Category: 1940s

Ivan the Terrible (1944-46)

Sergei Eisenstein | 2 Parts (1hr 40min, 1hr 26min)

So rapturous was the reception that Ivan the Terrible, Part I received from Joseph Stalin, it is hard to blame Sergei Eisenstein for recklessly pushing the boundaries of state censorship in its sequel. Both films are mirrors of each other – the first revealing an idealistic ambition in the young Ivan IV which Part II withers into paranoid cruelty, and together painting a vivid portrait of Eisenstein’s own shifting relationship with the Soviet Union. This was no longer the filmmaker who sought to reflect revolutionary principles in his experimental montage theory, but rather a disillusioned artist simultaneously defying and reluctantly cooperating with Stalin’s regime. It is a little ironic that the Communist dictator should see so much of him himself in the first Tsar of Russia, yet Eisenstein nevertheless took the metaphor as a creative challenge, risking his life and liberty to compose a vision of oppressive tyranny that stands true across centuries.

The casting of Nikolay Cherkasov as the imposing central figure here is particularly fascinating given his previous role in Alexander Nevsky, where he portrayed the titular 13th-century Prince of Novgorod. As a young, newly-coronated Ivan proudly declares Moscow a “Third Rome,” his eyes glisten with tears and hope, sentimentalising a vision of Russia’s future which doesn’t sound so different from Nevsky’s own utopian promise after vanquishing the Teutonic Knights.

Meticulous attention to detail in Eisenstein’s staging – this could very well be one of those images painted on the walls surrounding the young Tsar at his coronation, immortalised in history.

This is the ruler that Stalin admires, yet who is never viewed in such a pure light again after this moment, soon developing a distinctively hunched posture and angular facial features that become living extensions of Eisenstein’s majestic production design. Ivan’s bushy eyebrows, pointed beard, and crooked nose are virtually made for close-ups, and when his distinctive profile is cast in giant shadows upon the walls, he becomes a dark, physical embodiment of 16th century Russia’s formidable spirit.

An extraordinary performance from Nikolay Cherkasov, physically transforming into a hunched, crooked tyrant.
Meticulous framing in Eisenstein’s deep focus, imposing Ivan’s visage upon the Russian people.
An incredibly recognisable profile, cast against walls in darkened shadows.

Only the Kremlin’s lavish interiors can match his awe-inspiring majesty with religious iconography painted across arches and columns, reliefs carved from its stonework, and collectively resting the Tsar’s legacy upon centuries of culture and history. Eisenstein’s rich depth of field especially flourishes here, sinking the masses to the bottom of frames that revel in the overhead architecture, and symmetrically positioning Ivan at their centre. These vast, intricate halls of power may very well mark Eisenstein’s greatest achievement in mise-en-scene, borrowing heavily from F.W. Murnau’s expressionistic imagery to cloak characters in chiaroscuro lighting, and underscoring their constant psychological tension between good and evil.

Remarkable achievements in production design, sinking his actors to the bottom of the frame to bask in the murals painted all across these halls and arches.
Wonderful symmetry through framing, blocking, and production design, projecting power and control.
In the absence of formally innovative editing, Eisenstein turns his focus to composing magnificent shots like these through lighting and staging, marking Ivan the Terrible as his most beautiful work to date.

It is evident here that Eisenstein is far more than just an editor, though he nevertheless showcases those talents as well in the explosive siege of Kazan, where Ivan and his sprawling armies claim a stunning victory against the Khanate. As soldiers wait patiently upon hillsides with their cannons and banners, sappers furiously dig tunnels beneath the walled city to plant gunpowder, and Eisenstein clearly relishes the practical effects granted by his enormous budget when the time comes to blast brick, mortar, and smoke into the air. Rather than wielding his editing for intellectual purposes, here he dedicates it purely to the vast scale of his action, building Ivan’s grand authority upon the conquest of those who dare oppose his rule.

Eisenstein uses the natural terrain to block huge crowds of extras across hills, stretching their formations deep into the background.
Eisenstein proves he still has his knack for action editing, lingering on the burning fuse before unleashing a series of spectacular explosions around the city walls.

For the most part though, the greatest political threats to the Tsar are located within his own ranks, as conspirators plot to install his simple-minded cousin Vladimir as Russia’s true sovereign. The political intrigue carries a Shakespearean gravity to it, modelling Ivan after the likes of Macbeth or Richard III, and watching his games of manipulation unfold with treacherous delight. When he falls deathly ill and names his son Dmitri as heir to the throne, his aunt Yefrosinya is quick to whisper into the embittered Prince Kurbsky’s ear, perniciously encouraging him to announce her son Vladimir as the rightful successor instead. Kurbsky is smart to sniff out Ivan’s test of his loyalty here, as almost immediately after carrying out his wishes, the recovered Tsar emerges from his chambers and rewards his allegiance.

Shakespearean power struggles, treachery, and intrigue – perhaps Eisenstein’s strongest pure narrative to date.

Yefrosinya, on the other hand, is not so restrained. Though she prefers to pull strings from the shadows, she isn’t above getting her hands dirty, going so far as to weaken Ivan’s rule by poisoning his wife Anastasia. Later when he makes an enemy of Metropolitan Philip by overruling his religious authority, Yefrosinya again leaps on the opportunity to stir dissent among his followers, only this time rallying them behind an assassination plot that targets Ivan himself.

The murder is to take place after a banquet and theatrical performance, where Ivan the Terrible suddenly departs from the black-and-white photography which has dominated Eisenstein’s career thus far and catches aflame with hellish red hues. This vibrant burst of colour is a shock to the senses, accompanying Ivan’s final and perhaps most despicable act. Having plied Vladimir with alcohol and extracted the conspiracy from his lips, he mockingly dresses him in his own royal regalia, and lets him lead his entourage to the cathedral in prayer. Black, hooded figures trail behind Vladimir like spectres of death, and from the shadows the killer pounces, sinking his dagger into the flesh of the disguised prince.

An avant-garde eruption of blazing red hues as Ivan prepares to commit his most despicable act yet – a shock to our senses.
Shadows, candles, and hooded figures as Ivan’s plan is seen through to fruition, making for an outstanding visual and dramatic climax.

Yefrosinya’s celebration is critically premature. “The Tsar is dead!” she joyfully proclaims, before recognising the tragic turn of events which has befallen her son. Ivan cares so little for these traitors, he does not even bother to have them executed. After all, they are the ones who killed his worst enemy, and who have effectively destroyed themselves in the process.

With Ivan’s greatest threats in Moscow eradicated, the time has thus come for him to turn his attention to those on the outside – yet it is at this tantalising climax that we are left wondering what a third part to Eisenstein’s Ivan the Terrible trilogy might have looked like. Stalin’s fury at Part II’s tyrannical depiction of the Tsar not only kept the sequel from being released until 1958, but immediately ended production on Part III, destroying all but a single fragment of its footage. Even without completion though, the legacy of this truncated series is nevertheless secured in Eisenstein’s daring ambition. Through bold, inflammatory strokes, waves of Russian despotism are painted out in striking detail, reaching across centuries to impose familiar cruelties on this nation’s long-afflicted people.

Ivan the Terrible is currently streaming on The Criterion Channel.

49th Parallel (1941)

Michael Powell | 2hr 3min

The fight that the western world puts up again Nazi Germany in 49th Parallel is not led by individual heroes or organised military units. It takes a communal sense of justice, democracy, and moral fortitude among everyday civilians to not only pick off the six Nazi submariners who have been stranded in Canada, but to also thoroughly undermine the narrow-minded, hateful ideology which guides their actions. With the United States still being considered neutral territory in 1941, the Niagara Falls border crossing is their destination, and so all Lieutenant Hirth and his men need to do is keep their heads down for the journey south. If these fugitives are to successfully find sanctuary though, then it isn’t just a victory for them – it is an alarming affirmation of fascist indomitability.

The fact that this is one of the few Michael Powell films to be shot in black-and-white rather than Technicolor does not mean he is any less confident with his chosen aesthetic. While other works of his such as Black Narcissus and The Red Shoes possess a similarly haunting wickedness, they are also far more fantastical than 49th Parallel, whose grim severity simply would not be suited to the same stylistic vibrance. In small scenes of contained drama, cinematographer Freddie Young instead captures Powell’s rich blocking and rigorous military formations with a deep focus lens, remarkably uninfluenced by his contemporary Orson Welles who was making Citizen Kane at the exact same time.

Michael Powell was primarily celebrated for the lush beauty of his Technicolor cinematography, but this visual style would have not suited the bleak austerity of 49th Parallel, capturing grim compositions of soldiers and civilians in severe black-and-white.

Even more impressive is the grand visual scale which Powell quite comfortably inhabits, executing spectacular stunts of exploding sea vessels and crashing planes, and flying his camera over vast coastlines in extraordinary aerial shots. When the Nazi fugitives make it to Winnipeg, he confronts them with a rainy city of neon signs and busy streets where bulletins call for their capture, though it is more often the expansive alpine terrains where these ill-prepared men are mentally worn down. Dressed in suits and fine shoes, they traverse sprawling pine forests, hike up barren mountain ranges, and follow raging rivers in the hope of finding some sort of civilisation again, yet the North American wilderness is not kind to these foreigners. With long shots as sweeping as these, it wouldn’t be a stretch to say that Young’s work here thoroughly prepared him for his incredible landscape photography in Lawrence of Arabia twenty-one years later, especially since the editor on 49th Parallel is David Lean himself.

Thrilling spectacle in the opening act of 49th Parallel, crashing planes and exploding sea vessels to set up the large scale of the narrative to come.
Aerial shots of the Canadian wilderness, revealing the enormous scope of Powell’s narrative spanning hundreds of miles.
Harsh mountain scenery consuming suited men ill-equipped for their environment – a deeply ingrained mismatch between characters and setting.

Underscoring the incongruency of the Nazis’ survival in Canada even more than the natural environment though is the people they encounter, each of whom possess some liberal value which they view as weakness through their dogmatic perspectives. Powell gathers an impressive cast in his ensemble here, including Laurence Olivier as a jovial trapper whose optimistic trust sees him shot and killed, and Leslie Howard as an English novelist who camps by a lake to mentally separate himself from the war. He is thoughtful and sensitive, shrewdly analysing the repetitive rhetoric used by fascists to manipulate the minds of susceptible listeners, and yet Hirth is nevertheless quick to label him a soft, degenerate coward who would rather talk than fight.

Lawrence Olivier’s brief cameo as a jovial Canadian trapper is worth savouring, as Powell pits his naive optimism against the opportunism of the Nazis.
Leslie Howard’s English novelist offers the film’s sharpest indictment of Nazi ideology and rhetoric, embodying a sensitive sophistication that Hirth and his men disparage as weak.

49th Parallel may be a piece of wartime propaganda, but it is tough to deny the astuteness of its humanitarian arguments, especially when the fugitives are welcomed into a Hutterite farming community that houses German refugees. Anton Walbrook plays their leader Peter, an amiable man who views himself as a servant of his people, rather than the other way round – a shocking discovery for these fascists who are so used to heiling their Führer. Their blind belief that this community is a cover for Nazi sympathisers would almost be comical if Hirth’s impassioned speech inviting them to join him wasn’t met with such damning, disgusted silence, followed by a solemn response from Peter that further reveals how distant these humble Christians are from the monsters of their homeland.

“You think we hate you, but we don’t. It is against our faith to hate. We only hate the power of evil that is spreading over the world. You and your Hitler are like the microbes of some filthy disease, filled with a longing to multiply yourselves until you destroy everything healthy in the world. No. We are not your brothers.”

The stupid arrogance of the Nazis is revealed in Hirth’s attempted alliance with the Hutterite community, defiantly ignorant to the fact that many of them are refugees.

It is not these words alone which moves one of the fugitives to ally himself with the Hutterites, but Vogel’s brief experience of working as their baker and finding heartfelt acceptance among their ranks is enough for him to decide to stay permanently. We can only imagine what his reformation might have looked like had he been allowed to follow his own enlightened path though, as Hirth coldly executes him for treachery before departing with the remaining party.

The readiness of Nazis to abandon their own companions is plain to see all throughout Powell’s narrative, defining its very structure as their group gradually diminishes one-by-one in a similar fashion to Agatha Christie’s murder mystery And Then There Were None. Through plane accidents, executions, arrests, and physical assaults, each fugitive is stopped in their tracks, while the others continue their relentless march south to the Canada-United States border where they might finally be safe. The danger around them increases tenfold once they start drawing attention in the media, but so too does the subsequent news from back home praising them as national heroes spur them on, right up until Hirth is left as the sole survivor struggling to the finish line.

Like Agatha Christi’s novel And Then There Were None, Powell picks off his characters one by one, giving 49th Parallel a rigorous formal structure.

It is there on a freight train heading past Niagara Falls into New York that the German lieutenant encounters Andy, another stowaway similarly keeping a low profile due to his desertion of the Canadian army. “You’re a deserter because you have a legitimate grievance against your democratic government,” Hirth acclaims, but this disloyal soldier does not take so kindly to the Nazi once he learns of his true identity.

“You can’t even begin to understand democracy. We own the right to be fed up with anything we damn please and say so out loud when we feel like it. And when things go wrong, we can take it. We can dish it out too.”

True to Andy’s patriotic sentiments, it is exactly Hirth’s underestimation of the power that democracy vests in ordinary citizens which brings about his downfall. That the deciding moment of his victory rests on the shoulders of a lowly Canadian deserter and a US Customs inspector makes for a tremendous formal pay-off to this narrative, which has consistently underscored the ability of trappers, farmers, and writers alike to weaken fascism’s forward advance. Sacrifices must be made in the struggle, and yet Powell’s wartime fable effectively cloaks these in glory, vigorously rousing the then-neutral United States of 1941 to take up arms against Nazi Germany with egalitarian pride and honour.

It is not a concerted military effort that stop the Nazis in their tracks, but rather the democratic actions of ordinary civilians, right up to Hirth’s attempt to cross the Canada-United States border as the last man standing.

49th Parallel is currently streaming on The Criterion Channel, and is available to purchase on Amazon.

Beauty and the Beast (1946)

Jean Cocteau | 1hr 36min

It is not just the fantastical designs and living furniture which imbue the enchanted castle of Jean Cocteau’s Beauty and the Beast with an air of otherworldly awe. Time inside this ethereal realm mystically warps in unexpected directions, stretching out in delicate slow-motion when the captive Belle runs down hallways of billowing white curtains, and flipping it around with reverse photography as a collection of loose pearls magically form a necklace. Given that its days and nights are completely out of sync with the village situated just a few miles away, it might as well exist in its own time zone too, consumed in darkness when the sun should be shining.

As a skilled technician of practical effects, Cocteau is fully dedicating his illusory craft to our complete disorientation, further manipulating our own suspended disbelief as spatial dimensions disappear altogether in feats of teleportation and clairvoyance. The Beast’s castle defies logic in more ways than just its eccentric mise-en-scène. The very system of logic it operates on exists entirely outside of our own, making for a world that is as inventively surreal as it is fearsome.

White, translucent curtains billow and slow-motion as Belle runs down the hallway, transporting her to an ethereal realm.
Physical space is warped too in the Beast’s magic mirror, offering clairvoyant glimpses into other people’s lives.
Distance means nothing through the magic teleportation of the tale too, realised with incredible practical effects as Belle seems to burst out from a blank wall.

Especially in contrast to Disney’s animated adaptation of the French fairy tale, Cocteau’s vision possesses a far more whimsical horror. When Belle’s father first enters the Beast’s domain after getting lost in the forest, he is welcome by arms protruding from stone walls and holding candelabras to light his way, while faces carved into the dining hall’s ornate fireplace quietly observe his movements. These are not humans transformed into objects, but rather embodiments of the castle’s own sentience, opening doors and whispering to its inhabitants as if possessed by ghosts.

Phantasmagoric mise-en-scène that works the human body into its production design, lighting the castle entry with arms holding candelabras.
Faces surreally blend into the fireplace’s stonework, silently watching guests dine.

Where Georges Auric’s fabulously lush orchestrations build to grand crescendos outside this estate, the addition of a haunting choir within its dark chambers gives the eerie setting its own non-diegetic voice, effectively breathing life into that which is inanimate. Cocteau’s curious camera underscores the mystery even further too as it moves in dangerous anticipation of what we might find at the end of long corridors, while the cluttered Gothic décor obscures our clear view of what lies submerged in dark voids of negative space.

An obstruction of the frame to make Josef von Sternberg proud, crowding Belle’s father with intricate Gothic decor.
Outside, simple silhouettes set against grey skies create stark, minimalist imagery that could come straight from Carl Theodor Dreyer.

From the doorways encased in ornamental carvings to the grand stone sculptures guarding the castle walls, Beauty and the Beast is a towering landmark of cinematic production design, constructing an architectural marvel as phantasmagorical as its cursed master. The Beast’s anthropomorphic design is beautifully detailed, marking an incredible accomplishment of prosthetic makeup in his realistic fur and fangs, while possessing a low, raspy voice and human eyes which reveal a deep sorrow. It isn’t just that he is ugly, but this Beast also confesses that he is hopelessly dim-witted, and feels that this dehumanises him in Belle’s eyes. “You stroke me like you stroke an animal,” he laments, though it is her thoughtless response that stings even more.

“But you are an animal.”

To further underscore his monstrosity, the curse which was placed on him as a child also causes his hands to smoke whenever he is driven by his primal instinct to slaughter a forest creature, betraying his barbarity and driving him deeper into shame around his civilised guest. Though this version of Beauty and the Beast is far more faithful to the classic fable than Disney, these small, cinematic inventions shape it into its own fantastical character study, examining the thin line that separates virtuous honour from depravity.

Shame is visually depicted in the Beast’s smoking hands whenever he takes a life – truly haunting imagery.
Cocteau’s mise-en-scène is incredibly ornate and crowded, but his black voids of negative space also infuse the castle with an oppressive darkness.

The dual casting of Jean Marais as both the Beast and Belle’s vain suitor Avenant works brilliantly in this formal comparison too, especially as the Beast eventually finds himself becoming human, and Avenant respectively takes on his hideous form. “Love can turn a man into a beast. But love can also make an ugly man handsome,” the newly transformed Prince poetically expounds, before lifting into the air with Belle in a sudden gust of smoke and wind.

A miraculous, poetic reversal of fates as Avenant becomes a monster, and the Beast becomes human, made possible in Cocteau’s inspired dual casting of the roles.

Beyond this anti-hero and villain, Cocteau continues to lay out humanity’s shortcomings in Belle’s jealous sisters who manipulate her into turning down a more prosperous life, as well as her brother Ludovic who decides to help Avenant kill the Beast. Even Belle herself is forced to come to terms with her own selfishness when she realises her actions have led to the Beast’s impending demise, kneeling over his ailing body by a stream and tearfully confessing “I am the monster!”.

Indeed, moral virtue and corruption exist within each character to varying extents, though it is only through the filter of twisted dreamscapes that this sort of nuance becomes visible, allowing us to penetrate their deceptive facades of beauty and ugliness. Just as worlds of the conscious and subconscious collide in the love shared between Belle and the Beast, Cocteau also reconciles contradictions of the body and spirit with poetic justice, embracing a wishful ending that he recognises with whimsical poignancy may only ever exist in the boundless, imaginative possibilities of fairy tales.

Reverse photography and smoke make for a tremendous practical effect as the two lovers lift into the air, reconciling body and spirit.

Beauty and the Beast is currently streaming on The Criterion Channel, and the DVD is available to purchase on Amazon.

My Darling Clementine (1946)

John Ford | 1hr 37min

Even before directing My Darling Clementine, it was clear that John Ford never had any qualms around twisting historical truth into cinematic reconstructions, especially putting his talents to use as a documentarian and propagandist in the United States military during World War II. When he returned to Hollywood in 1946, the focus of his storytelling shifted, but his intentions did not. In his skilled hands, the famous western shootout at Tombstone’s O.K. Corral between lawman Wyatt Earp and the nefarious Cowboys becomes a tale of heroic courage and sacrifice, departing from the truth in too many ways to count. The fact that the Earp brothers were never cattle drivers, that Doc Holliday actually survived the climactic gunfight, and that our main antagonist Old Man Clanton had been killed several months before is negligible to Ford’s proud mythologising. As James Stewart would be told many years later in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, “When legend becomes fact, print the legend.”

This is the central tenet upon which Ford establishes his belief in America’s tenacious spirit, recognising the necessity of these folktales to revive the cultural identity that was slowly losing relevance in a cynical, post-war nation. Through this lens, the rambunctious rural town of Tombstone becomes a landscape of America in disarray, needing a strong leader to restore order to its chaos. As such, My Darling Clementine does not centre a hot-headed maverick like John Wayne, but rather a stoic, reserved Henry Fonda who faithfully abides by laws greater than himself.

Wyatt Earp is one of Fonda’s greatest characters – a lawman with an unwavering commitment to order, peace, and justice, watering the seeds of civilisation.
Ford uses Monument Valley as a gorgeous backdrop to his drama, imposing rough landscapes on his characters as they try to carve out order from the chaos.

With his Chevron moustache and humourless demeanour, Fonda characterises the famed Wyatt Earp as a quiet, pragmatic introvert, only taking up the position of town marshal when his brother is murdered in cold blood by unknown assailants. His gaze is intensely focused, refusing to make eye contact with local saloon singer Chihuahua when she briefly directs her performance to him, and often surveying the dusty rural plains from his porch as he leans back in a wooden chair. Here, Ford frames him as a guardian of civilisation, drawing a visual divide through the vertical posts separating the rustic town from Monument Valley’s wild landscapes of colossal sandstone buttes.

Civilisation and wilderness in Ford’s blocking, stationing Fonda on the precipice of both as a guardian.
Earp’s relaxed pose leaning back in his chair becomes a repeated character trait, echoing throughout the film.

Wyatt is unyielding in his defence of civil order, holding his neighbours to a rigorously high standard, and regarding those morally ambiguous troublemakers like Doc Holliday with suspicion. Right from their first meeting, tension underlies almost every interaction between these two rivals, with Ford using a row of gaslights in the local saloon to split them right down the middle. Behind them, the town watches on with nervous anticipation, vividly captured in a crisp depth of field while slightly obscured by the thick smoke hanging in the air.

The tension between Earp and Doc Holliday is set up magnificently from the start, dividing them through the framing and blocking of their encounter in the local saloon.

It is the Clanton family who Ford reserves his most daunting staging for though, uniting them as an indomitable force when Wyatt begins pursuing a clue to the identity of his brother’s killer. As Fonda questions the saloon’s owner, five Clanton brothers silently enter the foreground and line up along the bar one-by-one, piercing Wyatt with silent, threatening stares. Ford’s lighting frequently verges on expressionism in compositions like these too, casting characters in shadow to cynically illustrate the dark corruption that thrives in Tombstone’s shady establishments.

Dynamic staging as the Clanton brothers enter the shot one by one, posing a silent threat to Earp in the background.
Tremendous manipulation of light and shadows in Tombstone’s interiors, sinking the town into darkness.

Of course, this is only one dimension of a complex, dynamic town, layered with colourful personalities and cultural traditions. At night Tombstone is rowdy with gamblers and outlaws, but there is also a robust community living here that Ford relishes blocking through every corner of his frame, using its height as flamboyant stage actor Mr Thorndyke recites Shakespeare atop a table, and gathering eager crowds at the base of a tall, scaffolded structure – the town’s first church established by Wyatt himself. Its meagre facade does little to dampen the spirits of its excited parish as they join together in a hymn, celebrating the unity that their new marshal has cultivated.

Strong community in Ford’s use of large crowds, gathering in the local saloon and at the opening of Tombstone’s first church.

Like a gardener reaping the rewards of his own efforts, Wyatt also begins to sprout a mature vulnerability from the same fertile environment he has been tending to, motivated by the arrival of outsider Clementine in town. The significance of their romantic musical motif is instantly apparent. All through the film, instrumental variations of ‘Oh, My Darling Clementine’ are weaved naturally through strings, flutes, and Fonda’s whistling, immortalising his love in a ballad which would spread across America in years to come.

By linking Wyatt to a nostalgic, recognisable piece of Americana, Ford is effectively offsetting the more violent nature of his real legacy. Historically, the gunfight at the O.K. Corral encapsulates the tensions between law enforcement and outlaws during the United States’ formative years, and Ford’s staging of it here certifies Wyatt as an icon of cultural progress. As he strides down the main road of Tombstone towards the location of his great victory, the camera captures him at a low angle that radiates power, though this is not a conflict he gladly embraces. Wyatt gives Old Man Clanton multiple chances to avoid bloodshed, announcing the warrant for his arrest before the inevitable gunfight, and only landing the killing shot when his adversary tries to shoot him in the back.

A climactic showdown that centres Earp in a low angle beneath a vast, cloudy sky, later to be echoed in Kurosawa’s samurai film Yojimbo.

Whether or not this is true to the character of the real Earp is completely irrelevant to Ford. As far as he is concerned, Earp not only brought order to chaos in the Old West, but also originated a romantic folk song that has since become a famous expression of romantic love. The Greeks had Achilles, the Anglo-Saxons had Beowulf, and through Ford’s cinematic storytelling Wyatt Earp becomes a mythical hero of the American frontier, paving the path of moral virtue and honour to our modern civilisation.

My Darling Clementine is currently streaming on The Criterion Channel, is available to buy on Apple TV, and the DVD or Blu-ray can be bought on Amazon.

Brief Encounter (1945)

David Lean | 1hr 26min

The first time we encounter housewife Laura Jesson in the local railway tearoom of Brief Encounter, it is impossible to fathom the depths of her heartache. Her eyes are wide but uncfocused, concealing a complex mix of emotions from her endlessly chatty friend Dolly and the man sitting with them, Dr. Alec Harvey, who abruptly leaves to catch his train. The vague unease that hangs in the air cannot quite be pinpointed to any specific kind of sadness, though by the time the extended flashback which dominates most of the film leads us back to this moment, we are given the context to fully empathise with her. There wasn’t any way for us to know it before, but these are her last few minutes with the man she has secretly spent several weeks falling deeply in love with, and yet who can now only bid a final farewell with a discreet squeeze on her shoulder before disappearing forever.

In the absence of any giant romantic gesture or swooning kiss, this anticlimax brought about by Dolly’s unwelcome interruption is quietly shattering, forcing Laura to retreat into her mind and away from the onward march of an oblivious world. Time is a precious resource in Brief Encounter, particularly at the railway station where her and Alec’s schedules fleetingly align every Thursday where a giant clock imposes on their tiny figures, and through which the echoes of hours and minutes announce each new arrival.

The railway station is an embodiment of time’s constant passage, hanging a giant clock over Laura as a cruel reminder.

In essence, this setting is an icon of persistent transience, bringing strangers together every day by a common need to travel before separating them the moment they board a train. The ticket inspector and tearoom owner whose small talk frequently diverts our attention perfectly typify this, teasing a potential romance which never has the time to grow into anything fruitful. Together, they also form a more innocent reflection of Laura and Alec’s covert affair, with all four love interests trying to explore relationships confined to a fleeting moment in time. The romance is intoxicating, but the demands of life never go away, consistently drawing Laura and Alec back to their families at home.

At least within her subjective recollections of the past, Laura is able to exert some control over the flow of time and carry pieces of it into the future. As she returns home and sits down with her husband Fred, she begins to confess her infidelity, though not aloud. Instead, her voiceover pours out what she might have said if the stability of their family unit wasn’t at stake. David Lean starts to leap back into the memories of her affair with Alec here, from their innocent first meeting in the tearoom, through their first kiss, and eventually to that final decision to part ways. Laura’s narration drips with sentimental lyricism, and yet equally infused with it is the heavy guilt that slowly erodes her dignity.

“It’s awfully easy to lie when you know that you’re trusted implicitly. So very easy, and so very degrading.”

Touches of Jean Renoir in the romantic dates by the river, only barely keeping the melancholy at bay.

Love and shame are closely intertwined here, both being deeply internal emotions that cannot be openly expressed to the world, and which thus lead to greater repression. Lean’s elegant camera movements and deep focus capture this tension with immense aesthetic beauty, especially drawing on the poetic realism of French auteurs Jean Renoir and Marcel Carne which inevitably leads such romances to tragically fated ends. Clouds of smoke and shadow obscure scenes of blooming passion at the railway station, while the whistle and rattling of passing trains intermittently drown out speech altogether, absorbing Laura into a dreamy reverie that offers an escape from ordinary life. When her relationship with Alex progresses to the point of meeting up elsewhere, lush gardens and babbling rivers begin to host their secret dates, calling back to the nostalgic vacation of A Day in the Country. Meanwhile, the piano concertos of Sergei Rachmaninoff delicately climb and descend scales in romantic accompaniment, though never quite losing track of the sorrow shared between these guilty lovers.

Expressionism at the train station with the smoke and shadows, making a shady character out of London’s urban districts.

That this is the same director who would later craft some of Britain’s greatest historical epics in The Bridge on the River Kwai and Lawrence of Arabia is somewhat surprising given the profound introspection of the piece, though if anything Lean is simply proving the versatility of his immense talent. His inspired development of characters may be the strongest similarity between these films, here seeing Laura shrivel into a guilt-ridden shadow of herself as she takes up smoking to calm her nerves, and quietly interprets an accident involving her son as the universe’s punishment.

Lean portrays guilt with visible unease, forcing Laura to gaze at her own reflection as she tells her first lie, and elsewhere backlighting her sweaty profile.

Perhaps even stronger though are those moments which visualise Laura’s interiority, imagining an impossible future through double exposure effects which see her and Alec cruise, dance, and wander tropical beaches, and later hanging on her face as she tells Fred her first lie and ashamedly stares into a mirror. The deeper she sinks into her guilt, the darker Lean’s lighting becomes too, as a much greater deception further along sees her silhouetted at a payphone, with only the profile of her sweaty, anguished face vaguely illuminated.

More reflections, though this time with the fantasy of an impossible future is captured in double exposure.

Being shot right before the end of World War II in 1945, the hope for some restored order to the nuclear family unit looms large in Brief Encounter, and so there is no disagreement here between Laura and Alec when the shared guilt becomes insurmountable. A job opportunity for Alec in Johannesburg provides the perfect opportunity to make a clean break, but not before a quick journey back through all those locations that they had previously visited together.

For a short second after his train finally departs, a suicidal impulse crosses Laura’s mind. Lean’s camera tilts to the side in a dramatically canted angle as she rushes out to the platform, though panic quickly dissipates into mournful regret, and the rest of her life fades back into view. The dream ends, as does her internal confession, and although Fred has not heard a single word of it there is a quizzical look on his face. “You’ve been a long way away. Thank you for coming back to me,” he gently acknowledges with absolute sincerity. Perhaps Laura will may never find the resolution she seeks with Alec, or the same excitement which lifted her out of the monotony of being a 1940s housewife. But if there is any solace to be found, then it is in the love that is still very much present in this modest home, never even requiring such complex sentiments to be spoken aloud in order to be mutually understood.

A canted angle and strip of light across Laura’s eyes as she faces a bleak future, and her mind disappears into hopeless despair.

Brief Encounter is currently streaming on The Criterion Channel, is available to rent or buy on Apple TV, and the DVD or Blu-ray can be bought on Amazon.

Notorious (1946)

Alfred Hitchcock | 1hr 41min

The most obvious dramatic tension that emerges in Notorious comes from its thickly plotted conflict of romance and thriller conventions, tugging our central lovers between deep passion and cold, methodical pragmatism. This riveting narrative of high-stakes subterfuge could be read through the lens of either genre, especially when the initial honeymoon period between Cary Grant’s U.S. agent and Ingrid Bergman’s German defector is interrupted by official orders for her to seduce and spy on a suspected Nazi affiliate, Alex Sebastian. Their breakup is as clean as can be under these circumstances, with Devlin especially putting up a front of stoic impassivity, but Alfred Hitchcock’s fractured blocking betrays their mutual, wounded sorrow. Even the champagne bottle that Devlin bought to share with Alicia over a romantic dinner is suddenly missing, and thus their evening comes to an abrupt end.

It is in that final detail though that Notorious’ most robust motif begins to manifest, developing a tension through layers of formal symbolism that is far more intricate than its overarching genre clash. It begins with Alicia’s alcoholic lifestyle and reckless drink driving, allowing her an escape from the guilt of her father’s Nazi convictions, but wine bottles are also integral to the conspiracy she investigates for the U.S. government. One of Alex’s associates grows agitated at the sight of one specific bottle during dinner, and later Alicia discovers that her keyring grants access to every room in the house except for the wine cellar, making it apparent that these symbols of upper-class aristocracy hold darker secrets than one might expect. In one lush ball scene, Hitchcock even uses regular cutaways to an ice cooler of bottles to drive up the suspense, placing a time limit on her and Devlin’s investigation of the cellar by tracking the party’s dwindling supply.

Hitchcock’s dissolve transitions set up the romance of the first act between Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman beautifully.
Champagne glasses obstructing the mise-en-scène, visually weaving in Hitchcock’s primary motif.

Indeed, these intoxicating refreshments which promise a few hours of light-hearted fun only ever lead to danger in Notorious, and could potentially even instigate a third World War given the uranium ore contained within them. This is far from the end of Hitchcock’s beverage motif too, as once Alex and his mother discover Alicia’s loyalty to America, innocuous servings of coffee also become deadly weapons. Glasses and bottles are swapped out for teacups in Hitchcock’s mise-en-scène here, dominating and obstructing shots that leave her shrunken in the background, while she remains unaware of the poison hidden in their contents.

We start with alcohol bottles and glasses, and then we move to Alicia’s poisoned teacup, sitting in the foreground of this brilliant composition with a dominant presence.

Even more astounding are the close-up tracking shots which suspensefully trace the movements of these cups across rooms, from the moment Alex’s mother fills them with coffee to their eventual contact with Alicia’s lips. The murderous operations of these scheming Nazis are elegantly lethal, incrementally weakening her health over time, and Hitchcock’s camerawork is every much their equal in precision and sophistication. It reaches an enormous stylistic peak in a crane shot that sweeps us from a wide frame of Alex’s opulent entrance hall into a close-up of Alicia’s hand grasping a stolen key, and often punctuates dramatic beats with subtle push-ins on faces, but even beyond these agile motions his visual storytelling is remarkably dextrous.

One of cinema’s great crane shots, easing down from the chandelier above the party down to the key hidden in Bergman’s hand.

At its most potent, he lands us within Alex’s own silent investigation of the wine cellar, excising dialogue completely as he follows a trail of clues – the lost key mysteriously back where it belongs, the tampered order of bottles, a broken seal, and shards of glass swept under a shelf each point towards Alicia’s guilt. The editing is precise throughout, and the pacing measured, suspensefully building up to Alex’s major turn. His tightly framed face is tilted down in shadow when he finally comes to his mother with this revelation, and as he confesses, he rises it very gently into the light.

“I am married to an American agent.”

Hitchcock never spoon feeds us his narrative – this is visual storytelling at its finest, noting the four keys on the ring rather than the three from the previous night. We can see the puzzle pieces coming together in Alex’s mind.
Superb framing of this close-up, as Claude Rains raises his face to the light and comes to the inevitable conclusion of his wife’s betrayal.

For Alex’s mother who has mistrusted Alicia from the start, it is enormously vindicating for her suspicions to be proven right, yet this development may be even more satisfying for Hitchcock who revels in the Freudian insecurities of their relationship. Her protectiveness over Alex has been simmering with jealous undertones ever since he invited this other woman into his life, so now with her son fully on side, she relishes killing off his lover in a slow, painful manner, effectively becoming a slightly less twisted version of Norman Bates’ mother in Psycho.

More skilfully executed tracking shots as we trace the movement of Alicia’s poisoned coffee, and the subtle reactions of her would-be assassins.

In a strange way, this complex mother-son relationship also reflects the stifled romance between Devlin and Alicia, who correspondingly hold onto an emotional repression keeping them from expressing themselves honestly. It is often much easier for them to deny the existence of impractical feelings altogether so that everyone can move on with their work, yet in Notorious it is also those who deceitfully conform to rigid, impersonal standards that come closest to losing everything.

For our main characters to be saved then, they must allow their truest feelings to break through their cool exteriors, and Hitchcock approaches these arcs with an incredible formal mirroring between Notorious’ first and final acts. Alicia’s hangover early in the film blurs and spins the frame when Devlin comes to her with a job offer, and as he comes to take her away from Alex’s mansion, her vision is once again impaired. The initial meeting between Devlin and Alicia where conversation turns to alcohol and love is similarly echoed here as well, as they discuss her poisoning, and he confesses his feelings.

Brilliant formal mirroring between the first and final acts on multiple levels, starting here with Alicia’s distorted POV shots – one under the effect of alcohol, the other under the effect of poison.

Tentatively, they move downstairs in full view of Alex’s co-conspirators, who now peer suspiciously through a door at their compromised friend. The scene is reminiscent of that which previously saw a judge sentence Alicia’s father to prison, and now frames these Nazis as the judges of Alex’s own fate. Even the night-time drive which saw Devlin use his government position to save a drunken Alicia is inverted at this climax, where he lies about his identity to make a safe getaway in his car. No longer is he just a bureaucrat looking to use her for work, but a man so deep in love that he will put himself in harm’s way to keep her safe.

More reflections emerge between the start and end of the film, first framing three guilty Nazis in a doorway with a judge, and then three Nazis in a doorway casting judgement on their guilty friend.

In Notorious, this is the reward that comes to those who reconcile their subconscious desires with their conscious actions, invigorating its narrative with a muscular formal structure. Grant might be given the meat of this character development, but Bergman shines even brighter for the dazzling highs and profound depths that Alicia reaches, eventually finding sincere happiness as her true self beyond her alcoholic indulgences and deceitful double life.

It is not Devlin and Alicia who Hitchcock sticks us with in the final minute of Notorious though, but Alex, left to face the consequences of his actions and saunter through the large doors of hell. For a few seconds it looks as if the camera might follow him too, until they close in our face with a final clang. Hitchcock does not need to tell us what comes next. It is all there in the subtext of his collaborators’ accusing stares. Even in this den of humanity’s greatest evil, there is no haven for liars – merely a sad, pitiful end to a life of dishonesty.

Alex accepts his fate and walks back inside – an immaculate final shot.

Notorious is currently streaming on Tubi TV.

The Killers (1946)

Robert Siodmak | 1hr 43min

There isn’t a whole lot separating the narrative structures of The Killers and Citizen Kane, with both films seeking to dismantle the mystery of the men who die right at their very start. The friends, colleagues, and lovers they have accumulated throughout their lives each hold a piece of the overall puzzle, and as we trace flashbacks along non-linear paths, unexpected layers of their lives begin to emerge.

Perhaps the biggest difference is that the Swede is almost the inverse of Charles Foster Kane. He does not come from the world of multimillion-dollar corporations and mass media, but boxing and organised crime. He is not smooth and charming in the way a political aspirant might be when speaking to potential voters, but still personable on a much smaller scale when he isn’t losing his temper in fits of paranoia. He stands above virtually everyone else with his broad shoulders and strong physique, exerting a raw, physical energy impressively mustered by Burt Lancaster in his invigorating screen debut.

A resigned acceptance of his own death, suffocating in shadows.

Also unlike Kane, the Swede dies young – assassinated by a pair of hitmen who have tracked him down into a small, rural corner of New Jersey and dispatched him without much struggle. That he so despairingly accepts his fate seems strange to those who knew him, and is even stranger to us when we get to know him ourselves. What ensues is not a search for the truth of a man’s life, but rather an autopsy of his mysterious death, closely studying the circumstances which led him to such a tragic and uncharacteristic end.

Jim Reardon is the insurance investigator we follow through this trail of fragmented clues, played by Edmond O’Brien as a diluted take on Humphrey Bogart’s wise guy screen persona. On paper, Reardon is simply motivated to track down the beneficiary of the Swede’s life insurance, but upon discovering that she is a meek hotel chambermaid who barely even knew him, he is anything but satisfied.

Siodmak borrows the structure of Citizen Kane for The Killers, piecing together the mysterious details of a man’s life through a string of interviews.

Additionally, the Swede is only one of three titles that he goes by, Reardon soon discovers. Pete Lund is what most people in his local community know him as, while Ole Anderson is the birthname he has been running from ever since leaving his mob days behind. This is only the beginning of a thrilling plot layered with treacherous triple crosses and seductive intrigue though, all revolving around one lonely man doomed by his own fatal, obsessive insecurity.

Robert Siodmak was a director well versed in expressionist filmmaking by the time he got behind the camera on The Killers, and that experience is evident in the shadow-drenched mise-en-scène and piercingly deep focus he skilfully displays here. Even before we move into flashbacks, the astounding 12-minute sequence which opens the film in the town of Brentwood is filled with chiaroscuro lighting, cutting silhouettes out of two men in fedoras and trench coats wandering the dark, empty streets. This is where Ole has taken refuge and kept a low profile as a gas station attendant, but for the time being he is little more then a name floating about in conversation between these suspicious outsiders and the owner of the diner they have come across. Siodmak is patient with his tension, slowly turning up the heat as we recognise the inevitability of their mission, and submitting us to the same fatalistic resignation as Ole before shots are even fired.

The opening of The Killers is drenched in noir shadows and deep focus blocking, as these outsiders invade small-town America and slowly ratchet up the suspense.

With the foreknowledge of the Swede’s death accompanying us through the subsequent flashbacks, Siodmak often signposts each step that he takes towards it with some inspired visual flourish. Ava Gardner’s duplicitous femme fatale, Kitty Collins, enters the Swede’s life like a magnet, drawing his eyes from across the party while his girlfriend Lilly stands next to him. The three layers of blocking which positions Kitty in the foreground and staggers the two others into the background immaculately distils this love triangle into a single, poignant shot, though Siodmak isn’t done there. A subtle camera movement following Ole into a new position right behind Kitty cuts Lilly out of the frame altogether, all the while his new love interest croons a slow, romantic ballad.

“The more I know of love,

The less I know it…

The more I give to love,

The more I owe it.”

Siodmak’s camera deftly shifts with the blocking, drawing a love triangle across three layers of the frame, and then cutting Lilly out completely.

Ole’s boxing career being cut short due to a hand injury may have been out of his control, but when presented with a choice to either follow his friend Lubinsky into the police force or Kitty into a life of crime, the blame comes squarely back on him. Similarly, when he willingly takes part in a sensational robbery orchestrated by mob boss Colfax, Siodmak infuses the scene with a Hitchcockian suspense, expertly navigating the industrial factory through a two-minute crane shot. A voiceover reading about the exploit in a newspaper article details the events as we soar over fences, scale buildings, and follow the bandits’ escape, tracing their movements with a precision equal to their own perfectly choreographed plot.

The more we get to know Ole, the more we recognise the fatal flaws which put him on this road to hell. Siodmak formally lays out his weaknesses in smaller scenes as grounding for his more consequential downfall later on, especially revealing an inherent paranoia when he falsely assumes Colfax is cheating in a game of poker and foolishly attacks him. It seems that Kitty is the only person he does have total faith in, but when he willingly takes the rap for her stolen jewellery in a spur of the moment decision, his recklessness gets the better of him again and lands him in jail. The Killers may have been based on an Ernest Hemingway short story, but Siodmak, Lancaster, and screenwriter Anthony Veiller put in a huge amount of work to develop this character even further into a complex man of quick judgements, foolhardy actions, and perhaps beneath it all, a genuinely good soul.

Siodmak’s blocking is consistently excellent all throughout, detailing the manipulative relationships all around Lancaster.

With all of this in mind, we can see how Ole could have gotten out at each step along the way, and simultaneously accept that he was never going to make any other choices than the ones he ultimately commits to. Most significantly, the lie Kitty fabricates that his associates are planning a betrayal sets up the dominoes perfectly, manipulating him into stealing the money from them so that she can run away with it herself. With most of the pieces of Reardon’s puzzle finally in place, the loop that brings the story back to the present day is mostly closed, save for the danger which has moved on from Ole and now attached to our curious investigator.

We are given two big clues that Reardon is in trouble when he eventually meets with Kitty and enters a diner with her. The first is the diner itself, established in the very first scene as a prime spot for hitmen to hunt down targets. The second is Kitty, who has proven herself on numerous occasions to be an untrustworthy figure. Fortunately, Reardon is not fooled so easily by her feigned innocence. Siodmak is skilled with his foreshadowing in this way, but it is also a beautiful piece of bookending he crafts here too, bringing the film back to those two enigmatic assassins who enter these venues of warm hospitality and defile them with violence.

Another diner sets the scene for the titular killers’ second assassination attempt, and Siodmak designs a perfectly shady frame here with the deep focus and the chair’s obstruction in the foreground.

This potent metaphor of corruption pervades Siodmak’s film on every level, as much like the titular killers, Ole too has tainted something pure – his own innocent soul. As we recall those calm final seconds before his demise though, we see a new choice being made. His graceful acceptance of consequences runs in stark contrast to Kitty’s hopeless, desperate begging for Colfax to absolve her of guilt in front of the police. Perhaps his decision was born of a newfound humility, inspired by his time as small-town gas station attendant Pete Lund, or maybe he was simply tired of running. We might get most of the answers we have been looking for in this splintered collection of memories and clues, and yet even after all this, the mystery of the man’s uncharacteristic death remains.

The Killers is not currently available to rent or buy in Australia.

The Woman in the Window (1944)

Fritz Lang | 1hr 40min

Between Professor Richard Wanley and the portrait that he fixates on, a shop window draws a thin, transparent barrier. He is as close to this artwork as he is distant from the fantasy woman it is depicting, though it is upon that glass pane where they are united in the ethereal reflection of Alice Reed – the model whose likeness has been so attractively rendered in paint. She arrives in Richard’s life like a ghost, and he too subsequently crosses into hers, intersecting worlds through psychological dreams of seduction, murder, and subterfuge.

Many noirs inspired by The Woman in the Window took note of its grim, shadowy detachment from reality and built out similarly imaginative underworlds, though Fritz Lang’s approach is quite unique in literalising his protagonist’s expressionistic nightmares. Here, the twist of the story taking place inside his mind is saved for the end in a Wizard of Oz-style reveal, bringing to light the inspiration for many of Richard’s dream characters. It doesn’t quite land with the same impact as Victor Fleming’s Technicolor fantasy, but it isn’t the shoddy, tacked-on resolution so many criticise it of being either. Instead, it is the pay-off to one long series of imagined, improbable situations, subconsciously warning our impressionable professor of the dangers that come with falling into foreign temptations.

Edward G. Robinson is having a very good 1944 with his supporting role in the masterpiece Double Indemnity, and his leading role here – two of the best noirs of this Hollywood era.

All through the large, airy apartment that Alice invites Richard back to after their chance encounter, Lang lays out walls of mirrors that might visually suggest a deceptiveness at play, or at least a detachment from the world we are familiar with. His compositions are vividly blocked, building out the motif of reflections which first brought this femme fatale into his life and largely defines her expansive living space. Perhaps there is also a feeling of guilt and claustrophobia wrapped up in this imagery though, forcing Richard to reconsider this route he is travelling down towards infidelity. Fortunately, he is interrupted before he gets a chance to cheat. Unfortunately, it is by Alice’s own wealthy, jealous lover, Claude Mazard, who promptly attacks Richard and is killed by a pair of scissors to the back.

Deception and dreamy unreality implicated in the heavy use of reflections throughout The Woman in the Window.

After hiding the dead body in a nature reserve and mutually deciding to cut off all contact, problems start to stack up. Richard’s friend Frank is the lead investigator on the case, and the naïve professor evidently isn’t used to lying given his tendency to let on more about the murder than he should know. Meanwhile, Mazard’s bodyguard is on his and Alice’s tail, intent on blackmailing them. Nunnally Johnson’s script is tightly plotted in its foreshadowing, sowing the seeds of Richard’s potent sleeping pills and initialled pen early on before later turning them into key narrative devices via attempted murders and loose pieces of evidence.

If The Woman in the Window is going to suffer in comparison to any other film noir, then it is the delightfully macabre film noir Double Indemnity also released in 1944, which bears a good number of similarities. Edward G. Robinson stars in both as good-natured men, but where he plays the lawful investigator in Billy Wilder’s film, here he puts a lighter spin on the Fred MacMurray role of a man caught up in the murder of his lover’s partner. We don’t have any qualms about getting behind this nervous, jumpy figure, though at a certain point even he takes a dark turn when he decides to dig himself even deeper into this mess.

Some very solid noir photography with the deep focus lens, obstructions, and framing.

Save for a few scenes, it is his perspective we are stuck with through most of The Woman in the Window, and Lang is careful with his camerawork to ground us in his uneasy experience. After dumping Mazard’s body, Richard is moodily framed behind his car’s rain-glazed window, doused in the scene’s gloomy ambience. The camera’s deep focus lens is used effectively too, keeping us at a tense distance from the investigation when Richard desperately peers out of a car at the police bringing in Alice for questioning.

Windows are obviously an important motif in this film, as implied by the title, opening portals up to unfamiliar worlds.

Whether as windows or mirrors, Lang keeps weaving in these glass barriers as motifs of duplicity and disconnection, quietly feeding our doubt over Richard’s self-awareness. This nervous mistrust is the dark, beating heart of film noir, distilled here by one of its leading figures into a literal dream that glides by on hazy long dissolves and a score of tense, whiny strings. Like Richard, we may slip out of its hypnotic spell as smoothly as we fell under it, but its disquieting psychological impact is one that continues to linger long after it is over.

The Woman in the Window is not currently available to stream in Australia.

Late Spring (1949)

Yasujirō Ozu | 1hr 48min

The cycles of human life in Yasujirō Ozu’s domestic dramas are as natural as seasonal changes. Parents grow old, children move out of home, and their youthful innocence matures into worldly wisdom, guiding them forward into new experiences. This is the transitory period represented in the title Late Spring, where the period of birth and youth for 27-year-old Noriko is coming to an end. Chishū Ryū’s gently spoken widower Shukichi is not the obstacle to his daughter’s inevitable departure, but it is rather her own reservations about marriage and abandoning her father which creates friction in their household.

Setsuko Hara is radiant here in her first of many fruitful collaborations with Ozu, becoming the emotional centre around which the layers of his mise-en-scène and narrative are delicately formed. Her perpetual, beaming smile draws the camera’s attention in wide and mid-shots alike, and even continues through her savage digs at her father’s friend’s remarriage, calling it “filthy” and “indecent” without so much as a scowl cross her face.

Even outside his perfectly arranged interiors, Ozu keeps his eye for framing with exterior modern architecture.

From Noriko’s perspective, building a new life outside of her current home would be a selfish act. Just the thought alone is deeply upsetting, threatening to undermine the security she shares with her father. As far as she is concerned, “Marriage is life’s graveyard” – or at least, those are the words her friend puts in her mouth. At the moment that Aunt Masa starts pushing her strongly in this direction and reveals that her own father is planning to remarry their widowed neighbour, that smile that Hara is known for is wiped from her face, and it is a long time before it reappears.

When she’s smiling, it’s impossible to imagine Hara’s face with any other expression, and then there is a marked shift in her demeanour upon discovering her father’s plans to remarry. This shot mirrors nicely with the shot in the final scene with Ryū in a strikingly similar position.

Indeed, Ozu’s thoughtful framing of Noriko in his open doorways, funnelled corridors, and shoji screens essentially forms a protective shell around her, deeply connecting the young woman and her family to each book, chair, and piece of laundry on the clothesline. There is substantial beauty in this mundanity, and it is here where he develops his formally rigorous aesthetic as extensions of his characters. Even why they aren’t visible, their presence is still suggested by the pieces of themselves left behind – a pair of sitting cushions on the floor, a coat left hanging on a rack, and a hat resting on a briefcase collectively break up the harsh angles and lines of the living room’s architecture with hints of humanity. Though Noriko possesses no romantic interest in her engaged friend Hattori, Ozu still underscores their tender pairing through his framing of their parallel bikes in the foreground of one particularly elegant composition, mirroring the couple as they walk off into the distance together.

Ozu is a master of mise-en-scène, but his talent doesn’t announce itself loudly. There is precision in the placement of each cushion, coat, and hat, leaving traces of characters around the scene even when they aren’t present.
Ozu segmenting the frame through these vertical lines.
There is also of course a depth of field to Ozu’s staging as well, containing characters within their frames, and returning to the hanging laundry here as a consistent visual presence.

Ozu continues this still life artistry in more mystifying imagery as well, most famously that which briefly lingers on a vase in an inn where Noriko lies next to her father, coming to terms with their inevitable separation. Generations of film scholars would go on to pick apart the meaning of this simple cutaway, but on a purely formal level, it ruptures the scene’s pacing like a comma halfway through a sentence, gently splitting up a pair of close-ups that are almost identical, besides her smile which vanishes from one shot to the next.

The infamous, enigmatic vase cutaway. So much has been written on its meaning, though formally it fits effortlessly into the pacing and flow of the scene.

In the consistently low angles as well, there is also a deep humility baked into Ozu’s perspective that never let us look down on any character or their environment. The seconds before an actor enters a scene and the seconds after they exit are spent in quiet reflection with the room, finding traces of life that exist beyond human drama. These are also frequently blended in with his trademark pillow shots, drifting across still images of ancient Japanese pagodas, commercial trainlines, and modern interiors, leaving us never quite sure if a shot stands alone as a quiet observation, or whether it is about to open a scene. All we can do when they appear is consider both with equal significance. Ozu may be just as equally skilled an editor as his Japanese contemporary Akira Kurosawa, but rather than cutting to drive forward his plotting, he uses it as a tool to step back and contemplate the narrative from afar.

Pagodas, train lines, domestic interiors – Ozu’s pillow shots do an immense amount of work laying out the coexistence of tradition and modernity.

By sensitising us to the intricacies of the world around his characters, Ozu is also doing a lot of work to show the specific setting of the post-war society they live in – one which is striving for the future, while trying to hang onto its nostalgic heritage. Given this context, it’s easy to empathise with both sides of Late Spring’s core conflict, though as Noriko finds herself falling for the man she has been set up with, the harmony Ozu settles on possesses a strange melancholy.

Here, his pillow shots step up in frequency, floating us along lyrical meditations of the fate that has befallen this engaged woman once doggedly against getting married, and the lonely father who now mourns the void left in his home. Not that he would ever let that show – the notion that he would be remarrying was merely a lie he constructed to nudge her along without feelings of guilt, and now as she departs, he gifts her his own words of wisdom in her search for contentment.

“Happiness isn’t something you wait around for. It’s something you create yourself. Getting married isn’t happiness. Happiness lies in the forging of a new life shared together. It may take a year or two, maybe even five or ten. Happiness comes only through effort. Only then can you claim to be man and wife.”

Late Spring settles on a strange melancholy in its final minutes, returning to an iconic Ozu shot though now with its frame darkened.

As he sits alone in his now-dark home, he slowly and methodically peels an apple, silently recognising that Noriko’s happiness is no longer his to hold onto. Ryū doesn’t need any words to express the sorrow that has overtaken his life. In the final seconds, he bows his head in resignation, and Ozu inserts one last cutaway to waves rolling onto a beach, like a reminder of life’s gentle cycles that carry his characters along. With such thoughtful editing and curated imagery guiding Late Spring’s lyrical rhythms forward, there is both profound joy and sadness to be found in this father-daughter love, dominant for the years one spends in their youth, though never able to carry the longevity of romantic, lifelong partnership.

Ending with the powerful image of Ryū peeling the apple, delivering a poignant silent performance as he is left alone.

Late Spring is currently streaming on The Criterion Channel.

Thirst (1949)

Ingmar Bergman | 1hr 23min

The austere, psychological fantasies that Ingmar Bergman would explore at the height of his filmmaking career were still a long way off for him in 1949, and yet even so, the uneasy flashbacks of Thirst still bring a faintly nightmarish edge to the festered love at its centre. This contempt between married spouses would continue as a source of fascination for him in later projects like Scenes from a Marriage, and although there is nothing here quite on the level of that domestic epic, the vitriol that Rut and Bertil spit at each other is vicious nonetheless. These “prisoners in chains” are bound to each other in sickness and in health, and as they ride a train through a war-ravaged Europe, old heartbreaks rise to the surface, splitting our focus between their parallel traumas and nostalgic affairs.

Given how much of Thirst is spent following these alternating perspectives, it takes a fair bit of time for their context in the present day to emerge, and there is additionally some formal messiness in Bergman’s narrative construction. Specifically within Bertil’s memories, many scenes take place around his widowed mistress, Viola, where he is altogether absent. As a character though, she is a powerful testament to the failing of a patriarchal culture on many levels, from her struggling to stay afloat financially following the death of her husband, to the manipulative abuse of her psychiatrist Dr. Rosengren, thereby creating an opening for former ballerina Valborg to seduce her away from the world of men. Almost like a mirror held up to the opening scene of Bergman’s previous film, this young woman approaches the edge of a pier with the intent to drown herself, but where Port of Call’s Berit was unsuccessful, there is no one around to rescue Viola.

The camera only follows her so far though, eventually resting on the still reflection of a ship in the water, and just as the ripples of her jump gently disturb its image, so too does the impact of her suicide reverberate through Thirst with a haunting melancholy. It does not just occupy the thoughts of Bertil, whose love for her persists, but it also leaves a hopeless void in this allegory of Europe’s lost innocence. Outside the train windows in the present day, crowds of men and women whose lives have been disrupted by war and poverty reach up to the passengers onboard, begging for food scraps. Rut and Bertil may placate their requests, but it isn’t long before they are speeding off on the train again, submerged back in their own drama.

It is frequently in these intimate scenes of claustrophobic interiors where Bergman’s filmmaking flourishes, forcing the camera into delicately framed close-ups of his actors as they pour their frustrations out onto each other and themselves. As Dr Rosengren imposes himself upon Viola, Bergman shoots the profile of her insecure expression with his face behind hers, composing a distinctive shot that he would most famously return to later in Persona. Here though, the camera rotates around their heads in an enchanting swirl, moving into a shot of duelling faces on either side of the frame before letting Viola dominate the image, reflecting the scene’s shift in power dynamics with a single, fluid take. Similarly, the lighting of the train scenes also manifest the deep derision shared between Bertil and Rut, casting shadows and the train’s blinking lights across faces as the foundation of their misery surfaces.

“I hate you so much that I want to live just to make your life miserable. Raoul was brutal. You took away my lust for life.”

There is no downplaying the agony of Rut’s past, which saw her become another man’s mistress and suffer a botched abortion, and yet it is her current husband whose insistent longing for the deceased Viola which torments her the most. Conversely, it is Rut’s own history with her past lover Raoul which plagues Bertil’s mind too, setting up a pair of intangible obstacles that neither can move past. Both are at an impasse, taking snarky jabs at each other by complaining that “There’s too much nudity in this marriage,” but also degrading themselves with harsh, demeaning language.

“Nothing takes root in me. I’m all filth and sludge inside.”

The final, psychological departure from reality that sees Bertil kill his wife with a bottle to the head does not spill over in a moment of anger, but even more chillingly punctuates a cold silence. Once again, close-ups are Bergman’s chosen aesthetic in framing this violent outburst, though in separating them into their own shots there is a disconnection in the action. We see Bertil’s slow turn and sudden attack, and we also see Rut collapse a few seconds later, but the surreal discontinuity in the framing and delay hints at the action taking place purely within a dark, eerie dream state.

With both their previous love lives lying in tatters, further destruction is not the answer for these loveless partners. Perhaps these is a tinge of studio interference in the happy reconciliation that comes about, but if this couple is to represent the disrepair of Europe in the wake of war, then their decision to pursue a more hopeful future together at least expresses an optimism for the continent’s social and economic recovery. For Bergman, it is also slightly closer to the magical realism he would pioneer in future decades, even if it is not fully present yet in his narrative. Still, his dynamic camerawork and framing is enough to visually manifest the wistful temptation to escape into one’s mind from grim realities, especially when that reality is a morose, resentful marriage.

Thirst is currently streaming on The Criterion Channel.