The Sound of Fury (1950)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

The Sound of Fury (1950) – C. Endfield

Launching from the same true incident that was the basis for Fritz Lang’s Fury (1936), Cy Endfield’s film also tells the story of mob violence that ends in lynching.  However, The Sound of Fury really turns the screws on Frank Lovejoy’s down-and-out California transplant, showing him to be guilty (at least by association) whereas Spencer Tracy was wrongly accused in the earlier film.  So, this film is a true noir, as Lovejoy’s first mistake leads inexorably to his tragic downfall.  Things are all the tougher to take because he has a wife and a child, one of the reasons that he gives in to the easy money available in the life of crime offered by slick and sleazy Lloyd Bridges (who provides a tremendous incarnation of the sociopath).  So, on the one hand, we understand that social forces have led to Lovejoy’s bad decision, but on the other hand, we can see Bridges is an amoral opportunist.  When the mob descends on them, we know it is wrong tarring Lovejoy and Bridges with the same brush – but Bridges doesn’t deserve lynching any less.  A subplot showing how “yellow journalism” has incited the crowd is a little less effective and more didactic, but viewers can grasp the take home point that democracy requires a fair trial that isn’t biased by the press. The fact that this democratic ideal was subverted here (and in the real incident) makes this a dark and troubling film indeed.  

  

Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory (1971)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory (1971) – M. Stuart

I read the book (by Roald Dahl) to the kids and they were very taken by its wonders and its humour (and I hoped that its morality tale would sink in).  Therefore, I was curious to see how they felt about the movie version (the one from my childhood, not the later Johnny Depp remake) which I recalled fondly, despite some vivid early nightmares featuring Oompa Loompas.  I worried a bit that the movie’s images might come to dominate what they saw with their own imaginations but it seems not to be the case -- the kids voted for the book over the movie.  But perhaps that is always what happens when you read a book first?  To recap, little Charlie Bucket longs for a golden ticket that will give him a tour of Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory and a lifetime’s supply of sweets – but there are only five such tickets in the world, hidden underneath the wrappers of Wonka chocolate bars.  Of course, after suspense is built, Charlie does find a ticket and he and his Grandpa Joe (Jack Albertson) are taken on a magical and sometimes scary tour of the factory by Mr. Willy Wonka himself, played with a serene sense of perfect ambivalence by Gene Wilder.  Wilder is easily the best thing about the movie, giving exquisite line readings (whether absurd or menacing or bemused), although the various rooms in the factory do have a candy-coated funhouse charm to them.  Surprisingly, the film didn’t seem childish or particularly dated, although the haze of nostalgia might be clouding my judgment.  I had forgotten however that this was a musical (apart from the scary songs sung by the Oompa Loompas after the bad children are dispatched with) and the various songs (including “Candy Man”) work to bring out the fantasy elements of the film.   Of course, the book didn’t have the songs and some of the episodes are different (squirrels not golden geese, for example).  Most significantly, Charlie and Grandpa Joe don’t break the rules in the book.  However, this twist does add more suspense to the film than the book and gives Wilder a chance to turn Charlie’s grim disappointment into ecstatic amazement, something that every child (and adult) deserves to feel at least once.

Sudden Rain (1956)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Sudden Rain (1956) – M. Naruse

I’m a sucker for these Mikio Naruse dramas (or sometimes melodramas) where Japanese people talk incessantly and relationships are carefully observed.  I find them somehow relaxing.  Often Naruse focuses on women and their attitudes toward each other (or toward the men in their lives); in that regard, he aims for us to identify with the great Setsuko Hara (who died last year at 95) here. She is a patient housewife, managing things for herself and her husband (married four years), but denying her own needs and interests (in true Japanese female fashion).  I read somewhere too that Naruse films tend to fixate on money problems and Sudden Rain is no exception.  The pivotal event that tips the couple from “kentaiki” (relationship fatigue) into distress is the threat of lay-off for the husband from the cosmetics company where he is a salesman.  Actually, he has to choose between resigning with a 100,000 yen bonus (a vast sum in 1950s Japan) or staying on with the risk of getting laid off with no bonus.  He contemplates moving back to the small village where he grew up, something which he knows his wife would not want to do.  As is typical for Naruse, there is no clear resolution of the issues but, at the film’s end, the couple seems resigned to continuing as they are.

I couldn't find a clip of the film, so here's a quick tribute to Setsuko Hara:

  

Modern Romance (1981)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Modern Romance (1981) – A. Brooks

Albert Brooks makes things funny and painful (even excruciating) for viewers at the same time with this extended skit about an extremely neurotic film editor in an unstable relationship (the instability is his own doing).  Kathryn Harrold is his impossibly patient girlfriend who works in a bank.  Things start with Brooks breaking the relationship up because he feels it isn’t working; cue a slow motion trainwreck night on Quaaludes.  Brooks tortures himself (and the audience) with every false and real move that a man might make when experiencing attachment anxiety.  Of course, he screws everything up – but somehow manages to return to relational harmony (and then royally screws things up again).  The plot aside, it is the little moments that count with Brooks.  We smirk as he gets suckered in a sporting store or when he ridiculously recreates George Kennedy’s footsteps on the Foley stage.  The character Brooks plays isn’t as intellectual as Woody Allen nor as stupid as the fictional George Costanza (two erstwhile peers in pain) -- instead, he is the everyman who worries too much.  As a director, Brooks knows how to draw out a specific incident such that viewers can see the pain coming -- but it still resounds with comic reverberations when it hits; he makes a lot out of a little. I laughed.

Pitfall (1962)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Pitfall (1962) – H. Teshigahara

Teshigahara’s first feature is strikingly original, from the impressive blend of long shots and unusual angles to the very strange plot.  The latter involves a war deserter turned labouring miner who finds himself in the wrong place at the wrong time and is stabbed to death by a mysterious man in a white suit and gloves.  Rising as a ghost, he observes (but can’t interfere with) the efforts of the press and police to find his killer – and suspicion naturally falls on his identical double, a union official.  If it sounds as though I’ve given away too much about the plot, this probably doesn’t matter because the film continues to surprise (and delight) with its weirdness.  Teshigahara called it documentary-fantasy and perhaps it does take a rather matter-of-fact approach to the proceedings (unique camera moves aside, of course), even when they are unrealistic.  He followed up with Woman in the Dunes (1964) and Face of Another (1966), both highly stylized and also scripted by novelist Kobo Abe, who wrote Pitfall as well.  A sixties artefact to be sure but still refreshing today.

  

Your Name (2016)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Your Name (2016) – M. Shinkai

Apparently the most successful animated film in Japan since Spirited Away (2001) (and an exception to Studio Ghibli/Hayao Miyazaki’s domination of the genre), Your Name is an unusual combination of weird and saccharine.  On the one hand, we have a Freaky Friday-styled body swap that has something to do with a meteor hitting Japan and possible space/time travel.  On the other hand, the body swapping occurs between a teenage boy and girl who cheesily may be “meant” for each other.  But things are mostly not too cloying (some J-Pop interludes notwithstanding) and the plot is set up to be mysterious enough (with occult overtones) that a second viewing might be rewarding (I did get confused at one point although this might be due to the distraction of watching this on an airplane).  The animation itself echoes the Ghibli love of landscapes and nature without quite rising to the same level.  But I don’t want to undersell this film which is interesting and unpredictable and therefore worth a watch for adults (not for kids).  Japan’s animation output is still strides ahead of comparable films from other countries, respecting the intelligence of the audience and delighting visually at the same time.  Perhaps, though, it is the “otherness” of Japan that leads to this conclusion?

Vivre Sa Vie (1962)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Vivre Sa Vie (1962) – J.-L. Godard

In his third feature, Jean-Luc Godard continued to playfully innovate with film form, even as he focuses on the economic plight of women that leads them to turn to prostitution.  Godard’s wife, Anna Karina, is (again) delightful and charismatic despite the circumstances of her character.  She starts as a record shop assistant hoping to break into film but loses her apartment, tries (nude) modelling, and then runs into a friend who became a prostitute to support herself and her kids after a divorce and follows suit.  Godard breaks the film into 12 parts (it is subtitled “film en douze tableaux”) with brief intertitles announcing the content of the next section. As usual with Godard, the text is the thing and the characters chat away endlessly in interesting intellectual digressions; for example, later in the film, Nana (Karina) has a sit down with a French philosopher who argues that language is the basis for thinking.  Karina references Sartre (particularly his concept of “bad faith”) more than once (and the title itself points to existentialism methinks).  Most stunningly, she goes to see Dreyer’s La Passion de Jeanne d’Arc (1928) and tears up at the dramatic performance of Falconetti (and her giant shorn head in close-up).  Godard also uses many close-ups of Karina (when he isn’t showing us the back of her head, as he does frequently) and, as shot by Raoul Coutard (1924-2016) in black and white, the film (and Paris) looks overcast and beautiful.  The end result is pretty exhilarating with Godard in the middle of his most entertaining period (before he became truly difficult and cryptic).  Nevertheless, this film too will take some unpacking.

Anatomy of a Murder (1959)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Anatomy of a Murder (1959) – O. Preminger

One way that the movies competed with TV was to offer content that couldn’t be shown on the small screen.  Preminger’s courtroom drama is a case-in-point.  By dealing with rape and the subsequent revenge murder in detail, the cast is able to use descriptive details and words such as sperm or panties that would be too much for younger (or conservative) viewers at home.  Jimmy Stewart is the “humble country lawyer” who is craftier than he looks and may or may not be allowing sullen Ben Gazzara to use the temporary insanity defense to excuse his shooting of the man who raped his wife, Lee Remick.  Remick plays the flirt well and allows the film to explore the question of victim-blame – although rather than suggest that she brought it on herself, the script implies that there wasn’t a rape at all but rather consensual sex which led Gazzara to fly into a jealous rage.  But was he insane at the time?  George C. Scott plays the slick prosecuting attorney brought up from Lansing (to the Upper Peninsula where the film takes place) to combat Stewart.  What results is a suspenseful drama with a few surprises and some panache (particularly in the context of 1959) from all concerned.  Eve Arden and Arthur O’Connell are solid in supporting roles (on Stewart’s team) but this is Stewart’s show and he doesn’t disappoint (but he doesn’t push himself into darker territory like he would in Vertigo or the westerns he filmed with Anthony Mann). But the ending does make you think.