Category: 1947

Record of a Tenement Gentleman (1947)

Yasujirō Ozu | 1hr 12min

Whether they were abandoned, lost, or orphaned, young children were among the most impacted civilians of wartime Japan, making seven-year-old Kōhei one of many stranded without parents in Record of a Tenement Gentleman. Every survivor is dealing with their own struggles though, so when O-tane’s neighbour picks him up off the street, the question arises – why must this middle-aged widow be the one to take him in? If you ask her, it is because her friends agreed to randomly select who should be his carer, and she unfortunately drew the lot with an X on it. If you ask Tashiro or Tamekichi, the game was rigged so that all the lots were marked with an X, and she simply revealed hers first. To Yasujirō Ozu though, there is a maternal warmth beneath her spiky exterior that she might refuse to acknowledge, yet which predisposes her to the enormous responsibility of raising Kōhei.

Record of a Tenement Gentleman may be the closest this director of domestic dramas ever got to shooting a war film, rejecting the spectacle of battle for the quiet struggles of those whose homes were torn apart by bloodshed. Death and violence takes place entirely offscreen, never clarifying what led to the demise of O-tane’s husband, and only relaying the backstory of Kōhei’s bombed-out home through a neighbour’s brief exposition. The child’s father left for Japan to find work, we learn, and at some point along the way they were separated.“Your dad’s cold-hearted,” O-tane cynically reasons as they share food together atop a dune, overlooking a breezy, grey ocean.

“You didn’t get lost. You got abandoned.”

Grey skies and oceans form the negative space upon which O’tane and Kōhei’s figures are imprinted, bleakly looking out at the horizon as this middle-aged woman breaks the tragic news to the boy.

Perhaps this is her lack of faith in humanity speaking, or maybe it is her own justification to keep him by her side – not that she is terribly well-equipped as a mother. He is little more than a nuisance to her, earning her ire for failing to win a lottery draw, and repeatedly wetting his bed. Ozu’s storytelling through pillow shots is strong here, not only using his characteristic laundry montages to transition between scenes, but also frequently returning to the wet patch on his hanging sheets to reveal the chronic nature of this issue.

Unusually for Ozu, the narrative progresses through his trademark laundry shots, returning to this hanging blanket to reveal the chronic nature of Kōhei’s bed-wetting.
Ozu patiently builds out postwar Tokyo’s rundown districts, composing long shots littered with junk and debris as O-tane navigates its streets.

Through its elegant union of style and character, what is largely underrated as a minor Ozu film displays graceful, minimalist sophistication, building out Tokyo’s rundown districts and the people that inhabit them. His path may have never crossed with the Italian neorealists of the time, but his ability to find tenderness in mundane suffering certainly aligns with theirs, compassionately studying behaviours as simple as O-tane’s discontented grinding of flour. Hanging kitchen utensils clutter the ceiling in her home too, pressing down from above in isolating wide shots as she smokes alone, and serving a similar purpose as the obstructions so often framed in the foreground.

O-tane’s state of mind is expressed through everyday motions, comparing her slow grinding of flour to the rapid, frustrating grinding later on.
Hanging tools and utensils from the kitchen ceiling, pressing down on O-tane from this isolating wide shot.

When Kōhei runs away one day out of fear of wetting the bed again, Ozu’s focus turns to the rundown streets of O-tane’s neighbourhood, joining her silent, uneasy search for this regretfully mistreated child. There, he lingers on street litter as it is lightly tousled by the breeze, as equally disregarded as those young children who pass their days fishing from the bridge. Their featured presence in cutaways all throughout Record of a Tenement Gentleman is impactful – they live on the periphery of society, yet they are crucial to Ozu’s portrait of innocence in mid-century Japan, particularly centring Kōhei as a generational symbol of resilience.

A very fine montage as O-tane searches for a missing Kōhei, as Ozu cycles through shots set up earlier in the film.
The theme of society’s forgotten children echo poignantly through the scene, ending in this shot of litter blowing in the wind – sharp parallels drawn through imagery.

Upon this child’s safe return home, we see something shift in O-tane, lovingly spoiling him with a day trip to the zoo. “I’ve never felt like this before. Motherly love?” she wonders aloud to her friend, who humorously jabs back that she is more like a grandmother. For all the severity of these characters’ circumstances, Ozu maintains a gentle humour and levity in their interactions, making the unexpected arrival of Kōhei’s father to take him home all the more bittersweet.

Warmth and joy emerge in this surrogate mother-son dynamic, cracking O-tane’s stone heart and providing Kōhei a source of stability.
Ozu knows how to design a frame at this point his career, imbuing the scenery with hypnotic, repetitive motions.

No longer does O-tane find the same satisfaction in her solitude as she did before, and in Kōhei’s absence, the world again becomes a cold and lonely place. Ozu would later refine the conclusion of his character arcs, delivering emotional gut punches in a single, devastating composition rather than a monologue as he does here with O-tane’s explicit moralising, speaking to the life-changing marvel of children. It is fortunate indeed then that Record of a Tenement Gentleman does not give her the final say, but rather returns to the children of Tokyo, this time playing in Ueno Park where she plans to adopt one. There, a statue of Takamori Saigō watches over them like a vigilant protector, connecting this dark period of Japanese history back to one of its greatest icons of honour. O-tane may not strike nearly impressive a figure as this noble samurai, yet as her broken nation emerges from the darkness of war, so too does she embrace a quiet, compassionate heroism of her own.

O-tane’s world is once again a dark and lonely place to be, sinking her into shadows when Kōhei is taken back home.
Takamori Saigō – a symbolic, silent protector of Japan’s children, who smoke, talk, and play at his feet in the film’s closing pillow shots.

Record of a Tenement Gentleman is currently streaming on The Criterion Channel.

A Ship Bound for India (1947)

Ingmar Bergman | 1hr 38min

Underlying many of Ingmar Bergman’s greatest films is a psychological intrigue seeking to understand his flawed, complex characters, but even in his early melodrama, A Ship Bound for India, his development of a Freudian love triangle carries power in its twisted relationship dynamics. Though the biological matriarch of the Blom family is present in this story, Kapten Blom’s decision to integrate his mistress, Sally, into this clan of sailors immediately sets her up as a surrogate parent of sorts. With her being several decades younger than Blom, the affection is mostly one-sided, and further complications arise when she begins to strike up a romance with his son. Naturally, Johannes’ aroused interest in Sally drives a wedge between him and his father, and while there is no incest to be found here, the love and disdain that he directs towards both parental figures makes for a knotty, Oedipal-adjacent dynamic.

Hanging over this story is an air of fleeting transience, embodied literally by the ships sailing from one dock to the next, and formally weaved into the narrative’s structure as a single, extended flashback, nostalgically yearning for missed connections. Johannes’ incidental run-in with Sally seven years after their brief romance motivates this recollection, and despite the appearance of a random voiceover that we never hear again, the transition is effectively made with melancholy rumination.

It is unclear whether A Ship Bound for India was shot on Bergman’s home island of Fårö like many of his later films, but given the rocky beaches and dreary landscapes on display, it is very much possible. His camerawork is more refined than ever at this point in his career, displaying a depth of field in his blocking that paints out the meaningful character dynamics within its small ensemble, as well as an array of beautiful compositions, such as one particularly striking shot staggering silhouettes of dock workers against a grey sky.

The giant windmill set piece is a significant highlight in this aspect, as Bergman delivers a magnificent establishing shot of the wooden structure rising into an overcast sky and dwarfing the two lovers, before moving into its rough-hewn, timber interior where divisions are visually drawn between them out of log bannisters and sticks. These obstructions are present all through their quarrel, but it is only when they fall into each other’s arms and finally kiss that Bergman unites them in the frame, crafting a delicate, romantic composition.

Realising that Johannes is the only man who loves her without wanting anything in return, Sally all but turns away from Blom, whose hostile behaviour worsens. The ageing sailor feels his youth and vitality seeping away from him, and with the knowledge that his eyesight is going too, he pugnaciously lashes out at those around him. His long-suffering wife can’t wait for the day to come that he is completely blind, believing that maybe then he will settle down a little, but we can see instead the opposite is true. Upon discovering that Sally has left him for Johannes, he impulsively makes an attempt on his own son’s life, cutting off his air supply while he is scuba diving. As his cranking of the pump slows to a halt, Bergman ominously cuts to his shadow, revealing his malicious turn through the darkness he casts on the wharf. Likewise, when the time comes for the police to arrest him, he locks himself in his murky, low-lit bedroom, though this time Bergman hangs on his guilt in a long take, flashing a slow, pulsating light across face.

Johannes may not be directly responsible for his father’s death, but the Oedipal implications are hard to ignore. With his family virtually destroyed by his relationship with Sally, and his work summoning him to India, all they have to hinge their hopes on is the assurance that he will one day return and take her away for good. The pain of the past is still raw, but if there was ever a time to fulfil this promise, it is the present, where fate has drawn them back together on the same docks where they met. The metaphor of ships passing in the night is practically begging to be acknowledged in this tale of romance, trauma, and healing, and under Bergman’s assured direction, it manifests with a light touch of wistful longing.

A Ship Bound for India is currently streaming on The Criterion Channel

Out of the Past (1947)

Jacques Tourneur | 1hr 37min

It only makes sense that a classical Hollywood director with as thorough a grounding in cinematic horror as Jacques Tourneur can so easily slip into film noir and flex his expressionistic style in this adjacent yet still distinct genre. It almost doesn’t matter that Out of the Past’s narrative is eventually pushed to the point of inscrutability, especially given how much Tourneur turns this into a strength of the piece, stacking up lies upon lies from supposed allies and enemies trying to outsmart each other. The manner in which private detective Jeff Markham manipulates a fresh murder scene to confound the killer who herself is using it to manipulate others is almost amusing in its complexity. As with all great noirs though, such convoluted entanglements are deliberately undercut by the atmosphere of impending doom hanging over antiheroes and villains alike, threatening to send them all to early graves in spite of their intricate, egotistic endeavours.

Being a film as fascinated by the inescapability of old sins and crimes as it is, Out of the Past remains perhaps one of the purest noirs in its fatalistic pull. Jeff’s own destiny is etched out from the start in his decision to run away with Kathy, the mysterious woman he has been hired to track down, though Tourneur initially brings us into the narrative after all this has already taken place. As far as we know at this point, Jeff is a gas station attendant working in a small mountain town, dating a good-natured country girl named Ann, and it is only when summoned by a shady figure named Whit that he divulges through flashbacks and voiceover the shady past that he has been trying to outrun.

Robert Mitchum playing a sly, manipulative detective, caught in these magnificently claustrophobic frames.

Such introspective presentations of urban and rural regions may even seem directly parallel to Shakespeare’s own contemplative considerations of court versus country life, whereby the latter represents a place of healing from the politics of the former. This is indeed the motivation for Jeff at least, who is ready to make a fresh start in Bridgeport after getting tangled up in murder, theft, and fraud in the city. As Tourneur lays out in the very first shot of a crossroads sign displaying the directions of both though, there is a connection that joins one to the other, and it is along this route that the gloom and danger of Jeff’s old life invades his new.

The very first shot – a sign showing the route between the city and the country, the past and the present.

Robert Mitchum finds the ideal role for his screen persona in Jeff Markham, a man whose dialogue sizzles with sharp, succinct turns of phrase. “Tell me why you’re so hard to please,” Kathy teases him. “Take me where I can tell you,” he replies with understated cheek, and this wit very much defines his nonchalant, pointed style all through Out of the Past. His fedora and trench coat might make him appear like any number of other hardboiled black-and-white detectives, and yet the dark charisma he carries rivals Humphrey Bogart’s, much of it coming from that deep, resonant voice which is just as suited for narration as it is for short, quick-witted responses.

Tourneur’s magnificent horror lighting revealing itself in scenes like these – a lamp toppling off its table as the door blows open, throwing this room into darkness and changing its atmosphere in an instant.

And yet as much as he acts like it, Jeff is not some cool, untouchable figure removed the danger of the piece. Around him, Tourneur’s lighting flickers from bright to starkly expressionist as quickly as it takes a lamp to topple off a table, and within the dark enclosures of mansions, apartments, and isolated cabins the detective is visually trapped behind drapes and doorways. Indeed, there always seems to be constant attention on Tourneur’s behalf to the manner in which characters are made vulnerable against others, often shrunken against those who spy on them from behind. Even when it isn’t at the forefront of the narrative, Tourneur is quietly underscoring that lurking threat that comes from behind, fatalistically drawing Jeff back into those past transgressions he would much rather hide from than confront directly and have to carry the weight of in all their hideous, damning indictments.

Layering of actors across foreground and background, often making Jeff a vulnerable figure.

Out of the Past is currently not available to stream in Australia.