Flickers in Time

Street of Shame (Akasen chitai)
Directed by Kenji Mizoguchi
Written by Masashige Narusawa from a novel by Yoshiko Shibake
1956/Japan
Daiei Studios
First viewing/Netflix rental

Every man wants a woman to appeal to his better side, his nobler instincts and his higher nature-and another woman to help him forget them. — Helen Rowland 

Mizoguchi’s swan song is one of his best efforts.

The story takes place against the background of the Japanese Diet’s consideration of a bill outlawing prostitution.  The “mother” and “father” of a brothel are mighty worried.  They needn’t be because the girls are in such desperate circumstances that they have nowhere else to turn.  Every woman except the youngest and most popular is deeply in debt.  The one with the money has turned loan shark and is also conning her patron into supplying her with further money in the belief that she will marry him when she gets out of debt.

The women’s troubles do not end with their money woes.  We have one with an unemployed husband and baby who is barely scraping by; another who has been working to support her son; and one who finally leaves to marry a man in her village.  Finally, we are introduced to a new girl, the ultra-modern Westernized Mickie (Machiko Kyô).  None escapes additional tragedy as the story progresses.

This is a powerful and moving film.  It has a very modern feel and is told more-or-less as a series of vignettes.  I like that Mizoguchi gives none of his whores hearts of gold.  They are more human and poignant for that.  Recommended.

This movie reportedly led to the final outlawing of prostitution in Japan the following year.  The sex trade lingers on as only actual intercourse for hire is subject to the ban.  Mizoguchi died in 1956 of leukemia at the age of 58

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Swamp Women
Directed by Roger Corman
Written by David Stern
1956/USA
Bernard Woolner Productions
First viewing/YouTube

Billie: [digging for diamonds] Ouch! I busted the only nail I had left!

If you are interested in a very bad movie, women in short-shorts, cat fights, and a few smiles, this one is for you.

After what seems like five or ten minutes of stock footage of the New Orleans mardi gras, we are introduced to an oil man (Treat (AKA Mike) Connors) and the gold digger who is after his money.  The couple decide to make off to the swamp where he wants to check out an oil prospect.  Then we get to the main story.  A police woman is on the trail of a fortune in diamonds.  She is convinced that some female convicts know where the loot is stashed and gets herself locked up with them.  She helps them escape and they lead her to that self-same swamp.  The girls capture the oil man and his girlfriend as hostages.  They spend the rest of the film fussing, fighting, coming on to the stud muffin, and confronting the elements.  With poor Marie Windsor and Beverly Garland as swamp women.

This has the advantage of being only 67 minutes long and does not overstay its welcome. Mainly interesting for an early look at Roger Corman’s money saving film techniques.  The acting is not as bad as it could have been thanks largely to Windsor.  What in the hell was she thinking?  Probably about the pay check.

Trailer

Crazed Fruit (Kurutta kajitsu)
Directed by Kô Nakahira
Written by Shintarô Ishihara
1956/Japan
Nikkatsu Film Company
First viewing/Netflix rental

[box] “Don’t let two men fall in love with you, girls. It’s not the sort of thing that ends well.” — Ally Carter, Uncommon Criminals[/box]

If this movie did not predate the movement, it could have been the inspiration for the French New Wave.  It surely inspired the next generation of Japanese filmmakers.

Natsuhisa and Haruji Takishima are brothers.  They are members of the “taiyouzoku” (Sun Tribe), affluent twenty-something slackers that spend most of their time at beach resorts, playing in the water, catching a few rays, and chasing women.  The older brother Natsuhisa is a playboy.  Haruji is still an idealist and a virgin.  Haruji spots a young woman, Eki, at the train station and is immediately taken with her beauty and body.

When the two brothers run into her again, Haruji and Eki begin dating.  Haruji takes her to a party where he wins a contest to bring the most beautiful three girls with just one woman.  Natsuhisa finds out that Eki is married to a foreigner and, discovering that she actually cares for Haruji, blackmails her into sex.  The rest of the film takes the sibling rivalry to its natural conclusion.

This movie seems very modern and almost European.  It looks stunning.  The scene at the end with the speed boat circling a sail boat is unforgettable.  The commentary said it was like Blackboard Jungle for the Japanese, in that it appealed to the aspirations of teenagers.  The score is fantastic.  I liked this a lot.  Recommended.

Trailer

The Man Who Never Was
Directed by Ronald Neame
Written by Nigel Balchin from a book by Ewen Montagu
1956/UK
Sumar Productions
First viewing/Netflix rental

[box] Adm. Cross: It’s the most outrageous, disgusting, preposterous, not to say barbaric idea I’ve ever heard, but work out full details and get back to me in the morning![/box]

Here’s an OK true-life WWII thriller.

The Allies have defeated Germany in North Africa.  Everyone expects that the army will advance through Sicily.  This is the correct assumption but the British are seeking a way to divert Nazi troops to defend a false location.  Lt. Comdr. Ewen Montagu (Clifton Webb) is tasked with coming up with a plan.  He decides on planting a dead body near the coast of Spain carrying “top secret” documents saying the attack will be in Greece.

The rest of the film focuses on the elaborate execution of this plan. With Gloria Grahame cast against type as the deadman’s “fiancee” and Stephen Boyd as a German spy.

I found this a bit plodding but generally enjoyable.  Always nice to see Webb in a serious role.  He is acerbic but not a bit fey.  Grahame is good too.

Trailer

The Silent World
Directed by Jacques-Yves Cousteau and Louis Malle
Written by Jacque-Yves Cousteau
1956/France
FSJYC Production/Raquin Associes/Societe Filmad/Titanus
First viewing/YouTube[box] The sea, once it casts its spell, holds one in its net of wonder forever. — Jacques Yves Cousteau [/box]

Not what I was expecting.  The Calypso kills a baby whale with its propeller and the crew “avenges its death” by massacring a bunch of sharks.

During the Calypso’s voyage we get life on board, lots of coral reefs, divers, fish, a sunken ship, the aforementioned whale encounter, turtle rides, a storm, and a desert island.

How times have changed!  It doesn’t stop with the Calypso getting so close to a pod of whales that it bumps into one, knocking the breath out of it, and mortally wounds a baby. Then the crew punishes a ton of sharks for being attracted to its blood.  That’s not enough.  The crew feels compelled to hitch a ride on a sea turtle by hanging on to its flipper and riding a bunch of giant tortoises on the Galapagos that surely weigh less than they do.  All this I believe was in the name of “drama”.  Of course the most effective and beautiful scenes are simple observation of underwater life.  We’ve seen them all many times before but Cousteau pioneered them.

The Silent World won the Academy Award for Best Documentary, Feature.

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I Will Buy You (Anata kaimasu)
Directed by Masaki Kobayashi
Written by Zenzo Matsuyama; story by Mirnoru Ono
1956/Japan
Shochiku Eiga
First viewing/Hulu

[box] If you have a bad day in baseball, and start thinking about it, you will have 10 more. — Sammy Sosa [/box]

1956 seems to be a crossroads in Japanese cinema with more broadly socially conscious films being made.  Here Kobayashi progresses to the critical stance that would exemplify his later master works.

Goro Kurita is an extremely talented college home-run hitter.  Daisuke Kishimoto is a scout dead-set on sighing Kurita to the professional Tokyo Flowers team.  All the other teams in the league have the same idea.  Kurita is managed to within an inch of his life by the opportunistic Ippei Tamaki.  Tamaki has paid for Kurita’s college education and, at least in his opinion, made him the player he is.  Tamaki is now looking for a big pay off.

The story follows all the bribery and tricks employed by Kishimoto as he attempts to get the deal signed ahead of the other teams employing the same tactics. There are various twists and turns along the way.

If Kobayashi intended this to be a microcosm of Japanese society as a whole, he certainly took a very dim view of it.  I liked this one, especially the ending, which I was not expecting and which made the piece all the more scathing.

Federico Fellini’s La Strada was the winner of the first official Academy Award for Best Foreign-Language Film.  Bela Lugosi died at the age of 73. Grace Kelly married Prince Rainier III of Monaco on April 18 and retired from films.  Montgomery Clift suffered a life-changing incident  following a dinner party at the home of co-star Elizabeth Taylor, when he crashed his car into a telephone pole and incurred broken bones and facial injuries requiring plastic surgery. Afterwards his life slowly declined due to a destructive lifestyle and substance abuse.

Actor/director Dick Powell’s (and RKO’s) The Conqueror was released.  It was shot in Utah in 1954 near a nuclear weapons test site in the Nevada desert . Of The Conqueror’s 220 cast and crew members, 91 contracted cancer by 1980.  It was the last film produced by Howard Hughes and a flop at the box office and with the critics.

Rock Around the Clock featured disc jockey Alan Freed and was the first film entirely dedicated to rock ‘n’ roll.  The first commercially-feasible videotape recorders (with 2 inch tape reels) were sold for $50,000 in 1956. Videotape became a staple of TV productions.

In U.S. news, Dwight D. Eisenhower won a second term as U.S. President. 13-year-old Bobby Fischer beat Grand Master Donald Byrne in the NY Rosenwald chess tournament. “In God We Trust” was made the U.S. national motto.

Andersonville won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction.  The Diary of Anne Frank won for drama.  Elvis Presley entered the U.S. charts for the first time with “Heartbreak Hotel”.  The song was the number one hit of the year, spending eight weeks atop the Billboard charts,

Nikita Khrushchev, then First Secretary of USSR Communist Party, denounced Stalin’s excesses.

October was a big month for international news. The Suez Crisis, also named the Tripartite Aggression and the Kadesh Operation, was an invasion of Egypt in late October 1956 by Israel, followed by the United Kingdom and France. The aims were to reopen the Suez canal, regain Western control of the canal and to remove Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser from power.  After the fighting had started, the United States, the Soviet Union, and the United Nations forced the three invaders to withdraw. The episode humiliated Great Britain and France and strengthened Nasser.

On October 23, the  Hungarian Revolution broke out against the pro-Soviet government, originating as a student demonstration in Budapest.  Hungarian forces drove Soviet troops from Budapest and Hungary attempted to leave the Warsaw Pact.  By the end of the month, Soviet troops had retaken Budapest and decisively put down the revolution.

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For 1956, I plan to organize my viewing a little differently.  To keep the best films spread out more, I will be viewing in a random order rather than starting off with the highest rated films and working roughly downward as currently.  The complete list of films I will select from can be found here.

I have previously reviewed and on this site.

Montage of stills from the Oscar winners

Montage of stills from nominees for major Oscars

Le Amiche
Directed by Michelangelo Antonioni
Suso Cecchi D’Amico, Michelangelo Antonioni, and Alba de Cespedes from a novel by Cesare Pavese
1955/Italy
Trionfalcine
First viewing/Netflix rental

[box] One of the most beautiful qualities of true friendship is to understand and to be understood. — Lucius Annaeus Seneca [/box]

How refreshing to find a 1950’s movie in which the career woman is the most balanced and admirable character!  I liked this early Antonioni offering a lot.

Cleilia (Eleonora Rossi Drago) comes to Turin to prepare for the opening of a new studio of the Rome fashion house she works for.  She finds the project almost hopelessly behind schedule and must take charge of the lackadaisical workmen.  One morning, a maid runs into her room at the hotel announcing that the woman in the next room is dead.  It turns out that the woman, Rosetta, is not dead but nearly so due to a suicide attempt.  She recovers.  Gradually, Cleilia becomes part of Rosetta’s circle of friends.  She takes pity on the young socialite and gets her a job at the studio to distract her from her worries.

All of Rosetta’s friends have one type of man trouble or another.  The principal story involves Lorenzo, a painter, and his wife Nene (Valentina Cortese), a potter.  Lorenzo shows a portrait he painted of Rosetta at a show.  The show is not a success.  In the meantime, Nene is invited to show her ceramics at a celebrated gallery in New York.  Part of Rosetta’s problem is that she fell in love with Lorenzo while he was painting her.  After her recovery, she instigates an affair.  We continue to follow the friendship and romantic lives of our protagonists.

This has some of the familiar Antonioni themes of alienation and upper class ennui but there is also a sense of agency in these women that is very good to see for the period.  The men are really secondary.  For me the outstanding performance was that of Valentina Cortese who is being torn up by the conflict between her art and her love for her cheating husband.  I loved the ending as well.  Recommended.

Trailer (French subtitles)

The Rose Tattoo
Directed by Daniel Mann
Written by Tennessee Williams and Hal Kanter from Williams’s play
1955/USA
Paramount Pictures
First viewing/Amazon Instant

[box] “Everybody is nothing until you love them.” ― Tennessee Williams, The Rose Tattoo[/box]

The rest of the film is not as strong as Anna Magnani’s tour-de-force Academy Award winning performance.

Serefina delle Rose (Magnani) immigrated to the U.S. from Sicily and now lives somewhere in the South with her husband Rosario and fifteen-year-old daughter Rosa.  She is completely devoted and enthralled by Rosario, who wears a rose tattoo on his chest.  (Obviously, the rose symbolism is going to be taken to the limit in this movie.)  He is a truck driver and when caught hauling “something else” under his bananas gets into an accident and is killed.  Serefina is overcome with grief and spends her days in her nightgown and robe, embarrassing the hell out of Rosa.

Serefina continues with her business as a seamstress.  She becomes obsessed with preserving Rosa’s innocence.  She does not take it kindly when Rosa falls in love with a young sailor at a high school dance.

One day, a woman comes into pick up a blouse she wants to wear to a convention in New Orleans.  The blouse is not ready, one thing leads to another, and a terrific argument ensues.  The woman blurts out that Rosario was having an affair.  This is shattering news to Serafina and she intially refuses to believe it.  She ends up trying to pry the information from Rosario’s confessor at church.  She is unsuccessful but so distraught that she needs a ride home.

Alvaro Mangiacavallo, whose sister had been trying to make a match for him with Serafina any way, comes to the rescue.  The rest of the movie follows the uneasy courtship between Alvaro, “who has the body of Rosario, the face of a clown and smells like a goat”, and Serafina.

Burt Lancaster’s character is the big question mark in this film.  I’m uncertain as to whether the usually reliable actor was taking it way over the top or whether he is playing the character as written.  At any rate, his shenanigans add a comic tone to an otherwise dark story and seem incongruous.  Otherwise, there is nothing exactly wrong with the movie but it didn’t send me.

The Rose Tattoo won Academy Awards in the categories of Best Actress; Best Cinematography, Black-and-White; and Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, Black-and-White.  It was nominated in the categories of Best Picture; Best Supporting Actress (Pavan); Best Costume Design, Black-and-White; Best Film Editing; and Best Music, Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture.

Trailer