A thriller that, for all the elements typical to its creator, presents really a variation of Samuel Fuller, a variation somewhat familiar from certain glimpses in certain moments of his other films; House of Bamboo shows Sam Fuller, gifted a large budget and a chance to shoot in Tokyo, as an observer rather than the … Continue reading House of Bamboo (1955, Samuel Fuller)
Mediterranee (1963, Jean-Daniel Pollet) If the endless circuit of repetitive simulations and duplications continues then we should at least attempt to find some ecstasy, some liberty and some echoes of what we have lost within it. Jean-Daniel Pollet’s essay film is an edifice (strong yet weak, monumental but crumbling, still just together but ready to … Continue reading Round-Up: Pollet, Guitry, Robson/Lewton, Mizoguchi
Here Mizoguchi treads the trails left by the neo-realists and if the result is not a masterpiece (it lacks the sureness and completeness of so many of his best films) it’s still a remarkable and scrappy work of art, a sort of howl of rage and despair so brutal and overpowering that its expresser later … Continue reading Women of the Night (1948, Kenji Mizoguchi)
Two more silent Mikio Naruse films, both from 1933. Every-Night Dreams is currently the more acclaimed of this pair, perhaps because it’s story and feel is closer to some of the social realist Hollywood films or melodramas of roughly the same period (albeit while remaining distinctly Japanese). It is a film which attempts to present … Continue reading Apart from You (1933, Mikio Naruse) /Every-Night Dreams (1933, Mikio Naruse)
Twenty-eight minutes in length, Flunky, Work Hard is the earliest surviving work by Japanese master Mikio Naruse, made just one year after his debut. If Passing Fancy by Ozu belongs to the proletarian-focused cinema on the 1930’s, then Flunky, Work Hard belongs to that tradition too while also straddling a more experimental vein in the … Continue reading Flunky, Work Hard (1931, Mikio Naruse)
