Eclipse 1942: La mariage de Chiffon

I was watching a box set of WWII movies from Japan, but I couldn’t finish two of the movies, because they were just too brutally… er… bad.

So I’m switching it up completely! And starting on the box set of movies from… er… Occupied France in 1942.

Totally different!

Autant-Lara was hot shit during WWII and the years following, but was pilloried by the Cahiers crowd in the 50s and sank like a rock — before making a come-back in the 80s as a Le Pen representative and rabid anti-Semite.

So making a harmless comedy like this under Nazi supervision seems like foreshadowing.

*gasp*

Kittens!

The utmost in stache tech.

This started off kinda fun, but got progressively creepier and creepier. (Whoda thunk a director happy to work under Nazis was creepy?) But more importantly — kinda boring?

So:

La mariage de Chiffon. Claude Autant-Lara. 1942.

This blog post is part of the Eclipse series.

Eclipse 1944: 歓呼の町

I thought this box of war-time movies would be more… er… distinct? But it’s like the main requirement of the censors is that the movies should be as boring as inhumanely possible.

I mean, some of this may not be from gummint requirements, but just from crushing filming conditions — many of these scenes just seem really drawn out and padded — just as if they couldn’t really do anything but shoot on the studio lot with a diminished crew.

This is just too tedious.

Ah, it’s a movie basically nobody has seen.

I’m out after 28 minutes.

Jubilation Street. Keisuke Kinoshita. 1944.

This blog post is part of the Eclipse series.

Eclipse 1943: 生きてゐる孫六

This looks extremely unrestored, even as these movies go. It’s got these weird artefact-looking shadows that almost look VHS-like, but surely that can’t be the case here.

Nah.

Kinoshita’s previous movie was really enjoyable, even if it devolved into a very patriotic movie towards the end. This looks shoddily made (even if it has more horses than I thought existed in Japan in total), and is a straight-up propaganda movie? So I can understand why nobody would want to pay for a restoration, but… is it worth watching at all?

It’s pretty tough sledding so far, but perhaps it’ll pick up…

Well, the cinematography is pretty good…

I ditched this half way through, because it’s … not good.

The Living Magoroku. Keisuke Kinoshita. 1943.

This blog post is part of the Eclipse series.