Good Morning (1959) - Yasujiro Ozu

There’s always been an itch that certain directors get once they’re established that can only be scratched by revisiting one of their earlier films. Hitchcock famously remade The Man Who Knew Too Much as did DeMille with The Ten Commandments. It’s not something that happens so much nowadays, most directors are happy enough to recut their films instead. Sometimes it works, Blade Runner only really started earning any real kudos after Ridley Scott went back in with his scissors and chopped out the naff narration and altered that ending for instance. Then of course there are the times it doesn’t work quite so well and only ends up annoying the people who adored the original film. Cough cough, George Lucas and his little sticky CGI hands.

Yasujiro Ozu felt the urge to remake not one, not two but three of his own films during his career. All three arrived one after the other at the end of his career. Good Morning is a retelling of his silent great I Was Born But…, and was the first time he attempted a direct remake. Of course it could be argued that after a certain point in his career Ozu actually made the same film over and over, since most of his films feature the same plot of a middle class family trying to marry off one of their daughters.

As is usual with Ozu films the story itself is very simple, two boys Minoru and his incredibly sweet younger brother Isamu become obsessed with television after their beatnik neighbours buy a goggle box. They first beg, then scream and eventually go on a silent strike when their parents refuse to buy a TV set. Onto this Ozu hangs his observations of Japanese life in a Tokyo suburb. He sets the scene by opening the film with a misunderstanding about some unpaid money. Through this we get to visit each of the three main households in the film and meet the main players within the first ten minutes. It’s an excellent way of introducing the characters and giving a feel of how everything fits together spatially.

Good Morning seems destined never to make it onto any list of Ozu’s greatest works, but I think it’s one of his finest films. It’s quite different for him it’s funnier than most for a start, there’s even a running gag throughout the whole film about farting. The main difference between Good Morning and Ozu’s more famous films though is that this time the film isn’t shot from the parents perspective but from the children’s. Yes it’s still centered around a middle class Japanese family, and yes there is a hint of romance between their daughter and the kids English teacher. But getting her hitched to him isn’t the central theme this time ‘round. It’s still instantly recognizable as being an Ozu film though, the obligatory static low angle camera set up, scenes taking place at a train station and Chishu Ryu are all present and correct. As are the boiling kettles, clocks with pendulums and kids with baseball caps.

Good Morning is far lighter than most of the Ozu’s other work and at just a tad over ninety minutes flies by and is over before you know it. His use of colour after so many black & white films is a revelation. All reds and greens with almost every shot having one bright red object somewhere in the frame. By using the children rather than the parents as a voice, Ozu gets to wag his finger at certain things such as the mindless chit chat of everyday life, and of course the idea that television is only good for one thing - ‘producing 100 million idiots.’ Obviously he was worried about the negative effect television was having on cinema attendance.

This is a perfect film for anyone unfamiliar with the films of Yasujiro Ozu, and essential viewing for those who’ve already seen his ‘classics’. I’m not really sure what the conclusion of the film means though or even if Good Morning has an overall message beyond the obvious ‘the future is coming deal with it’. But that's neither here nor there since for the short time it's on screen you'll find yourself living in Ozu's world. Which is a great place to be.

Pitfall (1962) - Hiroshi Teshigahara

Yet another entry in what feels like the bottomless pit of genius Japanese 60's cinema. Despite having owned this film for years, it's taken me forever to get around to watching it for some reason. Pitfall (or Otoshiana to give it's Japanese title), is one of those films that packs an awful lot into it's brief (97 minutes) running time. Flitting between disparate genres - ghost story, murder mystery and gritty union drama to name the main three, it somehow manages to stay cohesive, never veering too far off the path it started out on. Add to that doppelganger characters, murders, twists and moments that will make you gasp for air, all set to one of those great atonal jazz scores that never turn up to buy anywhere, and you know you're in for an interesting evening. Teshigahara lays everything out in such a way that the audience should have no problem following the story. Understanding what they saw is another thing entirely though. It's not as tricksy as say Usual Suspects, it just stays with you, rolling around your mind while the undertones of it become apparent. So here goes…

Well right from the opening credits it's obvious that this is going to be a stylish affair, the first image we see is that of two adult men and a small boy running and hiding. They're obviously on the run from something or someone and look like they are wearing everything they own. I'm not sure if we ever really discover just what or who they're running from, but it turns out they are drifting from town to town (or mine to mine to be precise), trying to find work and some sort of stability. What the men don't know is that they are being shadowed by a man in a white suit. The boy clocks him straight away, but says nothing to his father. None of these three characters is given any sort of name, but the third cog disappears from the story when the father and son head off to a remote deserted mining town (which we later discover is literally a ghost town), when he is given a note and map saying that there is work for him there if he wants it. All the while the white suited man is close behind.

And to be honest that's where I'm going to leave the synopsis since anything more would spoil what is a brilliantly scripted film. On the surface the film is a equal parts murder mystery/ghost story, underneath though it's about the modernisation and economic boom that Japan was going through at that moment, and the effect it had on those that weren't swept along by it. Or at least that's how I read it. It's very much a film about duality (it reminded me a lot of Performance in this way), the white suited man (capitalism personified), pitted against the worker (who dreams only of working in a mine with a union). This dualism is carried over in the cinematography, which is the starkest black & white rather than black & grey as is so often the case. Teshigahara's blacks are as black as coal (just look at the mountains that surround the small town), while the whites burn into your retinas, making it difficult to forget what you've just seen.

Teshigahara doesn't take the easy route though, there's a constant refusal to focus on just one persons story, even though ultimately all the strands come together. Pitfall (great pun title by the way), has almost every character secretly observing another character doing something despicable, so much so that it brings to mind those other two great voyeuristic classics The Pornographers and Peeping Tom. That's the kind of company this film is keeping. There's an ambiguous rape scene that is filmed so tightly on the bodies that it becomes claustrophobic and confusing, it's hard to tell just what is going on. I'd say it's one of the best of these types of scenes I've seen in a film, since it's so uncomfortable to watch. Which brings us back to that voyeuristic element again.

Teshigahara obviously thinks through his camera positions carefully since every angle feels perfect. He also films in a variety of different ways, so there are really long takes and typical dolly shots mixed in with hand held camera, sudden whip pans and crash zooms. At one point there is a huge pulsating growing liquid circle superimposed over the film, it feels experimental without the painful viewing that 60's experimental films can sometimes be. It doesn't feel as obvious as someone like Godard say, who seems to have more fun with these kind of things. Teshigahara seems more considered in his approach, more Japanese I guess. I like the way that once the characters in the film become stuck in the town, so do we. It's almost like a genius Japanese version of British oddball TV show Sapphire & Steel, that has been shot through with a social conscience worthy of Ken Loach. The last shot of the film (the boy running) not only brings the film full circle but is reminiscent of the last shot of 400 Blows.

Of course like all subtitled films it's hard to gauge how good the vocal acting is. I mean I can't tell if a line is delivered well or not, it all sounds fine to me, but then I can't think of a time when I've ever bemoaned a foreign film for this. The physical side of the acting is superb, Hisashi Igawa in particular is stunning. He plays three characters (sometimes two in the same scene), and not once are you in any doubt just which of them he is. I love the icy cool of Kunie Tanaka too as the man in the white suit, but best of all is Kazuo Miyahara as the son in what would be his first and last film. Kids are always a huge obstacle to overcome for any director I can imagine, Miyahara has quite a bit to do, although not much to say. Just like Antoine Doinel at the end of 400 Blows you can't help but wonder what happens to this poor little guy who has been through so much. Of course we know what happened to Doinel, but this kid has stayed with me since the film ended, in much the same way that the smell of a fire lingers long after it's been extinguished.

A word of warning for those (like myself) that are sensitive to animal cruelty, you see a frog being pulled apart, it's not on the screen for long, but it's real and you'll never forget the image once you've seen it. I don't mean that in a good way either.

Having only ever seen Teshigahara's documentary about Gaudí before this, I had absolutely no idea of just what I was in for. I have two other films by him along with a handful of shorts sitting on a shelf just begging to be watched. Plus I have the whole of Saturday to myself. What would you do in my shoes?

Passing Fancy (1933) - Yasujirô Ozu

 

Not the best of the silent Ozu's I've seen, that'd be the previous years I Was Born, But..., still nonetheless Passing Fancy is a cracking film. Ozu seems to have most of the foundations for what would become his signature style already in place. The famous low static camera angle is all present and correct, as is the theme of fractured families. Although unlike the wealthier families of later Ozu, the characters during the silent era all seem to be living either on or just below the breadline.

On paper the story is very simplistic, Kihachi and Jiro are neighbours, workmates and drinking buddies. Both are single, although Kihachi has a son Tomio. Throw a female (Harue) into the mix and you have a love triangle storyline, as well as the more traditional Ozu father/son fare. Stir well and leave to simmer for 100 minutes. You know what to expect if you have been privy to any of Ozu's later films. It all plays out at a nicely composed pace. It's not at all predictable either, which is always a joy when viewing a film for the first time. Kihachi obviously proved to be a creation that Ozu enjoyed since he crops up in three more Ozu films. With so many films from the silent era being lost for ever, it's a constant joy that films like this crop up on DVD so often, normally (at least when one of the better DVD companies are involved) with a picture that is perfectly acceptable. I still have so many Ozu films left to watch, but of the few I've seen so far I'm in for a treat.

Seven Samurai (1954) - Akira Kurosawa

You see this is why I think The Internet Movie Data Base is a bad tool for the average monkey to judge films with. It always bugs me when someone mentions what the score for a film is on the IMDB. After all, those numbers only prove that people in general know naff all about what they watch, and probably spend more time thinking of what score to give, than reflecting on said film. Let's face it rating films, or music, or anything come to that, is such a lazy way to express what you thought of something. I never rate films in that way, or music, or books, or sex for that matter. At most I'll say I thought it was good or bad and give my reasons why, although not normally with the sex thing to be honest. At the time of writing this Seven Samurai, one of the greatest films ever made, has an IMDB rating of (drum roll) 8.8 out of 10. Shocking. How anyone can find any kind of fault with this film is beyond me. Just to put it in perspective Avatar has a rating of 8.3, so does that mean it's almost as good as Seven Samurai? Maybe the people that rate films drive big cars and have a dog called Tyson, if you know what I mean.

So let's move on shall we? This was Kurosawa's 14th film, and by my reckoning his third masterpiece. It was his first foray into the Jidaigeki (samurai films to you and me) genre, the style of film with which he'd eventually become most associated. Some think of this as his finest moment, which is a pretty tough call to make since he made so many stone cold classics. However if you want to name this one above all the others, then be my guest, I won't argue. Seven Samurai has been remade twice in the west. First in 1960 as The Magnificent Seven, and then 20 years later as Battle Beyond the Stars. Neither version comes close to the mastery of Kurosawa's epic though, and one (Battle Beyond the Stars) failed to even credit the great man.

The story itself is pretty simple. Japan 1580's, small village of farmers get wind that a gang of bandits are going to rob them of their crops after the harvest, so the villagers decide to hire samurai to protect themselves. Well you would, wouldn't you? In fact so simple is the story that you might wonder just why the running time is well over three hours. Well the answer is that Kurosawa was a big fan of procedural film making, showing his audience the minutest details of sometimes the most ordinary of things. In contrast some of the more obvious events that an average director would absolutely show, Kurosawa saw fit to skip over. For example when we first meet Shimada (played by Kurosawa regular Takashi Shimura), he is shaving off that most sacred of the samurai's garb, his topknot. We spend a fair bit of time watching this act from a number of different viewpoints. It turns out he's doing this so that he can pose as a monk, in order to enter a barn and rescue a child that is being held hostage inside. So normally you'd expect to see the action between the bad guy and the samurai after such a build up, but instead we linger outside with the onlookers, never seeing the swordplay. We only witness the after effects, as the kidnapper stumbles out into the open and falls (in a rare use of slow motion in a Kurosawa film), to the floor, dead.

Instead of seeing the samurai rounded up via montage, we get to see each one being recruited individually. I'm fairly sure that this cinema staple was first employed here. We learn more about the character of the samurai and their effect on the group dynamic this way. Just like the Seven Dwarfs, each of the titular samurai has their own personalities, some are novices, others old hands, some have seen combat, others not. In the same way Kurosawa doesn't just hurl us into a battle between the samurai and the bandits, he takes us around the village via Shimada, and allows us in on the battle plan, building tension and anticipation for the climax of the film - when they finally do fight. There are also many small sub plots involving the villagers and of course the samurai. It really is the tightest of scripts, and considering the length of the film (207 minutes), it amazes me just how quickly it flies by.

There are so many great moments, but for me the real clincher (with the exception of the ending), is when that other Kurosawa regular Toshirô Mifune (playing Kikuchiyo, a wannabe samurai who turns out to be a farmer's son), is half submerged in a river while holding a baby he has rescued. He breaks down, crying that the child was him all those years ago. Heartbreaking stuff, it really is.

Then there's the ending. That final battle that takes place in Kurosawa's famous rain. It always rains in Kurosawa films, and that rain is always heavy and normally (although not always) signifies impending doom. Now Seven Samurai over ran it's shooting schedule by a colossal amount, for various reasons including Kurosawa falling ill at one point. Anyway it ended up shooting for almost a year, so the end scenes that were originally due to be shot during the summer, actually ended up going before the cameras in the dead of winter. So when you watch Seven Samurai next, have a think about that when you see Mifune running about pretty much naked from the waste down, up to his knees in freezing cold water. You'd never know how uncomfortable it was from the madness on screen.

Of course the whole film looks gorgeous, AK was a master at framing and it is evident here, just look at how he frames the samurai when they are just sitting around. Flawless. The cast and crew are made up of people that Kurosawa would return to again and again, every one of them perfect in their roles. If there is one thing that is important about a film it's the ending, always end with a strong image. Seven Samurai opens with a shot of the hills surrounding the village, and ends with a shot of the burial mounds that echoes that opening shot. As I say this is a flawless film, one that should be watched again and again. It deserves it's reputation as one of the greats. It'll be interesting to see just what we'll still be watching and discussing from 2010 in fifty years time. Avatar maybe? I hope not.

Paprika (2006) - Satoshi Kon

Whatever way you look at it I'm always behind when it comes to watching films. It can take me years to get around to watching something that I ordered with the express purpose of watching as soon as it landed on my doormat. Plus how on earth are you supposed to justify watching one film over another? Just what is the criteria for choosing a film to watch when you get in from work? There have been times when I have spent half a day wondering what to watch when I get in, only for me to change my mind as I'm about to put it in the DVD player and stick in a Laurel & Hardy film instead.

Anyway the point I'm trying to make here is that I love anime, Japanimation or whatever it is the hipsters are calling it this week. This was recommended to me years back by a friend who is up on all of this stuff (along with jungle/desert based action films), and here we are all this time later and I've only just watched it, and of course it was every bit as good as he said it was.

As per usual with this genre it's as mad as David Lynch and Terry Gilliam on hallucinogens, and then some. Marching frog band? Check. Wheelchair bound bloke moving around the room with plant roots instead of legs? Check. Nudity, but no sex organs? Double check. In a nut shell it's all about some little gizmo called a DC Mini, that allows you to share your dreams with friends. Now in time honoured tradition said gizmo is half inched by some wrong man mental, who wants to destroy the world/create a new world/or something, I didn't quite catch what his dastardly plan was in the end. So plenty of 'are we dreaming or aren't we?' shenanigans crop up along with some massively far out visuals. The weird thing for me is I was able to follow the plot without the slightest difficulty. I say weird since I find anime pretty hard to follow since I tend to allow it to wash over me and just sink into the glorious images. So much so that when something happens that needs my brain to be firing on all cylinders, I get caught out and feel more than a little stupid.

Now you know you are onto a winner with a film when it finishes and you wished you had the time to just put it back on and watch it again. Even better than that is when you're only half way through and you start to think about when you can squeeze another viewing in. That's exactly how I felt when watching this, and of course the only down side to this film was the fact that now there is another director on that already huge list of mine, whose films I need to see. Oh well, one door closes while another opens I guess.