Monthly Archives: August 2015

The Idiot (Hakuchi)
Directed by Akira Kurosawa
Written by Akira Kurosawa and Eijirô Hisaita from the novel by Fyodor Dostoevsky
1951/Japan
Shôchiku Eiga
First viewing/Hulu

[box] Mutsuo Kayama, the secretary: What could be so frightening about that idiot?[/box]

This is a beautiful, fantastically acted film.  Unfortunately, it is also 166 minutes long and I don’t feel like I quite got the point.

Kurosawa has transposed the setting of Dostoevsky’s novel from Tsarist Russia to post-war Hokkaido.  The story takes place mostly in severe winter weather.

Kinji Kameda (Masayuki Mori) has just been released from an American military hospital where he had been treated for “epileptic idiocy”.  This condition developed after Kameda was spared at the very last minute from execution after having been erroneously charged with being a war criminal.  As he waited to die, Kameda felt an enormous love for everyone and regret that he had not been kinder or more considerate.

On his train journey back to Sapporo, Kameda is befriended by Denkichi Akama (Toshiro Mifune) who is headed there to reunite with and attempt to marry the woman he loves, Taeku Nasu (Setsuko Hara).  On arrival, the two stop to admire her portrait which is on display at a photographer’s shop.  Kameda immediately feels compassion for Taeku due to the sadness he sees in her eyes.

Taeko was taken as a fourteen-year-old girl to be the mistress of a rich man who apparently forced her into some unspeakable degradation.  The man has now tired of her and has offered Ayako, the son of Ono (Takashi Shimura), 600,000 yen to marry her.  Akama raises a million yen in a bid to marry her himself.  But Kameda quietly tells Taeko shed is not the person her trials have made her and she should not marry.  He offers to take care of her although he has no money.  Then Ono reveals that Kameda is actually the owner of a valuable estate that Ono has appropriated.

But Taeko cannot bear to “ruin” someone as good as Kameda. Although Kameda’s feelings for Taeko are more tender than passionate and despite their real friendship, Kameda and Akama are at odds over her fate for the rest of the film.  In the meantime, Kameda engages in a fairly bizarre courtship with Oda’s daughter.  Tragedy ensues.

Obviously, with this cast the viewer is in store for some tremendous acting.  Masayuki Mori, who played the samurai in Rashomon, is the standout as the “idiot”.  You have to love him.  Mifune and especially Hara were almost unrecognizable to me during the first part of the film and very good.

The film begins with a text saying that Dostoevsky wanted to create a character who was completely good and the only way to do so in this corrupt world was to make him an idiot.  The story is supposed to show the destruction of such a character by life.  I suppose this is true but the message kind of got lost for me in the extremely convoluted plot.

I think this movie could have lost forty-five minutes and been improved.  Be that as it may, the version I watched was already cut from the Kurosawa’s original, which clocked in at 265 minutes and the 180 minute version shown at the film’s premier.  Since I still don’t understand some of the plot points maybe they were left on the cutting room floor.

The Racket
Directed by John Cromwell
Written by William Wister Haines and W.R. Burnett from a play by Bartlett Cormack
1951/USA
RKO Radio Pictures
First viewing/Netflix rental

[box] Booking Sgt. Sullivan: [booking Joe Scanlon, then examining the gun he was caught with] Receipt for your toy, sonny. My granddaughter could use that for a paperweight – in her kindergarden.[/box]

Despite the presence of my two favorite Roberts (Ryan and Mitchum), I thought the most interesting thing about this film noir was the commentary track.

Through some heavy exposition we learn that organized crime, lead by a mysterious boss called “the old man”, has taken over a city and is now fielding its own candidates for public office.  Working for the syndicate is Nick Scanlon (Ryan) a run-of-the-mill old time hoodlum.  Scanlon is accustomed to wipe out anyone who crosses him.  The old man does not approve of such crude tactics.

Honest cop Captain Thomas McQuigg (Mitchum) is sent in to clean up.  He has a committed assistant in true blue officer Bob Johnson (William Talman).  McQuigg begins his assignment by going to Scanlon and warning him to stay out of his district.  He and Scanlon evidently are old acquaintances and Scanlon spends most of the visit complaining about his spoiled brother who has taken up with nightclub “canary” Irene Hayes (Lizbeth Scott).

McQuigg decides to get to Scanlon through his brother and to his brother through Irene. Somehow an intrepid but green reporter gets involved and falls for Irene.  Scanlon has a few cards up his sleeve in the form of the D.A. (Ray Collins), who is the syndicate’s candidate for a judgeship.  The battle of good versus evil continues on for the rest of the film.  With William Conrad as one of the old man’s associates.

I thought this movie was just OK.  It was a remake of a silent film of the same name, also produced by Howard Hughes, from 1928.  Commentator Eddie Muller makes it clear that he prefers the earlier version, which was nominated as Best Picture in the very first Academy Award year.  He details the fraught production history in which no less than three directors worked on the movie.  Muller said that Hughes rejected Samuel Fuller’s original script for this version.  He could not live with the police corruption included by Fuller in the plot.  Fuller’s version probably would have made a more dynamic film.

Clip

Quo Vadis  
Directed by Mervyn LeRoy
Written by John Lee Mahin, S.N. Behrman, and Sonya Levien from the novel by Henryk Sienkiewicz
1951/USA
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
First viewing/Netflix rental

[box] Emperor Nero: [none of his closest men will die for him in light of the mob’s anger over Rome’s burning] I’m surrounded by eunuchs![/box]

Objectively, this is worth seeing for Ustinov’s performance, the spectacle, and the music. Subjectively, it is just the kind of bloated epic I can’t stand.

The setting is Rome during the reign of the emperor Nero (Ustinov).  Marcus Vinicius (Robert Taylor) has returned to the city after emerging victorious over the Britons.  Instead of being received immediately in triumph, he is asked to cool his heels at the home of retired general Plautius.  He is immediately attracted to Lygia (Deborah Kerr), Plautius’s adopted daughter who was taken as a hostage from her father, the king of the Lygians.  It soon becomes clear to the audience, if not to Vincinius, that the entire Plautius household is made up of Christians.  Lygia is smitten with Vincinius but rejects his crude advances.

Soon enough, Vincinius is received in Rome in a triumphal procession.  He has had Lygia summoned by the emperor.  Nero is attracted to the comely lass but is persuaded by Petronius, Vincinius’s uncle and Nero’s right hand man, that the girl is not worthy of him. Vincinius claims her as his prize, angering Nero’s harlot wife Poppaea who has the hots for Vincinius herself.  Lygia flees,  When Vincinius finally catches up with her something makes him set her free.

Meanwhile, Nero’s artistic ambitions are getting out of control.  Not content with composing bad poetry, the fey demigod decides to rebuild Rome.  He will need to clear the area and decides the quickest way is to set the whole thing on fire.  He is stunned when the masses do not appreciate the gesture.  Poppaea, secretly striking back at Vincinius and Lygea, suggests the best way to deflect blame would be to blame the conflagration on the Christians.  The move concludes with the Christians going smilingly to their fate in the Coliseum and Nero’s end.  With Finlay Currie as Saint Peter.

Something about these things strikes me as so phony that I can’t stomach them.  It is as if the filmmakers neither knew nor cared about history, Rome, or Christianity.  It is 100% bombast and spectacle.  That said, the Technicolor really worked its magic on the Blu-Ray DVD I watched.  Taylor seemed a bit too old and stuffy for his role and this might be the worst performance I have ever seen from Kerr, which doesn’t mean it was actually bad. Ustinov veers between delicious camp and beastliness just as any Nero should and Genn is wry as his bored advisor.

Quo Vadis was nominated for Academy Awards in the following categories:  Best Picture; Best Supporting Actor (Ustinov); Best Supporting Actor (Genn); Best Cinematography, Color; Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, Color; Best Costume Design, Color; Best Film Editing; and Best Music, Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture.

Trailer