DVD/150: THE YOUNG LIONS (Edward Dmytryk, 1958)

A box-office success, THE YOUNG LIONS hasn't aged well with the exciting pairing of Montgomery Clift and Marlon Brando nullified as they don't appear together.

Irwin Shaw's 1948 WW2 bestseller novel has three protagonists: one German, two American.  Dmytryk and screenwriter Edward Anhalt changed the plot which angered Shaw.  The main change favoured Brando by making the German more sympathetic, which pleased him but Clift was unhappy about it.

As Christian Diestl is with the German occupation of Paris, in America singer Michael Whiteacre and shop worker Noah Ackerman become friends at their draft medical.  In training camp, Noah is bullied by others - oddly Dmytryk plays down the obvious anti-semitism.

Christian's involvement with icy Captain Hardenberg starts his disillusion with Nazism while Noah and Michael eventually find themselves in Europe.

In the final days of the war, the protagonists have a fateful meeting near a liberated concentration camp.

Shelf or charity shop?  I think it's time to let these lions roam. Dmytryk's attempts at profundity now appear heavy-handed and obvious and never makes a connection between the three protagonists so the climax has no particular power.  Brando occasionally flares into life but his blonde rinse and German accent seem to drain him.  This was Monty Clift's first film after his car crash while filming RAINTREE COUNTY which permanently affected him physically and mentally. His offscreen reliance on alcohol and painkillers gives his performance a tremulous, delicate quality - the prolonged fight scenes with the barrack bullies seem overly sadistic - but his civvy scenes with Hope Lange have a welcome warmth.  Dean Martin's career was stalling after his acrimonious professional split with Jerry Lewis and, while he certainly trades on his woozy wise-cracking persona, he delivers a good performance which showed his untapped dramatic potential.  By far, the performance that delivers the best is Maximilian Schell in his first English-speaking role as the cynical Captain Hardenberg - all the more impressive as he learned his lines phonetically.

DVD/150: CHICHI ARIKI (There Was A Father) (Yasujiro Ozu, 1942)

Filmed between Ozu's national service duties - in China between 1937-1939 then Singapore in 1943 - and adhering to Japan's 'national policy', CHICHI ARIKI manages to subvert dogma by alluding to the the emotional cost of 'duty done'.

Existing prints are post-war American versions which excised overt WWII references but Ryohei's army medical exams is evidence enough.

Ozu regular Chishu Ryu is memorable as widower Shuhei Horikawa, a teacher raising his son Ryohei alone.  He is a dedicated teacher but is devastated when a pupil drowns on a school trip.  Consumed with guilt, Shuhei quits teaching and moves to Tokyo to find work, leaving unhappy Ryohei to board at school.

Years pass: Shuhei is an office worker and Ryohei is teaching.  Ryohei tells his father he will leave teaching and move to Tokyo to be together again but Shuihei cannot condone Ryohei's dereliction of duty.

But can duty replace happiness...

Shelf or charity shop?  Watching the world from the shelf .  Ozu-san again provides an insight into parents and children, all the more impressive that he had to negotiate the Japanese WWII codes of Self-Sacrifice and Duty. Ozu wrote his first version of CHICHI AKIRI after THE ONLY SON was released and both have a similar theme - separated parents and children attempting to heal feelings of failed hopes - but the nuanced performances of Chishu Ryu (aged only 38 while filming) and Shuji Sano as Ryohei make it particularly memorable.  Ozu and his mother and siblings had been separated from his father during his teens so he knew the feelings involved but whereas Ryohei fulfills Shuhei's sacrifices, Ozu would avoid school to spend his days in cinemas and was later expelled for writing a love letter to a fellow school-boy.  CHICHI AKIRI was voted the 2nd best film in Kinema Junpo magazine's annual poll - number one was Ozu's THE BROTHERS AND SISTERS OF THE TODA FAMILY!