A Wife Confesses (1961)

☆ ☆ ☆ ½

A Wife Confesses (1961) – Y. Masumura

This is the fourth film I’ve seen by Yasuzô Masumura (who died in 1986) and I still cannot get a proper “read” on him; each film was very different from the others.  Man of the Biting Wind (1960) was a yakuza/juvenile delinquent picture (starring writer Yukio Mishima!) that was part of the zeitgeist of its time.  Giants and Toys (1958) was a wacky and prescient farce about the world of advertising (my favourite Masumura film so far).  Blind Beast (1969), one of his more notorious pictures, was a dark bizarre and lurid story of a blind sculptor who kidnaps a model and forces a relationship on her.  So, I didn’t quite know what I would get this time – but critic Jonathan Rosenbaum reckons A Wife Confesses (1961) is Masumura’s masterpiece.  I’m not so sure.  It is a courtroom drama about a woman (Ayako Wakao) who may have intentionally murdered her older husband on a mountaineering trip (by cutting the rope and allowing him to fall to his death after they had an accident).  Certainly, I can guess what attracted Rosenbaum’s plaudits:  the story is told in a nested flashback structure so that we see all of the events, including brief conversations, as they are mentioned in the trial (or in the concurrent time period).  The way that Masumura manages to keep viewers onside with all of this jumping around is downright magisterial.  Ayako Wakao also turns in an impressive performance as the wife of the title who maintains her innocence even as every other character, including the young pharma exec (Hiroshi Kawaguchi) who she is clearly infatuated with, suspects her to be guilty.  Perhaps it is a florid performance, but it reveals the underlying instability and yearning desire of the wife very well.  The rest of the cast (save maybe the gruff husband (Eitarô Ozawa)) pales in comparison.  Ultimately, it’s a melodrama but one told with a style that broke with the classical tradition of Japanese film (i.e., Mizoguchi, Ozu) and justifiably belongs to the “new wave”.      

Cash on Demand (1961)

☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Cash on Demand (1961) – Q. Lawrence

Well-scripted heist film that relies almost entirely on the acting abilities of André Morell and Peter Cushing.  Cushing plays the Scrooge-like branch manager who treats his employees badly and becomes the target of charismatic thief Morell.  In retrospect, it could have been performed on the stage, as it limits itself mostly to the bank and its front counter, manager’s office, and, of course, strong room.  Except for the use of Cushing and Morell, you might not realise that this was produced by Hammer Pictures at the height of their horror success.  But this film is still worth your time (only 80 or so minutes) given its tension-building twists and turns.  An unknown gem.

The Young Savages (1961)

☆ ☆ ½

The Young Savages (1961) – J. Frankenheimer

Sober social problem drama that tackles juvenile delinquency by pointing the finger directly at broken homes and the slum environment.  Burt Lancaster is the District Attorney, formerly from the slums himself, who wants to put three young hoods who killed a blind Puerto Rican boy into the electric chair.  His boss, aiming for the governor’s office, approves; his wife, a rich white liberal, disapproves.  Lancaster takes his time investigating both viewpoints, including the families of the victim and the accused murderers (with Shelley Winters as his former girlfriend, the mother of one of the accused) as well as other members of both the Italian and Puerto Rican gangs involved in the incident.  And then he basically throws the case in a quest for the truth, demonstrating to the jury how the killers came to be killers and why they should be treated with mercy – of course, the victim’s family is stunned and disappointed (especially because the truth involves a dose of victim-blaming).  If the film didn’t discuss the institutional racism present in America, one might worry that its conclusion itself smacks of bias.  But no one would disagree that Lancaster has done the right thing by showing mercy – it’s just that it’s all a bit preachy as directed by earnest young John Frankenheimer fresh from live TV and not yet up to the standards of his classic films (The Manchurian Candidate, Seven Days in May).  Rather dated too.   

  

One-Eyed Jacks (1961)

☆ ☆ ☆ ½

One-Eyed Jacks (1961) – M. Brando

Marlon Brando’s only directorial effort is a long-ish Western that holds up pretty well.  Brando mumbles his way through it as Rio, a bank robber, who is betrayed by partner Dad Longworth (Karl Malden) right at the start of the picture.  After five years in a Mexican jail, Rio makes his way up to Monterrey with a couple of dodgy outlaws to have a show-down with Longworth, who is now the sheriff there.  He falls in love with Longworth’s stepdaughter.  Apparently in Brando’s original five hour cut, things ended rather badly but a conventional Hollywood ending was forced upon him.  Slim Pickens is here in support.  One review I read wondered whether there was a competition among actors to see who could deliver the thickest drawl.  Brando’s is reminiscent of Elvis but you can’t deny Pickens.  The Monterrey vistas are very pretty as backdrop.  Again, the whole thing does hang together, pretty well, charting some classical Western themes in a leisurely laid back way.

Scream of Fear (1961)

☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Scream of Fear (1961) – S. Holt

Susan Strasberg keeps seeing her dead father around the estate after having been away for 10 years – except he is supposed to be very much alive according to her stepmother!  With the aid of her father’s chauffeur, Strasberg tries to solve the mystery, even as those around her indicate that they are concerned for her sanity.  Of course, if her father is really dead, then Strasberg is set to inherit his millions.  This provides a motive for doing her in – and her father too – or so she begins to think.  It is hard to separate the paranoia from the reality at times in this weird tale from Hammer studios.  Director Seth Holt allows stillness and silence to create suspense and absorb the viewer in the potential horror before her or him.  Yet something is not quite right in this solid spooky chiller!

Pigs and Battleships (1961)

☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Pigs and Battleships (1961) – S. Imamura

Imamura’s films are hard to predict; from my limited exposure to him, it seems that he doesn’t use genre (or formula) as a starting place for his films.  Pigs and Battleships was his first big hit and it is a savage comedic look at a post-war Japanese seaside town located adjacent to an American naval base (Yokosuka).  We follow an odd gang of chimpira (junior yakuza) who arrange a deal with a Japanese-American from Hawaii to buy food scraps from the base to support a pig farm (since pork prices are rising).  The unlucky loser among this bunch, Kinta, has a girlfriend who wishes to break away from the town and its symbiotic relationship with the Americans.  I say symbiotic instead of parasitic because Imamura is clear that it is the Americans that are exploiting and corrupting the Japanese (who may be willing participants, he suggests); in fact, the Americans are uniformly treated as brutal lugs here, seen mostly in brothels.  Gradually the film focuses in on Kinta and Haruko and their fate.  We hope they escape – but in an Imamura film, you never can be sure. 

Splendor in the Grass (1961)

☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Splendor in the Grass (1961) – E. Kazan

Elia Kazan (with playwright William Inge) brings us melodrama of an almost Sirkian kind – although Sirk typically took things much further, emotionally and sociologically.  True, Natalie Wood does allow sexual repression to drive her to hysteria (and the sanatorium).  And Warren Beatty can’t come to terms with his own impulses.  And Kazan does take aim at the late 1920’s Kansan context and the way that nice girls didn’t and bad girls go to hell (and what’s a poor boy to do).  But in comparison to a film like Written on the Wind, it feels as though Kazan is holding back.  Having watched this directly after Palo Alto (2013) with its depiction of kids running rampant and no urge really restrained suggests that there are both differences (actual behaviour) and similarities (pressures to “become” something) in the experience of high schoolers across films/generations.  The one exquisite emotion that Kazan’s film is able to achieve spawns directly from the title (and Wordsworth’s poem): a bittersweet nostalgia for previous episodes in our lives that used to mean so much but which have now faded gently away.

The Steamroller and the Violin (1961)

☆ ☆ ☆ ½

The Steamroller and the Violin (1961) – A Tarkovsky

This was Tarkovsky’s student thesis film, clocking in at about 45 minutes and in the rather glorious color that films shined with at the time.  A small boy learning the violin is teased by other bigger kids but finds a protector in a local worker who is operating a steamroller on a nearby building site.  Their unlikely friendship plays out in a series of anecdotes culminating with an agreed upon plan to go to the movies – which the boy’s mother subsequently prohibits. Somehow I kept expecting the violin to be smashed flat by the steamroller, but it didn’t happen.  That wouldn’t be Tarkovsky’s way, I’m sure, and instead he seems to be focusing on the relationship between workers and artists in the communist regime.  Can’t they be friends? Stalin rode roughshod over the arts bending them to his will but again Tarkovsky looks beyond that grudge to think more carefully about the role of art in a society and its contributions. The film contains dazzling poetic shots that must have led everyone to believe that this student would one day become a master filmmaker – and he did (Andrei Rublev, Solaris, The Mirror, Stalker, etc.).

Curse of the Werewolf (1961)

☆ ☆ ☆

Curse of the Werewolf (1961) – T. Fisher

Hammer surely got it right when they chose Oliver Reed to play their only werewolf (judging by his subsequent notoriety).  Rather than tackle the Universal Studios version of the story, however, Terrence Fisher and his team go for a different take on the legend.  Here, lycanthropy has possibly genetic origins and we are treated to a nearly 45 minute preamble involving Reed’s parents (mute servant girl and insane begging man) and his childhood (sneaking out to kill local goats).  Apparently, being loved can keep the dark side at bay, but, unfortunately, Reed’s true love is thwarted – but you expected that.  Hammer’s usual production values are present and Reed’s anguish is clear but there is only really one scene with full-on werewolf make-up.