Kagamusha

Akira Kurosawa's late career masterpiece "Kagamusha" is a story I'm just starting to fully understand. Throughout his career, Kurosawa had been interested in the mortality of mankind, you could see it early on in "Ikiru", the story of a man dying of cancer but wanting to leave something lasting behind before he died. "Ikiru" by comparison was a small intimate piece, a modern Japanese story; "Kagamusha" is far more epic in scale, yet I found it deals very much with the same themes of trying to achiece immortality and wanting to leave something lasting behind.

"Kagamusha" stands for the "Shadow Warrior", in this case, it's the story of an impostor, but an impostor who keeps a dream alive for a great emperor. The story is set in the 1500s when Japan was in the middle of a civil war. Shingen Takeda (Tatsuya Nakadai) is the leader of the Takeda clan when he is mortally wounded by a sniper bullet. Takeda survives for awhile, but soon dies, his clan take it upon themselves to use a double in order to fool their enemies. This double is thief, saved from crucifixion in order to play Takeda. At first he hesitates, but his loyalty to the clan and his sorrow over the death of the emperor overtakes him and he decides to do it. Takeda's dying wish was to keep his death a secret for at least three years in the hopes that his clan would be the first to conquer Kyoto. Takeda's loyal brother Nobokadu (Tsutomu Yamazaki) takes the thief under his wing and teaches him how to be an emperor. There are both tense and funny moments as the thief must go through the ringer of fooling everyone who was close to the emperor. As all of this is happening, he finds himself falling more and more into the role as it becomes less a performance and more a way of life. The way Kurosawa handles this identity crisis is intriguing.

The heart of this film lies in the thief, he was a local peasant taken in and being told to be a leader to this clan. The thief believes in the mantra of the clan that it is an immovable mountain and he proves this during one of the film's pivotal battle scenes, and probably the most famous scene in the film. He is only told to sit and not fight, he acts more as a symbol than anything. Around him people die for him, the irony isn't lost, it's here where it seems the spirit of the dead emperor has possessed the thief, in his eyes, he believes he's immortal, yet Kurosawa knows this could only end in tragedy.

The final act of "Kagamusha" is a perfect demonstration of the frailty of the delusions of immortality as the thief witnesses a massacre. There isn't much action in these scenes, only the consequences of hot headedness and the futility of war. The dream of immortality is lost, the men who's hopes it would last are shown in pale faces looking like ghosts, it's a tour de force image.

"Kagamusha" was made in 1980, Akira Kurosawa had not made a film in over a decade, luckily loyal fans Francis Ford Coppola and George Lucas came to his rescue and financed his film. It's strange thinking Kurosawa needed help financing a film, seeing that he's primarily responsible for bringing Japanese cinema to western audiences in the early 50s. It is said while waiting for production to start, Kurosawa kept himself busy by storyboarding the entire film in advance so he would've been well prepared when financing finally came through. The intricate artwork shines through, this is indeed one of Kurosawa's most stylized films. His use of color is quite extraordinary, in one scene he contrasts soldiers different bright colored uniforms with that of a running soldier who is covered in mud.

Many of the images seem to come as a dream, we see a night shot of a battle scene from afar, we don't see any action only behind a mountain a cloud of smoky red as if it were a volcano erupting. For me the most striking image comes from three clansmen on their horses ready to do battle, Kurosawa films these three men with no ground below them and only the sky, as if they are descending from the heavens, it's a myth that Kurosawa soon destroys with the devastation of the clan.

"Kagamusha" began Akira Kurosawa's twilight career, he had at least one more great film after this with "Ran" which was a take on "King Lear", he was a man showing his age, it was no wonder these films touched on immortality. As one soldier sings in the film "Once life is given, it is not meant to last forever", this was no doubt in Kurosawa's mind, he was a poet who concerned himself with life and death, and all the things in between, it's seeing his films you must wonder just what it's all about.

Once Upon a Time in the West

"Once Upon a Time in the West" is like a dream, it exists as a western, yet you never feel like you're in the west. The west was a real place long ago, but watching this film, you're not in a historical place, it's more like a mythical one. The characters don't seem real, some seem like ghosts, they're images, they walk majestically through the iconic valleys, and towns. There are the heroes, and the villains, all play a part, all are larger than life. When the film ends, it's the end of a dream, you swear you just had.

I felt this way watching "Once Upon a Time in the West" just recently, it never worked on me as a realistic western, when I think of those, I think mostly of films like "Unforgiven", this is something else entirely. This isn't the old west taught in history books, this is the one taught by movies, it's a mythical landscape, it brings out legends of what the west stood for, not what it was. It's a romantic ideal, but it's done with operatic poetry.

The story is a rather simple one if you actually analyse it. A landowner and his family is killed by a ruthless killer named Frank (Henry Fonda). Frank works for a warped, crippled entrepreneur who found out the man's land was worth money because the railroad would come through it. But Frank finds out the landowner had a wife, her name is Jill (Claudia Cardinale), a former prostitute newly arrived only to find her husband dead. Jill finds out her husbands plan was to build a station on the land for the railroad to come through, yet Frank plans to take it for himself.

A stranger comes into town only known as Harmonica (Charles Bronson), he is the man with no name, staying mostly silent playing his harmonica. He has come to see Frank, he has a personal vendetta with him that is only explained at the very climax. Another person involved is Cheyenne (Jason Robards) an outlaw who may or may not be all that bad. Cheyenne and Harmonica form a partnership and together they decide to help Jill create the railroad.

"Once Upon a Time in the West" is a long film, but like all the greats, it never feels long, you could swear the story doesn't take this much time. Yet it's in the arrangement and execution of director Sergio Leone, that makes this such an epic experience. Leone was a man known for long drawn out sequences, he goes from long establishing shots, to extreme close-ups and uses them to full effect to create a certain mood, or to enhance the action. Very little is said in a Leone film, he likes to show it instead, it probably worked to his advantage since he always worked with such an international cast and only spoke Italian.

Leone is one of the most strategic filmmakers when it comes to composition, some of the shots are ingenious, yet it never feels like he's showing off. Leone seemed to have found a new found confidence with story telling when it came to this film, he takes his time even topping his last masterpiece "The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly". Leone chooses to open the film with practically ten minutes of silence. We watch three bad guys at a train station, it's obvious why they are there, they are waiting for someone to get off the train. That someone turns out to be Harmonica who quickly does away with the three men as soon as he gets off, yet before all that happens, we watch these three men as they wait at the station. The way Leone composes it, it's both funny, and suspenseful. We hear the creaking of a windmill, the dripping of water on one of the gunmen's head, and the buzzing of a fly inside the barrel of a gun. This is all made to create a mood, it keeps us interested because we know what is to come will be memorable.

You can't mention a Leone film without mentioning the music by Ennio Morricone. The score for this film is probably Morricone's masterpiece. The themes he works with is in a operatic scale, it brings out the vastness of the west and the larger than life drama unfolding perhaps better than any other film. The music along with the images of in the film become quite emotional, particularly near the end with the showdown between Frank and Harmonica. The sequence here is quite astonishing, almost a little movie of its own, as we see the story behind these two men unfold right before the guns are drawn. It's shot differently than the final showdown in the "Good, the Bad, and The Ugly", Leone built up the suspense in that film using quick cuts of close-ups, here it's a slow burn as Harmonica's story unfolds, with a quick release, there also seems to be more at stake emotionally than with the earlier film.

With "Once Upon a Time in the West", it seems Leone reached a new maturity, he created a more assured western, one that didn't seem to rely on style. The characters are complex, the situation is at a grand scale, it's as if this was the film he had always wanted to make. Unlike his past films, Leone was given money to shoot some location shots in America, where he pays tribute to John Ford with some amazing compositions of Monument Valley. Leone probably didn't have to shoot there, but he probably did because John Ford did.

Yet "Once Upon a Time in the West" doesn't have to worry about being thought of as an homage, it's one of the greatest westerns of all time, it's about what we think of the west when we see a western, not what the west really was. Leone used the west as a canvas to bring out his own legend, he created a west for the ages, a west we could only dream of.

Stagecoach

The western never seems to fade away, many times it seems to, but it always comes back. It's difficult to remember that way back when movies were still in its infancy, people would flock to westerns the same way they do with super hero movies of today. Westerns started off in the early silent days, you could trace it back to "The Great Train Robbery". It would live on as classic B-stories or Saturday matinee serials. Very few people took westerns seriously, they were made up for action sequences where the good guys shot the bad guys and that was that.

Then John Ford came along, is there any other director so well known for westerns. Ford started out in silent films making the very kind of westerns I stated above, but he knew there could be something more to the genre. I"m not sure if there was a legitimate western made before "Stagecoach" came along, but one things for sure, it took most of the credit for being the first one that took it seriously.

"Stagecoach" has since taken on a legendary status for many reasons, it introduced John Ford's mythical monument valley, it also introduced a star in John Wayne by giving him one of the most famous close-up intros in history. Besides that, "Stagecoach" was also the film that Orson Welles allegedly watched over thirty times before he started filming "Citizen Kane". Besides all the legendary status, it's also a very entertaining and intriguing western.

"Stagecoach" was dubbed the "Grand Hotel" of westerns, it's a multi-character story of a bunch of strangers who must share a stagecoach together. Among the colorful people along for the ride are a gambler (John Carradine), the wife of a calvary officer (Louise Platt), a meek but kind liquor peddler (Donald Meek), a drunken doctor (Thomas Mitchell), and his call-girl friend Dallas (Claire Trevor). Riding the stage is Any Devine and the sheriff Curly (George Bancroft). Each person has there own reasons for leaving town on the stagecoach, Dallas and the doctor have been run out of town by the locals for being unsuitable for society. The gambler seems to be in love with the wife of the Calvary officer, and Curly's looking for The Ringo Kid (Wayne). Ringo has just escaped from jail to avenge the death of his brother, and Curly wants to bring him back to jail for his protection.

On top of all the personal dramas, there is also danger of Apache attacks, the stagecoach is accompanied by the Calvary for awhile, but then they are on their own to fend for themselves. We first meet John Wayne's Ringo in the middle of road, the camera pans right up to Wayne's face, it's almost a blatant way to say to the audience, "this is a new movie star". Ringo takes most of the center stage, he falls hard for Dallas, yet he doesn't know her background, he's on his way to meet his destiny, of course you could say that for most of the people here.

You can't really take "Stagecoach" as seriously as it may have been back then, it was probably John Ford's intent on showing three dimensional characters could live in the west. In this way he succeeds where many have failed. The other films it tries to emulate are "Grand Hotel" and "Dinner at Eight", both of which I find entertaining, but the characters never seem three dimensional to me, there's more love in "Stagecoach", Ford deals with simple feelings of compassion, and redemption and takes it seriously, it's there he's given credit. Many of these scenes might be considered cliche by today's standards such as the doctor having to sober up fast with coffee in order to deliver a baby, yet it works with this film.

Of course the film looks marvelous, Ford is a master of spectacle especially with Monument Valley as its backdrop, the contrast between the majesty of the mountains and the human action around it is breathtaking, Ford was obviously touched by the location of this film and could see the dramatic possibilities surrounding it.

The intimate scenes are just as effective, with the use of black and white cinematography, as the group of travellers are huddled in a Mexican cantina while there is a Mexican song being such outside, it's a quintessential Ford scene. Many of the performances also transcend their somewhat cliched trappings; Wayne has his natural charisma working for him, you can understand just why he became the most popular star in America. Many critics of Wayne find that he's not much of an actor, however I beg to differ, Wayne just knew how to react, he knew film acting was different from real acting, of course he couldn't perform Shakespeare, but no one could ride a horse better.

Claire Trevor is quite touching as Dallas, you can see a cynical side to her that would come in handy when she would be a grand dame of film noir, of course she has a heart of gold. Thomas Mitchell, one of the great character actors of his day has a wonderful time as Doc Boone, the drunken physician, Mitchell had memorable work the same year in "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington", "Gone with the Wind", and gave one of the best death scenes in "Only Angels have Wings", but he got the Oscar for "Stagecoach".

John Ford won four Oscars for directing in his career, yet not one for a western, today of course we associate him for his westerns, it's hard not to. With "Stagecoach", Ford created the road map for westerns to come, he created the archetypes, the feeling, the nostalgia, and the action. He was still romantic about the west, the darker elements of "Fort Apache", "The Searchers", and "The Man who Shot Liberty Valance" were still to come, but "Stagecoach" prepared us for a rich tapestry from this great American poet.

Double Indemnity

It's the kind of murder that starts with an anklet. The anklet leads up to the face of Barbara Stanwyck, she may be in a cheap blond wig, but it's still Barbara Stanwyck. She has this plan to kill her husband for the insurance money, in order for the insurance to double, she has to make it look like an accident, instead of $50.000 she would get $100.000, it's a clause by the insurance company called double indemnity. Why does Barbara Stanwyck, feel like she can get away with this? Because she's Barbara Stanwyck, meaning she's tough, she's sexy, and men want her, men like Walter Neff (Fred MacMurray), he's an insurance salesmen, and from the sound of it, a very smart insurance salesman. Walter's no idiot, unless it comes to an anklet worn by Stanwyck's Phyllis Dietrichson. Of course, the anklet wasn't the first thing Walter saw, when he saw Phyllis, it was actually her ontop a flight of stairs just getting out of the shower with a towel wrapped around her. She came down the stairs fully clothed, but the anklet was all that was on his mind.

We get the sense Walter's no dummy, but that might be just because the words coming out of his mouth were written for him by Billy Wilder and Raymond Chandler. It doesn't take long for Walter to figure it out, Phyllis wants her husband out of the way. At first he rejects the idea, then Phyllis comes to his house, and some how, he finds himself convinced that murder is the only way to be with this wild, unpredictable woman.

The plan is set, Walter and Phyllis kill the husband, Walter pretends to be the husband on a train, he jumps off making it look like an accident, everything is done, he traces his steps, he's so very careful, it' all working out well. That is of course except for Walter's boss Keyes (Edward G. Robinson). Keyes is an insurance investigator, a very good one, he usually can tell if an insurance claim is real or phony, he has a fool proof way of knowing, he's got a little man inside his stomach that bothers him everytime there's something fishy. But this crime may be too tough for Keyes to crack, because not only is he Walter's boss, he also his best friend, but Walter is more and more on edge, which only makes Phyllis more dangerous.

Things aren't looking well for Walter, but still there's that anklet, maybe the only thing he can hold on to, there isn't much to hold on to in the world of film noir, but I suppose Walter didn't realize that was the world he fell into once Phyllis appeared before him with that towel around her. That's certainly what Billy Wilder had in mind when he read the novella by James M. Cain who wrote another book very similar to this "The Postman always Rings Twice". That book was made into a classic film noir too, but "Double Indemnity" is the richer one, the characters just seem so much smarter, they're headed for trouble, but it's such an entertaining ride with this script and those words. Robinson's character is an extra added substance too, you could say film noir doesn't have many heroes, at least ones who have no morality, but Keyes does. Keyes might be Billy Wilder, the small, smart, funny little man who sees through the facade of crime, the lies, the contempt for law, and he does it with a flare for cynicism. There's a part of us who want Walter and Phyllis to get away with there plan, because if they get caught, the movie has to end, yet we want Keyes to solve the case, because he's the one honest guy in the whole mess.

Of course, tragedy is always at the end of the road in film noir, for Walter, for Phyllis, and even for Keyes. If only Walter was just a little more smarter, if he had only noticed the darkly lit rooms he always found himself in, or the fact that every drape on the windows reflected bars of a jail cell on his face, or the fact that the woman with that anklet, and that towel around her at the top of the stairs was Barbara Stanwyck, then Walter could've ran away for good instead of getting into all that trouble, then again, what fun would it have been for us?

R.I.P. Elizabeth Taylor

Elizabeth Taylor was one of the most beautiful women in film period. When I look again at "A Place in the Sun" you can see why Montgomery Clift wanted to kill for her. Taylor represented to me an unattainable beauty most men could only dream of. It wasn't just her beauty, she was a knock-out actress as well, in her glory days, it was as if no one could touch her. She was nominated for the Academy award five times, winning twice, once as a call-girl in "Butterfield 8", and again in Mike Nichols' adaption of "Who's afraid of Virginia Woolf". In that film, she was almost completely unrecognizable.

She got her start as a child actress making her debut as a childhood friend in "Jane Eyre" which starred Joan Fontaine and Orson Welles. The same year, she was in "Lassie Come Home". She made a splash as in "National Velvet", and "Father of the Bride", usually playing ingenues. It was in George Stevens' "A Place in the Sun" opposite her life long friend Montgomery Clift, where she really showed some acting chops. She played a high society girl who falls for Clift's character, a man trapped between high and low society where murder seems like the only option.

Stevens would use Taylor again in the epic Texas soap opera "Giant", this time getting in the middle of Rock Hudson's oil tycoon and his rival played by James Dean.

She received Oscar nominations for a couple of Tennesse Williams adaptions "Suddenly Last Summer", where she played with a hammy Katherine Hepburn and a subdued Montgomery Clift, and "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" where she was the neglected wife of Paul Newman. It must've been hard for Newman to resist her for that film.

Around this time, Taylor became probably the biggest movie actress in the world. Her personal life could sometimes overshadow her talent, she was married twice to Richard Burton, I even got to see their vacation spot down in Mexico which was purchased when Burton was film "Night of the Iguana".

But besides her high profile love life, Taylor was one of the great movie queens, she made an indelible mark on Hollywood films and it's sad once again to think that another classic star has faded.

Chinatown

The more I see "Chinatown", the more I like it, it used to be my second favorite Roman Polanski film after "Repulsion", but after viewing it again, I have to say for me, I join the masses and regard it as his masterpieces. Polanski has made many great films, but this for my money is his greatest, and perhaps one of the greatest of all films.

"Chinatown", is a modern film noir, it was made in the glorious decade of the 70s when people who ran studios still loved making movies, it starred Jack Nicholson, a man who was arguably the greatest actor of his generation, it was written by his friend Robert Towne, a script that is still talked about today as one of the greatest ever written. It was produced by Robert Evans, a man who owned paramount and was also responsible for "The Godfather". Lastly there was Polanski, a European filmmaker who Evans thought was ideal this type of material and he was correct.

"Chinatown" isn't only a wonderfully entertaining picture, it's a metaphor for evil, it's multi layered in a labyrinth plot that enhances with each viewing, it's got an old fashioned view of film noir, yet it's entirely modern.

The film for those of you who don't know has to do with water and Los Angeles, yet it begins with a case of infidelity. Nicholson plays Jake Gittes, a private eye who mostly makes a living as a man who takes pictures of spouses having extra-marital affairs; It's not glamorous, but it's an honest living. Jake is hired by Evelyn Mulray (Diane Ladd) who's husband is cheating on her, her husband also happens to be the water commissioner for Los Angeles. Jake sees the husband with another woman and the pictures are leaked. Soon Jake meets the real Evelyn Mulray (Faye Dunaway) who never hired him to take these pictures. Jake realizes he's been duped by someone and he wants to find out why. The plot leads to the water commissioner being murdered, and finding out that L.A.'s water is being rerouted without anyone knowing. The mastermind behind this is Noah Cross (John Huston) who also happens to be Evelyn's father. Both Cross and Evelyn aren't telling Jake the full truth, yet as his investigation digs deeper, we like Jake are just as surprised by what this all leads to.

"Chinatown" was directed like most Private Eye movies, we as the audience are following Jake, he is our way into the mystery that is being unraveled, we know what he knows, it's only at the end do we realize how far behind Jake was with the whole investigation, it all comes down to one of the most shocking and horrifying climaxes in film history, one that Polanski had to fight for to put into the script.

Like with all great movies, the more you watch it, the more things I picked up on, I always found Nicholson's performance great, Jake Gittes is one of his greatest screen performances, but this time I was stunned by how wonderful Faye Dunaway was. Dunaway is a bundle of nerves throughout the film, she's unwinding as the plot is unfolding, you know she is hiding something, but you don't know, by the end she's a neurotic mess, but by that time we understand, she goes from femme fatale in her opening scene, to a delicate tragic figure, her performance is as mysterious as the film itself.

Of course credit should be given to Robert Towne for writing what many call a perfect screenplay, he had the ingenious idea of incorporating water into the mystery, whoever owns L.A.'s water, owns L.A. The city lives at the edge of the dessert, and water is the life force of the film. The water motif comes up very often in the film from spewing out of a car that's been shot at, to a small salt water pond in a persons yard that becomes very important in the plot.

Polanski though seems to be in full control, a director who can be as controlling with shots and what the people see as well as Hitchcock, yet he tremendously economical, you don't really realize how long these shots go on because they are composed so well. Polanski gives us a Los Angeles that's both old and new, it's set in the 1940s when noir films were at its peak, but he updates those themes to a modern audience, he reveals the evil that film noir was getting at and illustrates it better than anyone.

It's important to view when Polanski filmed "Chinatown", it his first Hollywood film since the murder of his wife Sharon Tate by the Manson family, he has been long affected by that and perhaps still is. He was a child of the holocaust, he has seen evil come at first hand, I was a little critical of Polanski's last film "Ghost Writer", a film that ended so bleakly, almost as if Polanski had to make it bleak even if it didn't call for it. I now understand that it was probably me being too narrow minded of that film and of Polanski's point of view, of course he had to make it bleak, that was part of the whole film, that's what it leads too no matter how hard it is to take. It's the same in "Chinatown", yet it's even more shocking in this film because we are expecting at least a clean ending, but that's not how it should end, that's not what life is like all the time, and Polanski knew that. You can't really think of "Chinatown" with another ending than what it has now, I hate to think of it with another ending, and I think Polanski could hate to think of another one as well.

"Chinatown" is one of the great film noirs, perhaps the greatest, each time I think of it, it's more complex with its plot, its characters, and its motivations, it's also an entertaining film on its own, full of the great type of cynical humour known throughout film noir. "Chinatown" came at time when Hollywood studios still took chances on films, that time was brief but it was there, it's one of those films people still don't forget the impact it had back then and even now.