Now Showing at The Clark

“Four Seasons in Japan: A Cycle of Film Classics”

Free Films Fridays at 4:00 in the Clark Auditorium

This series samples the classic work of four Japanese masters of cinema, who made the postwar era a golden age of film in Japan. Rising from the ashes of atomic annihilation and the humiliation of surrender and occupation, Japanese cinema burst on to the international scene when Kurosawa’s Rashomon won the grand prize at the Venice film festival in 1951, with Mizoguchi winning there the next three years.

Ozu achieved posthumous recognition when Tokyo Story was belatedly released abroad in the ’70s, its supreme achievement gradually confirmed as part of a seamless and peerless fabric of work, when his later films were rediscovered. In the ’80s Naruse was revived to critical acclaim but little distribution, becoming a special favorite of cinematic cognoscenti. All four of these directors had extremely prolific careers that bridged the devastation of World War II, and while many of their films are hard to find, the visible tip of the iceberg is monumental indeed.

June 12: Ugetsu. (1953, 96 min.) Kenji Mizoguchi’s celebrated tale follows a 16th century potter who leaves home to sell his wares in the midst of a civil war, and is captivated by a ghost princess. His signature style, with a gliding camera that unfolds scenes like a Japanese scroll, conveys the magic and mystery of the uncanny without blinking at the gritty reality of a war-torn world. Mizoguchi (1898-1956) is also known for The Life of Oharu and Sansho the Bailiff, among other undiscovered gems.

June 19: When a Woman Ascends the Stairs. (1960, 110 min.) Mikio Naruse’s modern story examines the life of a woman who ascends (and descends) the stairs to the Ginza bar where she serves as a female companion to businessmen, in a niche between geisha and prostitute. Naruse (1905-1969) shares a slow and stately style with Ozu, though his focus tends to be harder edged and grimmer in implication, so almost none of his films are easy to find.

June 26: An Autumn Afternoon. (1962, 112 min.) Yasujiro Ozu’s valedictory film recapitulates his customary themes, with a widower marrying off his daughter as the modern postwar world supplants traditional Japanese ways. As more of his films become available, the place of Ozu (1903-1963) in the pantheon of great directors becomes more certain. The Clark caps last summer’s popular “Seasons of Ozu” film series with this final testament to his genius.

July 3: Ran. (1985, 160 min.) Akira Kurasawa’s culminating masterpiece adapts King Lear to a mythical samurai past with pageantry and passion, mounting some of the most spectacular battle scenes ever filmed. Kurosawa (1910-1998) was the youngest and by far the most Westernized of these four masters. Besides Shakespeare, he found inspiration in John Ford Westerns and other popular genres, and the favor was amply returned when Hollywood remade a number of his films, most notably The Seven Samurai. With his mastery of genre and a wider view of his work, it’s hard to pigeonhole his style, but Ran demonstrates his taste for the epic.

Coming to the Clark – a film series called “An Artist in Her Own Right: Barbara Stanwyck and the Modern American Woman,” showing Saturdays at 2:00, July 18-August 15. And in September, the Cinema Salon Film Club at the Clark -- watch this space for more information.

Revolutionary Road

This is an okay film that suffers by comparison to two superior works, the Richard Yates novel on which it is based, and the tv series Mad Men, which has claimed that era and milieu as its own. I had high hopes when I heard this film was coming out with Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet, directed by her husband, Sam Mendes, so I re-read the 1961 novel to whet my appetite. Yates is deservedly known as a writer’s writer, and indeed I was led to him originally by Joe McGinnis, with whom I became friendly after I wrote a rave review of Fatal Vision. So this film preserves most of the novel, except that which makes it a great book -- the writing. Particularly the excruciatingly nuanced accumulation of shame and humiliation deduced from the workings of self-delusion, the mind in subverted communication with the tongue, and the tongue with others, in a cascade of misrepresentation. Beginning with the same scene, the novel presents the snowballing disaster of a community theater performance in a protracted set piece, but the film shows only the curtain coming down to scattered sarcastic comments from the audience. If you know the book, the movie seems skimpy. If you don’t, it’s likely to seem simplistic and unmotivated, however blistering. Likewise if you know Kate and Leo -- and who does not? -- then it’s hard to see them as these resourceless characters, trapped in a cage of their own illusions. They seem bigger than their cramped circumstances, which is just what the Wheelers were not. When I was reading the book, I couldn’t help seeing April in the guise of Betsy of Mad Men -- January Jones, as pretty, fragile, and hard as porcelain. Ms. Winslet simply has too much substance for the role, and no way is Leo pathetic enough to be Frank. Which is not to disparage their performances, but to point to the misconception that dooms this film from its worthy inspiration to its tasteful semi-tragic conclusion. It’s hard to make a great film from a great book. (2008, dvd, n.) *6+* (MC-69.)

That truism might, at a stretch, apply as well to Killshot (2008, dvd, n.) Elmore Leonard is great within the limits of genre fiction, but maybe not as literature. And certainly he has proven amenable to movie adaptation, from Out of Sight and Get Shorty down through the ranks. This one, however, didn’t make it to theaters but went straight to dvd, despite a noteworthy cast of Diane Lane, Mickey Rourke, Joseph Gordon-Levitt and others, plus director John Madden (of Shakespeare in Love fame). Somebody must have made Harvey Weinstein mad, because worse crap than this shows up in cineplexes every week. I think the key element missing from this adaptation is Leonard’s sly humor. The whole femme-in-jeopardy shtick is competently handled, as a woman witness is stalked by two crazy hitmen. But some crucial element of wit and irony is missing. Nonetheless this dumped film strikes as better, not worse, than average.

Frost/Nixon

Ron Howard’s adaptation of Peter Morgan’s play is well-played as far as it goes, but as with Milk’s quasi-documentary, it tends more toward the quasi-. All is forgiven for Frank Langella’s portrayal of Nixon, humanizing the bogey man who haunted my youth. I guess it’s a compliment to call Michael Sheen’s portrayal of Frost convincingly fatuous, until the dark night of the soul when he becomes a responsible journalist. It’s rather absurd how the film buys into the mano a mano fantasies of the pair. Once again, the artificiality of a theater piece is unmasked by the unavoidable actuality of film. Nice try, but the need to insert a standard dramatic arc (and eye candy like Rebecca Hall) undermines the veracity of the documentary intent. (2008, dvd, n.) *6+* (MC-80.)

Rambling round-up

I’ve been laid up for a little longer than expected after a knee operation, so I’ve used some of the leg-up time to catch up with movies on my TiVo playlist, some recorded more than a year ago. There’s none I’d recommend outright, but in the interests of viewer advice, I’ll suggest why you might want to watch any of them.

For cinephiles of my generation or a little older, Antonioni was always a touchstone. I never had a taste for him -- too dour a personality, too grim a viewpoint -- though I could see the appeal of his formal cinematic approach. Back then, L’eclisse (The Eclipse) (1962) struck me as the liveliest of his trilogy looking at fashionable modern alienation between men and women, so when I spotted a chance showing on TCM, I recorded and finally got around to watching it again. Monica Vitti is all that as a vision of romantically troubled blond beauty. Alain Delon is just as pretty as the hyperactive and distractable stock trader, who may or may not meet up with her in the end. The scenes at the Bourse exchange lend a frenetic vitality to what otherwise might sink into vapidity. Antonioni has a sure hand, a steady eye, but a cold and lonely heart.

I recorded Lust for Life (1956) to re-watch for possible showing at the Clark some time, and would not be embarrassed to show it, despite Kirk Douglas’s teeth-gritting, scenery-chewing performance as Van Gogh -- he certainly looks the part of all those self-portraits, though a little louder than the paintings. Just as loud, and colorful, are the widescreen visualizations of director Vincente Minnelli, who clearly favors art over kitsch in his adaptation of the Irving Stone bestseller.

I’ve had several occasions to review the slim pickings of feature films about the American Revolution, and each time I noticed recommendations of the filmed musical 1776 (1972), so I recorded it off TCM and eventually found it to be surprisingly adult in its portrayals and dialogue, set in the Continental Congress leading up to the Declaration of Independence, with songs full of content if not exactly hummable, such as one on the triangle trade of molasses, rum, and slaves. William Daniels is John Adams, Howard da Silva is Ben Franklin, and Ken Howard is Tom Jefferson, in performances more flavorful than you would expect, with impressive sets and costumes, and even some location shooting at Independence Hall. The proceedings do drag a bit, however.

As I was making my way through the top films in the indieWire critics poll for American releases of 2008, I happened to spot #21, The Duchess of Langeais (2006), showing on the Sundance Channel. New Wave veteran Jacques Rivette’s latest won’t make my list of best of year or of his career, but was certainly interesting to watch (MC-74.). This adaptation of a Balzac story set in the 1820s features Jeanne Balibar as the duchess who captivates the wounded Napoleonic general Guillaume Depardieu, and is captivated in return. With manners and conventions barely subduing unruly passions, these two dance around each other until it’s too late for anything but tragedy. What the production lacks in psychological realism, it makes up in elegant formality. Though nowhere near as long and slow as certain Rivette masterpieces, this film doesn’t hurry through its florid emotions and sensational plot, but marinates them in his obsession with theatrical performance, in life as well as on stage.

Because I’m showing Ball of Fire in a Barbara Stanwyck film series at the Clark this summer, I was intrigued when I saw that Howard Hawks later remade it as a musical, A Song is Born (1948), with Virginia Mayo in the Stanwyck role and Danny Kaye subbing for Gary Cooper. As you would expect, it’s not as good. But it’s still good fun, with the “seven dwarves” becoming musicologists instead of lexicographers, and the gang moll instructing them in the ways of jazz instead of slang, and rollicking guest appearances by the likes of Louis Armstrong and Tommy Dorsey.

A more plausible film to show at the Clark sometime might be Age of Consent (1969). I was interested in it as Michael Powell’s all but last film, and also for the promised sight of a teenage Helen Mirren frolicking in the nude both underwater and above. Successful New York painter James Mason decamps to an underpopulated island on the Great Barrier Reef north of Australia, where he encounters child of nature Helen, who inspires him to paint again. There are elements of inappropriate humor and questionable sentimentality, but in its portrayal of an aging painter reinvigorated by a naked young muse, it bears comparison to Rivette’s magnificent La Belle Noiseuse.

While Age of Consent was issued on dvd in tandem with an old Powell-Pressburger favorite of mine, A Matter of Life and Death (1946, aka Stairway to Heaven), the Criterion Collection brought out an earlier production of “The Archers” -- The Small Back Room (1948). Let it be said that any Michael Powell film is worth seeing, but coming after the fevered color dreams of Black Narcissus and The Red Shoes, this is a look back, to WWII in B&W -- a tense but multivalent story of a bomb disposal specialist, who must contend with a tin foot and a drinking problem, as well as a difficult relationship with a lovely, loving secretary, and a new booby-trap bomb that the Germans have taken to dropping on the English countryside. I watched the film in a fragmented way, but it was not only that that forced me to go back and re-view the beginning to put together all the pieces. It doesn’t blow up in his face, but the film is not among Powell’s best.