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
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
