Monthly Archives: October 2017

Billy Rose’s Jumbo
Directed by Charles Walters
Written by Sidney Shelton; book by Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur
1962/USA
Euterpe/Arwin Productions
Repeat viewing/Netflix

[box] My romance doesn’t need a castle rising in Spain/ Or a dance to a constantly surprising refrain/ All at once I can make my most fantastic dreams come true/ My romance, doesn’t need a thing but you – lyrics by Lorenz Hart[/box]

It seems it is a challenge to make a good circus movie.  This one does not break the genre’s losing streak.

Chronic gambler “Pop” Wonder (Jimmy Durante) owns a circus whose star attraction is the elephant Jumbo.  His show-rider daughter Kitty (Doris Day) has to deal with the many bill collectors hounding the production.

One day Sam Rawlins (Stephen Boyd) shows up looking for work.  It turns out he is a talented aerialist and Sam and Kitty quickly fall in love.  Can the relationship work after Sam’s connection to a rival circus owner is revealed?  With Martha Rae as Pop’s long-suffering fiancee.

One of the problems with circus movies is the need to show circus acts while at the same time including some kind of plot.  This one also adds in a bunch of Rogers and Hart ballads to get through.  All the elements are just OK and do not make a satisfying or coherent whole.  Still, this is another movie I saw as a child.  We had the soundtrack album on frequent rotation at our house.  So it retains a little bit of magic for me.

Jumbo was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Music, Scoring of Music, Adaptation or Treatment.

Trailer

The Inheritance (Karami-ai)
Directed by Misaki Kobayashi
Written by Koichi Inagaki from a novel by Norio Nanjo
1962/Japan
Shochiku Eiga
First viewing/FilmStruck

[box] Kikuo Furukawa: I’ve got a favor to ask. It’s embarrassing. But a coffin is waiting for me, so I can say this plainly. I don’t have any legally recognized children. But I do have children. To top it off, I’ve got three of them. Some may be dead. But there’s no way all three are dead. So I want you to find my children. I don’t mean to legally acknowledge them and their heirship right away. Some may have grown up to be scoundrels. But if any of them are suitable, I’d like to add them as heirs.[/box]

This lacks the gravitas of Kobayashi’s other 1962 film,  , but the imagery is equally beautiful.

Immensely wealthy Kikuo Furukawa is terminally ill and is trying to get his affairs in order before he dies.  He decides to leave a third of his estate to his wife and the remainder to his three illegitimate children who have remained unacknowledged until now.  If the children are not located he intends to leave their share to charity.

The story follows the search for the children.  It is half-hearted at best as those close to the dying man want that money for themselves.  With Tetsuya Nakadai as one of the money seekers.

I think Kobayashi is at his best when he has a grand theme to work with and I enjoy his period pieces the most (Harakiri, Samurai Rebellion). All the characters in this are unlikeable and there is a certain sameness to the proceedings.  No one could fail to appreciate the exquisite compositions however.

Clip (credit sequence)