The Life Cinematic » 2009

80 Years Ago

Thunderbolt

Posted August 8, 1929 with 1 comment

1929, US Dir Josef Von Sternberg Cast George Bancroft, Fay Wray, Richard Arlen IMDb

"I feel terrible. I feel like I'm going to die."

1929 is shaping up to be a big year for underworld pictures, and one or two of them are very good. Hot on the heels of Alibi, Von Sternberg’s contribution is more languidly paced and equally stunning to the eye. Again gang hideouts and prisons are presented as lush and sinister places, taking on larger than life proportions in high-contrast black and white. And again the story that fuels it is not quite up to par: the condemned men’s wry realization that downfall always comes after a dame aside, the compulsion to put a flimsy love story at the center of the action is usually the biggest drag on a picture of this type. Here Fay Wray plays the nervous, fidgety girlfriend of wanted man Thunderbolt, not half as beguiling as she was in The Wedding March, and looking to go straight with a bloodless bank clerk. The film gets much more interesting when Thunderbolt is caught in a surprisingly charming incident involving a stray dog and sentenced to die. There, the interaction between the hardened »»»

The Screening Log

The Love of Sumako the Actress

Posted August 5, 2009 with 0 comments

1947, Japan Dir Kenji Mizoguchi Cast Kinuyo Tanaka IMDb

If it isn’t quite up to the staggering fluidity and layers of meaning of Ugetsu, this is above all things a gloriously beautiful film, reminding me why—before I had a leg to stand on (and I still don’t)—I proclaimed Mizoguchi by far my favorite Japanese filmmaker a long time ago. (It may be true, but a handful of films from each of the majors and none from the overlooked talents won’t decide the matter now.) At least, Mizoguchi’s cinema is easier for me to grab on to, easier for me to be wowed by, prettier, more identifiable. Then, Kinuyo Tanaka is better than anyone. And that’s about as far as Sumako goes for me, which is plenty far. The unrelenting melodrama and simplicity of the story tested my patience—why here and not elsewhere, I can’t say, and I recognize the unfairness in that. Expectations, I suppose: when a film opens with a monologue on personal ethics, honest living, the relationship between art and life, and then turns swiftly to bringing Ibsen’s “A Doll’s House” yes »»»

80 Years Ago

Alibi

Posted August 2, 1929 with 0 comments

1929, US Dir Roland West Cast Chester Morris, Harry Stubbs, Regis Toomey, Mae Busch IMDb

A tremendously exciting picture: talkies take a big step forward in maturity and artistry with this film. The story and dialogue are hardly more imaginative than the average underworld picture. There are tough-talking cops who bend the rules and slick mobsters without conscience who are ultimately revealed to be cowards—in its more interesting moments, the film flirts with blurring the line between the two sides, but doesn’t delve deeply into the idea. Caught in between is the virtuous, independent blond beauty, the daughter of an officer and girlfriend of a convict, convinced the police are nothing but a gang of brutes setting up innocent men who need society’s help to escape the abusive hands of the law. The dialogue, generally, adds nothing to the image.

But what an image: art-deco meets German expressionism in a foggy, geometric, relentlessly »»»