1950s List Discussion and Suggestions (Lists Project Vol. 3)

[Tommaso]

Genji Monogatari (AKA The Tales of Genji, Kozaburo Yoshimura, 1951): I have to admit that I had never even heard the name of the director before, but this version of the Japanese classic was nothing short of a knockout for me. I had to read up a little on the 11th century book that is the model for it, and it seems that the novel is as episodic as the film in its telling of the amorous exploits of the title figure and seems to have even more female characters than the film. In other words, I probably have to rewatch the film to understand fully who is who here, but I'm not much of a plot-driven watcher anyway, and so this film impressed me completely on the strength of its acting and especially the visuals. The film has a rather melancholic air, slow-moving and introvert. It seems to focus on the plight of the women much more than on the erotic or political successes of the title figure - played by Kazuo Hasegawa, who doesn't seem too be much of a 'hero' for me here - which adds to the impression the film leaves. But I haven't read the book, so this might well be something that's in the source already.

In any case, this is every way as good as the best films by Mizoguchi from the period in terms of strikingly lyrical images all the time. Great camera set-ups and movement, fine acting, rich sets, achingly beautiful in places (that sequence in which one of the ladies appears to Genji while he's outside watching the moon... like something straight out of "Ugetsu"). I don't hesitate to call this a masterpiece, and it will certainly be on my list. I have no explanation why it hasn't found its way to a dvd release in the Western world, perhaps it seems not 'commercial' enough, I don't know. But thankfully there is an English subbed version in the usual places...

[Michael Kerpan]

Kozaburo Yoshimura trained under (yet another) great but unsung Japanese master of (usually) comic realism at Shochiku, Yasujiro Shimazu. Later, he moved to the camp of Mizoguchi at Daiei (and he directed Mizoguchi's last unfilmed script, Osaka Story). His most famour (in the West) film is the late 40s Ball at Anjo House.

I have not seen Genji monogatari (though I have wanted to see it), but the things I have seen have been generally quite good, if perhaps just a bit "stagey". Genji monogatari (at least the first 2/3s -- up until Genji's death shifts the focus to a new generation) is a very interesting book, painting a world far different from the Japan that would come into being not all that long afterwards.

[puxzkkx]

Renato Castellani's Italian women's prison film Hell in the City surprised me by not being exploitative at all: here the catfights and hair-pulling (and there is some) function as dressing for a deeper exploration of the ways personalities can, perhaps unconsciously, influence and change each other. Giulietta Masina is a maid from the provinces who is framed in a burglary and ends up cellmate to Anna Magnani's charismatic serial inmate. Magnani takes her under her wing in a way and this sets off a gripping and interesting chain of events.

This is really well put-together, too - one late scene with Magnani working in a laundry and confronting a fellow inmate limns a sort of character 'awakening' through shards of immediate experience impressionistically assembled. The acting showboats but not to the point of ignoring finer psychological detail - Magnani threatens pantomime, especially in early scenes, but manages to make her character's transformation seem organic even when it largely happens offscreen. Magnani steals the show, though - she's a firebrand, capable of providing both grand intimidating presence and small, private tragedy, crackling with a nervy, self-destructive energy like a moth trying to escape into the light. Her performing alone is worth seeing this film for.

[Cold Bishop]

Have you seen Caged? Because you really should see Caged.

[knives]

Everyone should see Caged.

[puxzkkx]

I haven't seen it yet, but this is the second 'incarcerated woman' film I've seen this year (after Yield to the Night) that I've actually really enjoyed, so if it is anything like those two I'll put it on my kevyip

[knives]

There was a lot of discussion of it in the noir thread and I highly recommend you check out what was discussed there. It is far more complex than it has any right to be with one of the best lead performances of the decade.

[TMDaines]

Last year I rented the previous UK edition of The Bridge from Digital Classics - definitely subtitled and it came with this documentary (which was admirably thorough) among the extras. I don't remember there being anything untoward about the transfer, but then I don't recall it being exceptional either.

Edited my post. Thanks for the info. The edition with that documentary in Germany is much more expensive! Anywhere between 15 and 25 euros. Looks like I'll get this UK edition.

Thanks for the recommendation again. My copy just arrived from Tesco. Decent transfer (far better than the average for German films on German DVDs), optional English subtitles, optional English dub, an original TV introduction and a two hour documentary on Wicki. Similar set in Germany retailed for at least 15 euros so it's a very nice package. Shows how important reviews can be: I never would have picked this up without someone letting me know it's kosher and was intending to buy one of the German releases.

[puxzkkx]

Anyone know of any African cinema from this decade?

[Yojimbo]

Everyone should see Caged.

I've been meaning to watch it since buying that 'cult camp classics' mini-boxset a few months ago but haven't been able to fit it in

[colinr0380]

Caged is quite a strange film, though I slightly prefer The Weak and the Wicked - the other 50s women in prison ensemble film. I remember back when that Celluloid Closet documentary about the portrayals of homosexuality in the cinema was shown on television it was followed up by a double bill of Victim and Caged! Here's the brief mention of Caged from the documentary

[domino harvey]

I think I've alluded to my high opinion of the film in the past but I would like to make a strong argument for a prestige picture unlike any other, and one of the key American films of the fifties:

The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit (Nunnally Johnson 1956) A bizarro literary adaptation concerning Gregory Peck's inability to reconnect to the world around him ten years after getting back from fighting in WWII. Within minutes the film seems a little off. The acting is overly stiff and affectated, even coming from wooden actors like Peck or Jennifer Jones. The timing is wrong. Scenes seem to extend their usefulness on either side. Telephones reach the person on the other end with a speed that even a comedic farce wouldn't attempt. There is no stable narrative structure. I've sat through a lot of pretty bland prestige pictures, and certainly all of these elements could be a naturally occurring aspect of any of them. But the density of "offness" in the film expands and compounds quite rapidly and only lets up in the final moments. The film takes, manipulates, and exploits flatness in a manner more befitting art films that would not come for years. Granted, "flat" is a term I would use to describe several other Nunnally Johnson-helmed films, but only with the Man in the Gray Flannel Suit is the term not invoked as a pejorative. Simply put, the Man in the Gray Flannel Suit is one of the most formally interesting films ever to emerge from the studio system.

The characters, in as much as they are represented, don't exactly interact as much as they find themselves occupying the same space, often to their own bewilderment. Conversations ensue between two people that take on the life of talking into a mirror, acknowledging the other person only in as much as they're waiting for their turn to continue their own conversation. The film moves beyond characters failing to understand or connect with each other into territory that's difficult to equate to any known method I've previously encountered. At times it's often as though every character were dead and found themselves haunting a world in which nothing anyone says or does is of any consequence. Frederic March repeatedly tells his family he loves them. They repeatedly tell him that he does not. A judge lays out a parade of conclusive evidence against a guilty man. The guilty man insists he will win his case. But the lack of interaction pushes past the human level and into that of the cinematic world itself. Patently false backdrops and sets blend and push the limits of studio fakery, and in one particularly cruel and shocking moment, the artificiality of the film world is taken for granted by the audience: One glaringly fake matte backdrop during a war flashback shockingly springs to life with brutal explosions, an unexpected moment of reality in a film world previously devoid of it.

What's more, and this is really where I think the film becomes something approaching a masterpiece, the film's flat approach to the material paints every event in the same drab shade, so that when the film slips into moments of genuine insanity, the audience is lulled away from acknowledging the absurdity of the situation. Numerous such moments emerge that nearly give the impression that the entire film is a half-remembered dream on the part of the audience. To name but a few:

--Gregory Peck shows up to a job interview and is greeted by his interviewee, who reclines so far back behind his desk that Peck is literally talking to a wall for the entire scene.
--During each of the numerous scenes in which the family's TV appears on-screen, the set shows the same footage from the same western.
--A previously unacknowledged maid shows up out of nowhere halfway through the film and proceeds to yell at Peck's kids while tying a chair to her leg and loping around in a circle in the foyer before slipping out of the world of the film.
--The Escher-like unbroken shot from early in the film that finds Peck slowly pouring himself a drink while members of his family move across the spatial area of the kitchen, every act counteracting the act that came before it until it comes across, like most of the film, as an infinite loop.

And yet the film is neither merely concerned with replicating a dream nor is it interested in presenting any recognizable version of reality, even a traditionally cinematic one. The film comes across as a formal experiment that always leaves me bewildered, fascinated and ultimately destabilized while watching. The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit is a strange, wonderful (and incredibly cynical) film ripe for rediscovery.

[Wu.Qinghua]

Anyone know of any African cinema from this decade?

There's not much 50s African cinema available in the strict sense of the term, is there? As far as I know, and I don't know much, there were at least quite a few films made in Egypt after Nasser's seizure of power in 1952. Someone's [Oh, you've done that yourself] already recommended Youssef Chahine's noirish Bab al-Hadid / Cairo Main Station (1958) which has been released on DVD by Typecast and is said to be a prime example of Third Worldist realism. I don't like the main character of the film, an handicapped newspaper vendor obsessively making a pass on the girlfriend of a unionizer and cracking up in the end, but I'll give it another try, too.

So far, I have three films on my preliminary list, which may be labeled African, as there are Les maitres fous (1955) and, of course, Moi, un noir (1958), two of Jean Rouch's ethnographic films dealing with migration and colonialism, and Paulin Vieyra and Mamadou Sarr's essayistic short Afrique sur Seine (1957), which is considered to be the first film made by sub-Saharan directors portraying 50s Paris from the perspective of educated African immigrants and praising everyday interaction and metissage. I doubt the last one will stay but it's well worth checking out.

[swo17]

A heads-up: Ida Lupino's The Hitch-Hiker will air on TCM this Saturday morning. Perhaps the transfer will be an improvement on the barely watchable DVDs?

[swo17]

Spotlight: N.Y., N.Y. (Francis Thompson, 1957)
There is a wealth of great experimental '50s shorts of this ilk, what I might call distorted cityscapes (see also: Daybreak Express, Bridges-Go-Round, Mirror of Holland), but this is the most fantastical of them all. You essentially spend the duration looking at various parts of New York City through funhouse mirrors, only these mirrors were allegedly two decades in the making, and the effects they produce are frequently mesmerising. In the film's best moments, you forget about the method of capture and are simply treated to these majestic, surreal images like a floating alien oasis or the morphing liquid side of a bus.

Here are a couple of other commercially unavailable shorts that I'm also hosting, because they are wonderful:

Yantra (James Whitney, 1957)
Brings to mind the ending of 2001 (not the very ending, but the tie-dyed space travel sequence) only made out of, say, construction paper. Warning: Might give you epilepsy, but worth watching even at that cost.

A Movie (Bruce Conner, 1958)
A random but seamless collage of found footage that is equal parts moving and hilarious. I had a serious case of déjà vu while watching this, despite never having seen it before, which should speak to how perfectly it's been assembled.

Thanks to those who recommended these films earlier in the thread!

[domino harvey]

I don't know if anyone cares but my last duty before putting all my movies in storage for the summer is to finish the eight remaining auteur guides I promised earlier in the thread. They should be up within the next week.

[swo17]

I very much care.

[knives]

Ditto, they've been very helpful guides. Come Back, Little Sheba was an amazing discovery.

[zedz]

Thanks for hosting those, swo. N.Y., N.Y. is a spectacular find and will probably make my list, and it's great to see Yantra again. This was definitely going to be on my list, even though it was getting harder to remember exactly why, since I only saw it once more than ten years ago. It still amazes me that a film produced in such a laborious and mechanical way can be so organic. The soundtrack is very impressive as well (Henk Bading, apparently) - I was much less impressed by the Mickey-Mousing of N.Y., N.Y.'s sub-Gershwin score.

EDIT:
And this reminded me that there were a few films I'd overlooked in my guide to experimental films available on DVD. I'll insert them in the main list, but here's what I'm adding.


WALERIAN BOROWCZYK
Les Astronautes (1959) – Goto, Island of Love (Cult Epics)

CHRISTOPHER MACLAINE
The Man Who Invented Gold (1957) – Beat Films (Re:Voir)
Beat (1958) – Beat Films (Re:Voir)
Scotch Hop (1959) – Beat Films (Re:Voir)

ANDRZEJ PAWLOWSKI
Here and There (1959) – Anthology of Polish Experimental Animation (PWA)

STAN VANDERBEEK
Science Friction (1959) – Visibles (Re:Voir)
A La Mode (1959) – Visibles (Re:Voir)

[puxzkkx]

Just saw the most wonderful Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? which is not only hilarious but incredibly piquant as a document of a time in American history where McCarthyist paranoia led a culture to view its own typifying institutions with a sense of unease: if we cannot trust our neighbours how can we trust ourselves, marriage, the nuclear family, the economic boom, celebrity - and success? I think the crux of this film is in the film's 'climactic' scene in Rock's new office (where the idea of narrative climax - like so much else in this film - is subverted by setting up and resolving a psychological conflict rather than depicting a confrontation with Rita or with Rock's adoring public) where the queasy framing shows the potential for tyranny in Rock's personality, and the red/white/blue of the colour scheme backgrounding him like a Nazi banner, the redness like a hell. A question that I think America has always been afraid to ask itself is "will success spoil?" - I applaud this film mightily for asking just that question, and answering it so well.

[knives]

Don't Go Near the Water
I was dreading this one a little as naval comedies don't really work and Walters can be very hit and miss not to mention Glen Ford as the hero. So pardon me for being absolutely shocked when this film was wicked smart. It isn't terribly funny, but it's clever in a way that lasts longer than a laugh anyway. a lot of this goes to Fred Clark's commander who balances cliche surprisingly well even if the take isn't unique. Walter's visual flash isn't really alive here, but it hasn't reached the television levels of his '60s work yet. So while it's a trifle it is an entertaining one at least.

Cheaper by the Dozen
Given the sorry state of the director and the even sorrier state of the remake I was expecting a terrible Disney type movie at best and the film sort of fills that expectation though minus the terrible. Some of the comedy goes for the low hanging fruit you'd expect, but not terribly often (a cartoonish schoolroom scene where Webb's sitcom dad is at his sitcom-iest is about as bad as things get) where even a few jokes show a smartest that goes beyond the expected for this type of family film. really the only complaint I have for this mellow treat is that aside from Webb nobody is really given the screen time to make an impression. Even Jeanne Craine's top billed eldest daughter gets nothing more than the most rudimentary of plots and is largely forgotten for some more of Webb's shenanigans. That said Webb makes some good fun.

Peyton Place
Now here's one that is just absolutely amazing. I didn't think Robson had it in him to make such a vile film that looks so '50s. I adore this sort of laid back taking down of the times and this is easily one of the best I've seen with every character given time to shine in their own backwards way. I almost feel like highlighting any of the actions or characters will be at a disservice to everything else since this is such a perfectly tuned film; even the length works just swell. I guess I should mention the teacher who isn't as '50s as everyone else while still being trapped int the time. Her reaction to the janitor's drinking just sums up the film perfectly. You almost don't need anything else, but than you wouldn't have the truly bizarre Lana Turner storyline which could have easily gone too far over the top in its melodrama so as to twist into some Lee Daniels trash, but it's played so small as to prevent any grotesqueness. Terry Moore's (who is quickly becoming a favorite of mine with how complex she can turn her Audrey Hepburn appearance into some great acting) storyline too is just a perfect summing of everything too with some shocking and interesting stuff. Though this all seems connected by that drunken maniac who again could have been just some grotesque monster which would have made the film lesser by every degree. Instead he is played so far on the side that we barely get any of him which makes his appearance all the nastier and a more serious threat. I wonder what he's exactly intended to represent as he is treated as a fear of the future and the past with none of that classical dignity suggesting a more puritan fear of the poor and the youth's looseness. Yet it seems largely suggested that he is caused by the constraints of the time attacking that same puritan idea that it at the same time seems to enforce. The movie seems smart enough where I don't think this is an accidental hypocrisy, but rather a very complex argument about the times.

The Crowded Day
What a bizarre film to make in an attempt to be treated seriously. It's great in its own way particularly in how it balances tone, but its so light in its comedy and drama that I can't imagine what they thought the hook would be. That said it is wickedly well crafted feeling as if it were only as long as an instant with the very large cast well treated. The big thing though id the tone and this is a case where all of the points with the films desperately needed to sync up to work as the comedy could have overpowered the drama or vice versa easily so as to entirely make awkward and ruin the event. The script almost seems entirely unbalanced with dramatic scenes and comedic scenes being intercut at near random and the sense of one tends to over power the other in individual scenes making it so that the director (John Guillermin who seems to be quite the hidden talent between the two on this disc and Rapture) must play the reverse of the script to develop a consistent tone and even then to overplay it would turn things into a mess (or at least make a radically different film).

[Gregory]

Re: Cheaper by the Dozen, the Steve Martin film wasn't really a remake; they just used the same name for a film with a premise about a family with 12 children, and the connections pretty much end there (there were actually 11 children in in the original film; because one of the 12 in the real-life family had died in childhood). Anyway, I can enjoy almost anything with Myrna Loy in it, and Cheaper is far, far better than the sequel, Belles on Their Toes. In both cases, the books were more enjoyable. The book-film franchise really trivialized/distracted from Lillian Gilbreth's actual achievements in some ways, but the Cheaper film is still an enjoyable as an example of a wholesome family film of the era.

[matrixschmatrix]

I rewatched All About Eve hoping to get a fresh perspective on it, as it didn't strike me much on my first viewing a few years ago, but I think I ruined it for myself by reading a dumb thematic discussion of it on Wikipedia before watching the movie- it so colored everything I was seeing that I really have no idea of what it was about at this point. I do know that I could have used more of Sanders' DeWitt (and Marilyn Monroe's slyly funny character), but I spent so much time and focus on what the movie was saying about gender politics or homosexuality or whatever else that I'm not sure I was really following what it was about in a straightforward way. And I'm not certain I have much to say about the gender politics etc, except that I do think it's silly to assume the movie is straightforwardly encoding DeWitt and Eve as gay and therefore eeevil.

Overall, it's still one of those movies where I can't help but feel I'm just not seeing what other people see in it. Dom, I know you're a big Mank booster- could you talk about what it does for you a bit?

[domino harvey]

Overall, it's still one of those movies where I can't help but feel I'm just not seeing what other people see in it. Dom, I know you're a big Mank booster- could you talk about what it does for you a bit?

Mankiewicz's films are by and large concerned with two things: self-confidence and self-delusion (note the key word!) and Mankiewicz, better than maybe any other writer-director I can think of, used his own ego to drive his films in a positive direction (well, usually). I think symbolic readings of All About Eve may be valid, but it's primary delights still exist outside of academic constraints: I love the film as it fits into Mankiewicz's oeuvre, but I loved it before I could even ascertain what that was. Why do I love it now and/or why did I love it then? Because Mankiewicz amplifies every negative suspicion an audience ever had about The Theatre and executes it with the bitter, inevitable wit that exemplifies and separates his work from his contemporaries-- it's mean-spirited without being mean, the performances are all exemplary (particularly Baxter and Sanders, never better), and Mankiewicz is never over-eager to please or impress: his cockiness reads as confidence, the same confidence his protagonists all share. Viewing a Mankiewicz film is a tacit agreement to accept the auteur's mastery: whether you sign on or not is a good indication of the enjoyment you'll get out of it.

[matrixschmatrix]

I can see that- there's definitely a delight to just reveling in the nastiness of Sanders, and it's weirdly fun when Baxter finally lets slip her mask and shows the reptile underneath. I think perhaps I just don't have enough of a relationship with the theater nor with the mythos of what goes on behind the stage door to have an immediate, strong connection to the work.