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.

Sorry, Wrong Number (1948)

☆ ☆ ☆

Sorry, Wrong Number (1948) – A. Litvak

Re-imagining this as the radio play it once was is instructive.  The film could easily dispense with the visuals, which add nothing at all, and perhaps it would be more harrowing alone in the dark with just the soundtrack.   And perhaps Agnes Moorhead, the original victim of this noir tragedy, would have been better and more shrewish (Barbara Stanwyck’s sultry portrayal in Double Indemnity stands out a bit too much in memory to reconceptualise her in this role). The plot involves Stanwyck overhearing a murder plot on a crossed telephone line and then we (and she) learn about the possible crime’s backstory through flashbacks.  Of course, she’s in trouble (a woman in peril again; see also The Two Mrs. Carrolls from the previous year). Burt Lancaster and William Conrad are, unfortunately, sorely neglected here and, all things considered, this is a pretty creaky show.  Next time, I might turn off the screen and turn out the lights.       

  

Palo Alto (2013)

☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Palo Alto (2013) – G. Coppola

It is probably trite for me to call this a cross between “Kids” and “Valley Girl” but somehow that’s what kept coming to mind (particularly after I stumbled across the latter film on cable TV in the US last year and was rather dumbstruck by it).  Of course, recalling Altman’s “The Player”, maybe this really could have been “the pitch” that got the film sold/made.  Or more realistically it was James Franco’s doing, because the script is drawn from some of his short stories (somehow I shudder to think of them), he plays a bit part (as a soccer coach on the make for his high school girl players), and he also served as executive producer.  Director Gia Coppola is, yes, Francis’s grand-daughter but much like her aunt Sofia, she does seem to have inherited some talent (or at least learned from the family traditions).  The film follows a handful of teens as they fill up their bored lives with parties and emotional problems -- so much so that I worried about their self-esteem for most of the movie.  Much of their feelings remain implied rather than shown, however. And the languorousness of things (including the stylish cinematography) is only occasionally punctuated by abrupt reckless behaviour, creating a sort of tension that, instead of leading to some sort of screenwriting arc, ultimately dissipated leaving me, the viewer, to wonder what the point of this all was. 

Ex Machina (2015)

☆ ☆ ☆ 

Ex Machina (2015) – A. Garland

High-concept, near-future sci-fi that I thought I would like more than I did.  Possibly this is due to the fact that I watched it on the tiny screen on an airplane.  However, maybe it was because this genre is starting to feel too pat, too self-satisfied, too ready to use flashes of violence or sexuality to spice things up (or to attract the teenage male viewers).  Ex Machina is being talked about as more “intelligent” than most of its ilk, probably because the plot hinges on the “Turing Test”, the challenge a computer (or robot in this case) must beat in order to be determined to have artificial intelligence. True, you never quite know whether Oscar Isaac, as a computer genius “dude”, is telling the truth (but he probably isn’t) to the young employee he brings in to test his sexy robot -- and this creates some suspense.  But something authentic seems lacking and, in the end, intelligence is scrapped for dimestore psychology and the usual conventions of the thriller. Others liked this better.

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.).

El Bruto (1953)

☆ ☆ ☆

El Bruto (1953) – L. Buñuel

After his collaboration with Dalí at the height of surrealism, Luis Buñuel laid low and then re-emerged in Mexico where he slowly rebuilt his career with a series of commercial films for local producers.  Some of these films are now recognised as important parts of his oeuvre (Los Olvidados, The Exterminating Angel) but many remain virtually unknown.  El Bruto falls into the latter category.  Clocking in at a trim 80 minutes, it is basically straight melodrama.  Although Buñuel’s usual interests (surrealism, feet, insects) are absent, there is a strong Marxist undercurrent which aligns with his political orientation.  A rich landlord hires El Bruto, more brawn than brains working at a slaughterhouse, to help him evict some poor tenants who are organized to fight.  Poor Bruto punches a sick old man who later dies; even worse, he falls in love with the man’s daughter who freaks out when she discovers Bruto is responsible for her father’s death.  All the while, the landlord’s wife is virtually throwing herself at Bruto.  Well, it doesn’t end well for any of them.  Worth a look but not up there with Buñuel’s masterworks by any stretch of the imagination.