Big Ideas Simply Explained - The Movie Book

["A GOLDEN AGE IN BLACK AND WHITE 99 What else to watch: It Always Rains on a Sunday (1947) \u25a0 Passport to Pimlico (1949) \u25a0 Whisky Galore! (1949) \u25a0 The Man in a White Suit (1951) \u25a0 The Tit\ufb01eld Thunderbolt (1953) \u25a0 The Ladykillers (1955) The charmingly sel\ufb01sh Sibella his materialistic The movie\u2019s title is presents her marriage deal to Mazzini childhood sweetheart taken from a poem by in his cell. Sibella is competing with Sibella (Joan Alfred, Lord Tennyson: Edith, the widow of one of Mazzini\u2019s Greenwood), who \u201cKind hearts are more victims, to marry him. made the mistake than coronets, and of turning down simple faith than Here is director Robert Hamer\u2019s the lowly Mazzini Norman blood.\u201d genius in having Guinness play all to marry the rich but eight victims. Because the audience very dull Lionel, only the one death of knows that when one Guinness to see Mazzini rise which he\u2019s innocent. character is bumped off, another to become a duke His only hope of will take his place, it never feels and fabulously escaping the hangman repelled by the murders, but rather rich, while Lionel comes when Sibella remains in thrall to Price\u2019s charm descends into hints that she might and wills him on as he eliminates bankruptcy and \u201c\ufb01nd\u201d Lionel\u2019s suicide the obstacles to inheriting the suicide. Mazzini, having got away note if Mazzini promises title. A subplot shows Mazzini in a with the D\u2019Ascoyne murders, is to marry her. But even then, the complex romantic relationship with convicted of murdering Lionel, movie has one more twist up its sleeve\u2014a typically sardonic \ufb01nale. I shot an arrow in the air; she fell Ealing movies were not always to earth in Berkeley Square. as sweetly innocent as their reputation suggests, and Hamer\u2019s Louis Mazzini \/ Kind Hearts and Coronets movie was the perfect mix of the comic and the caustic. \u25a0","100 THE WORLD DOESN\u2019T MAKE ANY HEROES OUTSIDE OF YOUR STORIES THE THIRD MAN \/ 1949 IN CONTEXT C arol Reed\u2019s 1949 \ufb01lm noir played by Orson Welles. Echoing The Third Man captured through it all is the haunting zither GENRE Europe\u2019s fractured spirit music of Anton Karas, whom Reed Film noir after World War II. Unusually for the found while shooting in Vienna. time, Reed shot it in partly on DIRECTOR location, in bomb-damaged Vienna. The movie was hugely popular Carol Reed Dramatic pools of light and shade, in Britain, but fared poorly in and tilted camera angles, turn the Austria. To Austrian audiences, WRITER city into a nightmarish setting for it was a painful reminder of a Graham Greene the tale of racketeer Harry Lime, troubled past. STARS Joseph Cotten, Alida Valli, Orson Welles, Trevor Howard BEFORE 1941 The \ufb01lm noir genre is established by US movies such as The Maltese Falcon. 1941 With Citizen Kane, Orson Welles establishes a \ufb01lm-noir staple\u2014the narrative voice-over. AFTER 1951 Welles revives his Third Man character on radio in The Adventures of Harry Lime.","A GOLDEN AGE IN BLACK AND WHITE 101 What else to watch: The 39 Steps (1935) \u25a0 Brighton Rock (1947) \u25a0 The Fallen Idol (1948) \u25a0 Our Man in Havana (1959) \u25a0 The Manchurian Candidate (1962, p.334) \u25a0 The Ipcress File (1965) \u25a0 The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1965) The screenplay was developed by revealing that Lime was a black novelist Graham Greene from his marketeer who sold adulterated own novella. It came from a simple penicillin. Martins visits Anna, thought that occurred to Greene: who tells him that she might be \u201cI saw a man walking down the deported to the Soviet sector street whose funeral I had only of the city. As he leaves, recently attended.\u201d This idea he spots a \ufb01gure in the inspired the story of a man who shadows. It\u2019s Lime. fakes his own death. Martins meets The third man Lime the next day American pulp-\ufb01ction author Holly at the Riesenrad, Martins (Joseph Cotten) arrives where Lime has in a Vienna wrecked and divided invited Martins to join by war at the invitation of his old him. Martins, realizing how friend Harry Lime, only to \ufb01nd much his old friend has changed, that Lime has been killed by a agrees to help Calloway trap speeding car just days earlier. At Lime, on the condition that Anna the funeral, Martins meets the two receive safe passage out of men who were with Lime when he Vienna. When Anna refuses to died. He also meets Lime\u2019s girlfriend accept the police chief\u2019s deal, Anna (Alida Valli), with whom he Calloway takes Martins to becomes smitten. Together they a children\u2019s hospital question the porter at Lime\u2019s to show him the apartment building, who tells them devastation caused there was an unknown third man by Lime\u2019s adulterated present at the fatal moment. penicillin\u2014and \u276f\u276f On Vienna\u2019s giant Ferris wheel, Lime is cool and known as the Riesenrad, police calculating, and has chief Calloway (Trevor Howard) disdain for Martins\u2019 advises Martins to leave Vienna, moralistic view of the world. In Lime\u2019s cynical opinion, there are no heroes in the real world. Has there ever been a \ufb01lm where the music more perfectly suited the action than in Carol Reed\u2019s The Third Man? Roger Ebert Chicago Sun-Times, 1996","102 THE THIRD MAN persuades Martins on moral Welles can be seen not just in his As ever-growing teams of police grounds to help him trap Lime acting but in the dramatic \ufb01lm noir chase Lime through the sewers, even if Anna is not saved. shooting style, which clearly owes a only the running water and the lot to Welles\u2019s own movies Citizen cops\u2019 echoing calls in German can Anna warns Lime of the trap, Kane (1941) and The Lady from be heard. The sense of panic rises and he tries to escape through the Shanghai (1947). as Lime \ufb02ees like a rat. sewers. The climax, a masterful symphony of action beneath the For the \ufb01nal chase through the Both Selznick and Greene had Viennese streets, is one of the most sewers of Vienna, scenes were wanted an upbeat ending, but Reed thrilling moments in cinema. shot partly on location and partly insisted on keeping it bleak. Greene on studio sets. Reed brilliantly later admitted Reed had been right. Casting Welles edited together the long, empty That the movie turned out as it did caverns of the sewers, with their Clever use of shadows heightens is due largely to the determination glistening bricks and sudden the sense of menace in the dark streets of the director Carol Reed. Producer shafts of light, and the echoing of war-ravaged Vienna. The noir style David O. Selznick had wanted footsteps and close-ups of Lime\u2019s is strongly reminiscent of Orson Welles\u2019s suave British actor Noel Coward to sweaty face glistening like the own movies, but Welles later insisted play Harry Lime, but Reed insisted bricks, eyes darting this way and that he had taken no direct role in the on Orson Welles. The in\ufb02uence of that as he searches for a way out. movie\u2019s direction or editing.","A GOLDEN AGE IN BLACK AND WHITE 103 Moral vacuum Over it all spreads the Carol Reed Director As part of the postwar Allied melancholy, inert beauty of a occupation of Austria, Vienna had ruined city, passive on the Born in London in 1906, been divided into four zones\u2014US, Carol Reed was the son British, French, and Soviet\u2014with a surface, twitching with of the famous Shakespearean jointly controlled central district. uneasy life underneath. actor-producer Herbert The Third Man exploits the political Beerbohm Tree and his tensions that existed between the Vogue, 1949 mistress May Reed, whose occupying forces, and the dramatic name he took. He started potential of characters\u2019 movements would you really, tell me to keep acting at an early age, and between the sectors. Those without my money, or would you calculate joined the theater company papers, such as Anna, are desperate how many dots you could afford of the thriller writer Edgar to avoid the Soviet sector, where to spare?\u201d Wallace, becoming his their fate is uncertain. personal assistant. This Back on the ground, Lime says, led to his \ufb01rst work as As far as Lime is concerned, in lines added in by Welles for an assistant director. this situation has created the timing: \u201cYou know what the fellow perfect moral vacuum, in which said\u2014in Italy, for 30 years under Reed\u2019s early movies as a inventive, dynamic, ruthless the Borgias, they had warfare, director, such as Midshipman men such as him can, and should, terror, murder and bloodshed, Easy (1935), met with only thrive. Europe is world-weary but they produced Michelangelo, moderate success, but the and cynical in the aftermath of Leonardo da Vinci, and the novelist Graham Greene saw the war, and for Lime, his fellow Renaissance. In Switzerland, they great potential in them. Reed American, Martins, is a naive had brotherly love, they had 500 made his \ufb01rst signi\ufb01cant child stepping into it. years of democracy and peace, and movie, Odd Man Out, about what did that produce? The cuckoo an Irish terrorist on the run, in Improvised lines clock.\u201d According to Welles, the 1947. The producer, Alexander Greene\u2019s script for The Third Man words came from an old Hungarian Korda, introduced Reed to is as taut as you would expect from play. Ironically, the Swiss did not Greene and they made two such a peerless writer, but some of invent the cuckoo clock at all, great movies together, The the movie\u2019s most memorable lines and they had been decidedly Fallen Idol and The Third Man, were improvised by Welles. One warlike at the time of the Borgias. which was critically acclaimed reason for the movie\u2019s durability is Nonetheless, the words seem to and a huge box-of\ufb01ce success. that it successfully connects the sum up perfectly Lime\u2019s amoral Reed died in London in 1976. talents of three hugely gifted men: outlook on the world. \u25a0 Reed, Greene, and Welles. Key movies Lime looks down from the wheel 1947 Odd Man Out on the people like dots below, and 1948 The Fallen Idol asks Martins if he would feel pity 1949 The Third Man if one of them \u201cstopped moving 1968 Oliver! forever\u201d. He challenges Martins: \u201cIf I offered you twenty thousand pounds for every dot that stopped, In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock. Harry Lime \/ The Third Man","FEAR AN WONDER 1950\u20131959","D","106 INTRODUCTION Hollywood introduces Billy Wilder directs A Streetcar Named Fred Zinnemann\u2019s widescreen cinema Sunset Boulevard, a Desire, directed by Elia From Here to Eternity, and gimmicks such controversial satire on the Kazan, catapults a young based on James Jones\u2019s as 3D to counter the Hollywood system; Bette epic novel of military Davis lands her sharpest Marlon Brando to growing medium role in All About Eve. movie superstardom. life, sweeps eight of television. Academy Awards. 1950 1950 1951 1953 1950 1951 1952 1953 Akira Kurosawa\u2019s The Day the Earth US judges rule that With the success of Rashomon tells a crime Stood Still is the \ufb01rst of story from four different many science-\ufb01ction movies are a form of free the thriller The Wages viewpoints, a template that would be imitated movies that re\ufb02ect speech: Roberto of Fear, director widespread fears about in many movies. Rossellini\u2019s L\u2019Amore Henri-Georges the Cold War. cannot be banned Clouzot is dubbed the for \u201csacrilege.\u201d \u201cFrench Hitchcock.\u201d T his chapter covers the The movie\u2019s impact was sudden imbued with an existential dread. shortest time period of any and immense: not only did it make In The Wages of Fear (1953), a movie in the book\u2014the 10 years Kurosawa\u2019s name as a director, about a group of desperate men between 1950 and 1959. Yet in that but it sparked a growing curiosity driving truckloads of nitroglycerine one decade we \ufb01nd a swathe of in the West toward international through rough country, French extraordinary movies. Many, as cinema. Also from Japan came director Henri-Georges Clouzot before, are American movies the \ufb01nely drawn, deceptively simple made what was probably the most produced in Hollywood (which, by dramas of Yasujir\u00f4 Ozu. And of tense movie since Battleship this period, had enough of a history course, there was Godzilla, whose Potemkin (1925). It was also a to inspire the Tinseltown satire towering monstrousness was bitingly satirical story of imperialism, Sunset Boulevard), but great cinema inspired by Japan\u2019s direct capitalism, and human greed. was also rising to prominence in experience of nuclear war, still other parts of the world. raw in the national memory. In several countries, directors were creating movies that offered In the years that followed Cold War dread at once entertainment, intellectual World War I, it had been Germany Many movies of the 1950s provided stimulation, and stunning displays that blazed the trail of cinematic the most delirious form of popular of technique. Douglas Sirk, for innovation. Now, after World War II, entertainment (even today, it\u2019s example, made lush melodramas it was the turn of Japan. impossible for anyone to watch about suburban American life, such Singin\u2019 in the Rain without a grin on as All That Heaven Allows (1955). Rise of Japan their face), and yet some of the key Long dismissed as kitsch, they are In 1950, Akira Kurosawa released movies of this period also re\ufb02ected now recognized as sensitive, Rashomon, a fractured, brilliant anxieties over the Cold War and are multilayered masterpieces. In story of a murder in ancient Japan. France, meanwhile, a group of","Federico Fellini\u2019s Satyajit Ray\u2019s Hollywood drops FEAR AND WONDER 107 La Strada is released low-budget Pather racial epithets from (and later wins the \ufb01rst Panchali, a coming- Alfred Hitchcock\u2019s Oscar for best foreign of-age story, is the \ufb01rst movies, and allows psychological thriller Indian movie to win some references to Vertigo is released. \ufb01lm); Fran\u00e7ois international acclaim. drugs, abortion, and Hitchcock is hailed Truffaut describes by French critics as prostitution. his auteur theory. a true auteur. 1954 1955 1956 1958 1954 1956 1957 1959 Toho studios in The science-\ufb01ction Ingmar Bergman Truffaut\u2019s debut movie, Japan releases the \ufb01rst classics Forbidden releases The Seventh Seal The 400 Blows, marks of the Godzilla monster Planet and Invasion of the Body Snatchers and Wild Strawberries, a high point in the movies. Kurosawa dealing with his French New Wave, rede\ufb01nes the Western are released. trademark themes dealing realistically with Seven Samurai. of life and death. with modern society. young \ufb01lm critics from the If it\u2019s a good movie, the Henri-Georges Clouzot, with magazine Cahiers du Cin\u00e9ma sound could go off and whom he enjoyed a friendly rivalry, expounded a whole new way the audience would still and who turned the book into the of looking at movies. To them, have a perfectly clear idea supremely creepy Les Diaboliques movies deserved respect and of what was going on. (1955). Hitchcock made sure he intellectual scrutiny. Their studious Alfred Hitchcock secured the movie rights to what gaze examined not only \u201cserious\u201d Boileau and Narcejac wrote next\u2014 directors such as Ingmar Bergman, movies. Some years before, he had and the result was the intense but also the populist brilliance been eager to adapt a novel by psychological thriller Vertigo (1958), of Alfred Hitchcock. The best French crime writers Pierre Boileau a tale of memory, lust, and loss that directors, they argued, \ufb01lled their and Thomas Narcejac. On that now frequently tops the lists of the work with personal obsessions and occasion he was beaten to it by greatest movies ever made. visual signatures\u2014what we saw on screen was \u201cauthored\u201d by a director In 1959, a movie was made by just as a novel is by its writer. This one of those young French critics was the auteur theory, and for responsible for the auteur theory. decades it would shape perceptions His name was Fran\u00e7ois Truffaut, of movies and their makers. and the movie, a portrait of a rough Parisian kid, was The 400 Blows. High ambition In\ufb02uenced by Orson Welles but Fittingly, this was the decade in possessed of an energy all of its which Hitchcock made what is now own, it marked the end of an the most highly regarded of all his extraordinary cinematic decade, and the start of a new era. \u25a0","WE ALL WANT TO FORGET SOMETHING SO WE TELL STORIES RASHOMON \/ 1950","","110 RASHOMON A kira Kurosawa\u2019s Rashomon Human beings are unable to is a thriller that revolves be honest with themselves IN CONTEXT around two possible crimes that take place in a secluded about themselves. They GENRE glade: the rape of a woman (Machiko cannot talk about themselves Mystery drama Ky\u00f4) and the violent death of the woman\u2019s samurai husband without embellishing. DIRECTOR (Masayuki Mori). The truth, This script portrays such Akira Kurosawa however, is hard to get at; it is tangled up in a knot of yarns spun human beings. WRITERS by four eyewitnesses. Whom does Akira Kurosawa Akira Kurosawa the audience trust to tell them the (screenplay); Ryunosuke truth? The alleged rape victim? The Akutagawa (short stories) bandit accused of committing the offense? The ghost of the dead STARS man? The woodcutter who found Toshir\u00f4 Mifune, Machiko the body? Whose story is the story? Ky\u00f4, Masayuki Mori, Takashi Shimura Beneath the gate is told about the crime and the The opening shot of the movie is subsequent arrest of the bandit BEFORE of the Rashomon city gate, a huge Taj\u00f4maru (Toshir\u00f4 Mifune). 1943 Akira Kurosawa makes ruin in medieval Kyoto, seen from his directorial debut with afar through a curtain of rain. As the woodcutter and the Sanshiro Sugata, a historical Sheltering beneath the gate are a priest relate the tale, \ufb02ashbacks drama about the struggle woodcutter (Takashi Shimura) and show the bandit and the woman for supremacy between the a priest (Minoru Chiaki), and they explaining what they saw at an adherents of judo and jujitsu. are soon joined by a commoner inquest\u2014or what they think they (Kichijir\u00f4 Ueda). The newcomer saw. Then a medium (Noriko AFTER strikes up a conversation, and 1954 Kurosawa\u2019s Seven Samurai, a 16th-century epic Dead men tell no lies. in which a village enlists seven warriors to protect The priest \/ Rashomon it from bandits, is widely regarded as his masterpiece. Akira Kurosawa Director Kurosawa was the \ufb01rst Japanese cinema, which saw him develop director to \ufb01nd popularity in a sensibility that was partially the West. His movies Rashomon, Westernized. He experimented Seven Samurai, and Yojimbo were with courtroom drama, crime remade as Westerns (The Outrage thriller, \ufb01lm noir, and medical in 1964, The Magni\ufb01cent Seven in melodrama. He continued making 1960, and A Fistful of Dollars in movies until his death in 1998. 1964, respectively). Kurosawa ultimately found greater critical Key movies appreciation in Europe and the US than he did in his native country. 1950 Rashomon 1954 Seven Samurai The son of an army of\ufb01cer, 1961 Yojimbo Kurosawa studied art before 1985 Ran embarking on his career in","FEAR AND WONDER 111 What else to watch: Possessed (1947) \u25a0 Stage Fright (1950) \u25a0 To Live (1952) \u25a0 The Hidden Fortress (1958) \u25a0 The Outrage (1964) \u25a0 Red Beard (1965) \u25a0 Samurai Rebellion (1967) \u25a0 Ran (1985) \u25a0 The Usual Suspects (1995) \u25a0 Fight Club (1999) Honma) shows up and channels he observed a \ufb01ght between the Tajomaru describes the \ufb01ght the spirit of the dead samurai, who bandit and the samurai, but that between himself and the samurai as gives his version of events. Finally, it was a messy scrap between a heroic struggle between two master the woodcutter relates what he two physical cowards. swordsmen. The woodcutter saw it as saw. Each of the stories is radically a brawl between two terri\ufb01ed men. different, and in its own way On the surface, Rashomon is entirely self-serving. a whodunit: it sets up a mystery, the evidence, and asks the audience The bandit asserts to draw its own conclusions. But that he killed the introduces the there\u2019s a problem. Kurosawa is more samurai in a heroic suspects, presents interested in the elusive nature of battle; the woman truth than he is in capturing it\u2014 claims not to recall the The movie he refuses to provide the audience moment, but suggests established with a de\ufb01nitive account of what that she stabbed her Kurosawa as an happened in the glade. husband on seeing his internationally expression after the renowned \ufb01lmmaker. Shot in an unfussy, austere rape; the samurai It also made a star of style, Rashomon relies on subtle claims to have killed Toshir\u00f4 Mifune (the symbolic imagery to communicate himself; and the bandit), with whom its ideas about memory and truth. woodcutter says that Kurosawa would make The curtain of rain, tinted black by 16 movies between Kurosawa so that it would show up \u276f\u276f 1948 and 1964.","112 RASHOMON Four con\ufb02icting versions of events Forests have always had a primal association with the human imagination\u2014as dark places The bandit\u2019s version The samurai\u2019s version located far from civilization. In \u2022 He tricked the samurai \u2022 The bandit raped his wife; the traditional folklores of many and tied him to a tree she chose to go with the bandit cultures, forests are the sites of \u2022 He seduced the samurai\u2019s \u2022 The bandit gave him a choice: magical, inexplicable encounters. wife, after initial resistance let his wife go, or kill her as The earliest known Japanese prose \u2022 The wife convinced him to punishment for her in\ufb01delity narrative, The Tale of the Bamboo \ufb01ght a duel with the samurai; \u2022 His wife \ufb02ed, followed by Cutter, also known as Princess he defeated him honorably the bandit; he killed himself Kaguya, is a 10th-century fable in which a lonely and childless The wife\u2019s version The woodcutter\u2019s version woodsman stumbles across a \u2022 The bandit raped her \u2022 The bandit begged the phantasmal infant in the depths samurai\u2019s wife to marry him; of a forest. \u2022 She begged her husband to instead she freed the samurai kill her to save her honor Kurosawa\u2019s movie reaches \u2022 The wife encouraged the back to such folklore with its rural \u2022 She fainted, holding bandit and the samurai to duel setting, its archetypal characters, the dagger, and awoke and its notion that what we see to \ufb01nd her husband dead \u2022 They dueled pathetically, is shaped unconsciously by our and the bandit won by luck deepest fears and desires. The movie even features an abandoned child at the end, whom the on camera, divides the present from leads the viewer away from reality woodsman takes home with him the past, which is sun-dappled in and into the febrile undergrowth as the rain stops. \ufb02ashbacks. The forbidding gate of the subconscious; the forest symbolizes the viewer\u2019s gateway clearing is an enchanted space in Embellishing stories to the world of the movie, a realm in which the drama of the samurai\u2019s Kurosawa has said that humans which nothing is what it seems and death will unfold again and again, cannot help embellishing stories no one can be trusted. each time in a different way. about themselves, and this is what The glade is also symbolic. We \ufb01rst see it through the woodcutter\u2019s Just think. Which one of these eyes as he traipses deep into the forest at the beginning of the stories do you believe? \ufb01rst \ufb02ashback. In this beautiful, wordless sequence, Kurosawa The commoner \/ Rashomon Minute by minute 00:17 00:51 01:11 At the inquest, Tajomaru tells The dead samurai tells The woodcutter 00:07 his version of events, in which the his version through a medium. describes a desperate The woodcutter says wife begs him not to leave, and he He says that his wife and \ufb01ght between the that he was the \ufb01rst cuts her husband loose so that Tajomaru ran off, and that samurai and the person to \ufb01nd the body of they may \ufb01ght for her honor. he stabbed himself. bandit, in which the samurai, and also the both shake with fear. person who found Tajomaru. 01:15 01:28 00:00 00:15 00:30 00:45 01:00 00:12 00:39 01:03 01:20 The priest recounts The wife tells her story. At the gate, the woodcutter A baby is found how he saw the She says that she fainted, says that he saw everything. crying at the gate. samurai before he only to come round to \ufb01nd He says the husband did not The woodcutter died, leading a the dagger in her husband\u2019s want to \ufb01ght, and wanted his offers to take the woman on a horse chest. She then tried to wife to kill herself. baby home with him through the woods. drown herself. as the rain abates.","FEAR AND WONDER 113 happens in Rashomon\u2019s glade: four sleight-of-hand potboiler plots of truth remains elusive because no one people witness a simple chain of The Usual Suspects (1995) and can agree on what happened. What events, but they interpret it through Gone Girl (2014). However, rarely is certain is that Rashomon was one the \ufb01lter of their own imaginations. do the imitators dare to withhold of the most in\ufb02uential movies of the Each of them transforms what they a satisfying solution, as Kurosawa 20th century. It set box-of\ufb01ce records have seen into a story. These stories does at the end of his masterpiece. for a subtitled movie and acted as are not lies, however, but tricks of We never \ufb01nd out who killed the a gateway through which Western the mind\u2014indeed, with Rashomon, samurai, nor what really happened moviegoers could look for the \ufb01rst Kurosawa suggests that there is no between the woman and the time at the beguiling, unfamiliar such thing as objective truth. bandit, but we do see the world of Japanese cinema. And characters change as they sift each of those moviegoers would Since the movie\u2019s release in through their own recollections. have seen something different. \u25a0 1950, the primary storytelling device of Rashomon has been The Rashomon effect In the wife\u2019s story, she offers her borrowed and imitated countless The \u201cRashomon effect\u201d has entered husband a knife to kill her after she times, from the American remake language as shorthand for any sees a look of disgust on his face in 1964, The Outrage, a Western situation, in art or life, in which the following the rape. starring Paul Newman, to the","114 I AM BIG. IT\u2019S THE PICTURES THAT GOT SMALL SUNSET BOULEVARD \/ 1950 IN CONTEXT A t one point in Billy Wilder\u2019s Sunset Boulevard is a blackly comic Sunset Boulevard, faded elegy to Hollywood\u2019s silent age, and GENRE silent-movie star Norma the movie is \ufb01lled with faces from Drama Desmond (Gloria Swanson) \ufb02ashes those glory days, including Buster a look at the audience. \u201cWe didn\u2019t Keaton, looking time ravaged at a DIRECTOR need dialogue. We had faces!\u201d card table, and legendary director Billy Wilder she says, as her eyes shine with Cecil B. DeMille, both playing madness, sorrow, and fear. Norma\u2019s themselves in wry, self-deprecating WRITERS cracked state of mind, and her fall cameos. Norma\u2019s servant Max is Charles Brackett, from sanity and fame, can all be played by Erich von Stroheim, Billy Wilder seen in that single close-up. another famous director of the STARS Joe dresses in white tie and Gloria Swanson, William tails for Norma\u2019s New Year\u2019s Holden, Erich von Eve party, only to \ufb01nd that she Stroheim, Nancy Olson has invited no other guests BEFORE and is trying to woo him. 1928 Gloria Swanson\u2019s silent movie career peaks with Sadie Thompson, a drama set in the South Paci\ufb01c. 1944 Double Indemnity is Billy Wilder\u2019s classic \ufb01lm noir about the double dealings at an LA insurance company. AFTER 1959 Wilder shows his versatility with Some Like It Hot, a comedy in which Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon dress in drag to escape the mob.","FEAR AND WONDER 115 What else to watch: A Star is Born (1937) \u25a0 All About Eve (1950, p.332) \u25a0 Some Like It Hot (1959, pp.148\u201349) \u25a0 Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962) Wilder\u2019s movie marked an extraordinary screen comeback for Gloria Swanson. She effectively retired from movies afterward. silent era. Swanson herself had with the reclusive Billy Wilder been a huge star of the silent Norma when she asks Director screen, so in taking on the role of him to write her comeback the deranged Miss Desmond, she movie. The aging diva is \u201cNobody\u2019s perfect\u201d is the \ufb01nal creates a grotesque parody of her convinced that her millions line of Billy Wilder\u2019s Some Like celebrity self. of fans are waiting, \u201cout It Hot. All Wilder\u2019s movies are there in the dark,\u201d for her based on this simple truth\u2014 The movie tells the story of Joe return to the silver screen. with characters whose \ufb02aws Gillis (William Holden), a down-on- Joe reluctantly moves into the are fascinating, from Fred his-luck screenwriter who falls in star\u2019s creepy mansion on Sunset MacMurray\u2019s Walter Neff in Boulevard, and Norma falls in Double Indemnity to Robert love with the young writer, who Stephens\u2019s detective in The is drawn into her delusions. Joe Private Life of Sherlock Holmes eventually tries to escape Norma (1970). As a \ufb01lmmaker, Wilder and salvage what little dignity he himself was as close to perfect has left, but we know things end as it\u2019s possible to get. badly for him because his story is told in \ufb02ashback; at the start of the Born in Austria in 1909, movie he is a corpse \ufb02oating in a Samuel \u201cBilly\u201d Wilder \ufb02ed the swimming pool. \u201cThe poor dope. Nazis to make his directorial He always wanted a pool,\u201d is Joe\u2019s debut in Paris. In the 1930s narration\u2014a gallows-humor gag he came to Hollywood, where told from beyond the grave. he wrote movies with Charles Brackett. Double Indemnity, Silent tribute his collaboration with novelist Wilder\u2019s movies are celebrated for Raymond Chandler, is often their cynical dialogue and one- credited as the \ufb01rst \ufb01lm liners\u2014\u201cYou\u2019ll make a rope of words noir. His later movies were and strangle this business!\u201d is one mostly comic, but retained of Norma\u2019s most memorable lines\u2014 the cynical bite\u2014and eye but there is also a suggestion of for human weakness\u2014of melancholia in Sunset Boulevard. his earlier tragedies. He Beneath his cynicism, Wilder\u2019s died in 2002. reverence for a vanished era is obvious. Ultimately, while there Key movies is a glittering monstrousness to the deluded Norma, she is also 1944 Double Indemnity a tragic \ufb01gure. Wilder suggests 1945 The Lost Weekend that she may have a point about 1950 Sunset Boulevard the movies: that they lost some 1955 The Seven Year Itch of their magic when their stars 1959 Some Like It Hot began to talk. \u25a0","116 I HAVE ALWAYS RELIED ON THE KINDNESS OF STRANGERS A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE \/ 1951 IN CONTEXT T here isn\u2019t much One of only two movies in history to kindness on win three Academy Awards for acting, GENRE display in A Streetcar Named Desire made a Drama A Streetcar Named household name out of its star, the Desire, which tells the now legendary Marlon Brando. DIRECTOR story of Blanche Dubois Elia Kazan (Vivien Leigh), a woman attack. This taut adaptation of whose past catches up Tennessee Williams\u2019s play sparked WRITERS with her one sti\ufb02ing outrage when its director, Elia Tennessee Williams, summer\u2019s evening in Kazan, \ufb01rst screened it for Warner Oscar Saul (screenplay); New Orleans. \u201cDeliberate Bros., and he was forced to cut \ufb01ve Tennessee Williams (play) cruelty,\u201d she says, \u201cis the minutes from his movie before the one unforgivable thing.\u201d studio\u2019s executives would release it. STARS Marlon Brando, Vivien When she comes to stay with Controversial themes Leigh, Kim Hunter, her younger sister Stella (Kim These small but crucial edits Karl Malden Hunter), Blanche thinks she is papered over the more sordid running away from her former life aspects of the story\u2014Blanche\u2019s BEFORE as a scandal-hounded teacher. \u201cnymphomania,\u201d her late husband\u2019s 1950 Tennessee Williams In reality, she is running toward secret homosexuality, Stella\u2019s lust adapts his own play, The Glass a cataclysm of destruction and for Stanley, and the climactic rape\u2014 Menagerie, for the screen. It is cruelty in the hulking shape of inadvertently mirroring the self- a thematic companion piece to Stella\u2019s husband, Stanley Kowalski A Streetcar Named Desire. (Marlon Brando). Blanche has a horror of the naked truth, which AFTER she has a habit of disguising with 1954 Elia Kazan is reunited illusions and wily fantasies: \u201cI don\u2019t with Marlon Brando to make tell the truth. I tell what ought to be On the Waterfront. the truth!\u201d The moment Blanche arrives at Stella\u2019s apartment, 1958 Elizabeth Taylor and Stanley scents her fear, and a game Paul Newman star in Cat on a of cat and mouse ensues. He is a Hot Tin Roof, another blistering predator who resents his sister-in- adaptation of a Williams play. law\u2019s snooty put-downs, and the game ends with a violent sexual","FEAR AND WONDER 117 What else to watch: A Place in the Sun (1951) \u25a0 The Wild One (1953) \u25a0 Rebel Without a Cause (1955, p.131) \u25a0 The Rose Tattoo (1955) \u25a0 Baby Doll (1956) delusional madness of its central the inner life of the brutish Stanley, Elia Kazan character. However, the movie was and the results are truly volcanic. Director also criticized for its staginess, and it The performance made Brando is true that Kazan refuses to open up into a star, but even he could not Turkish-born US director Elia the drama beyond the four peeling outshine Vivien Leigh\u2019s \ufb02ickering, Kazan was one of the most walls of Stella and Stanley\u2019s poky, iridescent portrait of a woman famous practitioners of the run-down love nest. But it is the haunted by her own desires. \u201cMethod\u201d technique movie\u2019s claustrophobic atmosphere \u201cWhoever you are,\u201d she says at the developed by Lee Strasberg, that becomes the source of its end of the movie, her Southern-belle which encouraged actors to electricity\u2014the actors prowl and accent \ufb02uttering delicately around draw on their personal pace the set like caged animals, the sad truth at the heart of her experiences and to \u201cbecome\u201d straying into each other\u2019s territories self, \u201cI have always relied on the the characters they played. and overstepping their marks. kindness of strangers.\u201d \u25a0 In the 1930s, he joined New York\u2019s experimental Group This is especially true of Theatre and triumphed on Brando. A student of the \u201cMethod\u201d Broadway, cofounding the approach to creating a character, he Actors Studio in 1947. By dedicated himself to unearthing the mid-1950s he was a Stella\u2019s major player in Hollywood. husband In 1952, Kazan testi\ufb01ed Stanley before the House Un- has a brutish American Activities attraction for Committee. Having been Blanche, but a member of the American his attentions Communist Party, he quickly turn informed on eight former to abuse. colleagues who had been communists. He resumed his career but his focus changed from controversial movies to historical allegories, such as an adaptation of John Steinbeck\u2019s East of Eden. Key movies 1951 A Streetcar Named Desire 1954 On the Waterfront 1955 East of Eden 1961 Splendor in the Grass","118 IT\u2019S A HARD WORLD FOR LITTLE THINGS THE NIGHT OF THE HUNTER \/ 1955 IN CONTEXT U pon its release, The Night with its use of exaggerated framing of the Hunter was such a shots and shadow to create GENRE critical and commercial an escalating mood of dread. Thriller, horror failure that actor-turned-director Contemporary audiences were, Charles Laughton never directed perhaps, confused when their DIRECTOR another movie. The movie was expectations were confounded, but Charles Laughton marketed as, and appeared to be, over time the movie has established a \ufb01lm noir, an idea reinforced by itself as a key work of American WRITERS the casting of genre mainstay cinema, a modern-day fairy tale James Agee (screenplay); Robert Mitchum in the lead role. Yet unafraid of reveling in its darkness, Davis Grubb (novel) it has more in common with 1920s both literally and \ufb01guratively. German Expressionist horror movies STARS than it does with hard-boiled noir, Wolf in sheep\u2019s clothing Robert Mitchum, Shelley This is the story of a psychopath Winters, Lillian Gish Charles \ufb01nally had very little in preacher\u2019s clothing, Harry Powell respect for [screenwriter] Agee. (Mitchum), a con man who seduces BEFORE and murders women. The action is 1933 Charles Laughton wins And he hated the script, but set in the Great Depression, which an Oscar for the lead role in he was inspired by his hatred. has driven desperate family man The Private Life of Henry VIII. Ben Harper to attempt a bank Elsa Lanchester robbery. Harper is caught and 1947 Robert Mitchum makes sentenced to death for murdering his name in \ufb01lm noir with Charles Laughton\u2019s wife two people during the robbery. Build My Gallows High. Powell shares a cell with Harper AFTER while Harper awaits execution. He 1962 In Cape Fear, Mitchum learns that the condemned man again plays an ex-con who has hidden $10,000 with his family. terrorizes a family, pitted On his release, Powell sets out to against lawyer Gregory Peck. ingratiate himself with Harper\u2019s widow, Willa (Shelley Winters), and","FEAR AND WONDER 119 What else to watch: M (1931, pp.46\u201347) \u25a0 Build My Gallows High (1947, p.332) \u25a0 Angel Face (1952) \u25a0 Les Diaboliques (1955) \u25a0 Touch of Evil (1958, p.333) \u25a0 Cape Fear (1962) her two children. Willa is to be the dialogue. For instance, encroaching Light and shade are used to frame next hapless victim of his creepy threat is conveyed by the overtly key images. As Powell stands over yet all too smooth preacher act. styled framing of the children\u2019s Willa, knife in hand, her bedroom hiding place in a barn, juxtaposed is converted by the shadows into Light and shadow with Powell on the distant horizon, a perverted church. One of the most notable aspects or by the way shadows overwhelm of The Night of the Hunter is a bedroom, leaving what little light image of a corrupted altar in a how powerfully it communicates remains to create the effect of an church mirrors Powell\u2019s own status signi\ufb01cance in ways other than altar as Powell murders Willa. The as a false prophet, an amoral man who uses the word of God to serve She\u2019ll not be back. I reckon I\u2019m safe his own nefarious purposes. in promising you that. The use of high-contrast black- Harry Powell \/ The Night of the Hunter and-white photography also helps to highlight the contrast between good and evil in the movie. \u276f\u276f","120 THE NIGHT OF THE HUNTER Menace and meaning are further Its lyrics are about the peace and subsequently disappears. He conveyed through the use of song. joy believers \ufb01nd in the arms of appears to be the picture of Harry Powell appropriates a hymn the Lord. In the small town that charity, and a trusted authority \u201cLeaningon the everlasting arms,\u201d he in\ufb01ltrates, Powell poses as a \ufb01gure\u2014but his true intentions which he sings to himself as he man of God whom the bereaved are to abuse, exploit, and steal. hunts the children, Pearl and John. Willa can lean on as she copes with the loss of her husband, and Magical realism Powell uses his tattoos to tell whom the local community trusts As John and Pearl escape Powell\u2019s a moralizing tale of love and hate, with the care of clutches in a rowboat that carries but Rachel Cooper can see right the children through him. after she them away by river, their journey into a dangerous unknown is conveyed by song, rather than dialogue. Pearl sings of a \ufb02y soaring up to the moon. A tiny thing in a vast world, the \ufb02y does not know what perils lie before it, yet it goes anyway, for there is no other course. The song adds to the expressionistic feel of the movie, creating a sense of magical realism.","FEAR AND WONDER 121 The widow Willa is won over by the phoney charm of the false preacher, who brings horror into her home. down to the cellar by candlelight. These scenes terrify audiences because they tap into an innate fear: the violation of the home, the place where people should feel safe. Horror in the home Fairy-tale ending Charles Laughton In the 1970s, movies such as Eventually, the children are Director Halloween and The Exorcist were taken in by the kindly and praised for domesticating horror, wise Rachel Cooper (played Charles Laughton was born bringing it out of the abandoned by Hollywood veteran of the in 1899 in Scarborough, in the asylums and castles and into the silent era Lillian Gish), an old north of England. He trained home. Yet, 20 years earlier, The woman who has adopted a at RADA, the London dramatic Night of the Hunter had already number of children that have arts academy, which enabled done this. Terror is built up during fallen victim to the Depression. him to get his \ufb01rst acting work the movie as Powell ingratiates his Like a fairy godmother, Rachel on the London stage. way into John and Pearl\u2019s family, protects Pearl and John\u2014but seducing their mother with his Powell is not yet \ufb01nished, and He made his Hollywood religious fervor. One by one, he the children are not yet safe. movie debut with the 1932 violates the domestic norms that The Night of the Hunter is hard movie The Old Dark House, are supposed to make the children to categorize, which may explain starring opposite Boris Karloff. feel safe in his care. Rather than why, on its release, it was met with His most iconic role came a nurturing and feeding them as incomprehension. It is experimental, year later, starring as the title expected, he starves them in his with close stylistic ties to German character in The Private Life attempt to make them confess Expressionism. Scene after scene of Henry VIII, a performance where the money is hidden. The hovers on the cusp between dream that won him the Academy sense of menace becomes almost and nightmare, real and surreal. Award for best actor in 1933. unbearable as he leads them Above all, it is a terrifying but Laughton went on to star in hopeful fairy tale\u2014candid in its such movies as Mutiny on the depiction of the evil Powell, but also Bounty (1935), Jamaica Inn insistent on the possibility that evil (1939), and Spartacus (1960). can be fought. It is a story of love and hate, the words tattooed on Laughton\u2019s only foray Powell\u2019s knuckles. These two into directing was with The elemental forces collide in one of the Night of the Hunter. Although most magical movies ever made. \u25a0 it has gained critical mass over the years, the movie\u2019s Salvation is a last-minute initial box-of\ufb01ce failure business, boy. discouraged him, and he did not direct again. He died in Harry Powell \/ The Night of the Hunter California in 1962. Key movie 1955 The Night of the Hunter","122 WHAT\u2019S THE FIRST THING AN ACTOR LEARNS? \u201cTHE SHOW MUST GO ON!\u201d SINGIN\u2019 IN THE RAIN \/ 1952 IN CONTEXT F rom A Star Is Born in 1937 corrupting in\ufb02uence of fame and to The Artist in 2011, the money, and the compromises they GENRE movie industry has exhibited make for the sake of their careers, Musical, satire a narcissistic obsession with itself. many \ufb01lmmakers have made satires Drawing on its own experiences of about the movies. Singin\u2019 in the Rain DIRECTORS studios sti\ufb02ing creativity, the Gene Kelly, Stanley Donen approaches the movie industry with more affection than others. WRITERS It sees Hollywood, despite its Betty Comden, decadence and eccentricities, as Adolph Green a place where talent can thrive, and it remains one of the \ufb01nest STARS examples of why that optimism Gene Kelly, Donald is justi\ufb01ed: a movie so brimming O\u2019Connor, Debbie Reynolds with creativity and invention BEFORE that more than 60 years later, it 1927 The Jazz Singer is the retains the capacity to inspire world\u2019s \ufb01rst feature-length and entertain. \u201ctalkie.\u201d It is mentioned in the plot of Singin\u2019 in the Rain. End of an era Singin\u2019 in the Rain is set in the 1945 For Anchors Aweigh, late 1920s, toward the end of Kelly was given free rein to the silent-movie era, and it create his own dance routines. deals with the need for a studio and its silent star, Don AFTER Lockwood (Gene Kelly), to 2011 The Artist revisits the end of silent movies and the Singin\u2019 in the Rain is birth of cinematic sound. considered one of the all-time great musicals for its gentle satirizing of Hollywood mores.","FEAR AND WONDER 123 What else to watch: The Jazz Singer (1927, p.330) \u25a0 Top Hat (1935) \u25a0 A Star Is Born (1937) \u25a0 Anchors Aweigh (1945) \u25a0 Ziegfeld Follies (1945) \u25a0 On the Town (1949) \u25a0 Sunset Boulevard (1950, pp.114-15) \u25a0 An American in Paris (1951) change with the times. Unless he making with his shallow co-star, In one of Don\u2019s (Gene Kelly\u2019s) can learn to work with synchronized Lina Lamont (Jean Hagen), is being \ufb02ashback career moments, we see sound, Don is destined, in his words, reshot for sound. The cast and crew him becoming a big Broadway star to become \u201ca museum piece.\u201d are out of their depth with the new and performing Gotta Dance. technology; for example, even the His position very much mirrors talented Don asks for dialogue to be mistakes he makes on account of the status of the musical as a genre replaced with him repeating \u201cI love that anxiety, but it is also about the at the time that Singin\u2019 in the Rain you,\u201d unaware of how wooden that eclipsing of the musical by other was released: in 1952, it was a will sound in a \u201ctalkie.\u201d The scene genres of movie. format whose heyday seemed to be addresses his fears of replacement, passing. There is one memorable as his skills and methodology The arc of creativity sequence when The Dueling become redundant, and the One of the key themes of Singin\u2019 Cavalier, a silent movie Don is in the Rain is the undigni\ufb01ed and humiliating work that creative people If we bring a little joy into your are willing to do in order to get ahead humdrum lives, it makes us feel as in the industry. This is highlighted though our hard work ain\u2019t been in in three stories within the movie. vain for nothin\u2019. In the \ufb01rst, Don reminisces to a journalist on the red carpet at a Lina Lamont \/ Singin\u2019 in the Rain premiere. As he waxes lyrical about his digni\ufb01ed rise to stardom, the \u276f\u276f","124 SINGIN\u2019 IN THE RAIN Actress Cyd Charisse as herself is Kelly\u2019s sensational dance partner in the \u201cBroadway Melody\u201d musical sequence. viewer is shown a montage that performer and is then corrupted movie star from the moment we contradicts his words. He is seen by fame and adulation, before meet him, yet he is not truly working his way up from rock eventually rediscovering why he successful until the last scene, when bottom as a musical performer, as wanted to sing and dance in the he is in his element, having become he and his partner Cosmo Brown \ufb01rst place. The \ufb01nal story is that of a musical star instead of a silent (Donald O\u2019Connor) perform in dive the movie itself, in which Don actor, and is with the girl he loves, bars, get booed off the stage, and evolves from a silent star to his true Kathy Selden (Debbie Reynolds), stand in the unemployment line. vocation as a musical performer. instead of the self-serving Lina. The The second story takes place within movie takes an optimistic view, the extended fantasy sequence The movie uses these stories suggesting that the path to \ufb01nding \u201cBroadway Melody,\u201d in which Don to examine just what it is that your creative self is long and arrives on Broadway as an eager constitutes artistic success. It is dif\ufb01cult, but if you have the talent not the same as simply making it, and conviction, as Don does, you\u2019ll and getting rich\u2014it is about the eventually get to where you belong. artist doing what he or she loves without compromise. Don is a Singin\u2019 in the Rain stands out in the pantheon of musicals for a number of reasons. It takes a self-deprecating look at its own craft, and it features several iconic musical numbers (from the titular Singin\u2019 in the Rain to the comedic Make \u2019em Laugh), but above all it has endured because it speaks to a timeless fascination: the celebration and power of talent. While many movies portray the eventual corruption of talent and creative ambition, Singin\u2019 in the Rain salutes genuine talent as an irrepressible force that will always prevail. \u25a0 Gene Kelly Actor One of this movie\u2019s pleasures Gene Kelly was starred in, won several Oscars, is that it\u2019s really about born in 1912 in including Best Picture. Singin\u2019 in Pittsburgh, PA, the Rain was a modest success something. Of course it\u2019s and became a upon release, but its popularity about romance, as most dance teacher soon grew. Kelly died in 1996. musicals are, but it\u2019s also before making it to Broadway. about the \ufb01lm industry in a His big break came in 1940 when Key movies period of dangerous transition. he got the lead role in Rodgers and Hart\u2019s show, Pal Joey. 1945 Anchors Aweigh Roger Ebert Anchors Aweigh gave Kelly his 1946 Ziegfeld Follies \ufb01rst and last Oscar nomination 1951 An American in Paris for best actor, although An 1952 Singin\u2019 in the Rain American in Paris, which Kelly 1960 Inherit the Wind","FEAR AND WONDER 125 Don is \ufb01nally in his element as a song-and-dance man, not a silent movie star, as he performs the movie\u2019s titular musical number.","126 LET\u2019S GO HOME TOKYO STORY \/ 1953 IN CONTEXT T okyo Story The movie depicts was made Japan at a moment of GENRE in the wake profound change, but Drama of the decades of its story of familial militarism in Japan disintegration DIRECTOR that culminated in resonated with Yasujir\u00f4 Ozu catastrophic defeat in World War II. Ripples audiences WRITERS from the war can be worldwide. K\u00f4go Noda, Yasujir\u00f4 Ozu detected in it, but unlike many Japanese movies As the title STARS of the postwar period, suggests, Tokyo Chish\u00fb Ry\u00fb, Chieko Yasujir\u00f4 Ozu\u2019s movie Story is a simple Higashiyama, S\u00f4 remains even-keeled tale. The movie is Yamamura, Kuniko Miyaki throughout. Its characters more a carefully go about their lives curated collection BEFORE without fuss, and it ends with a of moments than a drama, and 1949 The \ufb01rst great movie in quiet tragedy that mirrors Japan\u2019s concerns relations within a family. Ozu\u2019s \ufb01nal period, Late Spring, somber introspection at the time. Shukichi (Chish\u00fb Ry\u00fb) and Tomi is an example of shomin-geki, (Chieko Higashiyama) have four a story of ordinary people\u2019s lives in post-war Japan. Yasujir\u00f4 Ozu Director 1951 Ozu continues his Often described as the most them focused in some way on preoccupation with the state Japanese of \ufb01lmmakers, Yasujir\u00f4 the changing rhythms of family of the Japanese family with Ozu is also the most accessible life in the modern age. His Early Summer. of the great directors to emerge \u201cNoriko Trilogy,\u201d of which Tokyo from that country in the postwar Story was the last, all starred AFTER period. His unfussy style Setsuko Hara as Noriko. 1959 In Ozu\u2019s Floating Weeds, won him the reputation of a a group of kabuki theater minimalist\u2014but his movies Key movies actors arrive in a seaside town, are busy with the rich detail of where the lead actor meets his human life and drama. Between 1949 Late Spring son for the \ufb01rst time. 1927 and 1962, Ozu directed 1951 Early Summer more than 50 features. All of 1953 Tokyo Story","FEAR AND WONDER 127 What else to watch: Brothers and Sisters of the Toda Family (1941) \u25a0 There Was a Father (1942) \u25a0 The Flavor of Green Tea Over Rice (1952) \u25a0 Tokyo Twilight (1957) \u25a0 Equinox Flower (1958) \u25a0 Good Morning (1959) \u25a0 The End of Summer (1961) The children return home for Tomi\u2019s funeral. Over the funeral dinner, the conversation turns into a discussion of the inheritance with almost indecent speed. children: Kyoko (Kyoko Kagawa), an unmarried daughter who lives with them at home; Keizo (Shiro Osaka), their youngest son, who works in Osaka; Koichi (S\u00f4 Yamamura), a doctor living in Tokyo with a wife and two sons of his own; and Shige (Haruko Sugimura), also a Tokyoite, who runs a beauty salon. A \ufb01fth child, a son, died in World War II. A journey down, at the eye level of a person acceptance between them, Shukichi and Tomi decide to pay a seated on a tatami mat. Characters an acknowledgment that their visit to their children in Tokyo and come and go, moving in and out of shared role as parents has become meet their grandchildren for the the frame, but Ozu sees everything, redundant. This sparse exchange \ufb01rst time, and embark on a train as though a silent and invisible is typical of the couple\u2019s interaction trip to the hurly-burly of the city. observer planted in every scene. in that few words are spoken but They are unfailingly positive and The camera\u2019s positioning is all much is said. It is also Ozu\u2019s way polite, but viewers sense the pair\u2019s about tradition, just as the story it of telling stories on \ufb01lm: a small disappointment in the way their records is about the mutation of and \ufb02eeting moment that contains offspring have turned out. None family life and an ancient culture huge signi\ufb01cance. of the children make time for their in the age of modernity. parents in their busy schedules. The couple is sitting on a sea Indeed, it seems that Noriko \u201cLet\u2019s go home,\u201d says Shukichi wall in their spa gowns. As Tomi (Setsuko Hara), the widow of their to his wife after a few days. \u201cYes,\u201d gets up, she has a dizzy spell. \u201cIt\u2019s dead son, is the only person who replies Tomi. In their words is an because I didn\u2019t sleep well,\u201d she cares about them. At one point, explains to her concerned husband. the parents are packed off by Shukichi\u2019s face tells us what he is Koichi to a coastal spa, so that the thinking: she is going home to die, room in which they are staying can which she does a few days later. be used for a business meeting. Now it is the turn of their children to make a journey for the family. \u25a0 Static observer This funny-sad odyssey is observed in Ozu\u2019s trademark style: through a static camera positioned low This place is meant for the younger generation. Shukichi \/ Tokyo Story","128 WHEN I WAS A KID I USED TO SEE MEN GO OFF ON THESE KIND OF JOBS\u2014 AND NOT COME BACK THE WAGES OF FEAR \/ 1953 IN CONTEXT H enri-Georges Clouzot\u2019s village. When they are hired by a The Wages of Fear is a ruthless US oil company, they think GENRE juggernaut of suspense it\u2019s their ticket out. But they are told Drama driven by greed and desperation. to drive trucks of nitroglycerine A contemporary and friendly rival across a wilderness of potholes, DIRECTOR of Alfred Hitchcock, Clouzot crumbling ledges, and rickety Henri-Georges Clouzot succeeds in gripping the viewer bridges to put out an oil \ufb01re hundreds with a nerve-wracking story. Four of miles away. Not everyone is WRITERS men, Mario (Yves Montand), Jo expected to make it back alive. Henri-Georges Clouzot, (Charles Vanel), Luigi (Folco Lulli), J\u00e9r\u00f4me G\u00e9ronimi and Bimba (Peter van The movie exhibits a low opinion (screenplay); Georges Eyck), are desperate to of men\u2019s motives, and an even lower Arnaud (novel) escape life in a grim one of the aggressive capitalism that South American exploits them, but \ufb01rst and foremost STARS it\u2019s a movie about terror: a white- Yves Montand, Charles Mario (Yves Vanel, Peter van Eyck, Montand) knuckle adrenaline ride. From the Folco Lulli accidentally treacherous road that threatens runs over Jo the trucks, to the \ufb01re-and- BEFORE (Charles brimstone \ufb01nale, each set piece 1943 Clouzot\u2019s caustic drama Vanel) in is more gut-wrenchingly tense Le Corbeau tells the story a pool of a poison-pen writer who of oil. than the one before. \u25a0 signs his missives \u201cThe Raven.\u201d What else to watch: Le Corbeau (1943) \u25a0 Eyes Without a Face (1960) \u25a0 1947 Clouzot\u2019s third movie, Henri-Georges Clouzot\u2019s Inferno (1964) \u25a0 Duel (1971) Quai des Orf\u00e8vres, is a crime drama set in postwar Paris. AFTER 1955 In Clouzot\u2019s taut and twist-\ufb01lled Les Diaboliques, two women take revenge on a sadistic headmaster.","FEAR AND WONDER 129 BUT IF WE DON\u2019T USE YOUR DEVICE AGAINST GODZILLA WHAT ARE WE GOING TO DO? GODZILLA \/ 1954 IN CONTEXT G odzilla (Gojira in Japanese) new threats and mass devastation. is a low-budget monster Honda is bold in his use of images GENRE movie in which a giant ripped straight from his country\u2019s Science \ufb01ction lizard rises from the Paci\ufb01c Ocean recent memory: huge, white-hot and attacks Tokyo. For all the explosions that turn night into day; DIRECTOR clumsiness of its special effects, Tokyoites cowering in concrete Ishir\u00f4 Honda the monster of Ishiro Honda\u2019s movie bunkers as cityscapes crumble to resonated powerfully with its rubble. The only hope of defeating WRITERS audiences in 1954. Godzilla is a device called the Takeo Murata, Ishir\u00f4 Honda (screenplay); The creature remains \u201coxygen destroyer,\u201d Shigeru Kayama (story) mostly in shadow as an another grim indistinct threat, while invention of human STARS the grainy, black-and- progress. Honda, a Akira Takarada, Momoko white imagery is nature lover, saw his K\u00f4chi, Akihiko Hirata, chillingly reminiscent lizard-king as Earth\u2019s Takashi Shimura of newsreel footage revenge for science\u2019s from August 1945, environmental BEFORE when atom bombs recklessness. 1949 Ishir\u00f4 Honda works as were dropped on Japan assistant director on Stray in the \ufb01nal days of Mega franchise Dog, a \ufb01lm noir directed by World War II. Japanese Godzilla spawned a his friend Akira Kurosawa. viewers were therefore franchise of monster no strangers to the proportions, with 1953 In Honda\u2019s Eagle of the concept of horri\ufb01c sequels stretching from Paci\ufb01c, special effects are 1955\u2019s Godzilla Raids created by Eiji Tsuburaya, who Honda saw Godzilla Again to the US would go on to create Godzilla. as means of absorbing blockbuster of 2014, the trauma of the atom although the creature AFTER bomb attacks into itself has become an 1961 Atomic tests summon Japanese culture. icon of kitsch. \u25a0 another monster in Honda\u2019s movie Mothra, about a giant What else to watch: King Kong (1933, p.49) \u25a0 The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms moth terrorizing Tokyo. (1953) \u25a0 Godzilla vs. Hedorah (1971) \u25a0 Monsters (2010) \u25a0 Paci\ufb01c Rim (2013)","130 JUST WAIT UNTIL YOU SEE YOUR MOTHER. SHE\u2019S NEVER LOOKED SO RADIANT ALL THAT HEAVEN ALLOWS \/ 1955 IN CONTEXT D ouglas Sirk was a director kids object, Cary breaks off the skilled at balancing the affair. Beneath this tragedy is an GENRE conventional with the indictment of small-town America\u2019s Romantic drama subversive. His lush Hollywood moral codes, which contrived to melodramas were the chick \ufb02icks keep women in their place. DIRECTOR of the 1950s: a parade of magazine- Douglas Sirk cover movie stars dressed and lit \u201cThe community saw to it,\u201d to perfection, falling in and out of says Cary\u2019s daughter early in the WRITERS love against a backdrop of cherry- movie, as she explains an ancient Peg Fenwick (screenplay); blossom suburbia. But these big- Egyptian custom in which widows Edna L. Lee, Harry Lee screen soaps contained dark depths were buried alive in the tombs (story) that were disguised by Sirk\u2019s craft, of their husbands. \u201cOf course, it and none more so than All That doesn\u2019t happen anymore.\u201d But Sirk STARS Heaven Allows. shows his audience that it does. Jane Wyman, Rock The glossy colors he uses to portray Hudson, Agnes Moorehead, Suburban prison Cary\u2019s suburban cage mock its Conrad Nagel On the surface, the movie is a ideal image. Every frame love story, in which a widowed communicates her unhappiness, to BEFORE housewife, Cary (Jane Wyman), the point where even her daughter 1954 Sirk pairs Hudson falls for her handsome gardener, admits that it may have been with Wyman in Magni\ufb01cent Ron (Rock Hudson). Ron doesn\u2019t wrong to force the breakup with Obsession, a melodrama care about the difference in age or Ron. Will Cary \ufb01nd the courage to about a reckless playboy. social class. Unfortunately others defy the conventions that dictate do, and when Cary\u2019s college-age her life? Sirk knew he\u2019d get his AFTER audience \ufb01rmly on Cary\u2019s side. \u25a0 1956 In Written on the Wind, Sirk directs another romance You were ready for a love affair, with Hudson as a working- but not for love. class underdog. Cary \/ All That Heaven Allows 1959 Sirk\u2019s Imitation of Life tackles gender and race with What else to watch: Written on the Wind (1956) \u25a0 Imitation of Life (1959) \u25a0 the tale of an actress hiring a Seconds (1966) \u25a0 Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (1974, pp.222\u201323) widow to care for her daughter.","FEAR AND WONDER 131 I DON\u2019T THINK THAT I WANT TO LEARN THAT WAY REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE \/ 1955 IN CONTEXT T he title of Nicholas Ray\u2019s father tells him. But Jim rejects his iconic teen movie is parents\u2019 life lessons; he gets into GENRE misleading, because the knife \ufb01ghts at school and races cars Drama movie\u2019s central character is a rebel in a game of \u201cchicken\u201d to prove he whose cause could not be more clear: hasn\u2019t inherited their cowardice. DIRECTOR 17-year-old Jim Stark (James Dean) Nicholas Ray wants his parents to stop lying. Rebel Without a Cause spawned numerous imitations\u2014teen movies WRITERS When Jim starts a new school noisy with sex, drugs, and rock Stewart Stern, Irving in a new town, his troubled past and roll. But the loudest noise in Shulman (screenplay); catches up with him and his home Ray\u2019s movie is the howl of anguish. Nicholas Ray (story) life deteriorates. Jim looks at the He does not exploit his young respectability of his mother and his characters, he sympathizes, STARS weak, ineffectual father and sees coaxing a powerful performance James Dean, Natalie Wood, nothing but hypocrisy and failure. from Dean, who came to symbolize Sal Mineo, Jim Backus \u201cYou\u2019ll learn when you\u2019re older,\u201d his teen angst for a whole generation. \u25a0 BEFORE Jim (James 1948 Ray\u2019s They Live by Dean) attacks Night, about three outlaws his father, Frank on the run, explores his (Jim Backus), for fascination with the outsider. his cowardice. Jim is unhinged and 1955 Elia Kazan\u2019s East of violent, but he\u2019s not Eden, the \ufb01rst of James Dean\u2019s a sociopath\u2014he\u2019s a three movies, is an adaptation victim, and his of John Steinbeck\u2019s epic novel. cause is the truth. AFTER What else to watch: The Wild One (1953) \u25a0 Bigger than Life (1956) \u25a0 1956 Dean is killed in a car Easy Rider (1969, pp.196\u201397) \u25a0 American Graf\ufb01ti (1973) \u25a0 The Warriors (1979) crash before the family saga Giant is released, lending George Stevens\u2019s movie added tragic resonance.","132 WHEN I\u2019M BETTER WE\u2019LL GO AND LOOK AT THE TRAINS AGAIN PATHER PANCHALI \/ 1955 IN CONTEXT P ather Panchali tells the story Apu isn\u2019t the only one who is of Apu (Subir Banerjee), a learning. Ray himself had never GENRE young boy learning about written or directed a movie before; Drama the world around him. He lives with his cast had never acted before, with his mother, father, sister, and aunt the exception of Chunibala Devi; the DIRECTOR in an impoverished Bengali village photographer Subrata Mitra, whose Satyajit Ray in India. The family edges ever cinematography captures the closer to \ufb01nancial ruin, but Apu\u2019s languid beauty of an Indian WRITERS eyes are full of wonder. Although his summer, had never worked Satyajit Ray (screenplay); life is blighted by despair, he doesn\u2019t with moving images; even Bibhutibhushan yet know it, and director Satyajit Ravi Shankar, who Bandyopadhyay (novel) Ray allows the audience to share provides the movie\u2019s in his protagonist\u2019s innocence. shimmering sitar STARS score, and who Kanu Banerjee, Karuna would later Banerjee, Subir Banerjee, be world famous, Chunibala Devi was a novice. BEFORE The family cares 1948 Vittorio De Sica\u2019s The for the elderly Indir Bicycle Thief inspires Ray Thakrun, played by to make the story of Apu. Chunibala Devi, who died before the movie AFTER 1956 Ray\u2019s follow-up to Pather was released. Panchali, Aparajito, continues the story of Apu, who journeys to a new life in Calcutta. 1959 The \ufb01nal movie in the \u201cApu Trilogy,\u201d Apur Sansar follows the adult Apu on a trip to a provincial town that will change his life forever.","FEAR AND WONDER 133 What else to watch: The Bicycle Thief (1948, pp.94\u201395) \u25a0 Jalsaghar (1958) \u25a0 The Cloud-Capped Star (1960) \u25a0 Charulata (1964) \u25a0 Ashani Sanket (1973) On the \ufb01rst day of shooting, Ray Sarbojaya Ray (Karuna Banerjee) Satyajit Ray Director had no script, but Apu\u2019s story\u2014 tends to her sick daughter Durga based loosely on the novel by (Uma Das Gupta). She is helpless \u201cNever before had one man Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay\u2014 to stop a deadly fever. had such a decisive impact on was all in the director\u2019s head. He the \ufb01lms of his culture,\u201d wrote had already visualized it in a series \u201cwe\u2019ll go and look at the trains again.\u201d American \ufb01lm critic Roger of illustrations for the novel, which It\u2019s possible that Durga believes she Ebert, summing up Satyajit perhaps explains why so much of will recover, and that Apu believes Ray\u2019s contribution to cinema Pather Panchali\u2019s beguiling power it too, but the audience knows there in his review of the can be found in its imagery: white- is really no hope. The camera paces \ufb01lmmaker\u2019s \u201cApu Trilogy.\u201d hot light cutting swathes through queasily to and fro in the storm- Before Ray, Indian movies wracked sickroom, following Apu\u2019s were generally musicals, the forest; the gathering clouds mother, Sarbojaya, as she watches romances, and swashbucklers; of the monsoon; water bugs her daughter slip away. It\u2019s a long, after Apu, something of what twitching on a pond; a steam heartbreaking moment, and one it meant to be alive in India train glimpsed on the horizon. that Apu will carry with him to the had been captured on \ufb01lm, end of the movie and beyond, into and a new cultural tradition Slow speed two more movies about his life. \u25a0 was born. Apu and his sister Durga (Uma Das Gupta) delight in running Beautiful, sometimes Ray founded Calcutta\u2019s funny, and full of love. \ufb01rst \ufb01lm society in 1947. He alongside the train, whose was working at an advertising whistle vibrates along the Pauline Kael agency when he directed his wires of vast electricity \ufb01rst feature, Pather Panchali, pylons and can be heard which won awards in France, long before the train London, and Venice. This and itself appears. This is the two other Apu movies all the fastest moving strove for realism, but Ray thing in Ray\u2019s later experimented with genre tranquil movie. cinema, including fantasy and \u201cWhen I\u2019m science \ufb01ction. His instinct for better,\u201d says Durga character, however, remained later on, as she lies strong. He died at 70 in 1992. dying of a fever, Key movies 1955 Pather Panchali 1956 Aparajito 1959 Apur Sansar 1964 Charulata 1970 Aranyer Din Ratri","134 GET ME TO THAT BUS STOP AND FORGET YOU EVER SAW ME KISS ME DEADLY \/ 1955 IN CONTEXT C hristina Bailey The movie (Cloris Leachman) used the form GENRE is a mysterious of a pulp- Science \ufb01ction, crime blonde with a terrible \ufb01ction crime secret. She begs private drama to DIRECTOR eye Mike Hammer (Ralph explore the Robert Aldrich Meeker) to forget he ever saw her. For the viewer, atmosphere WRITERS however, nothing about Kiss of fear and A. I. Bezzerides Me Deadly is easy paranoia (screenplay); Mickey to forget, from Christina that had Spillane (novel) running barefoot down a developed highway at night, her eyes in the US by STARS wide with fear, to the movie\u2019s the 1950s. Ralph Meeker, Albert shocking climax. Dekker, Cloris Leachman, must never, ever Gaby Rodgers Science \ufb01ction meets noir be opened. The paranoid nihilism Robert Aldrich\u2019s crime thriller of 1950s science \ufb01ction overlaps BEFORE is based on one of a series of with \ufb01lm noir: instead of a priceless 1955 Aldrich adapts Clifford popular novels about the exploits jewel or a lost statuette, these pulp- Odets\u2019s play The Big Knife, of thuggish Los Angeles private \ufb01ction crooks are \ufb01ghting over a about Hollywood corruption. eye Mike Hammer. Aldrich uses doomsday weapon. Yet despite its the story to explore the weirder bleakness of spirit, Kiss Me Deadly AFTER pathways of the \ufb01lm-noir detective is highly entertaining. The dialogue 1962 What Ever Happened genre, adding a sinister science- is diamond sharp in every scene. to Baby Jane? is Aldrich\u2019s \ufb01ction edge. The movie opens with \u201cThe little thread leads you to a twisted drama with Bette Christina\u2019s escape from a mental string, and the string leads you Davis and Joan Crawford. institution and veers into a quest to a rope,\u201d wisecracks Velda for \u201cthe great whatsit,\u201d a strange (Maxine Cooper), \u201cand from the 1967 In Aldrich\u2019s wartime box that is hot to the touch and rope you hang by the neck.\u201d \u25a0 thriller The Dirty Dozen, Lee Marvin, John Cassavetes, What else to watch: The Maltese Falcon (1941, p.331) \u25a0 Murder, My Sweet Ernest Borgnine, and Charles (1944) \u25a0 The Big Sleep (1946) \u25a0 Touch of Evil (1958, p.333) \u25a0 Repo Man (1984) Bronson form a suicide squad.","FEAR AND WONDER 135 THAT\u2019LL BE THE DAY THE SEARCHERS \/ 1956 IN CONTEXT F rom the moment John Westerns of the 1960s. Ford takes Ford gave John Wayne pains to portray the dif\ufb01culty of GENRE his big break in the 1939 surviving in the West, with its Western movie Stagecoach, one of the most icy winters and scarcity of food. iconic partnerships in cinema was Meanwhile, Ethan Edwards is DIRECTOR born. Wayne\u2019s rugged masculinity portrayed as ruthless, bigoted, and John Ford combined with Ford\u2019s riveting crazy, a man who would rather kill action sequences to create movies his niece (who is not happy to be WRITERS that elevated the Western from rescued) than see her grow up as Frank S. Nugent B-movie status to a classic popular an Indian. At one point, he shoots (screenplay); Alan Hollywood genre in its own right. at the eyes of an Indian corpse so Le May (novel) that its spirit cannot see in the The Searchers is regarded by afterlife. This is not a simplistic STARS critics as the best movie of the Ford\u2013 tale of cowboys and Indians. \u25a0 John Wayne, Jeffrey Wayne partnership. Its story follows Hunter, Vera Miles Ethan Edwards (Wayne) as he tracks down his niece (Vera Miles), BEFORE who was kidnapped by Indians in 1940 The Grapes of Wrath is an attack that killed her family. Ford\u2019s screen version of the famous Depression-era story. New vision of the Old West In The Searchers I think Ford Many Westerns bene\ufb01ted from was trying, imperfectly, even 1952 Ford directs John Wayne (and contributed to) the romantic nervously, to depict racism in The Quiet Man, a lavish revisionism of the time, which comic drama shot in Ireland. presented the Old West as a that justi\ufb01ed genocide. dangerous place, but also one Roger Ebert AFTER of noble heroes with clear-cut 1959 In Rio Bravo, Wayne American values. In The Searchers, stars as a sheriff standing any heroism is tempered by the up to a powerful rancher. harsh realities of place and time. The movie foreshadows the darker 1969 True Grit is the story of a young girl who hires an What else to watch: Stagecoach (1939) \u25a0 Rio Bravo (1959) \u25a0 The Good, The aging US marshal (Wayne) to Bad and The Ugly (1966) \u25a0 Unforgiven (1992) track down her father\u2019s killer.","136 I HAVE LONG WALKED BY YOUR SIDE THE SEVENTH SEAL \/ 1957 IN CONTEXT T he Seventh Seal (Det sjunde The knight Antonius Block offers inseglet) takes the form of Death a game of chess for his life. Death GENRE a medieval morality play. agrees to the game, to which they will Drama A knight returns from the Crusades return several times during the movie, to \ufb01nd his native land devastated but which Block cannot win. DIRECTOR by plague. He goes to confession in Ingmar Bergman a church surrounded by corpses. \u201cI The \ufb01gure reveals itself as Death, want God to put out his hand, show who has been following the knight WRITER his face, speak to me,\u201d he says to on his journey from the Holy Land. Ingmar Bergman (from his the hooded \ufb01gure on the other side play Wood Painting) of the grille. \u201cI cry out to him in Having fought for God in the the dark but there is no one there.\u201d desert, the knight, Antonius Block STARS (Max von Sydow), is experiencing Max von Sydow, Gunnar Bj\u00f6rnstrand, Bengt Ekerot, Nils Poppe, Bibi Andersson BEFORE 1955 Bergman\u2019s \ufb01rst hit, Smiles of a Summer Night, is a partner-swapping comedy. AFTER 1957 Bergman\u2019s next movie, Wild Strawberries, is a tale of an old man preparing for death. 1966 In Persona, Bergman directs a bleak fable about death, illness, and insanity.","FEAR AND WONDER 137 What else to watch: Death Takes a Holiday (1934) \u25a0 The Virgin Spring (1960) \u25a0 Through a Glass Darkly (1961) \u25a0 The Silence (1963) \u25a0 Winter Light (1963) \u25a0 Hour of the Wolf (1968) \u25a0 Cries and Whispers (1972) \u25a0 Love and Death (1975) What will happen to us who want was taken from the apocalyptic to believe, and cannot? Book of Revelation) has its roots in Bergman\u2019s childhood: as the Antonius Block \/ The Seventh Seal son of a Lutheran pastor, he was surrounded by religious art from a young age. The director was a crisis of faith. Whereas the his wife Mia (Bibi Andersson). haunted by memories of the crude Almighty refuses to show Himself, They are traveling players, and they yet graphic representations of Bible Death (Bengt Ekerot) turns out have a baby son, Mikael, who is stories that could be found in the to be a certainty with a fondness their hope for the future. Jof and woodcuttings of rural churches and for morbidly funny one-liners. Mia are creators\u2014of both art and households. As a \ufb01lmmaker, he \u201cAppropriate, don\u2019t you think?\u201d says life\u2014and as such they are the dedicated his career to asking the the Grim Reaper when he chooses enemies of Death, who only knows same, unanswerable question over black in a game of chess\u2014a game how to destroy. When the knight and over again: where is God? \u276f\u276f that the knight must win if he encounters them on the road to wants to live. It is Antonius who his castle, Death not far behind, suggests the contest, a battle he \ufb01nds comfort in the couple\u2019s between black and white, darkness laughter and lust for life. In fact, and light, death and life. he is reminded of Joseph and Mary from the Bible\u2014could these Playing for his life performers be emissaries of God? The image of the knight and Death playing chess on the beach has Where is God? become one of the most iconic\u2014 The grim, austere imagery and and imitated\u2014in the history of obsession with biblical allegory cinema. It is a starkly monochrome in The Seventh Seal (the title vignette, the absence of color symbolic of the absence of God. Squire J\u00f6ns (Gunnar The world of Ingmar Bergman\u2019s Bj\u00f6rnstrand) saves movie is drained of life and a girl (Gunnel vitality: the water that laps the Lindblom) from a shore is slate gray, the sky rapist. He is a just above it smudged with dark man, but tires of clouds; the faces of God\u2019s the venality abandoned subjects are \ufb02inty, of human beings. bloodless, and unsmiling, while Death\u2019s is chalk white. Antonius already resembles the carved stone ef\ufb01gy on a Crusader\u2019s tomb. There are two \ufb02ickers of hope in this miserable landscape: Jof (Nils Poppe) and","138 THE SEVENTH SEAL Feel, to the very end, the triumph of being alive! Squire J\u00f6ns \/ The Seventh Seal The movie\u2019s original Swedish poster The knight searches, but emptiness.\u201d The squire is scornful shows death waiting impassively at he \ufb01nds nothing. At one of people\u2019s fears and the ignorance the bottom, with the human characters point he happens upon that leads them to burn the witch. on the black squares of a chessboard. a girl (Maud Hansson) imprisoned in a cage, Self-\ufb02agellation who is about to be If all of this sounds somewhat burned at the stake. earnest, that\u2019s because it is. She is accused of The Seventh Seal is concerned sleeping with the with the soul and damnation; with Devil and bringing the man\u2019s masochistic relationship plague upon the people. with his Creator; and with the howling wilderness that awaits Antonius is hopeful: if each of us at the end of the road. the Devil exists, then so Bergman communicates his vast must God. \u201cLook in my ideas in the simplest and most eyes,\u201d the girl says, as striking of images. In one she tells him that the extraordinary sequence, a group priest would not come of self-\ufb02agellating monks lurches near her. \u201cI see nothing past the camera, some staggering but terror,\u201d the knight under the heavy weight of crosses, replies, sadly. The others whipping themselves. The girl is burned, and plague, which they believe to be a the knight\u2019s squire, J\u00f6ns (Gunnar punishment from God, has driven Bj\u00f6rnstrand), can see no meaning them insane. Bergman cuts to the in her murder. \u201cLook into her eyes,\u201d faces of Jof and Mia as they watch he echoes. \u201cShe sees nothing but","this spectacle from their wooden There are light touches of dark FEAR AND WONDER 139 stage, which suddenly resembles humor all over The Seventh Seal, the platform of a gallows. They and its \ufb01nal image is a cruel joke. Ingmar Bergman have been singing a comical song \u201cThe master leads with scythe and Director about death, which they stop as the hourglass,\u201d says Jof, pointing to the penitents appear. Death spreads all horizon, where the Grim Reaper Born in Uppsala, Sweden, in around them, like the fog of incense leads his latest victims\u2014including 1918, Ingmar Bergman was spread by the monks, infecting and the knight\u2014in a danse macabre the son of a Lutheran chaplain transforming everything in the against the gray sky. \u201cThey move and was raised in a strict frame. Many onlookers fall to their away from the dawn in a solemn household. Invariably bleak, knees in prayer. It is a powerful, dance, toward the dark country, his movies deal with the major wordless metaphor for the human while the rain washes over con\ufb02icts at the heart of human condition, blackly comic in its their faces and cleanses their existence: madness versus surreal grotesquery. cheeks of salt.\u201d sanity, death versus life, nothingness versus God. The Regardless of whether I Jof is mesmerized by the parade human spirit rarely triumphs believe or not, whether I am a of the dead dancing beneath the in these battles. The Seventh Christian or not, I would play darkening skies, but for some reason Seal was followed by Wild Mia cannot see the phantoms. She Strawberries and, later, a my part in the collective tuts affectionately at her husband. trilogy that explored the building of the cathedral. \u201cYou and your dreams and visions,\u201d she smiles, and the two of them effects of human isolation: Ingmar Bergman shake their heads, turn their backs Through a Glass Darkly, on Death, and return to the business Winter Light, and The of living. \u25a0 Silence. His celebrated Death leads the dead in a dance Persona was the \ufb01rst in that only Jof can see. The scene was a series inspired by Far\u00f6, a improvised at the end of a day\u2019s \ufb01lming remote island in the Baltic Sea. on the coast at Hovs Hallar, using Bergman died in 2007. crew members and a couple of passing tourists. Key movies 1957 The Seventh Seal 1957 Wild Strawberries 1961 Through a Glass Darkly 1966 Persona","IF I DO WHAT YOU TELL ME WILL YOU LOVE ME? VERTIGO \/ 1958","","142 VERTIGO D irector Alfred Hitchcock\u2019s My good luck in life was to be career was a 50-year-long a really frightened person. I\u2019m IN CONTEXT duel with the audience. fortunate to be a coward, to The more they thought they knew have a low threshold of fear, GENRE about his work, the more he would because a hero couldn\u2019t make Thriller use that knowledge against them. He would employ structural devices, a good suspense \ufb01lm. DIRECTOR narrative twists, and other tricks to Alfred Hitchcock Alfred Hitchcock give the audience something they had never seen before. While some eventually earned her own moniker: WRITERS directors sought to understand the \u201cThe Hitchcock Blonde.\u201d Although Alec Coppel, Samuel Taylor meaning of art or the essence of this left him open to accusations (screenplay); Pierre Boileau, human relationships, Hitchcock of misogyny, it is also true that his Thomas Narcejac (novel) was the great trickster. Audiences movies had more leading roles for could never be sure what was women than many in Hollywood. STARS coming next. Hitchcock\u2019s blonde was cultured, James Stewart, Kim fashionable, and intelligent, but Novak, Barbara Bel Geddes Vertigo plays the same games also icy and initially resistant to as the rest of Hitchcock\u2019s catalogue, the male hero\u2019s charms. Over the BEFORE but it has come to stand out as course of the movie, the character\u2019s 1946 In It\u2019s a Wonderful Life, something more complex. It is the barriers would be broken down James Stewart plays to type story of a retired cop, John \u201cScottie\u201d and she would end up in awe of the as a sympathetic everyman. Ferguson (James Stewart), who is hero, her individualism slightly lost roped in to an investigation into the in the process. Hitchock himself 1948 In Rope, Stewart teams mysterious behavior of Madeleine indicated that blondes were ideal up with Hitchcock for the \ufb01rst (Kim Novak), the wife of old college of his Technicolor movies. friend Gavin Elster (Tom Helmore). He becomes obsessed with her, AFTER adding an emotional intensity 1959 Eva Marie Saint is to the movie\u2019s usual magic show. the next \u201cHitchcock Blonde,\u201d playing opposite Cary Grant The Hitchcock Blonde in North by Northwest. As a director, Hitchcock used a certain type of female character 1960 Hitchcock shocks in his movies so frequently that she audiences with Psycho. Alfred Hitchcock Director Hitchcock was born in London on to have a 30-year career in in 1899. He started in the movie Hollywood, directing classics industry as a set designer. His such as Rear Window (1954), \ufb01rst chance to direct came with North by Northwest (1959), the incomplete movie Number 13, Psycho, and The Birds. He and then in 1925 The Pleasure died in 1980, at the age of 81. Garden. After gaining fame as a director in Britain with such Key movies movies as The Lady Vanishes (1938), Hitchcock moved to 1929 Blackmail Hollywood in 1940, when he 1951 Strangers on a Train was hired by David O. Selznick 1958 Vertigo to direct an adaptation of Daphne 1960 Psycho Du Maurier\u2019s Rebecca. He went 1963 The Birds","FEAR AND WONDER 143 What else to watch: Laura (1944, p.79) \u25a0 Spellbound (1945) \u25a0 Rear Window (1954) \u25a0 North by Northwest (1959) \u25a0 La jet\u00e9e (1962, p.172) \u25a0 Marnie (1964) \u25a0 Bad Education (2004) Hitchcock\u2019s blondes self-examination by Hitchcock regarding the way he treats women Hitchcock favored on \ufb01lm, makes it as unsettling as icy, \u201csophisticated anything he ever \ufb01lmed. blondes\u201d in his The fallen star movies. \u201cWe\u2019re after the drawing-room Tippi Hedren Grace Kelly Ingrid Bergman Another common theme in type, the real ladies, Hitchcock\u2019s movies is the who become whores The Birds Rear Window Spellbound exploration of the concept of the once they\u2019re in the movie star and how it affects the bedroom,\u201d he said. telling of a story, more speci\ufb01cally how stardom could be manipulated to surprise the audience. The most famous example of this is Psycho, in which star Janet Leigh is murdered after just 30 minutes, manipulating Kim Novak Janet Leigh Eva Marie Saint Marlene Dietrich audience assumptions of the way stories with stars in leading roles Vertigo Psycho North by Northwest Stage Fright usually progress in order to shock them. But while the twist in Psycho for creating cinematic suspense, speci\ufb01cally geared around is loud and unavoidable, in Vertigo saying in a 1977 TV interview, creating tension, but the subtext of it is subtle and slow to unfold, and \u201cBlondes make the best victims. emotional abuse in this sequence, its effect depends on the particular They\u2019re like virgin snow that shows along with the notion that it is a star chosen to play Scottie. \u276f\u276f up the bloody footprints.\u201d Vertigo\u2019s lead, Scottie, remakes He did nothing. The law has little salesgirl Judy Barton (also played by Kim Novak) in Madeleine\u2019s to say on things left undone. image. He removes everything that makes Judy an individual in Coroner \/ Vertigo order to have her conform to this visual archetype, a lifeless host for sexual objecti\ufb01cation. Scottie\u2019s requirements are hugely speci\ufb01c. He agonizes over the exact shades of gray for Judy\u2019s suit, and is disappointed when she returns home with a hairstyle slightly different from the one he chose (changing her from brunette to blonde). Hitchcock may have put together bloodier sequences, Scottie (James Stewart) is a police of\ufb01cer seen in a rooftop chase at the start of the movie. He slips, and a colleague falls while trying to help him. This is the start of his vertigo.","144 VERTIGO The casting of James Stewart process is never more clear than plan succeeds, the love story affects the direction and impact in a dream sequence that sees is poisoned by lies, and the of the movie profoundly; it adds an Stewart\u2019s disembodied head protagonist is broken emotionally extra textual layer of dissonance spiraling down into an abyss. His and physically. It is arguably to the \ufb01nal act. Stewart\u2019s image usual clean-cut image is distorted the darkest movie the director ever as an actor since the days of his as a wind unsettles his hair and made. It is a Hitchcock movie with early career, including previous his expression. He looks lost. no Hollywood obligations, as the roles for Hitchcock in Rear Window director seeks a richer form of (1954) and The Man Who Knew Twisted thriller terror\u2014not simply to shock, Too Much (1956), had always been Vertigo is an expertly that of the incorruptible everyman, crafted thriller, but repulse, or unsettle the decent and likeable to a fault. John one with twisted audience, but to disturb \u201cScottie\u201d Ferguson begins as a perspectives. them, to take everything good man, a typical Stewart The villain\u2019s they think they know character, but ends it as a man lost murderous about his style of in sexual despair, his mind ruined \ufb01lmmaking and to by tragedy. By putting James corrupt it to reveal Stewart through this something new. transformation, Hitchcock In Vertigo, is not just undoing a man, Hitchcock bares he\u2019s undoing a screen icon. a little bit more What we think we know of of his soul so Stewart\u2019s character makes that he can Ferguson\u2019s psychosis that twist the much more painful to watch, knife a and his unraveling affects us little bit that much more deeply. The deeper. \u25a0 visual representation of this Scottie and Madeleine (Kim 00:34 01:16 01:47 Novak) \ufb01rst embrace after she has At a bookstore, Elster tells Scottie Madeleine climbs Scottie buys Judy asked him whether she is crazy. and down-to-earth friend Midge the the bell tower. Scottie clothes and has her Judy, as Madeleine, has fallen for story of suicidal Carlotta, Madeleine\u2019s tries to follow but dye her hair in order Scottie, and it is this that will great-grandmother. Elster says that cannot. He sees a to make her look just ultimately lead to her downfall. Madeleine is possessed by her. woman fall to her death. like Madeleine. Minute by minute 00:12 Scottie meets with old college friend Gavin Elster, who asks him to follow his wife, Madeleine. Scottie \ufb01rst sees her as she is having dinner with Elster. 00:00 00:30 01:00 01:30 02:08 00:28 00:40 01:34 01:58 Scottie follows Madeleine jumps into the Scottie sees Judy Scottie recognizes Madeleine to a bay. Scottie is watching and Barton and asks her to the necklace. He takes hotel, where she pulls her out. He takes her dinner. When he leaves, Judy back to the is registered back to his apartment. She she starts to write a tower. They climb to under the name appears not to remember what note, and the plot with the top as he reveals Carlotta Valdez. happened. Elster is revealed. She that he knows. She decides to stay. panics and falls.","FEAR AND WONDER 145 This poster shows the spiral motif that features in Scottie\u2019s nightmare, and which recurs with the staircase and in Madeleine\u2019s hairstyle.","146 WHAT DID YOU DO DURING THE UPRISING? ASHES AND DIAMONDS \/ 1958 IN CONTEXT The title of Andrzej Wajda\u2019s Maciek (Zbigniew Cybulski) is war movie comes from a plunged into self doubt when he GENRE line of romantic poetry by meets Krystyna (Ewa Krzyzewska). War drama 19th-century Polish poet Cyprian His crisis is played out over a single Norwid: \u201cWill there remain among night\u2014May 8, 1945, the last day of war, DIRECTOR the ashes a star-like diamond, the when Poland, too, is deeply divided. Andrzej Wajda dawn of eternal victory?\u201d It is this uncertainty that characterizes all Wajda emerged as a world-class WRITERS of Wajda\u2019s movies, most of which \ufb01lmmaker during the renaissance Andrzej Wajda, Jerzy recreate the horror and heartbreak of Polish cinema in the 1950s. He Andrzejewski (screenplay); of Poland\u2019s recent history\u2014from made three movies dealing with the Jerzy Andrzejewski (novel) its occupation by the Nazis during war. A Generation (1955) followed a World War II to the Stalinist regime group of men and women \ufb01ghting STARS that lasted until 1989\u2014in order to in Nazi-occupied Poland. This was Zbigniew Cybulski, make sense of it. They sift through followed by Kanal (1957), which Waclaw Zastrzezynski, the wreckage of ordinary people\u2019s chronicles the tragic events of the Adam Pawlikowski, lives, looking for glimmers of hope. 1944 Warsaw Uprising, in which Bogumil Kobiela BEFORE 1955 Wajda\u2019s directorial debut, A Generation, is the story of Stach, a wayward teen living in Nazi-occupied Warsaw, Poland, during World War II. AFTER 1969 After the death of actor Zbigniew Cybulski in a train wreck, Wajda channeled his grief into his next, highly personal work, Everything for Sale, a movie within a movie.","FEAR AND WONDER 147 What else to watch: How to Be Loved (1963) \u25a0 The Army of Shadows (1969) \u25a0 The Birch Wood (1970) \u25a0 The Promised Land (1975) \u25a0 Man of Marble (1977) \u25a0 Rough Treatment (1978) \u25a0 Man of Iron (1981) \u25a0 A Love in Germany (1983) \u25a0 Katyn (2007) Andrzej Wajda Director remember. Looking up at the sky, Maciek sees \ufb01reworks exploding Born in Poland endured the war, and his movies in the darkness. The \ufb01reworks\u2014 in 1926, Andrzej play an enormously important glittering diamonds rising from Wajda became part in understanding what the ashes of Warsaw\u2014announce one of his happened to Poland\u2014and the Germany\u2019s surrender and the end country\u2019s most celebrated world\u2014in the last century. of war. Yet Wajda\u2019s trademark \ufb01lmmakers. He lived through the note of uncertainty hangs in the German occupation of Europe, Key movies air: it\u2019s the end of an era for Poland, which shaped most of his work. but what will the future bring? A key \ufb01gure of the \u201cPolish Film 1957 Kanal School,\u201d he brought a fresh air 1958 Ashes and Diamonds Dubious dawn of neorealism to his depictions 1975 The Promised Land \u201cWhat did you do during the of the men and women who 1977 Man of Marble uprising?\u201d is a question that echoed around daily lives in Poland Polish Resistance \ufb01ghters were the killing. This time he is waylaid for decades after the war. In his crushed by the German army. when he falls in love with Krystyna portrait of one man\u2019s fractured Third was Ashes and Diamonds, an (Ewa Krzyzewska), who works at the identity, Wajda constantly draws angry, melancholy movie set during hotel in which his target is a guest. our attention to broken glass and the chaos of the German occupation\u2019s She confuses him further, forcing splintered buildings. This sense of aftermath, once the dust of the him to question the beliefs that have fracture runs through the country, liberation had begun to settle. driven him for as long as he can and cannot be ignored. \u25a0 Questioning the cause You know not if \ufb02ames bring Ashes and Diamonds focuses on freedom or death. Maciek (Zbigniew Cybulski), a young soldier in Poland\u2019s right-wing Krystyna \/ Ashes and Diamonds Nationalist Army who fought in the uprising against the Nazis with the goal of establishing Polish sovereignty. As the Soviet Union takes control, Maciek is ordered to assassinate a new Communist of\ufb01cial, but he has second thoughts about waging a doomed war against the incoming left-wing administration. He bungles the murder, killing two bystanders. Torn between his conscience and loyalty to the cause for which he fought in the war, Maciek embarks on a second half-hearted attempt at In the ruins of a bombed-out church, Maciek re\ufb02ects on his equally battered ideals. It is here that Krystyna \ufb01nds an inscription of the poem from which the movie takes its name.","148 WELL NOBODY\u2019S PERFECT SOME LIKE IT HOT \/ 1959 IN CONTEXT The \ufb01nal words This poster of Some Like It \ufb02aunts the GENRE Hot, \u201cNobody\u2019s glamour of its Comedy perfect,\u201d could have starry cast, been writer\/director but other DIRECTOR Billy Wilder\u2019s motto. His versions of Billy Wilder movies are case studies of the fatally \ufb02awed and this group WRITERS the cheerfully cynical, the shot show the I. A. L. Diamond, suckers, hustlers, and two leading Billy Wilder fraudsters who are men dressed motivated by money and in drag. STARS sex and not much else. Marilyn Monroe, Jack as they come\u2014they\u2019ll do anything Lemmon, Tony Curtis Set at the tail end of the Roaring to get what they want. But Wilder\u2019s Twenties, Some Like It Hot is no movie is also a breezy feel-good BEFORE exception. Its main characters are comedy that sparkles with charm, 1953 Gentlemen Prefer as sel\ufb01sh, deceitful, and grasping pathos, and the spirit of romance. Blondes, Howard Hawks\u2019s musical comedy, is an early Hilariously innocent, Money and lust hit for Marilyn Monroe. though always on the Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon play brink of really disastrous Joe and Jerry, two Chicago jazz 1955 In Billy Wilder\u2019s romantic musicians who disguise themselves comedy, The Seven Year Itch, double-entendre. as women to \ufb02ee the mob after Monroe poses on a subway Pauline Kael they witness a gangster shootout grate, an updraft lifts her dress. during the famous Saint Valentine\u2019s 5001 Nights at the Movies, 1982 Day Massacre of 1929. They join an AFTER all-girl orchestra en route to Florida 1960 The Apartment reunites and meet vocalist Sugar Kane Jack Lemmon with Billy Wilder (Marilyn Monroe), who dreams of for a darker, more cynical take bagging a millionaire husband. on romantic comedy. Joe falls head over heels in lust and disguises himself again, this time 1961 John Huston\u2019s The as a playboy, in a bid to bed the Mis\ufb01ts is Monroe\u2019s last movie. singer. He\u2019s after sex, she\u2019s after money, but they also fall in love."]