I recoil from most allegorical films, so it’s hard to watch Hiroshi Teshigahara’s heavy collaborations with writer Kobo Abe and composer Toru Takemitsu. Yet the third of their efforts (1966) is more palatable than its predecessors (Pitfall, Woman in the Dunes) because its philosophical focus and thrillerlike story overpower the allegory, allowing Teshigahara’s eclectic mix of styles and forms to move beyond artiness. The embittered victim of an industrial accident (Tatsuya Nakadai), who has to hide his scarred face in bandages and has been rejected sexually by his wife (Machiko Kyo), gets fitted with a lifelike mask that encourages him to try to seduce her as a stranger. Though the story becomes almost as overloaded with ideas as Pitfall, the theme is brilliantly and imaginatively explored, and the acting is potent. In Japanese with subtitles. 124 min. (JR) Read more
Mikio Naruse’s first talkie (1935)a melodramatic tale about three sisters working as samisen street musicians, based on a story by Nobel Prize winner Yasunari Kawabatais characteristically downbeat and downscale but uncharacteristically experimental in terms of sound and image. Clearly Naruse was still getting accustomed to sound in movies, with interesting but uneven consequences; some of the camera setups detract from the story but are striking nonetheless. In Japanese with subtitles. 74 min. (JR) Read more
Krzysztof Kieslowski’s major work (1988) consists of ten separate films, each running 50-odd minutes and set mainly around two high-rises in Warsaw. The films are built around a contemporary reflection on the Ten Commandmentsspecifically, an inquiry into what breaking each of them in today’s world might entail. Made as a miniseries for Polish TV, these concise dramas can be seen in any order or combination; they don’t depend on one another, though if you see them in batches you’ll notice that major characters in one story turn up as extras in another. One of Kieslowski’s best ideas was to use a different cinematographer for each film (with the exception of the third and ninth), though the script is more important here than the mise en scene. In Polish with subtitles. (JR) Read more
Based on a book by Lynn H. Nicholas, this fascinating film documents the plundering and destruction of art during World War II; the moving and hiding of art, precautionary and otherwise, that were sometimes carried out on a massive scale (such as the Louvre being virtually emptied ahead of the German invasion, and preparations made by residents of Florence prior to the Allied bombing); and subsequent heroic acts of recovery. Part of the history lesson being conveyed here is how different the cultural climate was back then: Hitler and G Read more
Shohei Imamura’s first feature (1958), shot in black-and-white ‘Scope, deals with a form of working-class Kabuki that attracted him as a college student, but its story about an itinerant troupe performing a striptease version of the form near Osaka isn’t very inspired. Nevertheless, Imamura characteristically finds some vitality in vulgaritythough his more prosaic working title, Tent Theatre, was rejected by the production company. In Japanese with subtitles. 92 min. (JR) Read more
If Jean de Florette, the first chapter in Claude Berri’s two-part adaptation of Marcel Pagnol’s novel L’eau des collines, was all windup and no delivery, this sequel finally brings about the comeuppance of Cesar Soubeyran (Yves Montand) and his nephew Ugolin (Daniel Auteuil), the greedy peasants of Provence who indirectly brought about the death of Jean de Florette in the first part. Now Jean’s daughter Manon (Emmanuelle Beart) is all grown up and living with Baptistine (Margarita Lozano), the widowed well keeper, and Ugolin becomes smitten with her. While part one sets up the possibility of regarding the villains as a French counterpart to Faulkner’s tragicomic Snopes clan, part two brims over with too much cosmic justice to keep that analogy viable. Montand and Auteuil remain effective, Beart is unusually pretty, the rural settings are still attractive, and the qualities that make this a national myth persist; but Berri also remains a boringly uninteresting director, dotting every i and crossing every t with nothing much on his mind but platitude. With Hippolyte Girardot, Elisabeth Depardieu, and Gabriel Bacquier (1986). (JR) Read more
