The Great Dictator (1940)
Directed by Charlie Chaplin
* * * *
In his first talkie, the
legendary Charlie Chaplin made one of the most fortuitous comedies of the 20th
Century: The Great Dictator. Set in
the fictional country of Tomania, Chaplin
takes on two leading roles, first as a Jewish WWI veteran who becomes a barber
shop owner in a ghetto, a sort-of reprisal of Chaplin’s legendary Tramp. But
when Chaplin’s not sporting a bowler hat, he’s donning a pair of jackboots as Adenoid
Hynkel, the iron-fisted and rhetoric-sputtering dictator of Tomania. From
there, it’s about what you’d expect: classic Chaplin slapstick that ultimately culminates
into a wonderful (if sometimes morbid) comedy, closed by one of the most famous
and inspiring speeches in the history of cinema.
The transition from silent
movies to talkies is a challenge for many of the filmmakers from that time
period. Even if the result is still a great film, the DNA of the silent period
still runs through (in this case, I am reminded of Fritz Lang’s masterful M). As for Chaplin, though; he
transitioned to the world of talkies flawlessly, which is an incredible feat
for a filmmaker whose comedy of choice was slapstick, a style that maybe
doesn’t work as well in talkies. In The
Great Dictator, though it still works, and it’s still absolutely hilarious.
Within the first ten minutes, I was already in tears of laughter watching
Chaplin’s mishaps on a battlefield (that moment with the faulty artillery shell
is pure gold).
But as funny as The Great Dictator is, it never overdoes
it considering the touchy subject matter. Back then it is amazing how aware of
Hitler’s tyranny Chaplin was aware of, but we didn’t know nearly as much about
just how evil he was until a few years later, and knowing what we know now, I
wonder if The Great Dictator could be
made. I don’t know, but what I do know is that The Great Dictator is never naïve or oblivious to the horrors of
dictatorship, the comedy never becomes insensitive or tasteless, and best of
all, the film has aged wonderfully.
The Hidden Fortress (1958)
Directed by Akira Kurosawa
* * * *
A pair of idiotic and greedy
peasants. A stern yet jovial warrior. A princess sizzling with ferocious
spirit. How this unlikely team comes together is a result of circumstances I
encourage the viewer to discover themselves, as The Hidden Fortress is a terrific journey of a movie from Akira
Kurosawa, always unspooling with various twists and turns that leave the viewer
confined to their seat, eager to discover how our heroes will get out of one
sticky situation to the next.
The Hidden Fortress may not as epic in scope or as transcendent as
Kurosawa’s magnum opus Seven Samurai,
but that is a bar that cannot be surpassed, as far as I’m concerned. Besides,
here we are still left with a terrific addition to an already exceptional
catalogue of samurai adventures from the legendary Kurosawa, and this is
without a doubt one of my favorites. And what an exciting adventure it turns
out to be: great cinematography, solid sound design, terrific editing (keep an eye out for a horse chase), and
incredible pacing already made me fall in love with this one, but the element
that single-handedly steals the show are the characters. We grow to really like
these characters and we are eager to follow them every step of the way, and
every snafu they are thrown into makes our hearts race with anxious
anticipation.
The saying “imitation is the
sincerest form of flattery” shines bright with The Hidden Fortress: it is almost a thing of legend that The Hidden Fortress is one of the
primary influences on Star Wars, an
entity of a film that I don’t think needs any introduction. Searching for the
parallels between these two makes for a fun yet quite challenging task.
However, The Hidden Fortress does not
exist exclusively for Star Wars fans,
as the end of this cinematic journey still results in a thrilling adventure
that is great fun to this day.
Roger & Me
(1989)
Directed by
Michael Moore
* * * 1/2
Flint, Michigan; once a
prospering town with a General Motors plant serving as the lifeblood and
backbone of the town. Then comes 1986: the Flint plant is shut down, as GM is
moving their plants to Mexico to save itself some money by paying Mexican
workers obscenely low wages. This plant closure begins a domino effect that
devastates Flint: countless citizens are laid off with no other employment
opportunities. The town tries to make itself a tourist attraction, to no avail.
Eventually, Money Magazine declares Flint the worst place to live in the entire
United States. In a mission to set things straight in some way or another,
Michael Moore sets out to confront GM chairman Roger Smith for, essentially,
pulling the plug on Flint.
When I first started Red Eye,
I seriously contemplated avoiding documentaries, my reasons being for just how
manipulative and slanted they tend to be. Michael Moore, though a clever
filmmaker, is probably the punch-line of offenders in this category, and here I
am with his first film: Roger & Me. I
have decided that I will regard it as a film before a documentary, and with
this mentality, Roger & Me is
terrific. Yes, it has many of the typical Moore tricks and techniques, but I
must say that it is not as overbearing as much of his later output. And even
then, there’s some material that’s hard to argue: there’s a sequence that
cross-cuts between Roger Smith giving a speech and a mother and two young
children being evicted on Christmas
morning (this was a particularly gut-wrenching moment for me).
With Moore’s typical tropes
comes his gift at story-telling with his compelling exposition. All the while,
I was engaged in Moore’s journey as Flint slowly and tragically dies around him.
But it’s not all gloom and doom; also on display for the first time is Moore’s
clever and humorous with that never fails to win me over. Moore has always been
a polarizing man in documentary filmmaking, and Roger & Me isn’t much exception, but it’s hard to fault a man
using a cinematic call for justice on behalf of people screwed over big time by
big business.
Shadows in Paradise (1986)
Directed by Aki Kaurismaki
* * ½
Kaurismaki regular Matti
Pellonpaa steps into the shoes of Nikander, a lonely garbage man. Early in the
film, his close colleague mentions starting a business of his own. He wants
Nikander to be his foreman, to which he agrees. Unfortunately, this business
doesn’t get a chance to take off after Nikander’s co-worker suddenly dies of a
heart attack on the job. Frustrated, sad, and surrounded by folks whose only
interest is seemingly alcohol, Nikander finds solace in the company of Ilona
(the first role of fellow Kaurismaki regular Kati Outinen), a supermarket clerk
who has just been fired from her job. As one might imagine, romance blooms
between the two, but less out of genuine love than the need for companionship
in a cold world.
In spite of a significant
presence in the foreign film world, this is only my second experience with
Finland’s chief cinematic export Aki Kaurismaki. My first film of his was The Match Factory Girl, and after both
of these films I can safely say that I don’t think Kaurismaki is my thing.
You’ll hear me many a time criticize a film for being too forceful in the
feelings it wants to convey. In the case of Shadows
in Paradise, it is actually the opposite. The film is set in a gray and
chilly (sometimes run-down) city environment, almost always overcast – to my
recollection, there is only one instance of sunshine in the entire movie.
Kaurismaki clearly wants to emphasize how important that warmth of romance is
in this world, but he doesn’t really give us much opportunity to get to know
his characters – we see the basic essentials of their daily lives, and that’s
about it. Their demeanor throughout life is completely deadpan and seemingly
emotionless. I read that this is a common technique from Kaurismaki, and it
doesn’t quite work for me.
Granted, it’s not a bad film
by any means. As downplayed as the film is, I actually quite like that the film
expresses warmth through multiple small romantic gestures rather than one
grandiose gesture – even then, though, I feel that that’s been done better
(remember the penultimate bakery scene from Buffalo
’66?). Sometimes, the quite clever comedy out of the sheer deadpan style
makes for a few chuckles here and there. Best of all, Shadows in Paradise wasn’t torturous whatsoever to sit through, clocking
in at 74 minutes. Overall, it’s an admirable portrayal of off-color love, but
just wasn’t fleshed out enough.
Street of Shame
(1956)
Directed by Kenji
Mizoguchi
* * * *
Japanese master Kenji
Mizoguchi’s final film brings us inside a brothel in Tokyo’s red light
district. It is a time of worry for those in the sex industry: talks of a legal
ban of prostitution have been circulating national news. We are taken into the
lives of those who work in this brothel, namely the women; while coping with
the fear of their work becoming criminalized, we bear witness to their daily
lives both inside and outside the brothel, their attempts to move on to the
next chapter in their lives, and their attempts to keep warm from the brutal
cold economy of the outside world, sometimes resulting in getting sucked back
into the business.
Of course, being from the
1950s, there’s not much room for titillation or explicit sex, but that is not
the point of Street of Shame, as the
human lives are top priorities here. Mizoguchi’s
swansong is one of the greatest films about the proverbial “Oldest Profession”
ever made. Without indulging in melodrama or contempt for the industry (he was
very sympathetic of women’s suffering), Mizoguchi so engagingly captures the
emotional complexities of working in such a stigmatized business, the
camaraderie between the women, and the difficulty of getting out of the
industry. Even better is just how well this can translate to a non-Japanese
audience, considering how borderline-inaccessible Japanese traditions and
lifestyles can be at times.
I cannot say a single bad
thing about this movie (I didn’t rate it a 4 for nothing), though it would have
been nice to have gotten more in-depth with the johns. Granted, there’s no
demonization of men present here, but the psychological dependency that goes
with regular patrons of sex work is a major opportunity for a fascinating case
study. In general, Street of Shame is
actually fairly quaint and straight-forward in comparison to Mizoguchi’s
previous masterworks like The Life of
Oharu and Sansho the Bailiff. But
these are not criticisms, but rather what would have made an already great film
even better, and considering Street of
Shame is a great film, and I couldn’t be more grateful for that.
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