DVD/150: BANSHUN (LATE SPRING) (Yasujiro Ozu, 1949)

My 2020 highlight was discovering director Yazsujiro Ozu, watching 25 of his films on the BFI Player.  I had only seen one before and that was BANSHUN (LATE SPRING).

Ozu's meticulous framing, low-level cinematography and having actors address the camera in conversation casts a hypnotic spell as do the 'pillow' scene transitions - shots of trains, buildings, or restaurant and bar signs.

His 54 silent and sound films scanned 1927 to 1962 but BANSHUN explored the shomingeki genre of ordinary working and middle class familes.

 

Widower Professor Somiya and his 27 year-old daughter Noriko live contentedly together until Noriko's aunt says it's time Noriko was married.  Noriko doesn't want to leave her father alone but her aunt says she has a widow in mind for Somiya, leaving Noriko with confused emotions. 

 

Agreeing to her aunt's choice of husband, Noriko and Somiya have a last trip before life changes.

 

Shelf or charity shop?  It's what shelves were made for. BANSHUN is deservedly 15th on the current Sight & Sound Greatest Films of All-Time list.  Ozu's film is deceptively simple but resonates in the mind with it's universal themes of family, society's expectations, and sacrifice but also because of the performances from the two lead performers.  Chisu Ryu is remarkable as the taciturn Somiya; Ryu appeared in 52 of Ozu's 54 films, rising from extra to star and here his every "Hmmm" and "ahh" are loaded with meaning.  Setsuko Hara was already a star when Ozu chose her to play Noriko, and she is unforgettable.  She and Chisu went on to appear together in six more Ozu films including the magnificent TOKYO MONOGATARI (TOKYO STORY) which is listed 3rd in the same Sight & Sound Greatest Films list.  Another actress who appeared regularly for Ozu was Haruko Sugimura who is fine here as the matchmaking aunt and Yumeji Tsukioka is a delight as Hara's 'modern' cousin who has a job and is about to embark on her second marriage. One for the ages...

Exit Through The Giftshop - Pictures At An Exhibition #17

As museums and galleries are still locked down here are some memories from the past...

1) THE LAST JUDGEMENT (detail) (1435-1440) - Fra Angelico

I bought this at the Gemaldegalerie in Berlin where Fra Angelico's impressive triptych of the Day of Judgement is on display. The central panel is Christ triumphant surrounded by his sainted besties and on the left panel he shows those blessed with life eternal and on the right those being tortured in Hell.  It possibly needs renovating to bring the painting back to what one assumes was it's vibrant life.

The postcard features a detail from the left panel where those bound for Heaven are being led by dancing angels; the flowing robes are beautifully realised in such tiny detail and they really stand out against the dark background as do the tiny buds and shrubs.

2) THE ANNUNCIATION (1440 - 1445) - Fra Angelico

This came from the San Marco monastery in Florence which is the home of this fresco, one of Fra Angelico's two masterpieces showing The Annunciation, the other is in the Prado.  In one of the great moments of "art theatre" you ascend the wide staircase to the first floor of San Marco where the monks' cells are located and as you turn the corner, you see this large fresco facing you at the top of the staircase - a real wow moment.

Fra Angelico, through the held gaze between the Angel Gabriel and The Virgin Mary, creates a captured moment of being; there is nothing to distract from the intensity of that moment, you believe the world has stopped outside.  It is marvellous to stand and revel at it's detail: the intricate painting of the relief at the top of the portico's pillars which give the image a perspective that breaks with the traditional flat look of Gothic paintings, the vivid pink and gold of Gabriel's robe is contrasted against Mary's blue cloak and his lovely multi-coloured wings also contains intricate detailing.  It's interesting how the flat rendering of the garden is offset by the depths of the trees beyond the fence.

3) THE TOWNEY DISKOBOLOS (circa 2nd Century AD) - unknown

This marvellous Roman marble statue was discovered near Hadrian's villa in Tivoli in 1791 and later acquired for the British Museum.  It is based on a now lost bronze statue, sculpted in the 5th Century BC by the Greek artist Myron.

When it was found, the statue was missing it's head but when it was purchased by Charles Townley he was told that the head had been found nearby.  Down the years there has been much conjecture as to whether it actually was the original head as another marble statue had been found a few years before with the athlete's head turned looking at the discus. Whatever it's genesis, it is still a wonderful rendering of the athlete about to launch his discus into the void.

4) THE BROKEN COLUMN (1944) - Freda Kahlo

One of the most famous and revealing of Frida Kahlo's self-portraits, she painted it in 1944 after she had spinal surgery to correct the injury she received 19 years before in a trolley-bus crash   I bought this in 2005 at Tate Modern when they had a major retrospective of her work.

Frida stands alone, impassively staring out at the viewer in a landscape that is as broken and split as her body.  Her torso is cracked open to reveal a broken but still-standing stone column instead of her spine.  She wears the cumbersome harness that doctors had her wear to correct her posture and her body is pierced with nails as in her own crucifiction.  Although there are tears on her face, she is still standing, still surviving.

5) PORTRAIT OF A GIRL WEARING A BLUE JERSEY (DORA CARRINGTON) (1912) - Mark Gertler

Bought at the marvellous CRISIS OF BRILLIANCE exhibition at the Dulwich Picture Gallery in 2013 which brought together six contempories who studied at the Slade Art School in the 1910s: Bomberg, Nevinson, Spencer, Nash and, as seen here, Mark Gertler and his subject Dora Carrington.

Through his arresting portrait you can feel Gertler attempting to capture the quicksilver modernity of Carrington, then aged 19, with her placid but determined stare, her self-cropped hair and the cool tones of her blue jersey against the sky. Gertler was to become obsessed with Carrington only to find that CRW Nevinson was also pursuing her.  Carrington, however kept them both at arm's length, wanting their friendship but not sex.  She later gave in to Gertler's persistance but it left them both unhappy and they kept a distant friendship afterwards.  Carrington committed suicide in 1932 in despair after the death of Lytton Strachey, the love of her life, and Gertler killed himself in 1939, lost in a swell of depression.

DVD/150: CLEOPATRA (Joseph L Mankiewicz, 1963)

CLEOPATRA started life in Pinewood with director Rouben Mamoulian and co-stars Peter Finch and Stephen Boyd at a budget of £5 million; Elizabeth Taylor's pneumonia moved filming to the warmer Rome, jettisoning Mamoulian, Finch and Boyd as well.

It resumed with Taylor's choice of director Joseph L Mankiewicz both filming and rewrititng the script at the same time.  20th Century Fox kept throwing money at the production, it's budget totalled $44 million.

This budget meant that despite being the highest grossing film of the year, it only broke even through television sales.

With the publicity surrounding Taylor and Burton's off-screen love affair, oddly enough their on-screen relationship doesn't set the film on fire.

While Taylor gives a pure film-star performance, Burton is mostly pure prosciutto.

Luckily CLEOPATRA has two excellent performances balancing the story's two halves: Rex Harrison's urbane Julius Caesar and Roddy McDowall's slippery Octavian.

Shelf or charity shop?  Pure shelf, it's what Sunday afternoons were made for. Mankiewicz's script strains itself leaning as far away from Camp as it's can so at times it is deliberately verbose, which is fine when you have Rex Harrison's Caesar saying the lines but the Antony and Cleopatra section is a glum affair with Burton declaiming his lines like he is playing to the Old Vic balcony.  But you should just stand back - or better lie on a couch - and just let the stunning Academy Award-winning cinematography, art direction and costumes parade in front of you, marvelling at the visual splendour with hundreds of extras as far as the eye can see, and the thrilling Alex North score. With so much source material being used, Mankiewicz really should have worked Shakespeare's "I am fire and air" speech into the scene of Cleopatra's impending death; it needs to be elevated to greatness but sadly no such luck.  For all it's failings, it is still one of my favourites.

DVD/150: MARY, QUEEN OF SCOTS (Charles Jarrott, 1971)

Producer Hal Wallis and director Jarrott hoped lightning would strike twice after ANNE OF THE THOUSAND DAYS with MARY, QUEEN OF SCOTS.

However, John Hale's basic screenplay, constantly switching between the courts of Mary and Elizabeth I, never delivers a firm momentum and, as with every screen representation of Mary, she remains an enigma - a woman who things were done to, never an instigator.

Unsurprisingly, the film comes alive in the scenes we know are fiction, the two confrontations between Mary and Elizabeth.  They never met in actuality but it's too good an opportunity to pass up for dramatists - as in Schiller's MARY STUART - and of course it delivers the electric shock of Vanessa Redgrave and Glenda Jackson having at each other.

Glenda, in the same year as playing Elizabeth for the BBC, is all fire and brimstone while Vanessa is the ultimate willowy, romantic Queen, all air and light.

Shelf or charity shop?  Shelf.  Ultimately it might be a bit of a dull plod but it is worth the climb for the two confrontation scenes where Vanessa and Glenda light up the screen with their on and off-screen personas.  The male supporting cast hold their own against their warring Queens: Trevor Howard, Ian Holm. Timothy Dalton, Patrick McGoohan and Nigel Davenport all deliver strong performances while John Barry's score and Margaret Furse's costumes make it a pleasure for the ear and eye.  It's a pity Jarrott couldn't bring a more powerful flourish to match his leading ladies - still, I will take this every time over the turgid Josie Rourke version.

 

DVD/150: IN WHICH WE SERVE (Noel Coward / David Lean, 1942)

When producer Anthony Havelock-Allen approached Noel Coward in 1941 to make a patriotic film, Coward picked the Navy, and a fictionalised account of the recent sinking of his friend Lord Mountbatten's ship HMS Kelly.  Such a blatant propaganda piece shouldn't work - but it does.

Coward's name appears seven times in the opening credits!  He produced and wrote it, starred as the patrician Captain Kinross and composed the unmemorable score.

More importantly, first-time director Coward realised that while he could handle directing actors, he would be - ahem - all at sea with the action sequences so he gave a young editor his first chance at directing, David Lean.

An uncredited Leslie Howard announces at the start "This, is the story of a ship" and we follow the life of the fictitious HMS Torrin from construction to it sinking, watched by it's survivors as they cling to a raft.  As they wait for rescue, strafed by enemy planes, Kinross, Petty Officer Hardy and Seaman 'Shorty' Blake remember their lives back home..

Shelf or charity shop?  A definite shelf.  As I said, Coward and Lean's film stands the test of time and class snobbery to be a genuinely moving look at Briton at war.  Noel Coward won a special Academy Award citation for the film and one can imagine the effect it had on it's audience at the time. Wonderfully photographed by Ronald Neame - getting in soggy training early for his later THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE! - and Lean's editing keeps the film always moving forward.  Although Coward's writing for his working-class characters always verges on the Dickensian, it does lead to some memorable performances: Coward is his ramrod, debonair self which makes for an odd Captain but what a joy to see him in his clipped prime while among the crew, there are three actors who I usually dislike but here all deliver fine performances: John Mills as cheeky chappy 'Shorty', Bernard Miles as the stoic Hardy and the film debut of Richard Attenborough, as a stoker who abandons his post.  Keeping the home fires burning are the luminous Kay Walsh as Freda, 'Shorty's shy young wife, Joyce Carey as Hardy's no-nonsense wife Kath - her last scene is particularly moving, and the sainted Celia Johnson as Kinross' wife Alix.  This was her first feature film and, despite an accent you can etch glass with, she is magnificent, especially in her one-take speech about her acceptance of the third presence in their marriage, the Torrin.