Daily Archives: March 27, 2017

The River Fuefuki
Directed by Keisuki Kinoshita
Written by Keisuki Kinoshita from a novel by Shichiru Fukazawa
1960/Japan
Shochiku Ofuna
First viewing/FilmStruck

[box] You cannot step into the same river twice. Heraclitus [/box]

Kinoshita was certainly an uneven director.  I thought this anti-war film was up there with his brilliant .

It is a time of chaos and factional warfare among warlords and their samurai.  The hot-headed son of a simple farming family goes off to the war and makes a name for himself by catching an enemy general.  Grandpa congratulates himself for encouraging the boy to go to war.  Dad wasn’t so sure it was a good idea.  Dad, however, is honored by being asked to bury the afterbirth of the Lord’s son.  Grandpa insists on going himself and is killed for defiling the ground with his blood when he injures himself with the shovel.

The war goes on for generations.  Bloodlust hits at random among the offspring.  A non-combatant and his wife (Hideko Takamine) remain farmers as they grow old.  They are unable to prevent sons from going off to the war.  The samurai sons chastise them for ingratitude to the Lord.  It seems more like the Lord has been ungrateful to them.

This movie was shot in black and white and then hand-tinted, much like an old silent movie.  Some of the frames are selectively colored with masks and others are solidly tinted. Some of the war scenes are shown via a montage of stills.  The unusual technique works out surprisingly well.

The story is moving through its sad climax.  Takamine spends most of the film as a very old lady, disappearing into a character completely different than the one she played in  the same year.  She is one of the great actresses.  Recommended.

Trailer – no subtitles but you can see the way Kinoshita melds black and white with color

Bells Are Ringing
Directed by Vincente Minnelli
Written by Betty Comden and Adolph Green from their musical play
1960/USA
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
First viewing?/Amazon Instant

[box] Now you’re here, now I know just where I’m going /No more doubt or fears I’ve found my way/ For love came just in time /You found me just in time/ And changed my lonely life that lucky day – “Just in Time”, Lyrics by Betty Comden and Adolph Green[/box]

Back before cell phones, back before voice mail, and back before answering machines, there were human beings picking up our missed calls at something called an answering service.  This musical about an operator at a such a service made me happy.

Ella (Judy Holliday) works as an operator at Susanswerphone.  She brightens up her life and the lives of the customers by adopting different identities and helping them solve their many problems.  She is in love with one of the customers, a playwright named Jeffrey Moss (Dean Martin).  She interacts with him using the character of an old lady named “Mom”.

Jeffrey’s writing partner just left him.  It looks like writer’s block, drinking and women are about to put him on skid row.  Ella must resort to intervening in person to save him.  In the meantime, investigators suspect that Susanswerphone is a front for a “lonely hearts club” and spy on Ella’s every move.  Finally, a bookie is actually using Sue’s as a front.  With Jean Stapleton as Sue, Eddie Foy Jr. as the bookie, Frank Gorshin as a method actor, and Fred Clark as a producer.

Everything about the plot other than the romance is pretty stupid.  Its roots in a stage play are evident.  However, the romance is magical and the songs are great.  I enjoyed every minute.

This was Judy Holliday’s final film.  She spent most of her career on stage and died in 1965 at age 43 of breast cancer.  It was also Minnelli and Freed’s last MGM musical.