Random Thoughts

This starts off like many of these late Ozu films — with a bunch of guys around a table talking about nothing much in particular…

So what’s it going to be about this time?

Is it the same group of men as in the previous movie? I mean, Ozu uses the same troupe of actors a lot, so that’s not really significant, but they’re also ragging on the hostess here using similar in-jokes which befuddles her in much the same way as earlier…

I’m pausing to read the DVD liner notes. Be right back!

Ohhh! This is a remake of the much earlier Late Spring film… Sutsuko Hara played the daughter in that movie, and now she plays the mother… How odd. In any case, I haven’t seen Late Spring — it’s not part of this box set — but since Ozu is doing a remake, perhaps he’s knowingly putting in callbacks to other films, too.

Whaa…. that’s exactly the same hallway as in Equinox Flower!

And that’s the same office!

I think the liner notes neglected to mention some stuff.

No, hang on…

Different room number and different colour chairs. So totally different!

Anyway.

This is most amusing. It’s about three middle aged men who’ve somehow gotten it into their minds that they have to find a husband for the daughter of a woman they had a crush on when they were young — and the daughter is not having it at all.

This really is brilliant. Ozu is poking fun at these old guys, but in a good-natured way. It’s kinda touching?

Every scene mixes fun with wistful melancholia (and sometimes some anger at Japanese conservative society, but gently). It’s hard to stop smiling while watching this.

The film kinda takes a turn for fake drama towards the end — I find it in-credible that Ayako would believe that old fogey over her old mother — the film had established Ayoko as a pretty sharp cookie, so that just didn’t work for me.

Man, what a lovely movie. It’s almost kinda perfect — it’s funny (I laughed out loud a few times and kept smiling the rest of the 2:09 running time) and it’s touching, and it doesn’t have a pat ending. It is… dare I say it… even better than Tokyo Story in some ways.

Then again, Tokyo Story packs a bigger emotional wallop than this does. Still:

Late Autumn. Yasujirô Ozu. 1960.

This blog post is part of the Eclipse series.

Huh. This Grémillon box set is also set during the occupation. I’ve somehow saved a whole bunch of box sets filmed during WWII in Japan and France for the end of this blog series (we’ve got about 10% to go until it’s done). I didn’t do this consciously, so I guess it’s just a coinkidink.

*gasp* Jean Gabin!

This looks like it’s going to be a very moist movie.

But it was filmed mostly before France was occupied, and isn’t really about the war at all, I think?

Looks quite promising. It was a major box office success when it was finally released…

It’s just a light breeze.

This movie is getting to be a bit annoying. They spend most of the time shouting at each other, and it’s all So Much Drama. And it’s the stupidest drama possible — I mean, they’re in the middle of a huge storm, so you’d think that’d supply the drama, but instead it’s a lot of bickering AT FULL VOLUME.

I find this a pretty frustrating movie. It’s not boring, exactly — it zips past — but it doesn’t make much sense as a drama?

I guess it’s gonna end with Gabin saving the villain again or something. There has to be another stormy scene, I think.

Isn’t there even going to be another storm? Well, that’s a disappointment.

Oh, finally! An SOS from the evil guy’s ship, which I’ve been waiting for half this movie… but there’s just three minutes left?

So it’s gonna end with Gabin riding out into the storm to save the evil guy? But without actually showing it?

Yup.

Well, that sucks.

OOPS SPOILERS

Stormy Waters. Jean Grémillon. 1941.

This blog post is part of the Eclipse series.

Oh, this is a silent movie… Uhm… there’s an audio track here with very vigorous pianner music… but perhaps I should listen to something else to avoid going insane. But what! OK, I’m putting on …and the Ambulance Died In His Arms by Coil.

The Eclipse sets usually aren’t restored films — they’re supposed to be cheap and stuff. But this one is just weird: The footage looks great, not a lot of scratches or dirt, but whenever they change between the footage and the titles, there’s these aggressive horizontal white stripes for one (1) frame on each change. And there’s a lot of titles. A lot. With mostly just a couple words on each title. It’s really annoying, and it seemed like you could get somebody on Fiverr to just paint out those white lines in Photoshop. (With black lines, for instance.) Or drop those frames.

(And these days there’s probably AI that could do that for you, with a slight chance of inserting Nick Cage’s face into the scenes.)

OK, perhaps it’s not that easy to photoshop those lines out… NEVER MIND

I guess they glued the film back together after making edits with sticky tape that turned wrinkly or something?

Well, that’s a cool scene.

I’m having some difficulty getting into this — perhaps because of the judders whenever there’s a cut making me slightly dizzy — but it’s certainly a pretty movie. Shimizu made over 150 films in his career, with up to ten films per year, so it’s a wonder he found time to add nice cinematographic flourishes.

I don’t really know how doe throw the die on this one. When I could look at it, it looks great and interesting, but the glitches and shuddering do me in, so I find myself avoiding actually looking at the screen if I think there’s a cut coming up. So how about:

Japanese Girls at the Harbor. Hiroshi Shimizu. 1933.

This blog post is part of the Eclipse series.

That’s just not true! I’m very productive and my character is the worst.

Kurosawa’s previous wartime movie avoided dealing with the war at all by being all samurai and stuff. But this looks like it’s going to be a straightforward wartime effort propaganda movie?

She almost organised a strike, because they increased the men’s workload by 100%, but the women’s only by 50%, and that was totally unpatriotic. So she convinced the factory owners to increase the women’s by 75%. (Because women are weaker than men, but not that weak.)

Hey! What’s with the slut shaming!

Yes! Work through your pain and illness! Infect everybody else! For Japan!

As somebody’s that’s generally unimpressed with Kurusawa (I think he’s the most overrated director ever… after Uwe Boll), this is very satisfying to watch. Because it’s pure, awful, horrible, amateurish junk.

Hah! I knew it! He was never any good!

It’s got a 5.7 on imdb:

As for the quality of the film, it’s not surprising that there are some serious discrepancies in the ratings. Like many great directors, I notice that some ALWAYS rate all of the directors films high–even though it’s clear that Kurosawa (like most directors) was not a master director early in his career.

Work it!

Uhm uhm sure.

This is a bad movie, but there’s some nice scenes in here, and some performances that aren’t bad. So I guess it would be more reasonable roll of the die would be ⚁, but I’m not reasonable, so:

The Most Beautiful. Akira Kurosawa. 1944.

This blog post is part of the Eclipse series.

So this is a mockumentary?

So this is a parody of older Yugoslavian movies?

It’s kinda gruesome as parodies go, since it seems like it has actual documentary footage from WWII?

I mean, it’s amusing, but it’s not “ha ha” funny…?

I guess that’s “satire” for you.

OK, this film is just an excuse to show off these (admittedly amazing) acrobatic strongman feats?

Oh, right. This is a found footage film — Makavejev took a bunch of old documentary footage, and filmed the linking er skits between them to establish a sort of narrative.

Hm… the DVD liner notes claims that the funny bits in between the acrobatics are also old? I assumed those were parodies filmed by Makavejev… I’m not sure I believe the liner notes.

Oh, OK, this looks like it might actually be the real “lost” movie from the 40s. It looks properly amateurish instead of fake amateurish.

OK, now it’s looking fake amateurish again. I mean, it’s just too good. I mean, bad. I mean:

That can’t actually be from an actual film anybody actually released in the actual 40s. Actually.

Wikipedia is signing off on this not being a parody but actually “an old amateur feature pic”. 🤷🏽‍♂️

It’s an amusing film, if rather mean spirited. (I bet it was a hoot to make.) But it’s a joke that goes on for way too long — there’s material here for like a half hour movie? And then it just goes on and on.

Innocence Unprotected. Dušan Makavejev. 1968.

This blog post is part of the Eclipse series.