfathers” (Wiseman rose to fame playing the character of Dr. No ten years earlier). The film had a tough time upon its release as The Godfather had come out just a few months earlier and critics compared it unfavourably with Coppola’s instant classic. Nevertheless, it’s a solid film and well worth watching for fans of the genre.

For reference, here’s the link to #1-10.

Next up, #21-30, which will include films from Japan, Spain, Iran and the US.

A Criterion Channel journey, films #1-10

I got myself a Criterion Channel subscription in September this year and have watched more than 60 films in the past three and a half months, a mix of international arthouse and American classics. I’m going to try and write out short thumbnails of all the films, in groupings of 10 films each.

The Clock (1945): This is only the third film I’ve watched by celebrated director Vincente Minnelli. The romantic comedy was his follow-up to Meet Me In St. Louis, reuniting him with that film’s star (and his future wife) Judy Garland. She plays a spunky city girl who has a chance encounter at Penn Station with a guileless small-town soldier (Robert Walker) on a two-day trip to New York City. Although not love at first sight, there is a connection between the two which deepens over the next 24 hours, and results in a frantic tussle with the city’s bureaucracy to get married before his return to base. It’s very much a product of its time, reflecting a simpler value system when people were grateful just to be alive. Frankly, I didn’t care much for either of the two leads, although their earnest on-screen personas made the story believable.

Corporal Joe Allen (played by Robert Walker) and Alice Maybery (played by Judy Garland) have a whirlwind romance in Vincente Minnelli’s *The Clock* (1945)

Mélodie en sous-sol/Any Number Can Win (1963): This outstanding French crime film stars heartthrob Alain Delon and acting legend Jean Gabin, who team up to pull off an audacious heist of a casino in Cannes. As is typical for this genre, a significant part of the film is focused on the assembly of the team and the logistics planning. Delon’s character impersonates a high roller in order to stake out the casino from within, and he gets to look good in a tux while romancing one of the beautiful young stage performers. Most French heist films create empathy for the criminals and then break the audiences’ hearts when the heist ultimately fails…this film is no different and the manner in which their plan unravels at the end is both stressful and devastating.

The Tale of Zatoichi (1962): This is the first film in the beloved Zatoichi film series, featuring the eponymous blind masseuse who moonlights as a swordsman, righting wrongs and breaking the hearts of impressionable young village damsels. I had watched a later entry in the series Zatoichi Meets Yojimbo, which I found very boring, although it featured Toshiro Mifune reprising his role as Yojimbo. On the other hand, the 2003 remake by Takeshi Kitano is one of my all-time favourite samurai films. Therefore, I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect with this franchise origin film but it turned out to be entertaining enough, once I got accustomed to the physique and mannerisms of actor Shintaro Katsu. The stories, no doubt, got repetitive over the years, but understandably became a guilty pleasure for legions of fans.

Across the Pacific (1942): Released shortly after Humphrey Bogart’s megahits The Maltese Falcon and Casablanca, this spy thriller was directed by John Huston with Vincent Sherman taking over when Huston joined the US war effort. Bogart plays Army Captain Rick Leland who infiltrates a Japanese spy network attempting to coordinate an attack on the Panama Canal. The film reunites Bogart with his co-stars from The Maltese Falcon, well-known character actor Sydney Greenstreet as the antagonist and Mary Astor as his love interest. The film lacks the magic of Bogey’s other hit films, but is reasonably enjoyable. Interestingly, in the original script, the Japanese attack was supposed to be on Pearl Harbor (!!!), but then the real Pearl Harbor attack took place during filming, so the script was re-written changing the target to Panama.

The Browning Version (1951): I had watched the 1994 adaptation of Terrence Rattigan’s play starring Albert Finney, but this one from 1951 has now become my preferred version. Filmed from a screenplay by Rattigan himself, it features Michael Redgrave as the bitter, cuckolded Classics teacher Andrew Crocker-Harris, now in the autumn of his career and about to retire on account of his failing health. Redgrave’s restrained but searing performance of a man who is on the brink of mental collapse due to a lifetime of repressed emotions and unfulfilled ambitions won him the Best Actor award at Cannes, and the film itself was nominated for the Palm d’Or. There are brilliant supporting performances from young actor Brian Smith as the sympathetic student Taplow and Jean Kent as Crocker-Harris’ frustrated and vicious wife. I saw strong thematic parallels with Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, something other critics have commented on as well.

Classics master Andrew Crocker-Harris (played by Michael Redgrave) and his student Taplow (played Brian Smith) in Anthony Asquith’s *The Browning Version* (1951)

A Taxing Woman’s Return (1988): This sequel to the popular 1987 comedy A Taxing Woman, continues the adventures of the intrepid female tax investigator Hideki Gondō, who continues her battle against corruption and tax evasion. Directed by Juzo Itami and starring his wife and regular leading lady Nobuko Miyamoto, this film continues their successful collaboration which started off in 1984 with the dark comedy The Funeral and followed a year later with the brilliant Tampopo. This time around, Ms. Gondō investigates a religious sect which is being used by politicians and the mafia as a front for tax evasion. Miyamoto-san’s on-screen energy and a great supporting cast make this comedy a breezy watching experience.

Odd Man Out (1947): James Mason’s performance in this film earned him some of the best reviews of his British cinema career, shortly before he moved across the Atlantic to become a big Hollywood star. Mason plays Irish Nationalist Johnny McQueen, who at the start of the film is in hiding, having escaped from prison a few months earlier. He is now ordered by the Nationalist leadership to rob a mill to secure funds for the movement. The robbery goes wrong, a guard is killed and McQueen is shot and injured during the escape. Separated from his gang, the rest of the film traces McQueen’s tortured journey through the underbelly of the city as he seeks to evade capture. Having become a household name as a wanted man, he crosses paths with a number of Dickensian characters, never sure if they will help him or betray him to the police. The film is beautifully shot by cinematographer Robert Krasker with a strong noir-inspired visual sensibility; a similar effort, working with the same director Carol Reed, would win Krasker an Oscar two years later for The Third Man.

Kathleen Sullivan (played by Kathleen Ryan) and the ill-fated Johnny McQueen (played by James Mason) in Carol Reed’s *Odd Man Out* (1947)

The Grand Maneuver (1955): This tedious comedy-drama by director René Clair was a complete waste of my time. A lieutenant in the French cavalry undertakes a bet with his fellow officers that he will “win the favours” of a woman whose name has been picked randomly from a lot. I just found the whole premise unpleasant, although in the style of the times, the film makes it all out to be harmless fun! The film features Brigitte Bardot in one of her early roles just before she achieved international stardom.

Samurai III: Duel at Ganryu Island (1956): This is the final entry in Hiroshi Inagaki’s trilogy of films chronicling the adventures of renowned Japanese Kensei (“sword-saint”) Miyamoto Musashi, played by screen legend Toshiro Mifune. I had watched the first two films almost twenty years ago, but hadn’t managed to track down the final film until now. Samurai III features returning characters from the earlier films, including the two women who are in love Musashi, and a skilled samurai Sasaki Kojiro, who is obsessed with defeating Musashi in direct combat. Actor Kōji Tsuruta, who plays Sasaki Kojiro, lights up the screen with his striking features and intensity, while Mifune is his usual imposing presence. The duel occurs only at the end of the film, but there was plenty of plot development and character interaction to keep me glued to the screen throughout. I’ll certainly go back and watch the first two films when I get a chance.

I Was Born, But… (1932): This early silent film from Japanese master Yasujiro Ozu is a charming little gem, about the difficulties faced by two little brothers in settling into a new neighborhood and school. Their father has just moved the family to the suburbs of Tokyo so that he can be closer to his place of work. The siblings have to deal with the inevitable bullying from a group of neighborhood kids, which they manage to overcome. But the real blow comes when they see that their stern father, who they worship at home, demean himself excessively in front of his boss and co-workers to curry favor. This realization leads to tantrums at home and a dramatic hunger strike, all of which eventually fizzle out in the face of their parents’ maturity, good nature and some yummy home-made onigiri. It’s a wonderful story about the complicated world of adults as seen through the simple eyes of children, but told without any judgement by the storyteller. Later in his career, Ozu directed a loose remake with stronger comedic beats, titled in Good Morning.

More to come with #11-20, which will feature films from India, Germany, Japan, Turkey and the US.