Once again, slim pickings plus the last rattle of Kurosawa Centennial Fever.
A+ It’s a Wonderful Life, Stanford, Friday, 9:00. There’s a rarely-acknowledged dark
side to Frank Capra’s feel-good fable. George Bailey (James Stewart) saves his town and earns the love of his neighbors, but only at the expense of his own dreams and desires. Trapped, frustrated, and deeply disappointed, Bailey needs only one new disaster to turn his thoughts to suicide. The extremely happy (some would say excessively sappy) ending works because Bailey, whose main problems remain unsolved, has suffered so much to earn it.
B+ The Wizard of Oz, Oakland Paramount, Thursday, 8:00. I don’t really have to tell you about this one, do I? Well, perhaps I have to explain why I’m only giving it a B+. Despite its clever songs, lush Technicolor photography, and one great performance (Bert Lahr’s Cowardly Lion). The Wizard of Oz never struck me as the masterpiece that everyone else sees. It’s a good, fun movie, but not quite fun enough to earn an A.
The following films are all at the VIZ Cinema, as part of their series, Mifune x Kurosawa : A Beautiful Man.
A Drunken Angel, Wednesday, 7:15; Thursday, 4:30. The title refers to a gruff, short-
tempered, and alcoholic doctor (Takashi Shimura) who runs a small slum clinic next to a filthy sump. He’s trying desperately to keep people alive, and one of those people is a tubercular gangster played by Toshiro Mifune in his first collaboration with Kurosawa. Strutting, macho, and confused, the gangster is torn between fighting the disease and keeping up his high-living lifestyle. Easily Kurosawa’s best pre-Rashomon work. Read my Kurosawa Diary entry.
A High and Low, Monday, 7:15; Tuesday, 3:30; Thursday, 7:15. After his two great action comedies (Yojimbo and Sanjuro) and before his last black and white historical epic (Red Beard), Akira Kurosawa made one of the best crime thrillers of the 1960’s.
Toshiro Mifune (who else?) stars as a successful businessman who thinks he’s off the hook when a kidnapper snatches the wrong boy, leaving the businessman’s son safe. But the kidnapper still insists on the ransom (large enough to destroy Mifune’s tenuous hold on his company), forcing the man into a moral dilemma. Can he let another man’s son die for his career? Much of High and Low takes place in a single living room, and Kurosawa uses the wide, Tohoscope frame brilliantly in the confined space. See my Kurosawa Diary entry.
B+ Stray Dog, Tuesday, 7:15; Wednesday, 4:00. This 1949 police procedural follows a young, rookie detective (Toshiro Mifune) who loses his gun to a pickpocket. Tortured by guilt, he becomes obsessed with finding the stolen Colt. Stray Dog works best as a straight-up thriller, and doesn’t work at all when it tries to say something meaningful about the relationship between the police and the criminals they chase. See my Kurosawa Diaries entry.
A Red Beard, Sunday, 1:45. Akira Kurosawa never stated his central theme–the importance of kindness and charity in a
cruel universe–more powerfully or directly than in this three-hour, 1965 epic. A samurai movie without swordfights (but with one fantastic judo fight), Red Beard concentrates on human suffering and what must be done to relieve it. Toshiro Mifune, in his last performance for Kurosawa, plays a doctor in a mid-19th century slum clinic, desperately fighting corruption and exploitation as well as disease. The story is told through the eyes of an arrogant young intern (Yuzo Kayama), shocked to discover that he’s been assigned to work with patients he views as beneath him. Read my Kurosawa Diary entry.
A The Lower Depths, Sun,6:00; Monday, 4:00. Kurosawa’s follow-up to
Throne of Blood succeeds on almost every level, despite it’s feeling like a filmed stage play (which it is). Set in a grim flophouse in the 19th century (and based on the play by Maxim Gorky), the film examines several characters at the very bottom of the economic ladder. It’s depressing, of course, but it’s also warm, sardonic, and funny. A rare Kurosawa period piece without swordplay. Read my Kurosawa Diary entry.
Bayflicks 