Collected Criterion Collection Movie Review: 2013
2013 was a big year for me watching Criterion Collection movies. My wife at the time and I broke up in the fall of 2012, and streaming movies had become a thing recently (see my prior post reviewing movies on Netflix in 2010) and I spent time between relationships watching what was then the Criterion Collection "channel" on Hulu. These reviews were generally well received but there is just only so much time you can devote watching movies if you are seeing someone who doesn't love watching old movies, that amount of time being pretty much zero, so once I got into my current relationship and started the transition from San Diego to Los Angeles it got tough to keep going. Also there are only so many Criterion Collection films you can actually stream, so there ends up being a limit on this activity.
Movie Review:
Anna Karenina (1948)
Anna Karenina (1948)
d. Julien Duvivier (5/16/13)
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| Vivien Leigh as Anna Karenina in the 1948 film |
Movie Review:
Anna Karenina (1948)
d. Julien Duvivier
starring Vivien Leigh as Anna Karenina
viewed on Hulu Plus
I had a bit of a revelation last night when a friend logged me into her trial Hulu Plus account. This is on the heels of Wii related break through, where a 25 year old woman sat down with my Wii counsel for five seconds and showed me that I could download Youtube, Amazon streaming and Hulu Plus onto my Wii a la Netflix. I mention this because I had been watching Netflix on my Wii for three years without realizing I could get Youtube, Amazon & Hulu Plus- literally had no idea.
I'd known that Criterion Collection had left Netflix for Hulu Plus, but until last night I didn't realize that there are literally a 1000 Criterion Collection sponsored titles (not all of them are straight Criterion Collection films.) For years I've wanted to have a filmic counterpart to my ambition to read all 1001 books listed in the 1001 Books To Read Before You Die (2006 edition) and I've always thought the Criterion Collection would be a great counterpart. And now it is here. If you look at the list of Criterion Collection titles on Wikipedia, you'll see that it's not the strictly canonical effort that 1001 Books To Read Before You Die purports to be. For example, the 100th Criterion Collection title is called, "Beastie Boys Video Anthology." Interesting, perhaps. Canonical? No way.
It's funny, whenever I mention to people (rarely now because I know what people think) that I'm reading all 1001 Books of the 1001 Books Before You Die, I get weird stare and occasionally open condescension or hostility. And then, in the next breath, the same person will tell me they've watched all 300 episodes of some television show- in a week- 10 episodes at a time- and that, I guess, is normal now. It seems to me that if I'm going to "waste" a large part of my life consuming culture, I'm better off focusing more on timeless classics, and less on successful network sitcoms from the 90s- I am excluding the Friends TV series from that list- because I would totally watch that.
Of course the first film I watched was one that Criterion Collection is streaming on Hulu Plus, but is not actually a card-carrying member of the Criterion Collection itself, Julien Duvivier's 1948 adaptation of Anna Karenina, starring Vivien "You Know Her From Gone With The Wind" Leigh as Anna. Vivien Leigh was as "A List" as you get in 1948: Gone With The Wind was out in 1939, and her turn as Blanche in Streetcar Named Desire was three years in the future. Before Anna Karenina she played Cleopatra in Caesar and Cleopatra.
The director, Julien Duvivier is, according to IMDB, "the most neglected of the "Big Five" of classic French cinema (the other four being Jean Renoir, Rene Clair, Jacques Feyder, and Marcel Carne), partly due to the uneven quality of his work. The only Julien Duvivier film I had seen prior to last night was the classic Pepe Le Moko. Anna Karenina then is what you would call a late career misfire. According to the Wikipedia entry on the film, the budget was 700k British pounds and the B.O. gross was 150k- so that is a loss of a half million pounds right there. Chalk it up to the sumptuous back drop/scenery.
Not to be snobby or contrarian, but I almost preferred the 1948 version to the recent Keira Knightley starring version from 2012, simply because Vivian Leigh was splendid. Her eyes really do flash with hatred when she looks at her husband. The photograph above is a screen cap from the scene when her husband enters the grand stand during the horse race, right before Count Vronsky is thrown from his horse and Anna Karenina freaks out because she thinks he's dead.
All the other plots from Anna Karenina the book other then the main story of the Alexi/Alexi/Anna triangle are ruthlessly suppressed Specifically, the Konstantin Levin/Kitty Scherbatsky marriage plot is cut down to roughly three minutes of screen time. I thought Kieron Moore as Count Vronsky was quite good. In fact, I liked almost everything about this version, except for the obvious plot consolidation, and it's a bit of a mystery to me why it's critical reputation isn't higher a half century later.
Amarcord (1973) d. Federico Fellini (5/17/13)
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| This is a still from Amarcord d. Federico Fellini (1973) one of the many grotesques that appear in almost incidential fashion during Amarcord. |
Amarcord
d. Federico Fellini
1973
Criterion Collection #4
I can't properly express the feeling of joy I get when I think about being able to watch through the majority of the Criterion Collection on Hulu Plus. Seriously, is there anything else worth doing? Which is not the same as saying that I'm going to enjoy watching every film. In fact, I imagine it will be equally as tedious as reading all of the classics of 18th century literature in chronological order, like I did between 2008 and 2011.
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| This still shows Magali Noel playing Gradisca. She is perhaps the most central character in the film as she begins and ends it. |
The Criterion Collection is not in chronological order, rather they are simply sequentially numbered like the releases of a record label. So Amarcord, the 1973 coming of age reminisce by Italian director Federico Fellini, is Criterion Collection #4. An excellent attribute of every Criterion Collection title is the corresponding web page they have set up with supplemental material.
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| This is the head of Mussolini, who actually speaks to some of the townspeople during a Fascist rally that is both comical and surreal. Like, the mouth is about to open and address the crowd. |
For example, while I was watching Amarcord, I read the essay, Federico of The Spirits by Sam Rohdie. Considering my utter ignorance and even irrational dislike for the collected work of Fellini (Why? I have no idea) I found Federico of The Spirits to be incredibly helpful in understanding/enjoying the film. If you contrast the Criterion Collection page to the pathetic Wikipedia entry for the same film, its easy to see what a tremendous resource the Criterion Collection supplemental materials are for someone watching movies in a vacuum.
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| Fellini's use of color in the form of flags and furniture is used sparingly in Amarcord but often to striking effect. Here, I was reminded of Matthew Barney's Cremaster cycle, for some reason. |
Amarcord was late enough in Fellini's career that critics were able to instantly hail it as a masterpiece. It won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film in 1975 and numerous other critical awards during that time period. There is no central narrative to Amarcord, rather the film is organized around the turn of seasons during the course of a single year. The charteristics of late Fellini: a carnivalesque atmosphere and the presence of grotesque looking actors, saturates Amarcord, shades of contemporary film makers like David Lynch, Harmony Korine, Lars Von Trier and artists like Matthew Barney are evident from stills taken during the film.
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| This is a peacock in the snow from Amarcord directed by Federico Fellini Movie Review: Beauty and the Beast (1946) d. Jean Cocteau (5/18/13)
Movie Review: Beauty and the Beast (1946) d. Jean Cocteau Criterion Collection #6 Yeahhh... who I told I was watching this movie both thought I was talking about the Disney piece of s***. Anything sadder then the co-option by Disney of our public domain fairy tales? Sad but true. The Disneyfication of the fairy tale obscures the different origination of fairy tales in their "moden" form. Of course, the main vehicle has been the seminal work of the Brothers Grimm, but there is also a solid French contribution. The modern version of Beauty and the Beast has an actual author, Mme. Leprince de Beaumont.
Jean Cocteau is another director who I know I should have watched but have not because of not having access to the Criterion Collection, but now I'm on the road to correcting that- Cocteau has four films in the Criterion Collection: The Blood of a Poet, Orpheus, Testament of Orpheus and this one.
This edition of Beauty and the Beast was of course superb, particularly the quality of the film restoration and the "uncompressed" score by George Auric- both aspects of the release brought Beauty and the Beast to life and made watching it a pleasurable experience.
I spent plenty of time in college and afterwards watching scratchy VHS copies of non-restored classics, spent time in law school and after watching scratched up non-restored DVD's of classics and earlier in this decade, before Netflix lost the Criterion Collection to Hulu Plus, I would get their scratchy copies of the Criterion Collection movies- but they would always skip and not come with the bonus features. Honestly, the streaming function of Hulu Plus vis a vis the Criterion Collection is literally the greatest breakthrough in a decade. Cocteau's Beauty and the Beast is a world with real suffering intermixed with dreamlike/surreal qualities. It's quite a package for 1946 and easy to see why the Criterion Collection would release it in the first ten releases of the Collection. Walkabout (1971) d. Nicolas Roeg (5/20/13)
Movie Review Walkabout (1971) d. Nicolas Roeg Criterion Collection #10 The more Criterion Collection films I watch the more I realize that my interest lies just as much with the Criterion Collection itself as the individual films in the collection. I'm interested in the order of release, why they chose the films they released as well as the business side of the Criterion Collection. At the same time, though having all these Criterion Collection titles available via streaming on Hulu plus is almost like a relief, particularly since I only need to invest a couple hours in a film (vs. 2-20 hours on a book depending on the length.)
Walkabout is a stunning outing by director/cinematographer Nicolas Roeg (Australia), produced by the guy who made Clockwork Orange. It tells the story of a teenage girl and her kid brother, who are abandoned in the outback when there Father commits suicide on a after school outing. After they are abandoned, they come across an Aborigine who is actually on a real Walkabout- an Aboriginal coming of age ritual that involves the young Aborigine roughing it in the desert for six months.
Summertime d. David Lean w/ Katharine Hepburn (5/22/13)
Movie Review Summertime d. David Lean w/ Katharine Hepburn 1955 Criterion Collection #22 One of the attributes of people I've learned about from the internet is that it is easier to get people to like another person then a thing. People are more likely to "like" a band/artist then a record label. People are more likely to "like" Jesus then Christianity. People like to like other people. When you apply that principle to works of Art that are group efforts, it means that inevitably the Audience will be more interested in the specific people involved: the star Actor/Direction then the craft of an extremely complicated production. In music, when a new record comes out, people are interested in the novelty of it and what it tells the Audience about the Artist. Audience members do not care about how the record was produced Summertime presents two obvious focal points: the director David Lean and the star actress Katherine Hepburn. I should say it now: I have nothing but contempt for actors and their so-called "art." I can recognize and affirm great Actors but I don't think it's a worthwhile avocation for an amateur artist, specifically that it's inferior to being an author, musician or studio artist. I have more respect for Directors and the most for the system of movie production itself, but of course, no one wants to hear about that last one. David Lean is most known for his epics: Lawrence of Arabia and Doctor Zhivago, but the Britiish director had a "long and eclectic career" and this vintage 1950s Rom with a dash of Com is a good example of his eclecticisim. Katharine Hepburn stars as Jane Hudson, a "fancy secretary" from Akron Ohio who is on a once of a lifetime trip to Venice...solo. While there she befriends an orphan and has a brief love affair with Renato De Rossi a (married) antiques dealer who may or may not have defrauded her when she bought an "antique" vase from him. Ah, Italy. Besides Hepburn doing her thing as a lonely, over-educated white lady from the 50s, Venice takes center stage. Having been to Venice during the off season, I can only contemplate with horror what a nightmare it must have been to shoot this film, in Venice, during the high season for tourism. It seems literally insane/impossible not to mention like literally the most expensive undertaking outside of shooting a feature film on the Moon or at the bottom of the ocean- just my impressions from a visit to Venice during the dead of winter in 2010. I wasn't a huge fan of Venice at the time, but it's hard not to like how Lean shows her off: the bridges, the canals, the plazas, the Churches, the other plazas. Honestly, it seems like not much has changed in Venice since the mid 1950s. Once again, the restored Criterion Collection edition was a sheer delight to behold. Also, this is not a Criterion Collection edition where you need the special features, which are listed on the web page as "Original Theatrical Trailer" END OF LIST- so this is a good title to knock out without regard to missing the DVD only features. Shock Corridor (1963) d. Samuel Fuller (5/24/13) Movie Review Shock Corridor d. Samuel Fuller 1963 Criterion Collection #19 This is the second Samuel Fuller film in a row I've watched. The other was The Naked Kiss. Both have Constance Garnett as the female lead. In The Naked Kiss she plays a reformed prostitute who murders here pedophile fiance. In Shock Corridor she plays the cabaret singer fiance of the newspaper reporter who goes undercover into an insane asylum to solve a murder and pays... with his sanity.
Seeing the two films back to back in the their glorious Criterion Collection editions it is easy to see what contemporary critics saw in his movies. First of all, there is his outre treatment of mental illness- Shock Corridor has a black character who thinks he is white and repeatedly talks about lynching "niggers." The Naked Kiss was the first movie to directly discuss pedophilia as a mental illness. Fuller was clearly interested in the subject as a hook to sell movie tickets in the 1960s. This psychological angle is something that has lasting interest to the film scholar community, but these are not dry, academic films, they are pulpy b movies and rewarding for reasons outside of their long term value- in the same way that you can watch a Quentin Tarantino or Richard Rodriguez film as a genre exercise or a film that plays with the conventions of genre. Same thing with Fuller, in fact it seems like Samuel Fuller was likely an inspiration to Tarantino. I could probably look that up. It certainly feels right. There is a sort of studied artificality that surrounds Fuller's films that recalls the work of David Lynch, as well. Think of Kyle McLaughlin in Blue Velvet Andrei Rublev (1969) d. Andrei Tarkovsky (5/27/13)
Andrei Rublev (1969) d. Andrei Tarkovsky Criterion Collection #34 185 minutes/Russian subtitles From one perspective, watching a 3 hour film with Russian subtitles seems totally insane, but is it any more insane then watching six episodes of "Cheers" back-to-back on Netflix? Andrei Rublev is a quality example of a work of art I would literally have never seen were it not for its inclusion within the Criterion Collection. Director Andrei Tarkovsky is best known in the west for his sci-fi epic Solaris, but this is has to be his masterwork. Andrei Rublev is theoretically the biography of Russian Icon Painter Andrei Rublev, who lived in the 14th and 15th century. Little is actually known about the guy, and his biography is simply a cover for sweeping- SWEEPING- historical drama about Russian life in the Middle Ages. The black and white film used to shoot Andrei Rublev makes you think it was shot in the 1920s, and then Tarkovsky pulls away for an epic crane shot with hundreds of Russians and Tartars on horses and you're like, "Ah- no- not made in the 1920s."
Watching Andrei Rublev is like watching a film from another universe- only a Communist country would both fund such a work AND ruthlessly suppress it prior to release. One of the benefits of state funded art I suppose. Over the three hours I spent watching Rublev- and you have to actually watch it because it is in Russian, with English subtitles, I was trying to imagine what it must have been like being an Artist in Communist Russia- there must have been pros and cons. The stand out moments in the epic are the scenes of wanton cruelty of the Czar and Tartars alike towards the peasants. The cruelty is depicted so matter of factly that it can reach even people who have been desentizied to depictions of cruelty and violence. It's like seeing Birth of a Nation only the troops are raping people and gouging their eyes out before the heroic Klan arrives to save the day. The final chapter of Andrei Rublev tells the story of Fyodor, who is drafted by the Czar to make an enormous bell for a church based on his representation that his dead father, the bellmaker, had imparted his secrets to Fyodor before death. Then you watch this kid make this enormous church bell- essentially on pain of death- and then when it works, he breaks down and confesses that his father never told him the secret of making large bells, and he basically made it up as he went. It's a rare cinematic moment, equal to anything that Hollywood has thrown out there, and the fact that it comes at the end of this dark, savage movie about life in the Russian Middle Ages makes it all the more exceptional. Diabolique (1955) d. Henri Georges Clouzot (5/29/13)
Movie Review Diabolique (1955) d. Henri Georges Clouzot Criterion Collection #35 OMG this movie is so good, but unfortunately it's got a plot twist that makes talking about it almost impossible without ruining the film for someone who hasn't seen it. Henri Georges Clouzot is a good example of a film maker who benefits from Criterion Collection editions of his work. I realized while reading an article Terrence Rafferty wrote about this release that I had see another of his films, La corbeau, about the impact of anonymous gossip in a small town, in a non Criterion Collection version and it was scratchy and unrestored. The tag to get you to watch this movie is that this was a story that Hitchcock wanted to film and "got away." It has elements of film noir, suspense and horror that are characteristic of what would become "Hitchcockian" film making, but was made before Hitchcock himself had rounded into full, mature, artistic form. The plot of Diabolique: A spurned wife and beat-up mistress conspire to murder the brutal man they share in common, if classic film noir but as Diabolique moves through it's nearly two hour run time, elements of the supernatural begin to creep in, leading to the blow up ending. It is quite a ride, and the performances of the lead characters: Paul Meurisse as the brutal husband/love Michel Delassalle, Simone Signoret as the scheming blond mistress Nicole Horner & Vera Clouzot as Christina the spurned wife- are all top notch. The value of the Criterion Collection Edition here is that Clouzot was a filmmaker who was very much a victim of the rise of the Nouvelle Vague- it was unfortunate, he was targeted mostly because he was on top vs. being an embodiment of the film culture that Truffaut, Godard etc despised. Making a Criterion Collection of Diabolique cements his proper place in the canon of film. Fun movie- worth a watch on Hulu Plus for sure Branded to Kill (1967) d. Seijun Suzuki (5/30/13) Movie Review Branded to Kill (1967) d. Seijun Suzuki Criterion Collection #38 It's clear six movies in that one of the primary purposes of the Criterion Collection is to canonize films that are, at time of publication, outside the canon of generally recognized classics. This is a well established tactic of the marketing of cultural products, whether it be anthologies with critical notes or reissues of out of print records, the resuscitation of a product that has either a minimal market or is currently unavailable in the the market is always attractive because the acquisition costs are low relative to the production of a new art product in the same format.
It makes sense that so many of the Criterion Collection films are either foreign or from "B-Movie" genres, because these are the films that are most often going to be ignored by the American critical/popular Audience for movies. One characteristic foreign and b-movies have in common is less-then-perfect distribution, including, frequently, lags of years between production and distribution. If an art product is produced in year 1, and not shown to any Audience until year 3, there is less of a chance of the work connecting with that initial Audience. But one of the things I've learned already is that I've actually seen many/most of the Criterion Collection films already: Grand Illusion, Seven Samurai, The Lady Vanishes, 400 Blows, The Killer, Hard Boiled, Spinal Tap, Silence of the Lambs, Sid and Nancy, Dead Ringers, Robocop,Alphaville, M, Nanook of the North, Time Bandits, Armageddon, Fishing With John (TV Show.) That takes me up to this movie, Branded To Kill, Criterion Collection #38.
Anyone can see from that very partial list that there are a bunch of films that are hardly traditional classics: two John Woo movies, Spinal Tap, Silence of the Lambs, Sid and Nancy, Dead Ringers, Time Bandits- and... AND- Armageddon- directed by Michael Bay- in the first 50 titles. Clearly what we're dealing with here is what the Criterion Collection could get the rights for. That set, Branded to Kill, directed by Seijun Suzuki is a solid Criterion Collection gem, one of two Seijun Suzuki films that appear back-to-back 38-39 in the Criterion Collection. Seijun Suzuki is known as a great rebel of Japanese cinema and kind of seems like the Japanese equivalent of the New Wave bad boys of French Film or more recent Auteurs like Quentin Tarantino or perhaps even Eli Roth. Suzuki is so well known that I think it's warranted to quote the Criterion Collection biography of Seijun Suzuki itself: According to critic Manohla Dargis, “To experience a film by Japanese B-movie visionary Seijun Suzuki is to experience Japanese cinema in all its frenzied, voluptuous excess.” Suzuki played chaos like jazz in his movies, from the anything-goes yakuza thrillers Tokyo Drifter and Branded to Kill to the daring postwar dramas of human frailty Gate of Flesh and Story of a Prostitute to the twisted coming-of-age story Fighting Elegy; he never concerned himself with moderation, cramming boundless invention into his beautifully composed frames, both color and black-and-white. Accurate description. One of the most interesting aspects of Suzuki, besides the cinematography of this purportedly "B" movies, is their status AS B-Movies. Film makers are almost always working as employees of a film producing company, and this can lead to artistic disputes and outre behavior on the part of the Artists. For example, Suzuki was famously fired after Branded to Kill came out because the movie "made no sense." That is pretty epic. Watching Branded to Kill is a sequence of "gee whiz" moments as you recognize the enormous influence that Suzuki has had on a generation of Hollywood directors. As it turns out I've already seen Tokyo Drifters, but I would also write an amazing review of that film as well, if asked. Taste of Cherry (1997) d. Abbas Kairostami (6/2/13)
Movie Review Taste of Cherry (1997) d. Abbas Kiarostami Criterion Collection #45 Iran is a cultural blind-spot in the west. Even well educated American typically only know this history of Iran post Iranian Revolution. Few know that the Farsi language is part of the Indo-European linguistic family (alongside English, Spanish, French, German, etc.) or that the first Monotheistic religion (Zoroastrianism) was the state religion of Persia when the ancient Hebrews were exiled there. Iran is typically defined today by its religion: Shia Islam and almost never by ethnicity/language. Taste of Cherry actually won the Palme D'Or at Cannes in 1997 and the Criterion Collection edition followed shortly in 1999. Obviously, a film coming out of Iran in 1997 is going to have distribution issues, so it makes sense that this movie would basically go straight from theaters to Criterion Collection with no intermediaries. The story sounds like a parody of depressing indie films: Middle-aged Mr. Badii (Homayoun Ershadi) drives through the hilly outskirts of Tehran—searching for someone to rescue or bury him.
That's it- that is the whole story. Specifically he interacts with four people, a solider, a gatekeeper, a seminarian and a taxidermist, and tries to convince each of them to help him commit suicide by covering him with dirt after he dies. Although Taste of Cherry is only 90 minutes long it is a lengthy 90 minutes. I think I stopped it a half dozen times to get up and do something. Many of the shots are long static head shots of Mr. Badii driving, because the director was in the passenger seat shooting the film. The lengthy conversations are interspersed with breathtaking images of Iran- I'm just assuming this movie was shot near Tehran- perhaps in an industrial suburb- rather then Tehran proper. The Most Dangerous Game (6/4/13) Movie Review The Most Dangerous Game (1932) d. Ernest B. Schoedsack & Irving Pichel Criterion Collection #46 The Most Dangerous Game was a welcome respite after the slow-moving, elegaic & Iranian language Taste of Cherry. The Most Dangerous Game was the movie made by the group who would make King Kong the very next year, and even features King Kong leading lady Fay Wray playing another damsel in distress. Prior to watching this movie I knew of it mostly by pop culture references made in tv shows like the Simpsons. Who can't imagine Simpsons character/Arnold Schwarzenegger parody Rainer Wolfcastle gravely intoning, "I will hunt the most dangerous game...man." in his faux Austrian parody accent?
But, it actually is a film- this film- and it does tell the story of an insane Russian count living in an old Portugese castle in the Pacific who does, in fact, hunt the most dangerous game... that game being man. His foil is leading man Joel McCrea, but it's hard too take your eyes away from Count Zaroff, who turns in a crazy Russian bad guy for the ages. The impact is heigtened by the less-then-subtle camera techniques and a score that litereally goes bonkers every time the film makers are trying to hint at something. There is one scene where Zaroff is talking to Fay Wray and she is standing at the top of a lengthy stair case, and he is standing beneath, and he says something menacing, and the camera zooms in- it has to be- 50 feet, across the room to focus in on his menacing expression. It comes off as corny in 2013, but only because filmmakers have been using the same technique for almost a hundred years. The action sequences have the same clumsy, stop-motion quality that they have in King Kong but it doesn't detract from an enjoyable, and brief (The Most Dangerous Game is only an hour long) viewing experience. It's certainly more fun then Taste of Cherry. Black Orpheus (1959) d. Marcel Camus (6/6/13) Movie Review Black Orpheus (1959) d. Marcel Camus Criterion Collection #48 Black Orpheus is an outlier. First, it's in Portuguese, but made by a French director. Second, it's a filmic "one hit wonder" Marcel Camus never made another classic film. Third, it won both the Palme D'Or at Cannes and the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film in 1959 so it's not an lost masterpiece. Black Orpheus is the retelling of the Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice. In the original, Orpheus is a talented musician and Eurydice is his beloved. She attracts the attention of a malveolent shepard and she dies while in flight from him, bitten by a snake. Orpheus tracks her to the underworld and frees her once, but violates her condition of release by looking at her before they make it back to Earth, so he loses her in the end. Here the action is transposed to the favela's of Rio de Janiero during Carneval. Eurydice is a country girl who has fled into the city- scared of the man in the death costume who is stalking her. Orpheus is a talented guitar player and leader of a significant crew for the upcoming Carneval. When set against other foreign films of the late 50s and early 60s, Black Orpheus is a pageant for the eyes and ears.
Yojimbo (1961) d. Akira Kurosawa (6/10/13) Movie Review Yojimbor (1961) d. Akira Kurosawa Criterion Collection #52 Not particularly looking forward to watching every g d Akira Kurosawa movie, because it seems like every one is in the Criterion Collection. I know he's a master of world cinema but I just have never got into it. But I still prefer watching Yojimbo to any of the about 50 Friends episodes I've got stacked up on my DVR. I can't even contemplate the horror of watching 6 dvr'ed episodes of Friends in a row. It's like thinking about cutting off a limb, for me anyway. At the same time I'm forced to admit that I can't exactly sit down and watch a two hour Akira Kurosawa picture straight, either. What I end up doing is watching Yojimbo like it's an episodic tv show, with two half hour shows and a one hour finale over the course of 3 or 4 days. That way I have time to reflect before the film is over and I'm sitting there going "Ugh so boring." I've never been a Kurosawa fan but that must have something to do with the fact that I haven't seen the Criterion Collection editions of this work. For example, I can remember watching a pan and scan version of Seven Samurais on PBS in high school and not getting what the deal was. The deal is the way Kurosawa uses the wide screen format and translates the filimic components of a Western into his Japanese milleu. Many Americans who haven't seen Yojimbo have seen the Sergio Leon remake/adaptation from 1964, Fist Full of Dollars with Clint Eastwood. Actually probably at this point most people who have heard of one have heard of the other- don't know that the cult of Clint Eastwood really exists these days.
The center of Yojimbo is the incomparable (from the criterion collection website) Toshiro Mifune as Sanjuro, the itinerant Samurai/Cowboy who strolls into the frontier town where two gangs are at war with one another. Sanjuro plays both sides off against one another in his now classic, timeless, manner. Like the Seijun Suzuki films, to watch Yojimbo is to watch a movie that has directly influenced a half century plus of successful Film makers. One Criterion Collection specific observation I have after watching a dozen or so films is that the wide aspect ratio that characterizes Hollywood film was by no means standard on a world wide basis, particularly outside of America. Yojimbo has an aspect ratio of 2.35:1 whereas Amarcord, a Fellini film shot in the early 1970s, only has 1.85:1. The Most Dangerous Game, shot in the pre Code Hollywood era, is only 1.33:1. Same thing with Diablolique, a French film shot in 1955- 1.33:1. In fact, the only other film I can think of that shares the 2.35:1 aspect ratio of Yojimbo is Seijun Suzuki's movies. The 2.35:1 ratio is actually even larger then the current Hollywood standard. For example Robocop, shot in 1987, is 1.66:1. The 2.35:1 aspect ratio gives the filmmaker many possibilities in terms of composing the scene but it makes facial close ups awkward. Not in the hands of Kurosawa, but it's easy to see how a facial close up in a 2.35:1 aspect ratio would actually cut off the top and bottom of the face. But landscapes... or "long" shots- beautiful. Sanjuro (1962) d. Akira Kurosawa (6/12/13)
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