Reviews

In a Sirk film nothing is quite as it seems. Am I alone in finding rather more going on here under the surface, than might have been expected from a 'family fun' B-picture?

As we'd expect from Sirk, everything is kept tight, the actors take their chances well - not least the two, far from stereotyped house servants, played by Frances E. Williams and Elvia Allman - and there is plenty of genuinely funny comedy, primarily some well-timed phyiscal slapstick from Van Heflin.

Underneath the predictable family ingredients, there is some slightly less genial critique of middle-class American life and love going on. The mockery of Richard Denning's vegan 'Tarzan' character is sustained and trenchant, as is the far from flattering portrait of Virginia Field's careerist TV personality - women, it seems have to know their place in America's safe but stuffy 1950s society.

Yet the ironies are multiplied by the awful emotional ineptness of the two main characters - their idea of how to break the news of their engagement to their children would have seemed as horrific then as now. The 'fun' of American camp life, one step away from natural disaster, sends shivers down the spine. And at the climax, the still moment where Heflin's elder daughter (Gigi Perreau) gives her infantile father a lesson in emotional intelligence comes as a touching tension breaker - this is the first time we've seen any of the characters react or behave in a 'responsible' way. And it takes a child to get the adult to see the truth.

Perhaps I am alone, but I found Sirk's multi-layered social comedy fascinating, like peeling a workaday onion to find a diamond at its heart.

Although very different from Tomo Ushida's other late films, with its hand-held cameras, fluid 'noir' cinematography and realistic style, this is one of his unquestioned masterpieces, on a level with any of his post-war work. The acting is superlative - especially from Sachiko Hidari as the cheap and touchingly simple prostitute unexpectedly caught up in somebody else's drama - the narrative is beautifully paced, and the film fully justifies its three hours' length.

Without being one of those Hollywood-style "message" cop-jobs, or anything like Kurosawa's flimsy imitations of same (he is beloved in the States because his films are consciously in their - comparatively limited - transatlantic style) Ushida's film is a compelling thriller, with the inexorable movement of a Greek tragedy such as 'Oedipus'. It is also a deeply absorbing meditation on guilt, retribution, poverty - and most surprisingly, what we might call "the wages of kindness".

This is not some silly procedural for infants, anymore than Sophocles's drama; but it is a great film, for anyone who cares to respect a master of the medium, and gives some thought to what they are watching. (The DVD available from DVDLady is very watchable, taken from an excellent French print, with good English subtitles.)

This is the first of Tomu Uchida's trilogy of films (1957, 1958, 1959) which make up his version of the 'Daibosatsu tôge' story. There are, of course, other adaptations, but I will confine my comments to this one.

Uchida is one of the greatest Japanese directors, and he shows many of his qualities in this extraordinarily beautiful and visually imaginative film. Individual shots, especially those of Dojo and Inn interiors, are stunningly composed and wonderful for the eye to linger on.

The anti-hero - a wandering ronin samurai whose philosophy and 'silent' school of swordsmanship incline him to the 'dark side' - is an unusual character to find at the centre of a samurai film, and the fighting is confined to a handful of precisely choreographed minimalist "ballets", of great power. Ryonosuke is played by the ageing, almost immobile and reptilian-voiced Chiezô Kataoka, in one of his most compelling portrayals. His alter ego, the young samurai, Hyoma, represents the 'light side' and is perfectly portrayed by the young Kinnosuke Nakamura.

The characters and action around this pair develop a Shakespearean depth and range as the trilogy progresses. Though all is not perfect - the action can seem over-compressed (perhaps due to cuts) which works against the stately and noble pace of the whole five-hour epic. But even if this is not Uchida's greatest film - not quite reaching the consistency of 'Bloody Spear on Mount Fuji' or his five-part 'Miyamoto Musashi' sequence - it is full of breathtaking cinematography, excellent acting and exquisite artistic composition. Hugely absorbing!

My wife and I found this as a bonus "short" on a DVD devoted to Lev Atamanov's acclaimed "The Snow Queen", a film which is said to have inspired Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki ("Spirited Away", "My Neighbour Totoro" et. al.) with a desire to work in animation. "Golden Antelope" is a highly imaginative 35-minute work, in vivid colour, which is well worth seeing in its own right.

A young village boy in the Indian Jungle protects the magic antelope (a gentle creature who drops golden coins as she runs) from the pursuit of a wicked, greedy rajah and his henchmen, refusing to reveal her whereabouts even when threatened with death. Aided by a cavalcade of beautifully animated tigers, elephants, bears and monkeys, the boy tracks the antelope to her forest home. Eventually he faces down the powerful but sensually depraved rajah: "you may kill me if you like, but you do not understand the value of friendship and loyalty".

The moral may be slight, but the artistic power of this short masterpiece is anything but. Atamatov's fluid animated style captures the grace, variety and subtlety of the movement of his cast, human and animal; the jungle backgrounds are sumptuous; the musical score recalls the oriental splendours of Rimsky-Korsakov and Borodin; and there is great humour as well as drama in this lovely example of the Russian animated tradition.

"La dolorosa" is historically important for several reasons. First, it is the only film entirely directed by Grémillon in Spanish - "Centinela Alerta" from two years later was a joint effort with Luis Buñuel. Second, it was the very first zarzuela (popular Spanish opera) to be filmed as a 'talkie'. Third, it made, in the hotbed years immediately before the Civil War, a remarkably daring comment on religious and social intolerance. Religious feeling, it implies, is in essence little more than sexual sublimation.

Artistically, its power is hardly diminished by the years. Of course it helps if you are sympathetic to music drama, as the final section uses the climactic duet (between the disappointed-lover-turned-priest and his 'fallen', unfaithful fiancée Dolores) from Serrano's masterly zarzuela score to maximum emotional effect. Indeed much of the film is at least underscored by his music, plus additional cues by the conductor/arranger Daniel Montorio. It is compelling music, given sensitive and occasionally stunning visual counterpoint by Grémillon.

One sequence in particular, as Dolores stumbles through the rocky hillside to seek sanctuary in the monastery, packs an extremely powerful punch. The musical counterpoint (a song made famous latterly by Placido Domingo, in which the artist-monk-lover describes a painting he has made of the Virgin Dolorosa) gradually fuses with the cinematography, culminating in a vision of the cross in which the luckless Dolores finally *becomes* the Virgin, Mother of God. This is stunning cinema.

Rosita Díaz Gimeno's cool, classical beauty adds to the effect, and her performance as the Rich Girl Gone Wrong, who then finds herself spurned even by the lowest of the low, is one of understated dignity. Agustín Godoy as the lover-turned-monk is passionate, confused and touching by turns, and there is a warmly sympathetic portrayal of the Monastery's Prior by Luis Moreno - like Buñuel, Grémillon is careful not to condemn the man whilst questioning the faith.

The comedy sub-plot reflects the main plot neatly (this is taken directly from the zarzuela, of course, and is not Grémillon's invention) and the Spanish peasant characters are neither guyed nor glorified.

If you like good film and good music, "La dolorosa" needs no special pleading. An impressive, moving and rich masterpiece.

Warning! The original version of "Sampo" lasts over 90 minutes, and is a beautiful, atmospheric and awe-inspiring retelling of the Finnish legend of the Sampo, from their national epic, "The Kalevala". In many ways it was the great director Alexander Ptushko's most ambitious film: the idea of the Sampo itself goes far beyond the search for a mere object, touching on the mainsprings of desire and humanity's questing spirit (in much the same way as does the Holy Grail in Arthurian literature).

Sadly, the American release as "The Day the Earth Froze" more or less destroyed the director's structure, his epic time scale, and the sense of mystery to the plot itself, sacrificing everything subtle in a brainless attempt to turn the film into helter-skelter action and swashbuckling excitement. Almost one third of the original film disappeared, and much of the rest was barbarically recut.

The result is a travesty - please, if you watch and rightly condemn "The Day the Earth Froze", do not confuse this farago with the beautiful and profound original film which is (or was) "Sampo"!

So says the grizzled old factory watchman at the conclusion of the folk tale he's been telling the children huddled around his fire through the Russian night. One of the young boys comes quietly up to him as the others leave, and tells him that he too wants to be a master-stoneworker, like the hero of the story: "ah!", says the watchman, "you got the point!" And the point's not just for children, either.

Ptushko's memorably beautiful film makes for a gripping parable about the conflict between the inner and outer life of the born artist, willing to risk sacrificing everything - even the woman he loves - in pursuit of artistic and technical perfection. At the secret heart of the Copper Witch's caverns, the Stone Flower itself represents that unattainable ideal of beauty, natural material fashioned so cunningly that it seems more real than reality itself. Danila, deeply unsatisfied with his work admired though it is by so many, has to study its form at any price, leaving his betrothal feast to pursue his ideal and hone his technique.

Will Danila break free of the Copper Witch's charms, and return to the "real world"? You'll have to watch the film to find out...

With only four significant characters - the young genius, the ageing and ailing master-craftsman who teaches (or is taught by) him, his faithful betrothed Katinka, and of course the Copper Witch herself - "Kamennyy tsvetok" is much more tightly structured and less riotously inventive than some of the other Ptuchko films I've been privileged to see, and the tension never flags.

Political content, too, is restrained - surprisingly so, given the film's date and the fact that it was (as other commentators have pointed out) the first major Russian film to be made in colour. The peasants are duly repressed by the fat and frivolous landowners and their brutal class-traitor henchmen, but (assuming that *my* brain has figured it out correctly!) the clear message is that whatever its conflicts with everyday life and relationships, art certainly transcends politics and class. Surprising indeed. There's even a moment in the beautifully depicted and choreographed folk betrothal where religious icons are bowed to with grace and reverence. It is amazing that Ptushko was daring enough to try to get that one past the censors, let alone manage to succeed!

The commentator who compared the visual feast on offer with Powell and Pressburger's roughly contemporary "The Red Shoes" was spot on: their "Tales of Hoffmann" is even closer in spirit. Ptushko's visual imagination and daring are in that league, and his colour process produced really breathtaking pictures. If his images here seem more illustrative and pictorial, less intrinsically filmic than the art of those English masters, they are none the less memorable. The magic scenes in the woods, and in the gem-sparkling caverns, are of a loveliness seldom matched in film of any era, and never surpassed.

The currently available RUSCICO DVD version is quite beautifully restored visually, and the sound is very acceptable too. With good extras, including a half-hour feature about Ptushko's life and work showcasing extracts from many of his other films, why not treat yourself and your family, if you have one, to this rich folk-tale? If you respond to it as I did, you may even manage - for one brief, shining moment - to feel that you are nine years old once again!

I use "Princess Raccoon" (to give the film its not-quite accurate English title) as a litmus test for my friends' sense of humour. It either leaves them cold and baffled - as it clearly did several other commentators on this site - or results in doubled-up laughter, unassailably huge grins and occasional gasps of admiration.

The laughter comes from the film's consummate mixture of parodies in contemporary style. Targets include a bouquet of Japanese and Western classical stage drama forms, from Kabuki to Late Shakespearian and Spanish renaissance Christian fantasy; the naff vacuity of the modern American and European musical, as witness a host of random tap- and rap- dance songs and some very funny banal lyrics, all choreographed with loving "amateur" cliché; Japanese anime and samurai live-action clichés; portentous Buddhist ritual; and the overweening sweetness of Viennese operetta. I've not laughed out loud so much at this type of film since Ken Russell's outrageous musical deconstruction in "The Boyfriend".

The grins come from the clever textual subversion of the Japanese legend, told in a traditional 5-act structure reminiscent of the plays of the 17th century master Chikamatsu. As in his work the narrative is advanced in a mixture of song, recitative, high-flown poetry and low comedy relief - here the pot-broiling of the incompetent ninja, Ostrich, by peasants under the illusion that he is a tanuki-raccoon in human guise. All of this somehow does hang together, and even more remarkably does manage to engage the watcher's emotions through the welter of cultural references.

In truth "Princess Raccoon" wears its pan-cultural garb with alluring lightness, and that's where the gasps of astonishment come in. Visually - again, as with Russell's masterpiece - the film is a treat, a riot of colour with its digitised backdrops of classical Japanese images from screens and prints, over-the-top costumes and stage sets, mixed with some breathtaking live action sequences in summer fields and seashores. You'll love it or loathe it, but there's no point castigating chalk for being cheese; and "Princess Raccoon" stands, first and foremost, as a wickedly funny as well as affectionate put-down of our contemporary cultural vacuity, in both East and West. Bravo!