My first contribution to this thread and, hopefully, towards filling up 50 slots. My provisional list only has around 20 near-certainties, so I've got a ways to go! And lord knows there's not much here to shore up the vacancies:
Tange Sazen: The Million Ryô Pot (Sadao Yamanaka, 1935)
I wasn’t convinced of this one at first, but its constant sense of invention won me over as it went along. Yamanaka shows an occasional pronounced flair for comic filmmaking, with a few perfectly-timed cutaways, and a great recurring joke wherein a character proclaims their intractability and then, following a diagonal wipe, we see they’ve caved in. The density of the narrative also impressed me – this is undoubtedly the
Winchester '73 of Japanese period comedies! Not much else to say about this perfectly enjoyable film, except for a couple random points: the franchise character is never identified by name in the film. Gee, if not for the fact that one character has only one eye and one arm, a knack for sword-fighting, a furious temper, and a heart of gold when it comes to children, I might never have guessed who Tange Sazen was! Also,
That one lord or whatever gets rewarded in the end for lying to his wife, deceiving his servants into devoting enormous time and energy into a wild goose chase, and misrepresenting his own fighting abilities. I honestly though that, in the end, he’d be called out by the men in the dojo for not really defeating Tange Sazen, and would consequently lose his wife and fortune, only to wind up living with Tange Sazen & co. He’d still enjoy the benefits of the million ryo, but all his power would be gone. As is, the ending feels oddly rushed, and a number of steps seem to be missing on the way to its idyllic conclusion.
Le Nouveau testament (Sacha Guitry, 1936)
Now here’s a fascinating train wreck: a comedy where the sheer volume of “comical” dialogue is exhausting. And I mean volume in both senses. Not only is everyone in this film unstoppably garrulous, but all they can do is shout at each other! We get long,
long scenes of relentless yelling, stitched together with no variation, like a feature-length clip show from a horrible, angry sitcom from hell. Guitry’s direction does nothing to alleviate the monotony. In fact, during a couple dialogue scenes (and there’s nothing but dialogue scenes in this thing) the camera’s refusal to leave a speaker, the director’s refusal to add a reverse shot, seems almost willfully perverse, like he’s trying to deny you the basic entertainment of watching a filmed conversation. But it’s only fitting, since these are shouting matches rather than conversations, and, to the participant of a shouting match, how the other person is reacting rarely matters.
I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a film that so embodies a mindset of complete narcissism. Fittingly, Guitry’s is the only character afforded any sort of internal life. Everyone else is a broad and insulting caricature - insulting not because Guitry is too harsh on them for their flaws, but because we, as the audience, are expected to stomach this tired, unsubtle shit. The critique of bourgeois hypocrisy, which is what the film keeps claiming itself to be, misses all recognizable marks. Superficial elements shared by superior films like
The Rules of the Game and
Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? swirl around in the mix, but unlike those films, this ends up completely toothless. There’s a whole parade of potential emotional beats inherent in the script that Guitry’s ultra-stiff direction manages to evade completely. Every once in a while, like a stopped clock, it hits the right note of manic speed (though these moments are soon smothered, like everything else, under the sheer weight of its profound effort to be clever and fast). But the movie on the whole is so unimaginatively directed that I sometimes have no idea what emotional response it’s going for. Finally, once it eventually staggers to an unbelievable mess of a conclusion, Guitry teases that he’ll be tearing down all his guests’ delusions and vanities one by one in a big comic climax. Then, after a single (over-extended, and completely lame) dressing-down, he backs out! I don’t know what the hell I’m supposed to feel at the end – satisfied that the doctor gets one over on his unfaithful wife? All I felt was shell-shocked when the end title suddenly appeared, and I had to ask myself, “Was that a
movie?”
Kameradschaft (G. W. Pabst, 1931)
As far as political cinema goes, this is pretty tepid stuff. A few scenes in the mine, though, are excellent. Things seem patient – the camera moves slowly, shots last for long durations – but underneath (quite apposite for such a subterranean film) they rumble variously with panic, dread, or utter exhaustion. Some segments are hauntingly spare. An old man, searching for his grandson in the mine, is so consumed by his single-minded quest, every glimmer of hope and every stamp of defeat so deeply felt, that his humanity comes to seem effaced by the effort. He transforms before our eyes into a ghastly, animal figure of blind determination and despair. He’s the highwater mark in the film’s approach to character, which leans toward the plain and schematic. In this way (and not only this way) it resembles propaganda. But the message of empathy transcending barriers of race and ideology (we know this is the message because it’s proclaimed as such at the end – twice, in French and German) isn’t forceful enough to justify these structural elements. When characterization is so thin it keeps disappearing into the background, there ought to be some statement, some call to action, powerful enough that it consumes all our attention. “Let’s all be nice to each other” doesn’t fit the bill, and every aspect of the movie, aside from some technically marvelous visuals, winds up seeming slight and bland. And now, some time after watching it, what I remember most about this film is the lame broad humor of the central trio of German miners. An ill omen, I’d say, for its chances of making my list.
The Real Glory (Henry Hathaway, 1939)
And thus, from a tale of people transcending cultural boundaries, I turn to a film where those same boundaries are used as an excuse to display one’s superiority over others. Gary Cooper plays an assholier-than-thou physician in the Philippines Constabulary working to ready the natives for an imminent bandit invasion. His preparation involves, at one point, using someone’s deeply held religious beliefs to mock him grotesquely in front of a crowd. Fearing that he’ll be sent to Hell if his proper burial rite is not respected, a captured bandit falls to his knees and, sobbing, pleas for his life. It’s sort of like when John Wayne shoots out the eyes of the dead Comanche in
The Searchers. Except here, the crowd can’t get enough of it! And the good doctor’s humanitarian works don’t stop there. When a cholera epidemic breaks out, Cooper works feverishly (sorry) to get it under control. Well, actually, first he throws a tantrum and says he doesn’t care (because his commanding officer was a big meanie, you see). But once he’s threatened with disciplinary action for standing idly by – why, he’s an absolute saint! Outside of such oddities, however, the movie’s pretty rote. There are some odd character details that suggest further development in the original novel, or else a sorry effort to shore up shallow characterizations. Considering that David Niven’s yearning to live on his own private island and Broderick Crawford’s passion for breeding rare orchids both come to pretty much nothing in the end, I’d go with the latter. There’s also some romantic business that’s too dull for me to bother with. One more point of interest: the film transforms into a genuine bloodbath in its third act, including a couple surprisingly gory images! Well, at least I can now cross
“Seeing the Rotting Corpse of Broderick Crawford, Buried Up to His Neck in Dirt, Bugs Eating Away at His Face”
off my bucket list.
The Cowboy and the Lady (H. C. Potter, 1938)
By coincidence, I watched this before Domino posted his write-up. And you know, I was all set to say some moderately nice things about it, but I find I can’t disagree with any of Domino’s complaints. Still, there are a handful of really lovely moments here – best of all, when Cooper is miming what his married life will be like (showcasing Cooper as pretty adept at physical comedy) and in the process bewitches a crowd of his friends. But whenever Cooper starts spouting off about “good workhorse people” or whatever, you just want to crawl into a hole and stay there. I imagine a second viewing, and more exposure to that garbage, would’ve further soured me to this, so it’s probably just as well.