Category: 1931

Tokyo Chorus (1931)

Yasujirō Ozu | 1hr 30min

For many great artists, the act of creation comes as second nature, treated like a grand experiment to be dismantled and reconstructed in different forms. For Yasujirō Ozu, it is a practice of intense deliberation and refinement, stoking introspection by mindfully sharpening the tools of one’s craft. This is not to say that he lacks playfulness or humour – one only needs to look at his earliest films to see the influence of Hollywood’s silent comedies after all. Nevertheless, Tokyo Chorus marks a shift in his formal focus. Starting here, he sets off on a journey towards meticulous, cinematic perfection, directing pensive domestic dramas which would define Japanese cinema in decades to come.

Gone are the broad genre strokes which marked Ozu’s prior efforts. In their place, we find the subdued melodrama of a family man whose sudden unemployment tests his personal relationships and wears away at his lively spirit. As it so happens, that streak of wayward defiance has gotten Okajima in trouble ever since he was a student, previously exasperating his schoolteacher Mr. Omura and more recently getting him fired for aggressively defending a laid off colleague. Clearly he never quite learned to demonstrate tact in disagreement, and now as he faces up to the consequences of his insubordination, he must also grapple with the responsibility he holds as a husband and father.

Debuting four years after the advent of synchronised sound in Hollywood, Tokyo Chorus stands as a lingering remnant of the silent era, demonstrating some of Ozu’s finest visual storytelling at this point in his career. His trademark pillow shots aren’t quite fully formed yet, but the cutaway of rustling trees and a torii gate marks a soothing transition away from the prologue, while a montage of typewriters, half-eaten lunches, and empty shoes introduce Okajima’s office momentarily absent of workers.

Ozu’s tracking shots certainly bring a sense of order in their straight, unbending lines, but it is very much his editing which sensitively studies the details of these home and work environments, particularly following the hospitalisation of Okajima’s daughter. After selling his wife’s kimonos to pay the bills, their quarrel takes place almost entirely through silent gazes as they playing a clapping game with their children, underscoring the tension with whimsical levity. Actors Tokihiko Okada and Emiko Yagumo must be credited here too for the emotional journey of their facial expressions, bouncing his shame off her disappointment, before uniting in shared joy over their son and daughter. Having separated them in isolating mid-shots, Ozu finally cuts to a wide shot of the entire family playing together, bringing resolution through a moment of forgiveness and understanding.

On a broader level too, Ozu builds Tokyo Chorus around these small cuts to Okajima’s dignity, particularly demoralising him when he cannot afford a bike for his son. The job he finds carrying banners and handing out flyers for The Calorie Café does little to ease his insecurity as well, seeing him bristle at the pity of others, though there is a sweet poetry to the fact that he gets it from a random encounter with his old schoolteacher. Even after retiring and opening a restaurant in his senior years, Mr. Omura still hasn’t quite let go of his fatherly instincts, taking Okajima under his wing once again and promising to help him find work. Ozu allows room for some light comic touches here as Okajima finds himself reliving the days of his youth, obediently marching to the beat of Mr. Omura’s drum, yet still he can’t entirely stave off the creeping depression.

“I feel like I’m getting old. I’ve lost my spirit.”

There is a moral lesson to take from Tokyo Chorus, though Ozu does not deliver it with the overwrought sentimentality of his Hollywood counterparts. Mr. Omura’s gentle, reassuring presence rather stands as a delicate testament to those teachers who don’t just educate us, but become extensions of our families, guiding us with wisdom and purpose through our lowest moments. This tight bond especially reveals itself in Okajima’s class reunion at The Calorie Café, making for a satisfying bookend to Ozu’s narrative, and the job offer which our protagonist finally receives during this gathering makes the moment all the more rewarding.

Still, even amidst the celebration of Okajima’s new vocation as a teacher, there is a lingering sadness in the air as they realise that he must move away from Tokyo. Such is the nature of a student-mentor relationship after all, seeing both men inevitably part ways once the job is finished. Much like Okajima’s silent reconciliation with his wife from earlier though, Ozu again plays out another beautifully edited conversation through nothing but facial expressions, this time between the two men whose eyes sorrowfully drift to the ground while everyone joyfully sings around them. Noticing Mr. Omura’s doleful expression, Okajima offers him a wide, sympathetic grin, and graciously receives one in return. Families of all sorts heal wounded souls in Tokyo Chorus, and as Ozu sharpens his own cinematic skillset, his tender-hearted tribute to those who bring them together marks a moderate yet gratifying step forward.

Tokyo Chorus is currently streaming on The Criterion Channel.

La Chienne (1931)

Jean Renoir | 1hr 35min

So tragically naïve is aspiring painter Maurice Legrand’s tale that Jean Renoir does not even let his demeaning fall from grace speak for itself in La Chienne, but rather frames it within the humiliating confines of a Punch and Judy puppet show. “The play we shall perform is neither drama nor comedy,” our wood-and-felt narrator explains. “The characters are neither heroes nor villains. They’re plain folk like you and me.” Indeed, the super-imposed images of Maurice, his mistress Lulu, and her pimp Dédé take their place upon this tiny stage like figurines playing the roles assigned to them by some invisible force – perhaps a cosmic power that has already written out their fates, or maybe a humble storyteller who lingers just outside the frame.

Either way, there are some inevitable misfortunes that simply have no regard for whether one might consider themselves a good person or not. Maurice is a laughingstock among his peers, so timid that he is even overshadowed by the portrait of his wife Adele’s seemingly deceased first husband on display in his home. Nevertheless, a crack in the moral fortitude of a righteous yet weak-willed man is an opening for corruption to plant its seed. There are simply no winners to be found in Renoir’s adaptation of this French novel, especially when the storyteller deems all characters to be equally undeserving of happiness.

Maurice is introduced a puppet on life’s stage – a hapless fool whose story is already written out by fate.
The apparently deceased husband of Maurice’s wife hangs on the wall, overshadowing his replacement.

With La Chienne kicking off Renoir’s magnificent 1930s run, this moral fable set the wheels of France’s poetic realism in motion, weaving lyrical musings on romance and despair through Maurice, Lulu, and Dédé’s love triangle. Besides a few effective uses of stark light and shadow, it does not possess the visual harshness of German Expressionism, but rather bridges the gap between that cinematic movement and Hollywood’s film noir with its brooding fatalism and seductive femme fatale. Fourteen years later in 1945, Fritz Lang would even adapt the same literary source material in Scarlet Street, shooting in darkened studio sets modelled after New York rather than around the bright streets and buildings of Paris.

Renoir uses camera movement and his deep focus in tandem, constantly reframing his camera to catch new details through windows.
The bright streets of Paris are the primary setting of La Chienne, shot on location – an entirely different aesthetic to the expressionistic studio sets of Hollywood film noir.

The transitory nature of La Chienne’s production is only further underscored by the recent advent of synchronous sound in film, though one wouldn’t guess this was an issue for Renoir given the way his camera completely disregards the cumbersome audio equipment, preferring to glide into new frames rather than cut away. These delicate movements demonstrate a boundless creativity, rising with a dumbwaiter into the dining hall where Maurice’s tale begins, drifting past a row of laughing guests, and settling on the pouty face of our milquetoast protagonist. When we later visit Lulu and Dédé plotting how best to take advantage of this poor fool during a lively waltz, Renoir conversely distinguishes their passion with a kinetic burst of energy, displaying an early instance of handheld camerawork as we rock and sway with their dance.

Creative camera movements, introducing us to Maurice at a party by travelling up a dumbwaiter.
Brisk elegance as the camera dances with Lulu and Dédé, participating in a lively waltz.
A smooth camera motion separating Maurice from Lulu when he discovers her affair, looking through the window with her on one side, and him on the other.

The plan to milk Maurice of his money is thus set in motion, seeing Lulu claim his paintings as her own and remarkably find far greater commercial success. The trust that he places in her is pitiful, compelling him to look past the light that is suspiciously turned on in her apartment when she isn’t home, though we can’t feel too sorry for him either. Within the meekness of Michel Simon’s performance is a self-serving cowardice that particularly emerges when he breaks up with Adele, choosing to stage a cruel reveal that her first husband is in fact alive, rather than simply owning up to his infidelity.

Renoir’s blocking of this pivotal moment arrives with a gorgeous flourish as Adele and her astonished neighbours direct their eyes towards a doorframe bordered with patterned wallpaper, within which stands a living-and-breathing Alexis. This pairing of deep focus photography with structural frames continues to mark significant plot beats from there, notably including one devastating turning point that leaves a sliver of Lulu and Dédé visible through a doorway largely obstructed by Maurice’s body, frozen in shock at discovering them in bed together.

Superb use of wallpaper, blocking, and framing, layering the shot with detail as Maurice reveals Alex alive and well.
Maurice blocks the doorway that reveals Lulu and Dédé in bed together, uncomfortably crammed into a tight frame.

The window of Lulu’s apartment also makes for a series of stunning compositions in La Chienne, delicately framing her and Maurice’s romantic encounters behind a row of flowers sitting just outside, and delivering a Brechtian reminder of the puppet stage that this entire story is staged upon. When it appears in the first two instances, it is formally associated with Maurice’s tender devotion, though when we return for the last time it is tragically corrupted. As the camera climbs up the side of the apartment building and continues through this frame, Renoir’s camera finally settles on a truly horrific scene – the brutal distortion of Maurice’s love into a murderous rage.

In a magnificent demonstration of film form, Renoir returns to this flower bed outside the window three times, each time framing a development in Maurice and Lulu’s romance.

That this failed painter so easily escapes suspicion throughout the police investigation that follows is a testament to the community’s total disregard for him, unable to even tease the idea that he is capable of such a vile act. Despite Dédé being innocent for once, it simply makes far more sense to pin this crime on the widely-loathed pimp, especially since he was unlucky enough to be witnessed coincidentally visiting the murder scene around the time of Lulu’s demise.

Just as Lulu’s fate led her to the end of blade and Dédé’s to a public execution for a crime he never committed, Maurice is doomed to suffer a humiliation greater than he has ever known. Death would be preferable to this personal hell living as a haggled tramp on the streets without any work or wife, and even he acknowledges as much when he learns of Adele’s passing some years later. Having lost all dignity, there are few people who believe the words of a madman claiming responsibility for a murder that has already been solved, and those who do care little anyway.

Bitter irony follows Maurice to the end, designating him a pauper while his own paintings become tremendously valuable in the art community – wealth that could have been his had he been honest from the start.

Meanwhile, the artistic greatness that Maurice was secretly capable of is being sold for a fortune just down the street, still being attributed to the woman he killed – a prodigious painter whose life, in the eyes of the public, was taken far too soon. With his matted beard and tattered clothes, he is unrecognisable in the old self-portrait now being carried away by a customer dropping a measly 20 francs behind them as they leave. As Maurice scrabbles to pick it up, he barely even considers that this is the first and only time he has effectively received money for one of his artworks, and neither does he register the meagreness of the sum compared to what it has sold for. The meal that it will secure is good enough for our humbled antihero, now effectively rendered more invisible than ever as Renoir draws the curtains on this fable, and accepting his place as a mere puppet on life’s stage of poetic irony.

The puppet show lowers its curtains on this tragic farce, bookending the narrative.

La Chienne is currently streaming on The Criterion Channel, and is available to purchase from Amazon.

Bride of Frankenstein (1935)

James Whale | 1hr 15min

Before Universal Studios’ monster movies became parodies of themselves with such soulless sequels as Son of Dracula and Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy, there was a brief moment in the 1930s when it looked as if its attempts at franchise moviemaking might have retained some sense of artistry. In retrospect, the brilliant success of Bride of Frankenstein can be more put down to James Whale than anything else though, as the Gothic director steps up the subtext, camp, and expressionistic mise-en-scène of his original 1931 film Frankenstein to deliver not just a lynchpin of horror cinema, but a piece of film that feels even truer to his own dramatic sensibilities.

If it feels like Bride of Frankenstein carries a little less narrative elegance than its precursor, perhaps that can be put down to Whale’s diversion from Shelley’s original story. What he does offer though is an increased fascination in the more humanistic side of Frankenstein’s monster, lending the story a transgressive edge that frames him as a lonely outcast searching for genuine companionship, no matter how unorthodox. Where society deems him an inherently unlovable figure, Dr Pretorius decides that giving him a wife of his own kind might just be the answer. After all, isn’t that a perfectly conventional expression of happiness? The fact that the most honest, meaningful connection the monster makes is so quickly destroyed by strangers speaks volumes about the cultural restrictions placed upon individual happiness, particularly as they pertain to those who do not fit its most conservative definitions.

Theological symbolism in the monster’s journey. It isn’t a one-to-one comparison, but the crucifixion of a pure soul is a pointed parallel.

And indeed, it is in those areas beyond the ordinary, quiet village that the monster prefers to dwell, keeping out of sight for as long as he can. In this sense, Pretorius isn’t all that dissimilar – he too is a macabre figure who basks in the gloom of crypts and uses coffins as picnic tables. If there was anyone who could possibly understand the minds of both the monster and creator, it is him, a mad scientist who recognises his own innate darkness and yet brushes it off with grim jokes and a foppish theatricality. He is in a better position than anyone to realise what sort of friend the monster needs, and even in spite of this, the solution he poses is nothing more than a cruel, self-serving experimentation and tribute to his own ego.

Gothic architecture framing and obstructing these compositions. A simply magnificent use of decor.

Pretorius’ new world that places him at its centre is truly one of “gods and monsters”, and Whale recognises it as such in all its magnificent menace. Stark shadows are cast across faces and bodies caught in high, low, and canted angles, twisted in grotesque shapes like ghastly extensions of the Gothic architecture surrounding them. The influence of German expressionists pervades Whale’s aesthetic all through Bride of Frankenstein, its ubiquitous atmosphere forcing his characters to either struggle against or submit to its dark, eerie power. Towards the end though it is the Soviet montage theorists whose impact emerges in Pretorius and Frankenstein’s major experiment, as Whale builds a kinetic rhythm in his rapid cutting that climactically leads to the reveal of the Bride herself.

Landmark expressionistic lighting and set design in Bride of Frankenstein – truly haunting imagery.

In the short few minutes she appears onscreen, Elsa Lanchester gives a performance that, like the monster himself, has become the definitive icon of the character. Her eyes darts around the space in twitchy motions like a bird, stretched wide open in horror at her own existence. She does not react kindly to the monster either, as she screeches in fear at what has been thrusted upon her. “We belong dead,” is not so much his assertion of the natural order than it is a poignant submission to social convention, and a damnation of those other souls consumed by necrotic decay. One can’t help but feel in these final minutes that the empathy Whale holds for the monster is of an entirely different kind to that held by Shelley. Perhaps in the original 1931 film he was an abomination that Dr Frankenstein should have never created, but Bride of Frankenstein gives him the inalienable right to human life, and realises that he will only ever return to the place he came from when any chance of living that life outside the boundaries of social convention is well and truly destroyed.

A striking character design to match that of Frankenstein’s monster.

Bride of Frankenstein is currently available to stream on iTunes, YouTube, and Google Play.

M (1931)

Fritz Lang | 1hr 51min

It may be somewhat surprising to our modern sensibilities that M was such a controversial film upon its release, especially given its colossal influence on almost everything we watch today from police procedurals to crime movies. It isn’t its bluntness that makes it such a provocative film though, but rather its masterful use of subtext and signifiers to understand the mind of a reprehensible child killer. From the opening minutes where we watch the shadow of Peter Lorre’s profile slide across a wanted poster, to the simple image of a balloon floating into some power lines to mark the death of a child – Beckert’s crimes are conveyed through progressions of images and musical motifs that show us everything but his actual murders and, for its entire first act, his face. 

A chilling introduction to a great cinematic villain, and a highpoint of German Expressionism.
Hauntingly tragic visual symbolism – a balloon caught in powerlines marking the death of a child.

This is only one half of the story though. The other follows the police and crime rings tracking down the mysterious child killer for their own purposes, interrogating suspects and using a network of homeless beggars to keep an eye on the children of the city. The parallels between the law officers and criminals are closely drawn – both conspire in dark, dingy rooms about round tables, each possessing their own special abilities to achieve their goals. For once in their lives, they have a common target that unites them. That Beckert has made enemies of even the worst criminals paints him out as an abomination on a whole new level of depravity.

Fritz Lang’s camera is always finding reflections in glass windows and frames in the tight spaces between city buildings, archways, and even people. The crowds of the city are prone to hysteria when they believe they have found the culprit, but they are also capable of great cooperation when they put their minds to singular tasks. Without knowing his crimes, to them Beckert appears to be just another innocent citizen. But thanks to Lang’s framing of his short, dumpy figure, Beckert stands out to us. He doesn’t strike an intimidating figure, but in his bulging wide eyes and switch blade that suggests sexual arousal, Peter Lorre exudes revulsion. This isn’t a man who embodies murder in his very being, but rather an ordinary person who has let his most twisted desires get the better of him. When he realises he has been branded by an M, he panics. He can easily shed the marked coat, but the mere realisation that someone else has recognised the evil in him is the harshest damnation.

Striking imagery in the construction of this city through its architecture and frames.

Once he has been dragged into the unofficial courtroom, we keep seeing hands and arms reaching into the frame to grab Beckert by the shoulder, as if to accusingly catch him out over and over again. He is surrounded, and completely helpless. At his lowest and most vulnerable, he delivers an impassioned speech – but not the kind we were expecting from a man like this.

“Always, always I have to roam the streets and I always sense that someone is following me. It is me! And I shadow myself! Silently, yet I still hear it. Sometimes I feel like I’m hunting myself down. I want to run, run away for me. But I can’t! I can’t flee from myself! Must take the oath that it’s urging me on and run. I want off! I want off . . . Who knows what’s inside me? How it cries and screams inside when I have to do it.”

Beckert faced with his own sin, breaking down into guilt and panic.

It isn’t quite sympathy we feel for him, but rather pity for his own weaknesses. The visual threads that tether M back to the era of silent cinema are clear in the sped-up montages and expressionist images, but its use of sound, both in the whistling motif and in the payoff of Lorre’s final monologue, is also monumental in the history of film. It is certainly a highlight of both Lang’s and Lorre’s careers, but M is also disturbing in how it hints at a manipulative darkness in Germany a mere few years before the rise of the Nazi party.

Peter Lorre delivers one of the truly great screen performances of the 1930s as the grotesque serial killer and pedophile, Beckert.

M is available to stream on Kanopy, and available to rent or buy on YouTube.