Rashomon (1950)

5/5

Rashomon was the first Kurosawa movie I'd ever seen, and it blew me away. The movie is based on a short story called "In a Grove," which describes an incident that takes place in the woods. The incident involves the death of a samurai (Mori) and the rape of his wife (Kyo) after an encounter with the bandit Tajomaru (Mifune). But the exact details of what transpired there we may never know. The movie proper begins at Rashomon Gate in a torrential downpour. We see a priest (Chiaki) and woodcutter (Shimura), who both witnessed the court hearings and walked away baffled. After hearing each individual's conflicting account of the incident, each more self-incriminating than the last, the priest is on the verge of losing his faith in mankind.

The movie I remember is better than the movie I saw. The movie I analyzed is better than the movie I saw. That is not to disparage Rashomon at all, as it is a great film that has stood the test of time, but rather a mark on its characteristics. It is more art than entertainment, more stimulating to discuss than enjoyable to see. Whereas I could rewatch No Country for Old Men 100 times for the sheer fun of it, Rashomon more appropriately aims to contribute through its complex thematic possibilities. It is a movie that discusses insight and ideas first and foremost and then tries to tack on the human element afterward. The acting serves to advance the plot, and fails at realism or empathy. Unlike The Rules of the Game, the dialogue contains hardly any quotable gems. But there is something inimitable and profound about this movie that I cannot shake, something that sparked a fire in me and inspired me to search out art house cinema. Rashomon turned me on to Kurosawa, and to the moving pictures as works of art, and for that I will always be indebted to this film.

IMDb link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0042876/

Los Olvidados (1950)

4/5

Luis Buñuel's Los Olvidados, which translates to The Forgotten, tells the story of a young boy named Pedro who is caught up in a life of crime in the festering slums of Mexico City. He is friends with a gang of ragamuffins, including the recently escaped Jaibo, but wants to go straight. He tries returning to his mother for help, but she doesn't believe he has good intentions. Still, he presses on, finding legitimate work at a blacksmith, and then at a carnival. But at every opportunity for success, Jaibo is there to pull the carpet out from under his legs and flip his life upside-down again.

You feel for Pedro, you root him on, and you feel the pain he feels every time he bumps into Jaibo and things turn from bad to worse. It is gripping and depressing; it is not, as the intro tells us, optimistic. In fact, the intro tells us that there is no hope for the characters because there must be social change to cure the ills depicted in the film. But it failed to convince me of that premise because every obstacle Pedro encounters originates not from society as a whole, but from Jaibo as an individual.

The film is fairly mediocre on technical terms. The shots were conventional, the editing was shoddy, and the sound seemed perpetually off. Everything felt somewhat staged. The strength is in the film's quasi-surrealist images and ideas: a boy throwing an egg at a chicken to make it go away, a boy sucking milk straight from the udder of a donkey, a group of boys tossing mud and stones at a blind man. They are images that are difficult to ignore or forget. But they are images that hold power, value, and meaning. And they are images you should see.

IMDb link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0042804/

Scandal (1950)

3/5

Akira Kurosawa's Scandal is a rather middling film, I am disappointed to say. The plot follows a tabloid scandal alleging a love affair between painter Aoe (Mifune) and singer Saijo (Yamaguchi). Furious, Aoe threatens to sue the tabloid's publisher (Ozawa) and hires attorney Hiruta (Shimura) to help. But Hiruta's gambling addiction compromises their case. While the movie is more than a simple legal drama, it fails to satisfy on that basic level. After watching so much Boston Legal lately, my expectations for the genre have risen exponentially. And Scandal fails to meet them.

On a technical level, there is little to impress. I remember next to nothing of the cinematography and editing. Even the performances by Mifune and Shimura felt a bit like staged overacting given the rest of the piece. Where Kurosawa excels is in the human drama. The heart of the movie is Hiruta's relationship with his dying daughter. The man's vice fills him with guilt and he has no idea how to express it appropriately. All he can do is call himself a worm and beg for his daughter's mercy. It is a sentimental tale that ends ultimately in redemption, but not without a heavy dose of sadness along the way. As I said of One Wonderful Sunday, Scandal is not as good as Kurosawa's more famous works, so you should wait to watch it until after you've seen the rest of his oeuvre.

IMDb link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0042958/

Night and the City (1950)

4/5

Night and the City is a thrilling film noir, with an especially tense finale. All the main characters get what's coming to them in proper noir fashion. There were some sensationally powerful moments and some surprisingly emotional ones. The plot/content was perfectly, precisely, definitively noir and nothing else. It was mesmerizing to watch the world this man had worked to build through theft and deceit and sleaze slowly crumble around him. All the pieces literally fell into place to create one of the saddest noir endings I've seen.

It takes a little while to get into the rhythm of the piece. The cinematography was either out of place or just plain ugly the entire time, except for the extremely well-done chase at the end. The editing was also bizarre. The wrestling scene near the end, while gripping, was an example of poor cinematography and worse editing. The characters, while unique and well-formed when taken in the context of noir, are a little too unique for my tastes--it takes a while to get used to them. I especially couldn't stand the main character's laugh. The dialogue is bland except for two extremely well-done lines. Their rarity perhaps make them feel more precious and meaningful than they are. I forget one of them already, but here is the other.

--You don't know what you're getting into.
--I know what I'm getting out of.

IMDb link: http://imdb.com/title/tt0042788/