Monthly Archives: August 2019

Japan’s Longest Day (Nihon no ichiban naga hi)
Directed by Kihachi Okamoto
Written by Shinobu Hashimoto from a book by Soichi Oya
1967/Japan
Toho Company
First viewing/Netflix

[box] “… We call upon the government of Japan to proclaim now the unconditional surrender of all Japanese armed forces, and to provide proper and adequate assurances of their good faith in such action. The alternative for Japan is prompt and utter destruction.” – Potsdam Declaration signed by Franklin D. Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and Chang Kai-shek[/box]

It takes real talent to make a nailbiter when the entire audience knows the eventual outcome.  Tension and suspense along with a phenomenal cast combine for a terrific movie.

The Japanese Cabinet is at loggerheads over how to respond to the Potsdam Declaration.  Military leaders are so indoctrinated with the “no surrender” code that they would actually prefer one last glorious battle losing a million people to surrender under any terms at all.  Unconditional surrender is completely out of the question.  Then, after the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Emperor Hirohito takes matters into his own hands and orders any and all measures that will prevent any more Japanese deaths.  You would think a man who was worshiped as a deity could get his own way, but no, at least not right away.

The Government continues to bicker over terms but the Emperor is determined to have his way.  Finally, the Cabinet agrees on a statement which the Emperor will record and broadcast to the people.

In the meantime, the fiercely militaristic War Minister (Toshiro Mifune) struggles between his beliefs and training and his loyally to the Emperor.  Some officers in the Imperial Guard decide that they must take over the Palace and prevent the Emperor’s broadcast.  They spend much of the movie trying to win their superiors over to their side.  Then things get very bloody indeed.  With Chisu Ryu as the Prime Minister and Takashi Shimura as the Director of the Information Bureau.  Tetsuya Nakadai narrates.  Also with just about every great male supporting player from the golden days of Japanese cinema.

This grabbed me for its entire 2 1/2 hour running time.  I didn’t know what to expect and I really loved the movie.   I hadn’t known about the coup angle to the surrender and thought it was pretty darned fascinating.  And those actors!  And that score!  Recommended.

Scattered Clouds (Midaregumo)
Directed by Mikio Naruse
Written by Nobuo Yamada
1967/Japan
Toho Company
First viewing/Criterion Channel

[box] “my feet will want to walk to where you are sleeping/ but/ I shall go on living.” ― Pablo Neruda[/box]

A beautiful tearjerker that earns every one of its tears.

Yumiko and her husband have an idyllic life.  They are madly in love and newly pregnant. He works for the Trade Ministry and has just received a prestigious appointment to the embassy in Washington, DC.

Suddenly he is killed in a car accident.  Although he is entirely innocent, driver Shiro Mishima is determined to pay the widow monthly as amends.  Yumiko can hardly stand the sight of him.  Since he is an employee of a company that has close ties to the Ministry he is exiled from Tokyo to the provinces for a few years.  His new post is near the widow’s home town.

Poor Yumiko is stripped of her child, her married name and her widow’s pension by her husband’s greedy parents.  Everyone tries to exploit her in some way.  As the years pass, Mishima gradually falls in love with her.  She is determined to cut ties with the past, including Mishima, to get past her grief.  I won’t reveal any more of the plot.

I can’t even count the number of times I teared up.  This is a bit of a misery sandwich but is so downright sincere and sensitively made that I believed every minute.  It is also gorgeous to look at.  Warmly recommended.

This was Mikio Naruse’s final film in a career that spanned 47 years in the industry.  He added a lot of beauty to this world.  Farewell, sensei.

dTrailer (no subtitles)

Warrendale
Directed by Allan King
Canada/1967
Allan King Associates for Canadian Broadcasting Corp.
Repeat viewing/Criterion Channel

[box] Tagline: Adults think it’s about kids. Kids know it’s about adults.[/box]

Sans voice over narration, this documentary examines seven weeks at Warrendale, a home for emotionally disturbed children outside Toronto, Canada.  Along with TLC, the main treatment method seems to be physically restraining the children, who fight back vigorously, when they act out.

I am rarely in favor of talking heads but here I could have used a lot more explanation.  Not to be told what to think but to know some of the rationale behind the experiments.  Do the kids get better?  Or is this torture for them? We don’t know.  You have to admire the dedication of the therapists, who must have sustained numerous bruises every day.

The X from Outer Space (Uchu daikaiju Girara)
Directed by Kazui Nihonmatsu
Written by Moriyoshi Ishida, Eibi Motomochi, and Kazui Nihonmatsu
1967/Japan
Shochiku
Repeat viewing/Criterion Channel

[box] Tagline: What is This Monstrous THING (1967)?[/box]

Some days nothing will do but inane, cheesy, unintentionally hilarious Japanese sci-fi with stupid scientists and a ridiculous monster.

Some time in the near future, Japan’s space agency repeatedly launches missions to Mars despite the fact all mysteriously disappear before arrival.  Of course, they keep at it.  Eventually, our heroes find a way to defeat the mysterious force but not before retrieving a glowing, blinking egg like object that they feel compelled to take home.  On the space flight the object is kept in a vacuum jar but back on earth the scientists just have to remove it from the container.  An interracial love triangle and irritating Japanese comic relief are thrown in for good measure.  The picture below explains exactly what happens next. With Eiji Okada (Woman in the Dunes, Hiroshima Mon Amour) praying he won’t be recognized.

Stupid story?  Check.  Monster who looks like a chicken-lizard hybrid? Check.   Inane dialogue? Check.  Godawful miniature effects?  Check.  In short, a good time was had by me.  Perfection would have been if the monster had appeared before the last ten or 15 minutes.

This was the first film I watched on the Criterion Channel.  I was an early adopter but took my sweet time upgrading to the most current version of Amazon Fire as required by the service.

Montage of clips set to a song of the same name

Up the Down Staircase
Directed by Robert Mulligan
Tad Mosel from the novel by Bel Kaufman
1967/US
Park Place Production
First viewing?/Amazon Instant

[box] [Frequently Over Intercom] Mrs. Finch: Disregard all bells.[/box]

Loved the book.  Not so keen on the movie.

It is Sylvia Barrett’s (Sandy Dennis) first year as a high-school English teacher.  She happens to wind up in an inner city (though mostly white) school with the most baroque bureaucracy outside the U.S. Civil Service.  The kids are initially resistant to her idealism.  A bad boy mistakes her interest in him as a come-on.  A sensitive girl is driven off the deep end by her unrequited crush on a male teacher.  It is not a spoiler to say that Ms. Barrett wins the hearts and minds of her scholars, if not of the school administration. With Eileen Heckart as a fellow teacher and Jean Stapleton as a Ms. Finch, the principal’s secretary.

The least attractive costume in cinema history?

What made the book so good was its frequent inclusion of hilarious memos from the management. This has necessarily been stripped out of much of the movie, leaving the melodrama intact.  But what really got to me was all the speechifying.  By this I mean that Dennis breaks out in ponderous statements on the meaning of life at the drop of a hat and interpretations of literature that made me roll my eyes.  Nobody, but nobody, talks like this.

By far my favorite part of the movie was when Eileen Heckart danced the boogaloo with a student.  And a creditable job she did too!

Interestingly, Sandy Dennis tied for Best Actress at the Moscow International Film Festival.

The One-Armed Swordsman
Directed by Cheh Chang
Written by Cheh Chang and Kuang Ni
Hong Kong/1967
Shaw Brothers
First viewing/Amazon Prime

[box] Shih Yi-fei: Pei, don’t worry. So what if you cut off his arm? He’s not coming back anyway. We’ll just never bring it up in front of Sifu.[/box]

Japan has its blind swordsman Zatoichi, to whom I have formed some sort of addiction. The logical next step is Hong Kong’s one-armed swordsman.  And a worthy and extremely entertaining step it was!

A servant saves the life of the master of a sword fighting school and loses his own in the process.  In gratitude, the master takes his son Fang Kang (Jimmy Wang Yu) on as a student.  The other students look down on him although he is superior in every way.  The master’s daughter is secretly in love with him.  She challenges him to a duel – which he insists must be hand-to-hand – and she slices off his arm in a fit of anger.

Kang flees the scene and is rescued by a farm girl with a complicated past.  He falls in love with her but she wants him to put down the sword.  He agrees but enemies abound and honor and loyalty keep drawing him back into the fray.

It must have caught me on exactly the right day.  I thought this was a complete gas!  In a movie full of colorful costumes and sets, wildly dramatic music, histrionic acting, and plenty of wire-work assisted sword play, the action never stops.  We also get a love triangle that doesn’t slow the momentum down.  Recommended to fans of this kind of thing.

The version available on Amazon Prime is dubbed into English by some fairly stiff voice actors.  Might have been even better in the original Cantonese.