Category: 1934

A Story of Floating Weeds (1934)

Yasujirō Ozu | 1hr 26min

Kihachi’s theatrical troupe would be the first to admit that there is no great honour in their profession, drifting aimlessly from town to town like the titular debris in A Story of Floating Weeds. They are the dregs of society, offering escapist entertainment to working class audiences yet never planting roots anywhere for the long term. So ashamed is Kihachi of this life that even his illegitimate son Shinkichi is unaware of their blood relation, believing that the man who visits every few years with his troupe is merely a friend of his mother, Otsune. When Kihachi’s mistress Otaka eventually discovers his secret family and seeks revenge, she even spitefully sends fellow performer Otoki to seduce his son, hoping to taint him by romantic association with an actor.

The contempt these entertainers hold for themselves may be extreme, yet the petty reprisals they vindictively stoke among themselves only further cripple their morale. “He’s cheap like you, playing around with actresses,” Otaka venomously spits at Kihachi after her ruinous plans come to fruition, and he responds in kind with a beating, letting her provocation get the better of him. Yasujirō Ozu may offer compassion to the lower classes of Japan, but this does not get in the way of recognising his ensemble’s character flaws, driving them towards a pitiful, entirely preventable self-destruction.

The quiet stillness of the train station precedes the kabuki troupe’s noisy arrival, and continues to linger after they exit.
Ozu sets his tale in small town at the foot of a mountain range, disturbing the humdrum mundanity with the excitement of travelling performers.

Most important of all, A Story of Floating Weeds marks Ozu’s first major leap forward as a visual artist, studying the subtle details of those smalltown locations which set the scene for this working-class melodrama. A montage of pillow shots introduces us to the train station where the kabuki troupe is set to arrive, flitting through the quiet interior before it is filled with chatty visitors, and sitting in silence again as the lights switch off. These moments of stasis are crucial to Ozu’s narrative pacing, developing steady rhythms in both his editing and mise-en-scène. When Kihachi goes fishing with Shinkichi, Ozu aligns their movements as they cast lines into the river, and later illustrates the undisturbed synchronicity between father and son while they eat corn and play checkers.

Visual harmonies – father and son cast fishing lines in perfect unison, and Ozu would later recapture this shot with even greater formal purpose in There Was a Father.
Art rooted in Japanese tradition, aimed at the lower classes of Japanese society.

When the time comes for the troupe’s opening night, a parallel tracking shot past the audience’s hand fans waving in rapid harmony continues to underscore the lively anticipation brought in the actors’ wake, only for a sudden downpour to cancel the performance and mark a dour turning point. With little else to occupy her time, Otaka goes poking around at Otsune’s watering-hole to investigate Kihachi’s secret, and Ozu begins to use his staggered blocking to reveal their fracturing divisions. As Otaka and Kihachi take their argument outside, he splits them between awnings on either side of the alley, separated by the torrential rain. Her jealousy and his protectiveness of Shinkichi are irreconcilable, and thus she sets in motion that aforementioned plan to corrupt the innocent young man, wielding Otoki’s wily seduction as a distraction.

Torrential rain brings the troupe’s performance to a halt, yet heralds greater dramatic tension, marking a dour turning point in the narrative.
Rain separates these two resentful lovers, first conveyed through cutting back and forth between them, before Ozu eventually lands on this incredibly composed wide shot.

Further pillow shots capture swaying lanterns and tiny flags flapping in the gale, mirroring that uneasy, brewing tension which the troupe’s imminent departure will not so easily put to rest. Love is not some uplifting, indomitable force that transcends class boundaries here, but rather an inconvenience to the status quo, complicating matters when Otoki confesses she has genuinely fallen in love with this man she was simply meant to fake feelings for. With seemingly no chance for redemption or reconciliation, Kihachi decides that disbanding the entire troupe seems to be the only option, and A Story of Floating Weeds captures their last moments together with grave solemnity as they sit and smoke in silence beneath a dim, hanging lamp.

Simmering tension in Ozu’s atmospheric pillow shots as lanterns sway and flags flutter in the wind.
Ozu imposes darkness upon the actors in their final moments as a troupe, mourning the end of their ragtag, makeshift family.

For a director who is so often praised by his humanism, Ozu doesn’t get quite enough recognition for just how cynical he can be, often letting characters sacrifice individual desires for what they believe is the greater good. For Kihachi, all his fears about how Shinkichi might react come true when the secret is finally put out in the open, though this evidently stems more from shock and betrayal than any specific prejudice against Kihachi as a person. After all, despite his father’s absence, this was the man who paid for all his schooling with no expectations attached – besides perhaps the hope of simply seeing his son succeed.

Stillness and emptiness in Ozu’s mise-en-scène as characters part ways, the tension between them shamefully unresolved.

Shinkichi’s change of heart comes far too late. By the time he is rushing to the train station to make amends with Kihachi, his father has already left town, giving him the chance to progress in society without being hindered by his shameful parentage. Fatherhood is a thankless job in A Story of Floating Weeds, and one that is only further complicated by the value this culture places on class and honour, seeking to segregate educated professionals from those who barely scrape by. Ozu’s ire is not aimed at any individual character here, as even Otaka and Kihachi wind up reconciling in the closing minutes, recognising the similarities in their suffering. It is rather those arbitrary social barriers that condemn his ensemble to lives of lingering regret that disillusion him most of all, undermining family for status, and trading self-fulfilment for cycles of deep, enduring sorrow.

Forgiveness between the bitterest rivals, ultimately accepting their lowly place in Japanese society, and cynically realising they have no one else.

A Story of Floating Weeds is currently streaming on The Criterion Channel.

L’Atalante (1934)

Jean Vigo| 1hr 29min

Life aboard Jean’s canal barge L’Atalante is not quite the romantic escape that his young bride Juliette dreamed it would be. The men who sail it up and down the Seine are clearly unaccustomed to female company – particularly the eccentric first mate Père Jules, whose horde of cats, hand-drawn tattoos, and uncouth mannerisms clash with her more refined sensibilities. She appears truly alone as the camera follows her in a tracking shot across the entire span of the ship, and there is barely room for privacy in the clutter of Jean Vigo’s interiors, as bottles, lamps, and tools crowd out every frame. His trademark high angles not only serve a practical purpose fitting multiple characters into the same shot, but from this vantage point, we also grasp the suffocating claustrophobia of Juliette’s new home

None of this is to suggest that the barge is an irredeemable prison though. L’Atalante is a fable of ruptured innocence, jealousy, and temptation, tugging at the seams of Jean and Juliette’s fragile relationship while illuminating a path to the marital bliss that has eluded them. Salvation does not lie in the city’s worldly flights of fancy, as alluring as they may be, but aboard that very boat which she longs to leave behind. For Jean as well, contentment is only found once the chains of insecurity and mistrust are shed, guiding him towards an appreciation of the woman he has married. Although this ship may feel like an oppressive enclosure at times, Vigo’s lyrical direction also reveals it to be a sanctuary of healing, freely drifting from port to port with no anchors to tether it down.

A delicate arrangement of bottles and crockery to obstruct this romantic frame.
Vigo’s trademark high angles serve a practical purpose here, capturing the entire ensemble in close quarters while highlighting the ship’s claustrophobia.
A lonely tracking shot moving with Juliette from one end of the barge to the other.

Quite ironically, the character that L’Atalante affords the most personable qualities is Jules, who transcends mere comic relief and becomes Juliette’s closest friend aboard the boat. As subtly expressive as Dita Parlo’s performance may be, Michel Simon outshines both leads here, fully realising the endearing humanity in Jules’ idiosyncrasies. This is a man who joyfully dances around in a skirt that Juliette has sewn, and later on falls victim to a prank when he is astounded by his apparent ability to produce music by tracing a vinyl record, only for Vigo to reveal the cabin boy playing his accordion from the other side of the room. In his own time, Jules is also a collector of souvenirs from his travels across the world, ranging from a jar of grotesque, pickled hands to a mechanical puppet which conducts an imaginary orchestra. Wherever the camera sits in this wondrous cabin of curiosities, ornaments frequently obstruct our view, reframing what initially seemed to be a hoarder’s palace into a museum of exotic tales and warm conversation.

Père Jules’ cabin of trinkets and ornaments makes for a delightful set piece, displaying his eccentric personality via curious souvenirs amassed from his many adventures.
Cats and music – Père Jules’ identity captured in a frame, even without his literal presence.
Cluttered mise-en-scène worthy of Josef von Sternberg, impeding on the presence of this small ensemble.

Not that Jean is particularly happy about the hospitality which Juliette finds in his first mate’s quarters. It doesn’t take long after getting married for his envy to spike, smashing up Jules’ cabin upon catching them together, and glowering at flirtatious strangers when they journey into Paris. The camera glides with them into a dance hall where a handsome street peddler entertains Juliette with magic tricks, a song, and a dance, and even after Jean pushes him to the floor, he persistently seeks to lure her deeper into the city.

Lovely depth of field showing off the beauty of France’s canals and Jean’s playful personality.
Michelangelo Antonioni in the architecture – the harsh monstrosities of an industrial, modern society imposes on Juliette as she wanders without aim.
A decade before Italian neorealism would pioneer location shooting, Vigo was using the docks of France to ground his drama in a sense of authenticity.

And lured she is – just as Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans portrayed the city as a metropolis of excitement and danger a few years earlier, so too does L’Atalante tantalise Juliette with its urban thrills. Vigo’s location shooting thrives along the Seine’s industrial ports, setting his drama against warehouses, chimneys, and steam trains, while her journey into the shopping district of live bands and window displays carries a vibrant energy that her husband’s boat lacks. Still, the exhilaration can only last so long. Having been left behind, she tries to buy a train fare to reach Jean’s next stop in Le Havre, yet the dark reality of Paris is alarmingly revealed when a thief steals her purse and she is forced to find work.

The lights of Paris lure Juliette into its fleeting temptations, here reflecting storefront puppets in the window.
Perhaps the single strongest scene in the film, sinking Jean into surreal visions of his lost love beneath the Seine.

It doesn’t take long for regret to strike her jealous husband either, driving him into a deep depression. Wholeheartedly believing the myth that it is possible to glimpse the face of one’s lover in water, Jean impulsively dives overboard, and Vigo capitalises on the opportunity to sink us into his aching, dreamy mind through surreal dissolves and double exposure effects. There in the depths of the Seine, she floats like a doll suspended in the currents, and a light breeze ruffles her blonde hair as she lets out a silent laugh. Trying to cheer up his skipper, Jules plays a romantic melody on his phonograph, which Vigo further uses to underscore a montage intercutting their yearning search for each other. More long dissolves bridge match cuts between their restless tossing and turning, unable to get a good night’s sleep in each other’s absence, before finally ending this astounding sequence with a dishevelled Jean facing up to his displeased company manager.

Cross-cutting between both lovers as they longingly search for each other along the rivers of France.
Bound together by long dissolves and parallel montage editing as they toss and turn in their sleep.

Perhaps it is fate that ultimately draws friends and lovers together after their lonely parallel journeys, or maybe love really is that powerful a force in L’Atalante that it echoes across canals, calling them back home. After all, ‘The Bargeman’s Song’ not only provides comfort to Juliette during her visit to a music booth, evoking memories of her days with men who regularly sung this familiar tune on the boat. It also draws the attention of Jules, who happens to be passing by at the exact moment the melody is playing through a speaker on the street. In Juliette and Jean’s embrace, past misgivings are finally forgiven, rapidly dissolving all heartache. At last, their tiny vessel becomes a home where love takes root once more, and quiet freedom is found in its gentle, unanchored drift.

L’Atalante is currently streaming on The Criterion Channel.

The Black Cat (1934)

Edward G. Ulmer | 1hr 5min

Atop the ruins of Fort Marmorus in Hungary, where thousands of World War I soldiers died, an imposing manor has been built by Austrian architect, Hjalmar Poelzig. Within its basement, an evil Satanic cult gathers, preserving the bodies of dead women for its own nefarious purposes. It is also upon these dark grounds where Edgar G. Ulmer stages a showdown between two of Universal Pictures’ greatest stars, Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi, both chewing scenery with exaggerated accents and mannerisms that are wild by even their own standards. An “atmosphere of death” hangs over their decades-old rivalry, cast in stark shadows across lavish halls and secret dungeons, and Ulmer savours every demented moment of it, painting over The Black Cat’s uneven pacing with a pulpy, macabre expressionism.

Honeymooners and audience conduits Peter and Joan are the least interesting thing about this film of treachery, conspiracies, and mind games. Their encounter with Lugosi’s psychiatrist Dr. Vitus Werdegast is simply our introduction into a far more fascinating underworld run by Poelzig, Karloff’s enigmatic occultist. Rain pours down in the film’s exteriors, dousing the night in a pervasive gloom, while Ulmer’s interior architecture becomes a Gothic extension of Poelzig’s madness. Against bright backlights, silhouettes cut striking shapes out of his characters, while a pair of spiral staircases become central set pieces – one stretching wide across a gridded backdrop, and the other sharply dropping into the basement like a steep, rickety tower.

Like Dracula’s castle or Frankenstein’s laboratory, Poelzig’s manor stands in a lineage within Universal monster movies of creepy buildings standing atop lonely mountains.
Excellent use of chiaroscuro lighting for the introduction of Karloff’s creepy occultist, rising from his bed.
Ulmer returns to this set piece multiple times, each time finding new angles and shadows around it.

Most powerful of all Ulmer’s visual motifs though are the elongated shadows cast by Poelzig’s black cat, striking a fear deep into Dr. Vitus’ heart with its legs stretched out like fingers, and representing a “living embodiment of evil.” Karloff himself takes on characteristics of his feline companion too, prowling around the manor in long robes and scowling at his guests from beneath a heavy brow. When he invites Dr. Vitus to play a game of death, Ulmer even cuts away to an eerie montage of tracking shots down the building’s opulent hallways, hauntingly disembodying his voice like a lingering spectre. He is a force of malevolence on every level, certainly in the underworld of occultism, but also in his betrayal of his own nation to the Russians in World War I.

A commitment to the visual motif of the black cat, tying its shadows into the occult symbolism.
Ulmer using these angular beams to obstruct the shots of Poelzig’s Satanic cult.

The Satan worshippers who gather in Poelzig’s tabernacle are an unassuming lot, dressing in formalwear and looking more like wealthy aristocrats than social outcasts. Still, there is something unsettling about their glowering faces as we cut between them in close-ups, while Ulmer’s wide shots are obstructed by the obelisks and cross-like altar at the centre of the room. So too do the shadows and torture instruments of Poelzig’s dungeon construct some particularly oppressive frames around his final confrontation with Dr. Vitus, which gruesomely comes to an end with the Satanist’s execution on his own embalming rack. The Black Cat does not possess the same narrative strength as either Dracula or Frankenstein, and yet the morbid delight of seeing the stars of both clash across Ulmer’s expressionistic interiors makes for a darkly mesmerising occult horror.

A well-cut montage jumping around the faces of the cult members.
A huge influence from German expressionism in these shadows, angles, and designs – the foundation of this film’s profuse visual style.

The Black Cat is not currently streaming in Australia.

Manhattan Melodrama (1934)

W.S. Van Dyke | 1hr 33min

Back in the days of early Hollywood when it wasn’t uncommon for films to wear their genres as titles like The Broadway Melody, audiences knew exactly what they could expect by just a few, short words. It is a little surprising then to discover that Manhattan Melodrama packs an even greater punch than its uninspired name suggests, adding its own voice to the age-old ‘nature vs nurture’ debate by formally contrasting a pair of old friends who grew up as surrogate brothers, and yet find themselves following opposing paths leading them into conflict as adults. Not only is this the second film that W.S. van Dyke directed in 1932, with The Thin Man backing up his admirable filmography, but this is also the same year that Clark Gable made his breakthrough in It Happened One Night. While his performance here doesn’t quite touch the heights he reaches in Frank Capra’s romantic comedy, his brotherly chemistry with William Powell is substantial, building between them a sweet relationship that transcends any law that might drive them apart.

The sinking of the passenger steamboat PS General Slocum in 1904 marks the point at which young boys Blackie and Jim lose their biological families and start a new one with each other, connecting over the shared tragedy marking their childhoods. It also displays van Dyke’s greatest piece of direction in the film, a truly Eisensteinian sequence like Battleship Potemkin’s Odessa Steps scene that builds a tragic disaster from the colliding fragments of a dextrously edited montage. Beyond the utter panic present in the busy staging and frenzied pacing, this montage still carefully tracks various figures within the chaos – the man who has fallen beneath the feet of a trampling crowd, the trapped child banging on a window, the choking passengers toppling over the side of the ship, and most importantly, the two boys making their own escape to shore.

Van Dyke following in the footsteps of Eisenstein in his editing of this historical disaster, adopting the Soviet montage barely ten years after its innovation.
Manhattan Melodrama also features some dynamic camera movements, keeping up with the horses here at the race track.

Though they grow up side-by-side in New York, their shared history is one of the only things they have in common. Through their years as teenagers, van Dyke returns to his inventive montage editing, but this time a split screen accompanies them as the studious Jim works hard towards a law degree, and the mischievous Blackie gambles his way to owning a successful yet illegal casino. As they become adults, another similarity soon emerges as well – Gable and Powell bear a striking resemblance to each other with their slicked-back hair, smart suits, and pencil moustaches, looking like a pair of twins. When Myrna Loy finally enters the scene as Eleanor, the stage is finally set for a love triangle that will see her romantic interest switch from one to the other, perhaps seeing them as flip sides of a single person.

An inspired split screen montage showing the diverging paths of the two surrogate brothers as they grow up.

By crafting such robust formal connections between his characters, van Dyke draws out rich, internal conflicts that bring their very principles into question. Blackie’s murder of a man who has threatened Jim during his run for New York governor might have come from a place of love, but it is a foolish act that presses his friend to doubt the legitimacy of his own election, as well as to consider unethically commuting Blackie’s sentence. As one sits in prison awaiting his execution and the other is sworn into office, Manhattan Melodrama keeps on drawing these poignant comparisons that have sent them to either end of the social ladder, composing elegant frames that trap Blackie behind prison bars and wired windows.

Gable is often framed behind bars throughout the final act of the film, but in this composition as the friends say their farewells we see them both trapped by their separate fates.

It is only when both men stop trying to cover for each other’s mistakes and accept the natural consequences of their actions that they ultimately find any closure in their relationship, as van Dyke lets them part ways towards their independent futures with a poignant farewell. Tragedy thus marks the beginning and end of Blackie and Jim’s fraternal love, touchingly binding them together as star-crossed soulmates, and, yes, even delivering on the teary melodrama promised in the film’s self-conscious title.

A poignant frame as Blackie walks towards his execution, tying off his storyline.

Manhattan Melodrama is currently streaming on The Criterion Channel.