How many times must impresario Checco fall for a young lady, throw away his life for her career, and find himself abandoned before he learns his lesson? It seems that some romantics are simply incapable of such self-cognisance, as even after the precious Liliana departs his troupe to be a showgirl in a larger company, another woman similarly catches his eye and sets off the cycle all over again. Meanwhile, Checco’s faithful mistress Melina is always there to catch his fall, constantly letting her heart be broken in the hope that one day it won’t all be in vain. The bare bones of Variety Lights’ narrative make up a fable that Josef von Sternberg had previously given extraordinary cinematic life in has masterpiece The Blue Angel, and yet the light neorealist edge that Federico Fellini and Alberto Lattuada offer here alternatively ingrains it within the bohemian landscapes of Italy’s travelling troupes with effortless style.
For Fellini especially, Variety Lights marks a significant milestone as his directorial debut, having spent the past few years working as a screenwriter for Roberto Rossellini. His love of theatre’s longstanding traditions would take on even greater symbolic meaning in later films like La Strada and 8 ½, but they emerge quite directly here as the setting of his narrative, fuelling the drama between its flighty characters. So too does he initiate two of his greatest collaborations in this film, not only with cinematographer Otello Martelli whose keen sense of blocking and depth of field would later be put to tremendous use in La Dolce Vita, but also with Fellini’s own wife Giulietta Masina who steals every scene she is in as Melina.
Carla Del Poggio may not be quite up to Masina’s level as Liliana, but even so her transformation from awkward wannabe to glamourous showgirl is well-earned. Much like the sly usurper of All About Eve, Liliana works her way into the inner circle of powerful players with a sincere naivety, winning the viewer’s trust as a reliable heroine. Her first attempt at ingratiating herself with Checco by showing him her model photos is blunt, but it isn’t until she hires a carriage to rescue his stranded troupe that she is brought into their fold. Her apparent clumsiness onstage apparently doesn’t deter male spectators from cheering on her performance, and so she officially becomes the hot new attraction, growing audience numbers by the night and drawing invitations for the group to dine with wealthy patrons.
Seeing an opportunity to make more money and keep Liliana by his side, Checco resolves for the pair of them to strike out on their own and start a new acting troupe. The following struggle for funds that sees him crawling back to Melina briefly blows Variety Lights out into melodrama, and yet not enough to detract from Fellini’s naturalism. Taking inspiration from his neorealist mentors, he chooses to shoot on location all through urban and rural Italy, composing handsome shots from cobbled stone streets, narrow alleyways, and long, dusty roads lines with trees.
This is not the groundbreaking filmmaking that would later establish Fellini as a master of the art form, but it is nonetheless an admirable starting point, absolutely fitting for this fable of luckless artists. For better or for worse, Checco will always have Melina there to foolishly take him back when other women abandon him for more lavish opportunities, leaving him broke in both love and money. It might be easy to assume that only those blinded by dreamy passion lose themselves in eternal loops of self-degradation, and yet as is evident through Variety Lights’ hapless impresario, such complete failure also takes a self-centred ego and a certain lack of wits.
Variety Lights is currently streaming on The Criterion Channel, and the DVD and Blu-ray are available to purchase on Amazon.
There might not be any reliable historical record that the ritual of ‘obasute’ was practiced anywhere outside of Japanese folklore, and yet it is exactly in that heightened, mythical realm where The Ballad of Narayama dwells. In the small valley where the 69-year-old Orin lives with her grandson Tatsuhei, it is tradition for elders to be carried to a mountaintop when they turn 70, and then left alone to perish. This form of customary senicide is not something to be feared, just as the natural course of ageing is not to be shied away from. In fact, Orin’s 33 intact teeth are even a point of shame for her, becoming the subject of a mocking song that is quickly spread between neighbours, cruelly suggesting that she struck a deal with the devil.
“In a corner in the back room
My granny found herself a set of 33 demon teeth.”
The other implication here is that Orin’s appetite is unusually large for a woman of her age, and in this starving village, a gluttony like hers is worthy of public humiliation. Whether for celebration or punishment, singing is the medium through which ideas are shared among the locals, turning rumours into stories, and stories into lyrics. As implied by the title The Ballad of Narayama, narrative and music are strongly intertwined in the film’s very form, paying homage to the traditions of kabuki theatre with a singer introducing scenes and offering poetic commentary. “The harvest in autumn brings sorrow, Even as the rice ripens to a golden hue,” his wavering voice croons to the twanging of his three-stringed shamisen, evoking colourful images of workers labouring away in yellow rice fields that are only outdone by the bright, saturated visuals Keisuke Kinoshita matches to the lyrics.
Kinoshita’s frames are paintings rendered through theatrical staging and autumnal colours, visualising the lyrics of the sung narration with an incredibly saturated aesthetic.Each scene is given its own distinct colour palette, cloaking these characters here in vibrant red leaves.
While his Japanese contemporaries Akira Kurosawa and Yasujirō Ozu were still working in black-and-white around this time, the lesser-known Kinoshita was boldly venturing into the realm of colour cinematography – still a relatively new technology in late 1950s Asia, yet one which has rarely been put to better use than it is here. Within the widescreen Shochiku GrandScope, the earthy yellows and oranges of autumnal landscapes are detailed in vast, painterly compositions, while the colour palette’s eventual shift to greys and whites as snow starts to fall visually ushers in a dreary seasonal change.
Kinoshita eventually drains his mise-en-scène of colour as winter replaces autumn, shedding a light grey snow across spectacular sets.
Michael Powell’s Technicolor visuals no doubt influenced Kinoshita here, especially with matte backdrops of expansive mountain ranges heavily evoking Black Narcissus, and yet the village’s fluorescent green wash at night and its striking contrast against a bright pink sky makes for an electric contrast that was still quite novel in 1958. The potential of neon lighting was established from there, paving a path for Seijun Suzuki and Mario Bava’s stylistic genre experiments in the 1960s, though it wouldn’t be until Peter Greenaway’s brightly coloured satires in the 80s that we would see another filmmaker adopt and even match Kinoshita’s grand, theatrical artifice.
The Ballad of Narayama features some of the first neon lighting in cinema, striking a jarring visual contrast in the deep greens and pinks.
Because as a visual and formal statement, that is what The Ballad of Narayama is – a heavily curated representation of traditional Japanese storytelling, adapted to a modern medium. Kinoshita never hides the fact that these sets are built on highly controlled soundstages, but also never lets its limitations impose on his vibrant worldbuilding. The lighting dramatically shifts with the sentiment of each scene, at one point dimming to a spotlight on two characters consumed by darkness, and later casting an angry red wash over Orin’s disturbing arrival at a festival with several of her teeth smashed out.
A two shot contained within a spotlight, emphasising their connection through the negative space around them.An angry red wash is cast over the scene of Orin’s arrival at the festival, revealing that she has smashed several of her own teeth out.
Of course, all of this is entirely in line with kabuki theatre conventions as well, maintaining that invisible fourth wall between the scenery and the viewer as Kinoshita’s camera tracks parallel to the action, and frames interiors in wide shots like dioramas. These sets are incredibly dynamic, often moving walls and props to transition between scenes where one might expect to find a cut, and thereby manipulating our perception of time through theatrical rather than cinematic conventions.
This is not to say that Kinoshita’s direction is stagebound though, as there remains a very sharp attention to detail in his depth of field, mimicking the look of multiplane animations by dividing his frame into separate layers that move at different speeds when the camera drifts past. It is especially the final act of the film following Tatsuhei’s journey up the mountain with Orin on his back that Kinoshita delivers some of his most immaculate cinematic scenery, largely excising dialogue as grandmother and grandson traverse great mossy boulders, cascading waterfalls, and trees that grow more withered with the rising altitude.
Excellent visual storytelling in the editing and camera movement, journeying up the mountain through perilous terrains. The soundstages make for some incredibly rich compositions, obstructed by trees in the foreground while mountain ranges are painted out in matte backdrops.
Atop the craggy peak, the only sign of life are black crows standing over a number of skeletons – foreboding imagery for sure, and yet this pilgrimage is nevertheless one of serene acceptance. Through the ritual of obasute, generations are united in a cycle of life as enduring as the seasons themselves, which just so happen to shift at the exact point Tatsuhei begins his journey back down. Snow begins to fall, and again we move through the same shots as before, though this time in reverse order and with a soft, white powder concealing the vibrant colours.
Fog and death hangs in the air, littering the mountaintop with the skeletons of elders who have perished here before.
Though there may be peaceful closure within Tatsuhei’s family, the burst of violence that disrupts his descent is a culmination of several disputes we have witnessed up to now. His neighbour Matayan is at a similar age as Orin, and yet he does not embrace his encroaching death with such grace. Conversely, his son couldn’t be more ready to rid himself of the old man, finally resorting to dragging his fearful father up the mountain against his will. The brutality and selfishness of these villagers was also firmly established earlier with their lynching of a starving man who tried to steal food, and now as we watch Matayan and his son struggle on a cliff’s edge, we witness another cold-blooded murder. The son’s patricide is an unadulterated perversion of tradition, demonstrating an eagerness to escape the burden of the past rather than let it go with dignity as the conventions of obasute dictate. Grasping for some sort of justice as a bystander, Tatsuhei unleashes his fury upon his neighbour, and eventually succeeds in sending him plunging to his death too.
The village’s disrespect of elders pays off in this terrible struggle between father and son, sending the senior tumbling over the clifftop.
As if sectioning this entire tale off into a sad, distant dream of Japanese folklore, Kinoshita’s epilogue removes us completely from the vibrant sets and theatrical storytelling that have dominated The Ballad of Narayama up until now. Colours are desaturated into a miserable black-and-white, and for the first time the mountain scenery is entirely authentic, seeing a train pull into a modern-day station. The only indication of the region’s history is etched on a sign, giving the station its name – “Obasute”, or the “abandonment of old people.” A term that once carried great pride has become one of mourning, implying a desertion that is not merely symbolic, but loaded with cruel dispassion. Perhaps we can at least find some solace in the preservation of Japan’s forgotten legends through this cinematic ballad of lush, vibrant colours, healing that division between past and present with a painterly reinvention of theatrical and film conventions as we know them.
The epilogue is a powerful formal shift to black-and-white location shooting, returning us to the modern day where trains run through the old village.
The Ballad of Narayama is currently streaming on The Criterion Channel, and the DVD is available to buy on Amazon.
There are very few filmmakers who can accurately be called one of cinema’s great minimalists while detailing compositions with such organised clutter, revealing intimate details of an apartment building’s residents through the placement of a tricycle in a hallway, or the neat rows of white laundry hanging on a clothesline. For Yasujirō Ozu, it virtually came as second nature by the time he reached the pinnacle of his craftsmanship in Tokyo Story. There is a clean, precise order to the lives of the Hiryama family, precariously balancing traditional ideals valued by grandparents Shūkichi and Tomi against their children and grandchildren’s desire to keep striving towards a more independent future, and binding all three generations together through the meditative routines of everyday life. As the centrepiece of this narrative, they form a delicate microcosm of post-war Japanese culture, gently tugging further apart over time yet never reaching any sort of breaking point.
Bodies are staggered from foreground to background with care, here blocking each actor in a separate layer of the frame. This is a family drama, but there is division even among the children.Ozu is on the short list of cinema’s greatest masters of mise-en-scène, composing his shots with the sort of detail that turns settings into extensions of characters. Here, it is the tricycle in the foreground, the sake bottles off to the right, and the hanging laundry in the background which tells us about the residents of this apartment building.
For Shūkichi and Tomi, negative emotions are sealed tightly behind beaming smiles and quiet hums, only ever expressing difficult sentiments in private conversations. “We have children of our own, yet you’ve done the most for us,” Shūkichi warmly thanks his widowed daughter-in-law Noriko, expressing gratitude for providing the hospitality during his visit that Shige and Kōichi were too busy to offer. They too are polite in their outward mannerisms, but are far less adept at concealing their frustration over the burden of their parents’ visit. “Crackers would have been good enough for them,” Shige scolds her husband when he buys them expensive cakes, and she can barely hide her disappointment when they return early from a spa vacation organised to get them out of the house.
Indeed, tension is rife in Ozu’s family drama, though comparing it to the bitter dynamics of an Ingmar Bergman film or the overflowing Hollywood melodramas of Douglas Sirk reveals few similarities. Ozu’s friction does not beg for urgent resolution, but would much rather dwell in silent acceptance, evoking a Zen state that finds harmony in the paradoxes of the modern world. Smokestacks, powerlines, and train tracks impose their harsh edges on the curves of natural formations and traditional architecture, becoming the conflicting subjects of Ozu’s characteristic pillow shots. Where a more conventional director might use a simple establishing shot to transition from one scene to the next, we instead slip through elegiac clusters of exterior views, lifting us outside the narrative flow and into a state of transient suspension. Perhaps just as uncommon as a talented minimalist with crowded mise-en-scène is an all-time great editor who does not push their pacing beyond an easy, measured rhythm, and with roughly ten or so seconds dividing each cut in these montages, Ozu claims this rarified space as well.
Smoke stacks reach for the sky, and powerlines intersect them at corresponding angles, imposing a geometric rigidity on the scenery of modern Japan.Compare those harsh edges and angles to the elegant curves of traditional Japanese architecture and sculptures – a huge visual contrast between the country’s past and present is represented in Ozu’s pillow shots.Perhaps the single greatest image of industrial progress, disrupting a peaceful seaside village with a steam train running right through its middle.
Even beyond his pillow shots though, he remains averse to the idea of only staying in a scene for its drama, frequently cutting to an empty room before it is filled with people, and lingering there for a short time after their conversations have ceased. This is not quite the tragic neorealism of Vittorio de Sica or Roberto Rossellini, but rather a naturalism that elevates mundane, everyday living to a level of spiritual transcendence, stripping away obtrusive distractions to encompass us in a contemplative stillness. Besides one deliberate tracking shot when Shūkichi and Tomi sorrowfully head back home from Tokyo, the camera never moves, consistently sitting low to the ground at roughly the same height as the characters in their traditional kneeling position. As if following the rigorous consistency of the family’s routines, he selects a handful of these compositions to repeat throughout the film too, connecting us back to established visual beats. This does not only synchronise us with Shūkichi and Tomi’s symmetrical ‘there and back’ journey across Japan, but it also transforms the act of dutiful repetition into a formal, contemplative poetry that stretches through the entire film.
Ozu will return to a select few compositions throughout Tokyo Story to create a formal rhythm, underscoring the repetition of his characters’ routines and physical journeys.These two shots demonstrate another use of repetition. They appear roughly ten minutes apart and capture the exact same location in the house, but Ozu pushes the camera slightly further forward the second time round to study the movements of his characters more closely.
Ozu’s delicate timing and framing of these shots are also far more unified with his settings than his characters, often only observing family members from a passive distance as they drift through corridors and rooms. Just like the parallel lines and intersecting curves of the outside world, there is a geometric logic to his careful arrangement of each household item as they fill in negative space, obstruct compositions, and layer hallways with a vivid depth of field. Even when characters are not present, these homes carry the spirit of their day-to-day lives, carving out an unassuming beauty from each sake bottle, pot plant, and umbrella that sits in stasis between uses, yet which makes these spaces feel truly lived in.
Ozu wisely sits in rooms for slightly longer than his characters are actually present, letting us study the incredible detail of his compositions – the pot plant in the foreground, the frames within frames further down, the storage packed close to the ceiling. He uses every part of his shot to beautiful effect.Another intricately composed shot, revealing the life that persists in domestic settings even while his characters are absent – the hanging decorations, the cabinets along the right side of the frame, the low table slightly obstructing the shot in the foreground.
As we rest in the soothing passage of these still images, time very gradually becomes visible in Tokyo Story, delicately tracing Japan’s shift away from its complicated past and into an equally complex future. As innocent as Shūkichi and Tomi are in their old-fashioned nostalgia, their disappointment in their children at times seems firmly out-of-touch with modern demands, and Shige also recalls with disdain how her father would often come home drunk late at night when she was a child. Her desire to keep moving forward is not out of place among her generation, particularly given the recent traumas of World War II and the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Shōji is rarely discussed in Tokyo Story, but his absence silently carries the trauma of World War II, driving home a point of tension between those clinging to the past and those moving into the future.
Having lost their beloved Shōji in the Pacific War, the Hiryamas should understand this all too well, and yet the pain of his memory hurts differently for each family member. Noriko hangs on dearly to the memory of her deceased husband, but when Shūkichi and Tomi notice their son’s framed photo still up in her house, she can barely address it without making a convenient excuse to exit. Later when Shūkichi gently encourages her to let Shōji go and remarry, she accepts her new path with tender grief, finally taking on the lesson that her father-in-law has spent weeks learning the hard way.
For that older generation, the realisation of their fading relevance and mortality has trickled in very slowly. As Tomi sits atop a hill and watches her grandson play, she quietly wonders what he will be when he grows up, before pausing on a sad, poignant question – “By the time you’re a doctor, I wonder if I’ll still be here.” Later during their getaway at the hot springs, Ozu foreshadows her eventual death further with a brief dizzy spell, and at least partially suggests that the commotion of modern Japan is somewhat responsible for her ailing health. The noisy city nightlife certainly doesn’t help either, as there is a subtle restlessness in Ozu’s cutting between Shūkichi and Tomi trying to sleep, the rowdy patrons down below, and those empty, perfectly aligned slippers sitting just outside their room.
Excellent editing at the spa as Shūkichi and Tomi struggle to sleep, conveying a restlessness as Ozu cuts to noisy nightlife below and the slippers just outside their room waiting to be worn.Even when he isn’t filling his frame, Ozu still uses lines and figures to create these gorgeous minimalist compositions.
Not one to let life-changing events break through his emotional restraint, Ozu refuses to even show Tomi suddenly falling sick on the train home from Tokyo, nor her eventual death back home in Onomichi. This information is instead shared second-hand through other family members who are finally united under a single roof in grief. Ozu’s rigorous blocking of mourners at the funeral holds together a modicum of tradition that survives Tomi’s passing, and her children even contemplate their regrets over not being around more – “No one can serve his parents beyond the grave.” Unfortunately, their empathy is short-lived. Out of her father’s earshot and barely noting his loneliness, Shige tactlessly expresses her wish that he was the one to go first, and not long after she and her siblings have once again disappeared back to their lives in other far-flung cities.
A rigorous arrangement of bodies at the funeral – structure and tradition represented visually.Outside, Ozu cuts to the cemetery of clustered gravestones, mirroring his blocking of living people – cycles of life and death are embodied in this formal connection.
As flawed as the Hiryama children may be, Ozu’s meditation on generational changes is far from a condemnation of their modern values, and much more an elegiac reflection upon the natural course of life. Following his wife’s passing, a solitary Shūkichi gradually grows more isolated in Ozu’s mise-en-scène, mirroring the upright stature of two old stone pillars as he gazes out at the rising sun, and later sitting alone among his furniture as his home’s sole remaining occupant. These settings are visual extensions of their occupants, but so too are these characters equally consumed by their dynamic environments, drifting along a steady, one-way stream into a fading past. Few directors have found such an eloquent formal match between their aesthetic and their profound contemplations, yet even by Ozu’s standards Tokyo Story stands as his most carefully composed expression of melancholy acceptance, creatively distilling the experience of time’s unyielding passage down to the transient distance between one lingering instant and the next.
A solitary Shūkichi grows more isolated and one with his environment, with his posture reflected in the vertical sculptures around him.A melancholy final shot framing Shūkichi off to the left of the shot, leaving negative space where Tomi once sat.
Tokyo Story is currently streaming on The Criterion Channel, and the DVD is available to buy on Amazon.
Carl Theodor Dreyer’s parable of dwindling spirituality is stark in its dogmatic minimalism, enveloping Christians and non-believers alike in rural landscapes of harrowing scarcity. The few who maintain a relationship with God are often still isolated from their own souls, left to speak and move in slow, mechanical patterns like empty husks. Seemingly the worst of them all is Johannes, the middle son of devout widower Morten. While his family is busy quarrelling with neighbours and aiding sister-in-law Inger through the late stages of her pregnancy, he unhelpfully wanders around in a daze, preaching the delusion that he is Jesus Christ and lamenting their lack of faith.
“People believe in the dead Christ, but not in the living. They believe in my miracles from 2000 years ago, but they don’t believe in me now. I have come again to bear witness to my Father who is in heaven – and to work miracles.”
Atop a hill of long, swaying grass, he gazes up at a dreary Danish sky, speaking to no one in particular. There is a novel curiosity expressed in Dreyer’s low angle, marvelling at this strange figure who apparently drew such fanciful convictions from his time spent studying the philosophy of Søren Kierkegaard, but it also contains a trace of contemplative awe. He speaks of wondrous miracles brought about through the simple act of belief, and yet which so many now deny, with even the local reverend claiming that they break the laws of nature – “and naturally God does not break His own laws.”
Johannes stands alone against the dreary, overcast sky, looking to the heavens yet speaking to no one. Dreyer’s exterior landscape is sparse, void of life and vitality.
Dreyer is calculated in the perspective shift that unfolds over the course of Ordet, gradually expanding the scope of what we are willing to believe. Religion is represented as little more than a petty feud in the first act, seeing Morten’s conservative neighbour Peter refuse the marriage of their children due to their opposing beliefs. Morten’s faith is joyful but weak, while Peter’s is rigorous but dour, cruelly hoping that his foe might be taught a hard lesson through the death of his ailing daughter-in-law. This is the state of religion in modern Europe, Dreyer illustrates, losing sight of the brotherly love which underlies its core tenets and dividing believers over trivial differences.
“You think Christianity is sullenness and self-torment. I think Christianity is the fullness of life. My faith is for all day long and joy in life. Yours is longing for death.”
It is easy to brush off the image of highly idealised Christianity that Johannes represents given how distant he seems from reality, and yet there is a frightening accuracy to his portentous predictions. Inger’s baby will not survive birth, he announces, unless someone should believe in him and pray for Christ’s salvation. Even when this tragedy strikes exactly the way he described, few people are swayed in his favour. He is not yet done with his prophecies though, as right after Inger’s condition appears to stabilise, he claims to see the man with the scythe walk through the wall to fetch her too.
Dreyer’s parable is rich in its biblical archetypes, with the mysterious Christ figure prophesying tragedy and demonstrating ambiguous miracles.
The profoundly sombre tone that up has previously only lingered on the periphery of Ordet manifests viscerally in this double tragedy. Dreyer’s deliberations on matters of faith, death, and divine miracles carry great weight, emerging through the biblical archetypes represented in his characters and their dialogue, though the subduing power of his austere camerawork is crucial to his spiritual examinations. It navigates rigorously curated sets in long, slow movements with heavy restraint, letting us feel each passing second in its refusal to cut. When Johannes sits with Inger’s daughter and speaks of her mother’s impending death, Dreyer’s camera spends three minutes rotating from one side of the conversation to the other, absorbing his prophecy in pensive reflection.
Dreyer’s camerawork is slow and measured, moving inch by inch from one side of this conversation in prayerful meditation.
The emotionless detachment that has sunken into the souls of Johannes and those around him continues to manifest in Dreyer’s sparse mise-en-scène, stripped of life and joy. When his set dressers laid out the décor for each scene, it is said he went about taking pieces out until he achieved his desired minimalism, and the results are strikingly austere. In the negative space, he engages us in a cinematic meditation, removing extraneous distractions so that the deepest flaws of his characters may rise to the surface of each scene. In this sense, there is a clean line running between Dreyer’s work and that of his Swedish contemporary, Ingmar Bergman, who would similarly absorb the solemnity of his characters’ spiritual doubts into his severe visual style. Where Bergman’s dominant close-ups sought to draw out some cinema’s most profound performances though, Ordet’s emphasis on wide and mid-shots keeps a reserved distance from outward displays of emotion, draining scenes of life while maintaining a rigorously composed beauty.
Dreyer strips his sets of decor to create a bare minimalism, and then goes another step further by draining his actors of emotion and connection. The result goes beyond banality, and into a hypnosis that seems to suspend time altogether.
It isn’t until Inger’s funeral that Dreyer lands the film’s most striking image of irrevocable despair, symmetrically splitting the frame down the middle with the open casket. Even the bouquet of flowers at its base is arranged in perfect balance, while Morten and Inger’s husband, Mikkel, flank either side with a pair of white menorahs and carved wooden chairs. The tremendous grief that encompasses the scene moves even Peter to see the error in his puritanical beliefs and make amends with his old foe, and yet this is not the only miracle to be found through restored faith in Ordet.
One of Dreyer’s single greatest compositions, imposing a rigorous symmetry on Inger’s funeral with the carved wooden chairs and white menorahs on either side of her open casket.
When Johannes enters the funeral, it appears that he has snapped out of his stupor, but still he mourns the lack of faith among those who could have saved Inger from an untimely death – “Why is there not one among these believers who believe?”. As Christ sermonised though, those who take the lowly position of a child are the greatest in the kingdom of heaven, and Dreyer proves his film to be in deep conversation with the Gospels as Inger’s daughter steps forward for a second time to reveal a sincere, uncorrupted wisdom.
“Thy faith is great, thy will shall be done,” Johannes proclaims, singling her out as the sole believer among the many whose devotion is strong enough to raise the dead. Suddenly, within the cold stillness of Dreyer’s mise-en-scène, Inger’s hand twitches, and her eyes open. “It is the God of old, the God of Elijah, eternal and the same,” Peter proclaims in astonishment, though Dreyer finds an even greater blessing through the transformation of those who once rejected God altogether. With the resurrection of life in Ordet comes an equally astounding resurrection of faith, and thus as Mikkel espouses their total indivisibility, hope for a prosperous future is finally restored in Dreyer’s severe landscapes of spiritual isolation.
It is tempting to glamourise the life of Lola Montès, the famed dancer and courtesan who ventured across multiple continents and conducted affairs with some of 19th century Europe’s most famous men. After all, there are few women who can honestly say that their paths have intersected with so many key historical events, and even fewer who have used each as a platform to propel themselves higher up a cultural hierarchy that once towered above them.
The metaphor is not easily lost on the ringmaster of the circus that has essentially turned Lola into a novelty attraction many years later. “Just as every single action in her life has been, every single movement of her act is fraught with danger. She risks her pretty neck!” he cries, narrating her ascension up a grand trapeze, and labelling each acrobat who catches her in their arms as a new lover.
“Paris! Destiny sends her from the famous journalist Dunarrier to the journalist Beauvallon whose newspaper had a larger circulation. The great and celebrated Richard Wagner. The even greater and very famous Frédéric Chopin falls on his knees for her. Higher, Lola, higher! With dance and music, Lola rises from the world of art to that of politics!”
Lola Montes’ life has become little more than a humiliating circus act for the cheap entertainment of spectators, and Ophüls wields his metaphor with visual and formal brilliance as we slip between her past and present.
At the summit of this towering web of ropes and ladders, King Ludwig I of Bavaria awaits, ready to commence what will be “the most fantastic episode of her story.” Still, there is more than a hint of phoniness in the ringmaster’s theatrical rendition. His claim that her marriage to one Lieutenant James was a happy one is immediately undercut by her recollection of his drunken, abusive behaviour, exposing the scam of this fanciful historicising. As Lola Montes progresses, this tension proves to be key to Max Ophüls’ elaborately symbolic framing device, glamourising her rise to fame while forcing her to relive decades of objectification in her neatly interwoven flashbacks.
A heavy use of long dissolves in the flashbacks, offering a wealth of wall-art imagery as Lola’s face lingers over stunning establishing shots.
Indeed, Lola’s eventual fate as a target of the male gaze is written into her destiny from the start, not just as a courtesan flitting between lovers, but simply as a woman born into a patriarchal culture with limited options. Whisked off to Paris at a young age to marry a banker, she quickly recognises the power of her charm and natural beauty to carve out a future of her own choosing. The attention that Lola receives wherever she goes cannot be avoided, and so the best she can do is use it to her advantage, embracing her feminine image whether she is posing for royal portraits or standing atop garish pedestals.
Lola has always been the centre of attention, even posing for royal portraits in Bavarian palaces, though Ophüls’ visual comparison of the two types of pedestals she has been placed on marks a huge difference between luxurious wealth and gaudy entertainment.
As Lola marches even deeper into the annals of history, the undercurrents of time and providence swirl around her, and Ophüls’ sentimental, untethered camera is there swaying with them. More than just linking one stunning composition to the next, it manifests an ethereal elegance as it cranes up and down through theatres in long takes, and tracks the movement of characters across ravishing sets. The effect is intoxicating, yet in the hands of cinematographer Christian Matras it is also totally controlled – not at all a surprise given the mark he left on the poetic realism of the 1930s, further solidifying the line of influence between Jean Renoir’s roving camerawork and Ophüls’ own distinctive visual style.
Along with Carol Reed and Masaki Kobayashi, Ophüls is one of the few filmmakers of this era experimenting with canted angles, tipping his camera off balance to create some glorious frames.Ophüls’ moving camera is his greatest and most recognisable trademark, resting on remarkable compositions as we glide through gloriously designed sets.
Tied up in the work of both these directors is a tension between freedom and fatalism, and it is largely through the careful navigation of the camera in Lola Montes that both are so gracefully connected. For a long time, Lola would like to think of herself as a woman with boundless autonomy, even ripping open her bodice in her first private meeting with Ludwig I just to prove a point. Nevertheless, she still recognises on some level that she is trapped within the gendered rules of high society, and Ophüls frames her as such in opulent displays of Technicolor decadence, making this both his first and last film shot in colour before his untimely death a mere two years later.
Lola makes a huge first impression with the King of Bavaria, ripping open her bodice and immediately winning him over. The people of his kingdom are unfortunately not so easily swayed.
Whether actress Martine Carol is wandering through a rundown children’s dormitory of grey hammocks or draped in the finest royal garb, there is an air of delicate eminence to her, even as lush period décor and fluctuating aspect ratios press inwards like stage curtains. She is the luminous centre of each setting, asserting a screen presence that demonstrates why so many considered her France’s response to Marilyn Monroe, despite Lola’s dark wigs covering up Carol’s usual blonde hair. Cloaked in sparkling jewels and surrounded with extravagant historical décor, it isn’t hard either to see where the budget went for what was the most expensive European film of its time. Mirrors catch her reflection as she contemplates an uncertain future, transparent gauze drapes conceal her final goodbye to Ludwig, and the golden embellishments of Bavarian palaces frame her as another treasure added to the royal collection, lifting her to even greater heights as an inhuman object of imperial perfection.
Humble beginnings for Lola in this children’s dormitory of grey hammocks, and although it is missing the grand opulence of the rest of the film, Ophüls does not let the scene visually go to waste with its crowded mise-en-scène.Ophüls often closes in his aspect ratio like curtains, recognising when the widescreen format simply isn’t the right fit for his busy compositions.Josef von Sternberg did not have the precision of Ophüls’ moving camera, but he is a great influence on the German director’s elaborately ornate mise-en-scène, who obstructs frames all over the place with furniture and drapes.Ophüls showing off his magnificent production design in the majestic palaces of 19th century Bavaria, decorating almost every inch with gold. It is easy to see how this became the most expensive European film of its time.
The majesty of Ophüls’ production design does not cease when we cut back to the present-day circus scenes, but for as long as Lola stands onstage under the vibrant wash of red and blue lights, she is much more exposed than she ever has been before. She has certainly suffered in the public eye before, even becoming a widely hated Marie Antoinette-like figure spurned for her perceived “insult to dignity, morality, religion,” yet while courting Ludwig I she at least had the safety and privacy of the palace to protect her. As a carnival attraction, she is thoroughly humiliated, and her autonomy is destroyed. Everyone’s eyes are still on her, but there is nowhere to retreat in the middle of this stage.
Red and blue lighting in the present day scenes washing Lola Montes in shades of resentment and melancholy.
After a lifetime of never finding the security she craved, this is the life she wearily resigns to. She is filled with miserable self-loathing as she escapes the March Revolution of 1848, rejecting a friend’s romantic proposition not because of his lowly status, but because she no longer believes she is worthy or capable of love.
“I’ve lived too much, had too many adventures. Bavaria was my last chance. My last hope of a haven. It’s all over… all over. You see, if this warmth you offer me, if this face which I find not too unpleasing leaves me without hope, then something is broken. Yes, it’s over.”
Crushed spirits, rejecting a handsome suitor not because of his low class, but because of her lost faith in an authentic love.
The Lola who is forced to recount her life through ostentatious circus acts bears a pale resemblance to the one who is said to have bathed nude in Turkey for the sultan and served champagne from her slipper. Backstage, we learn of her medical concerns that are carelessly brushed off by the ringmaster, maintaining that she performs her climactic acrobatic leap without a safety net. Just as she once lived at the top of European society with the King of Bavaria, so too does her fall risk destroying everything she once had, landing her in a menagerie of exotic beasts similarly trapped behind bars. The camera floats back over the heads of audiences lining up to stroke her hair or kiss her hand, revealing an enormous line that could singlehandedly keep this circus running for years, though it isn’t until a pair of clowns close the red curtains on us that Ophüls lands Lola Montes’ final, scathing critique. Everything from Lola’s childhood dreams to her multiple romantic affairs has been little more than a cheap show for this culture of perverse celebrity worship, seeking to degrade the lives of great women into objects of commodified, gaudy spectacle.
The camera pulls back from Lola behind bars for the final bit of audience interaction, and then just keeps on moving to reveal the enormous queue lining up to completely degrade and dehumanise her.
Lola Montes is currently streaming on The Criterion Channel.
Even after pensioner Umberto D. Ferrari is threatened with eviction, kicked out of his hospital bed, and forced through the trials of losing and recovering his dog, it is surprising to find that he still has the pride to reject the smallest help from strangers. As he stands outside the Pantheon, he sheepishly wrestles with the prospect of begging, before thrusting his hand out at a passerby. The shame is almost instant – as soon as the man reaches into his pocket to take out a few bills, Umberto averts his gaze and flips his hand over, pretending to test for rain.
It is hardly his fault that he has fallen on such hard times, especially given the bleak social conditions of post-war Rome that have sent masses into poverty. Still, the disgrace of his own inadequacy is harrowing. This should be the time of his life that he is enjoying retirement, and this grand city of immensely rich history and culture should be the perfect place for that. The paradox of its beautiful, ancient architecture coexisting alongside this elderly man’s struggles in Umberto D. though is united under a very simple yet powerful visual conceit within Vittorio de Sica’s mise-en-scène. Rome’s urban landscape of stone columns and vast domes may be majestic in its imposing visual backdrops, but there is little consolation to be found in its cold, harsh discomfort.
Poverty and shame as Umberto decides against begging at the last second, and the Pantheon strikes an imposing backdrop to it all.
Italian neorealism was definitively on the way out by 1952, and by this point de Sica had already directed what is arguably the movement’s most seminal film, Bicycle Thieves, yet there is nothing in Umberto D. to suggest that his talents had dwindled. Its black-and-white location shooting through Rome’s streets and plazas is as robust as ever, imprinting Carlo Battisti’s sorrowful face in low angles against apartment buildings, and shrinking his feeble stature beneath towering obelisks. Equally crucial to de Sica’s imagery as well is the constant bustle of everyday life surrounding Umberto – in fact, it is hard to find any public space that isn’t crawling with workers on scaffolding, children playing games, or trains speeding through backgrounds.
A cornerstone of Italian neorealism in the use of authentic architecture and the naturalistic blocking, supported a great deal by the crisp depth of field – the harsh stone structures offer little comfort in this ancient city.
De Sica is all too aware of the irony in Umberto’s emotional isolation here, given the fervent activity and density of the city around him. There is little empathy to be found anywhere along the social ladder, from the unseen government bureaucrats with their scant welfare payments, to Umberto’s own landlady who renovates his apartment without warning. Her plan is to make one giant living room in the building, but right now the giant hole in the bedroom wall is nothing more than a visual manifestation of his crumbling life, and a crude opening through which de Sica’s camera sensitively frames his loss of dignity.
Umberto is a prisoner in his own home, claustrophobically framed in its hallways and through the hole in his wall.
At the very least, there is some comfort to be found in Umberto’s few companions. Just as Maria, the landlady’s maid, helps his situation as much as she can from her limited position, he too is determined to find the father of her unborn baby so that she may have some financial support. Both she and Umberto may belong to entirely different generations, but there is no competition between his encroaching homelessness and her teenage pregnancy. Instead, this elderly man and young woman share a common empathy for each other’s troubles, generating their own warmth in an otherwise hostile environment.
Even with such high narrative stakes though, the soul-crushing mundanity of day-to-day survival bleeds through in Umberto D. De Sica plays it out with an understated sincerity, recognising that everyday responsibilities do not disappear simply because one’s welfare is in peril, and even spends four minutes studying Maria’s internalised pain as she makes herself coffee. It takes her three strikes of the match before it lights up, though before she gets it to the gas stove, it snuffs out. Two more strikes do the job, and with the fire now burning she stops by the window to gaze outside at the dilapidated apartment buildings neighbouring her own. Over at the sink, she takes a quick drink from the tap before filling the kettle and placing it on the stove. She pauses, her hands reaching down to caress her belly, and then as she sits down to grind the coffee beans, we register the streak of single tear on her cheek. The moment the doorbell rings though, she is snapped out of her poignant reverie, and quickly rubs her face clean before answering.
Several minutes are spent watching Maria make coffee, as de Sica lets the subdued emotion naturally rise to the surface – a huge reaction against the heightened Hollywood movies of the era.
In an era that saw Hollywood blowing emotions such as these up into enormous Technicolor musicals and melodramas, de Sica was expressing them as uncomfortable interruptions to his characters’ efforts to stay alive. It is clear to see how much texture these tiny formal details bring to his characters, layering their journeys with struggles beyond their primary objectives. It is only incidental that Umberto’s apartment is infested with ants and that his sleep is constantly disturbed by loud noises from outside the building, as these facts of life sink into the background along with the threat of any future war. After all, there are only so many things one man can invest in emotionally before letting everything else fall by the wayside.
Carlo Battisti’s face is a vessel of empathy for the audience, bearing the weight of multiple burdens as he lays down to a restless sleep.
Even with all these pressures falling on Umberto’s shoulders though, it tells us a lot about his character that he doesn’t even think twice to prioritise finding his dog the moment he learns of his escape. Where children were typically used in other neorealist films as emblems of innocence, here Flike represents everything pure and good that the world has to lose should it continue along its path to total degradation. Umberto’s relief upon finding his best friend at the pound is immense, though the imagery there is harsh. With dogs being hoisted up their necks, kept in small cages, and shoved into incinerators, de Sica effectively draws bleak visual parallels to the concentration camps of the Holocaust. The aftershocks of World War II are evidently still reverberating across Europe.
Visceral imagery of concentration camps at the dog pound, never quite letting go of Europe’s recent history.
As long as goodness exists in a world burdened by historical trauma though, there is also hope for Umberto. No matter how hard he tries to hand his dog off to someone else, he simply will not leave his side, right up until he finds himself trapped in his master’s grip in the path of an oncoming train. Just as Umberto rescued Flike from certain death at the pound, Flike similarly saves him from suicide here, squirming out of his arms and leading him off the tracks.
The trust between man and animal has been momentarily broken, but as a result the roles have been swapped. It is now Umberto chasing after his disillusioned dog, marking the opposite dynamic of what we witnessed just a few minutes earlier. It takes genuine remorse and humility to restore that connection, but the fact that it can be mended at all speaks to the uniqueness of this relationship that responds to betrayal with compassionate mercy – a quality that is scarce to be found elsewhere in this amoral environment. While the rest of the world crumbles in Umberto D., de Sica emphasises the crucial role that our humanity plays in keeping us alive, distilling this warm, poignant sentiment down to a lonely man and his dog playing side by side in his very last shot.
A stunning final frame with the low horizon, towering trees, and Umberto happily disappearing into the background with Flike.
Umberto D. is currently streaming on The Criterion Channel.
Akira Kurosawa’s cynical landscapes of ambition, fate, and consequences make for a perfect marriage with Shakespeare’s grand historical tragedies. “This is a wicked world. To save yourself you often first must kill,” decrees Lady Asaji to her husband General Washizu in Throne of Blood, respectively standing in for Lady and Lord Macbeth, and possessing the same cutthroat megalomania. Like their literary counterpoints, Washizu and Asaji’s futures are written out by the prophecies of mysterious, supernatural forces far beyond their comprehension, raising them to great heights before sending them plummeting back to Earth as mortals terrorised by their own guilty consciences. The formal groundwork is there for a narrative steeped in centuries-old storytelling traditions, and yet it is through Kurosawa’s adaptation of the Scottish tragedy that Throne of Blood takes on new dimensions within feudal Japanese history, warping the doomed General Washizu into a figurehead of samurai brutality.
Especially significant to this reinterpretation of Macbeth is its fresh setting during the Sengoku period – a time of civil wars through the 15th and 16th century which saw samurai clans fight for political control of Japan. The romanticised code of honour they are often nostalgically associated with bears no relevance here, and instead leaves a moral vacuum for treacherous social climbers looking to exploit weakened political structures.
Traditions and designs of feudal Japan are substantially present in Kurosawa’s Macbeth adaptation, using giant wooden fortresses and samurai armies for his vast scenic backdrops.
Kurosawa stages such power plays against bleak, greyscale landscapes of giant wooden fortresses and overgrown forests in Throne of Blood, spilling personal conflicts out into monumental battle scenes featuring hundreds of extras. Just because his visual stylisation doesn’t reach the level of Seven Samurai or Rashomon doesn’t mean his talent for deep focus blocking isn’t on lush display, but even more deserving of praise is his his aesthetic use of weather to confront his characters with the might of the natural world.
Thick fog constantly rolls across Kurosawa’s scenery, cloaking it in an air of supernatural mystery.
Most prominently, thick clouds of fog roll across his barren hills and valleys, obscuring horizons and disorientating Washizu as he makes his way home from war at the start of the film. It has an almost ethereal quality to it, seeming to emanate from that evil spirit which sits in a cage of bamboo and forecasts the samurai commander’s rise to power. Rather than taking the form of a witch, this soothsayer is far more ghostly in appearance, and later even wispily floats through a misty forest crowded with dense, black branches as it delivers the fateful second half of its prophecy.
The three witches are replaced with a prophetic evil spirit in Throne of Blood, and Kurosawa designs a haunting environment around him with the mist and crowded, black branches of the forest.
The other spectre who materialises in Throne of Blood belongs to Washizu’s friend, Miki, who he kills out of paranoid concern for his own security. The ghost’s supernatural arrival unfolds in one smooth dolly shot at a banquet, pushing forward past an empty seat towards Washizu’s anxious face, and then pulling back to reveal Miki’s spirit now occupying that space. Whether he is an apparition that has come to haunt his murderer or merely a psychological manifestation of guilt, his mysterious appearance heralds even severer weather, with rain whipping the castle in a violent gale and lightning flashing across the sky.
A fluid tracking shot forwards and back again to reveal Miki’s pale ghost, silently tormenting Washizu at the banquet and driving him mad with guilt.
Even Kurosawa’s direction of the final act’s foretold ‘moving forest’ arrives like a primal force of nature, emerging from the thick fog and advancing with the heavy wind towards Washizu’s fortress. It is a smart choice for Throne of Blood to omit the passage from Macbeth which plainly describes the enemy’s disguise, as Kurosawa instead hits us with the frightening sight of these trees coming to life at the exact moment that Washizu recognises his own impending mortality. His ego and power may be mighty, but even that cannot stand up against the power of the ancient, formidable powers of fate.
Kurosawa visualises the moving forest as a primal force of nature, ripped up from its roots and animated by the sheer power of prophetic destiny.
Motivated as much by fear as he is ambition and arrogance, the crazed Washizu does not waver, and neither does Toshiro Mifune in his single greatest moment as this Japanese incarnation of Macbeth. His fiery eyes light up the screen as a gleeful snarl stretches across his face, while behind him Kurosawa sets a majestic military backdrop of samurai raising flags and banners in crumbling fealty. This leads into another alteration of Shakespeare’s original text, and perhaps the most significant. With the prophecy that ‘no man of woman born can harm Macbeth’ absent, Washizu’s death is placed in the hands of his own disillusioned men, imbuing this legend with a revolutionary turmoil that grounds it even deeper in Japan’s politically unstable Sengoku period.
Throne of Blood’s single greatest composition with the backdrop of samurai behind Washizu – epic historical imagery.Toshiro Mifune’s is incredibly animated as Washizu, lighting up the screen with his crazed eyes.
In extreme contrast to Mifune’s wide, crazed eyes, Isuzu Yamada displays Lady Asaji’s expressions like wooden masks, not unlike those worn by performers of Noh theatre. The guilt she exhibits is of an entirely different kind to Mifune’s fierce insecurity – rather than lashing out, she is found delusionally trying to clean her hands of blood that isn’t there, with her face contorted into the static image of a demonic hannya mask and her honed gestures mimicking those of Noh tradition.
In contrast to Mifune’s wildly expressive autocrat, Isuzu Yamada plays a much subtler and more cunning villain – very influenced by the masked performances of Noh theatre.
Kurosawa continues to weave these elements of Japanese theatre even deeper into its structure through his austere musical bookends, summarising Throne of Blood’s narrative into a couple of short, choral verses as fog continues to roll through the grey scenery.
“Look on the ruins,
Of the castle of delusion.
Haunted now only,
By the spirits of the dead.
Once a scene of carnage,
Borne of consuming desire,
Never changing,
Now and for eternity.”
Like the music of Noh theatre, these chants are limited in tonal and dynamic range, moving through repetitive patterns that restore a sense of order to Kurosawa’s world of subversive chaos. Tradition is the bedrock of these cultures, as ingrained in their social structures as it is in the laws of a calm yet overwhelming universe, and continuing to be carried out by forces of nature and destiny when humans fail to uphold its rigorous standards. Few films have truly captured the cinematic potential of Shakespeare onscreen in the art form’s history, and perhaps none with as much creative formal finesse as Kurosawa’s cynical exposure of the treacherous dishonour entrenched in samurai history.
Throne of Blood is currently streaming on The Criterion Channel.
Sympathetic soldier, prisoner, and political pacifist Kaji seems to live multiple lives across the modern odyssey that Masaki Kobayashi lays out in The Human Condition trilogy. Through several years of Kaji’s time spent in World War II, he traverses virtually every inch of Manchuria in northeast China, bearing witness to experiences from all over the spectrum of life. Over time, encounters with birth, death, love, sex, culture, grief, conflict, faith, desire, and fear build towards a greater understanding of what it means to exist on Earth – and yet the wisdom Kaji is granted does not come with some enlightening inner peace. If anything, it only threatens the humanity which resides within him, as Kobayashi piles endless tests of moral endurance upon this man who strives for the betterment of society.
Few times in the history of film has a director adapted a novel with as sweeping majesty and creative invention as Masaki Kobayashi does here, rendering entire worlds of literary prose with astonishing cinematic magnitude. The Human Condition is an accomplishment of epic proportions, matched perhaps only by Gone with the Wind or The Lord of the Rings in its equal devotion to the source material and awe-inspiring spectacle. The title itself makes a promise of daunting philosophical scope which might seem more suited to an introspective drama than a war film, and yet Kobayashi’s harrowing examination of modern civilisation at its lowest manifests these abstract ideas on a pragmatically large scale. It is here in humanity’s darkest days that its most vital essence becomes both the strongest threat to widespread injustice, as well as its greatest target, turning Kaji’s soul into the last remaining battleground of moral fortitude.
Tatsuya Nakadai’s idealistic pacifist suffers a great deal through this ten-hour epic – he is tortured, imprisoned, and forced into gut-wrenching tests of moral fortitude that wear away at his principles.
This 28-year-old idealist might not see it at the time, but these are the stakes laid out when he is first assigned to the role of supervisor at a slave-driven mining operation in Manchuria. Even the imperial Japanese authorities who place him there realise how little he is cut out for the job, and yet the report he has submitted against the exploitation of Chinese labour has nevertheless inspired them to send him off for a test of his naïve, pacifist principles. When he arrives with his newlywed wife Mochiko, he also comes with huge ambitions in tow – a revised employment system, improved working conditions, and rationing plans are just the start of it. “Take care of the men and the ore will come out,” he declares, practically bringing it all back a results-driven work ethic.
Kaji finds few friends among either the labourers or administrators, often separated from the prisoners-of-war by barbed wire.
The delivery of 600 new ‘special’ workers who have been taken as prisoners-of-war becomes his first trial. The moment the train doors are unlocked, the gaunt, half-dead men come pouring out like zombies, swarming Kaji and his fellow administrators for any food or water they can get their hands on. That he is driven to violence as a means of control so early in this series immediately introduces a crushing hopelessness – if he can’t maintain peaceful leadership now, then what does this mean for him later when more pressure is inevitably applied? In the aftermath, it becomes apparent that 12 men died from overheating in the carriages, and 150 others escaped upon arrival. Failure is a companion Kaji will come to know very well in his journey.
Kaji fails his first test to deal with a new batch of prisoners, instantly crumbling as they grasp at food and water.Watchtowers often in Kobayashi’s mise-en-scène in the first film, keeping an omniscient eye on Kaji’s actions.
Kobayashi has no reservations in landing us right next to him through these physical and emotional challenges either. Divided into three films respectively subtitled No Greater Love, Road to Eternity, and A Soldier’s Prayer, this ten-hour trilogy uses its length to gruelling effect, with each death and personal defeat accumulating in subtle increments towards a mountain of despair not even Kaji can bear.
Perhaps even more crucial to the vivid experience of The Human Condition than its scale is Kobayashi’s bleak, rugged photography, advancing in stylistic virtuosity with each film. Though not as widely recognised as his Japanese contemporaries Akira Kurosawa or Yasujirō Ozu, his mastery of visual composition through blocking rivals both, even as he is largely working with stark, desolate landscapes. A total dedication to building out the background of even relatively minor scenes consistently shines through the trilogy, connecting Kaji to hostile environments and enormous crowds of extras. In the labour camp setting of the first film, watchtowers frequently loom over him in low angles as he talks through barbed wire to embittered prisoners, always keeping that constant surveillance in the back of our minds. As these men are sent off to work at the mines, Kobayashi lines hundreds of them up in zig-zag paths across rocky hilltops and valleys, and pans his camera along their enormous trail from one horizon to another in a single magnificent shot.
An extraordinary achievement of blocking for Kobayashi, keeping up an extraordinary stamina across this entire trilogy as he works with hundreds of extras.
When Kaji departs the labour camp and is forced to serve in the Japanese army, the harshness of Kobayashi’s scenery continues to transform, pitching him against new threats within yet another corrupt institution. The depth of field present in his cinematography impresses even more when we find ourselves in army camps, its rough interiors lined with wooden bunk beds upon which soldiers are staggered across all levels of the frame. The power dynamics are evident in this staging – much like at the labour camp, Kaji is ostracised for his Communist-adjacent politics, while other recruits like the similarly rebellious Shinjo and the meek Obara also find themselves targeted by their more nationalistic peers.
In smaller scenes as well, Kobayashi’s deep focus photography lends itself well to some brilliant compositions that sketch out the power dynamics around Kaji, from being an outsider among soldiers to leading a group of refugees through the wilderness.
This instalment, Road to Eternity, clearly sets a standard of war film which would echo through history, especially providing the inspiration for Full Metal Jacket with its bifurcated structure split between boot camp and the battlefield. The suicide of the deeply tormented Private Pyle in Stanley Kubrick’s film mirrors Obara’s here too, though this death carries a tinge of bitter irony when the rifle’s misfire inspires a renewed desire to live – “Is that a sign that I shouldn’t? Yes! After all, one can die at any time” – before incidentally killing him a few seconds later.
Kobayashi’s dark sense of humour is clearly integral to his approach of such weighty material. The cruel fate which drew Obara to his tragic end is the same which leads virtually every other character along winding roads towards their inevitable destinies. For Kaji especially, there is a circular poetry to his journey that transforms him from a supervisor of a Japanese camp to a prisoner in a Soviet camp, inflicting the same inhumane punishments against him which he once sought to combat.
Circular poetry that mirrors Kaji’s status as leader and prisoner at a pair of labour camps.
Kaji’s integrity has been tested many times up to this point, even seeing him brutally murder a fellow Japanese soldier to keep his hiding spot, and yet this is the first time his Communist sympathies are directly challenged. When he tries to express them to his captors, he comes up against a language barrier that the corrupt translator ensures stays in place, and the political hypocrisy of those in charge similarly weakens his resolve. The theoretical equality of this supposedly classless ideology is nowhere to be found in this punitive, hierarchal institution, and Kaji’s impassioned monologue towards those Soviets he once expected to be allies falls on deaf ears that cannot understand his Japanese.
“In your urgency, supervision grows slack. You stick to inflexible rules. Good intentions are suppressed, and evil is tolerated. The fact that socialism is better than fascism isn’t enough to keep us alive!”
In environments as aggressive as this, even the most basic human communication cannot function, leaving those who do share some level of understanding to bond on more intimate levels than normal. Therein lies another key aspect of the ‘human condition’ – the desire to seek companionship effectively becomes a form of emotional starvation in times where common empathy is lacking. For Kaji specifically, it is his love of Mochiko which remains his core motivation when all his principles are stripped away, but even he feels the lure of extramarital attraction in her absence. A sweet but fleeting connection with a nurse in a military hospital almost develops into an affair, yet simply ends on friendly terms with him teasing the possibility that they might see each other again.
Mochiko has relatively little screen time compared to Kaji, but it is an incredibly significant role that motivates him to stay alive through even the worst of circumstances.
This is no romantic Jacques Demy musical though, bringing distant lovers together by whims of fate. Every scene of intimacy in The Human Condition hinges on the understanding that anyone could potentially die at any time, and that this moment of ecstasy may be all they have left. Hearing that prostitutes will be visiting the camp ignites joy in the Chinese prisoners of the first film, and the alliance built between those men and women fosters some of the strongest relationships of the entire series, with both working together on multiple escape attempts.
For Kaji, it is Mochiko who motivates him – for many other men in the Japanese labour camp, it is the prostitutes making frequent visits who incite a spark of warmth they can’t find elsewhere.
Later when Kaji abandons the army and finds himself leading Japanese refugees through dangerous forests and wastelands, Kobayashi orchestrates yet another profoundly affectionate scene between those whose lives have been destroyed. As most of the men and women make love in a farmhouse, Kaji sits by a campfire with another woman seeking warmth. Sensing his judgement of those inside who are married, she mounts a poignant defence of them, while Kobayashi sensitively dollies his camera slowly in on her face.
“Even if we get home alive, how many of us can return to our former lives? When women and soldiers spend fleeting nights together, they always talk about returning home together. When flesh meets flesh, it really seems possible. But at dawn the soldiers are strangers again. They get restless and anxious and grab their weapons and sneak off.”
At this point her monologue turns into voiceover, as Kobayashi detaches his camera from the conversation and starts moving it into the farmhouse. A single, parallel tracking shot glides across a row of beds, upon which bodies wrap around each other in sexual embrace, and yet whatever pleasure we expect to find is muted. As she mourns their collective futures, a faint sob can be heard in the background, and a montage unfolds of their distraught faces crying into each other’s arms.
“We’ll never get home. We’ll never see our loved ones again. We don’t even know how long we’ll live. We all share the same fate. We’re all ruined. We eat only to keep our strength from failing.”
For a director so dedicated to epic imagery, Kobayashi is notably skilled at depicting the psychology of his characters, entering the deepest recesses of their mind. Close-ups like those in the farmhouse offer a glimpse into emotions shared by entire communities, but within Kaji’s own story too we often get voiceovers of his immediate thoughts paired with Tatsuya Nakadai’s haunted, wide-eyed expressions. His performance is nothing less than breathtaking, especially when one considers where it starts and finishes, mapping out the erosion of every belief that defines Kaji as an individual until all he is left with is a single, primal desire to return home. Hatred gradually settles into his soul, and finally wins out in one of the trilogy’s greatest shots that smothers his face with darkness, leaving only a thin sliver of light to illuminate the bitter anger in his profile.
A close-up worthy of Ingmar Bergman, illuminating Nakadai’s profile with a thin sliver of light while the rest of his head sinks into darkness.
Once Kaji’s mind is infected with the madness of war, so too does Kobayashi’s cinematography throw its axis off in chaotic canted angles. After a devastating battle which unfolds like a horror film in Road to Eternity, Kaji ventures into the wilderness in A Soldier’s Prayer with a few troops by his side. For the first time he finds himself beyond the reach of any corrupt institutions, and instead bucks up against the devastating power of the natural world. Tilted tracking shots stumble with them in total exhaustion, bearing resemblance to similar visual devices innovated by Soviet director Mikhail Kalatozov from around the same time, as delusional voiceovers echo through his mind.
The Third Man, Do the Right Thing – and you can add The Human Condition to the short list of films that display some of cinema’s greatest canted angles.
It is an incredibly effective technique that Kobayashi touches several other times in this trilogy, most notably during the execution of Chinese prisoners-of-war after an attempted escape. Kaji’s world is totally tipped off-balance as he kneels beside them in agony and empathy, looking almost like he too is condemned to suffer his own parallel spiritual death. Kao is the only one among them to put up a fight in furious protest, and when he too eventually gives in, Kobayashi physically moves the camera to straighten out his final canted angle as if in quiet resignation. “This is your true form. The face of a man, the heart of a beast,” Kao spits at the hopeless Kaji before his demise. These words cut deep, ultimately spurring Kaji to take the moral high ground against his fellow Japanese – but for what? The purity of his own soul? His courage is admirable, but the actual change he can affect is minimal.
Then again, perhaps the inspiration expressed by a colleague upon his departure from the labour offers some justification. It is but a tiny spark of hope in a series that shows us time and time again the powerlessness of individual morality. Even as Kaji trudges through distant, snowy fields in his final days, utterly drained of those ambitions and convictions which defined him as an individual at the start of The Human Condition, he is fuelled solely by the last remaining shred of his humanity which could not be destroyed – his love for Michiko. It persists in hallucinations of her elated voice welcoming him home as Kobayashi frames his frozen, bearded face against dark, angry skies, and drives him right up to his final steps.
True transformation in Nakadai’s performance, wearing years of emotional torture as he staggers aimlessly through an icy tundra.
In the end, it is Kaji’s body which gives up before his spirit. Perhaps this is the core of the human condition, Kobayashi posits, finally distilled into its purest form – a desire for goodness persisting not for some moral high ground, or even in some false belief that it will reliably prevail over adversity, but simply because it is our most base, natural instinct. In this moment, every minute of Kobayashi’s epic, ten-hour trilogy can be viscerally felt, and we are left with nothing but the lifeless remains of humanity destroyed by the very same war it created.
The Human Condition trilogy is currently streaming on The Criterion Channel.
For men like Michel who deem themselves ‘Übermensch’, there is no need for feelings of guilt. This is merely an emotional hindrance for people who bind themselves to traditional moral values. There is a special class of humans, he reasons, “gifted with intelligence, talent or even genius,” and thus “should be free to disobey laws in certain cases.” If he truly is a being independent of society norms, his petty theft should be excusable. Where then do these feelings of shame come from?
To understand the heart of a Robert Bresson character such as Michel, one must look beyond their outward displays of emotion – or lack thereof. He is not a filmmaker terribly interested in sentiment, and so even in the opening text of Pickpocket he is adamant that this is not a thriller, which would seek to excite and tantalise audiences. Were it in the hands of a Hollywood director, perhaps it might have been, with a fatalistic voiceover spinning poetic metaphors and a visual style running thick with shadows. As it is, this is a drama of subtle internality, employing non-professional actors with expressionless faces to become blank canvases of Bresson’s unembellished vision.
Bresson famously called his actors “models”, using them more as blank figures than vehicles of emotional expression. Martin LaSalle’s performance isn’t extraordinary, but he fits this sort of direction perfectly.
Martin LaSalle fits this mould perfectly as the unblinking Michel, making a film debut which ironically earns him praise for his utter normality. There is nothing exceptional about his appearance, making it easy for him to blend into crowds and steal from strangers. Bresson even refrains from offering him any close-ups which might pick up on stray hints of emotion, and instead turns his camera’s intensive focus towards Michel’s primary tools for work – his hands. After all, it is not his speech or face which opens the clearest window into his mind, but his writing, chronicling his innermost thoughts in private diary entries.
“I know those who’ve done these things usually keep quiet, and those who talk haven’t done them. Yet I have done them.”
Diary entries prove integral to penetrating Michel’s thoughts, but also note the continued emphasis on his hands.
These are the words which open Pickpocket, spoken over the first of many shots which narrow in on Michel’s hand putting his musings down in a notebook. Bresson would influence Paul Schrader in many ways, but it is this formal use of voiceover which would so crucially form the basis of his introspective character studies, from Taxi Driver to First Reformed. Much like Travis Bickle and Reverend Toller, Michel’s inner monologue is our primary companion through Pickpocket, leading us into a mind which has grown bored with modern society. He does not turn to theft out of poverty, but is simply motivated by a selfish desire for excitement in his wandering, purposeless existence. That it also cures him of the deep disconnection he feels with the world is a bonus. The power to affect the lives of others is literally in his hands.
The penetration of the personal space of strangers is almost erotic in the prolonged tension and frequent eye contact. Bresson attaches a deep sensuality to Michel’s larceny.
The sensitivity that is absent on the faces of Bresson’s actors is thus found instead in the dextrous movements of their fingers, palms, and wrists, slyly penetrating the coats and purses of unsuspecting strangers. The sheer intimacy of the act and the fluidity with which Bresson’s camera traces its movements almost is virtually erotic, drawing pleasure from the slightest of human interactions. It is a stimulating transgression for Michel, who often makes eye contact with his victims as if engaging in contactless foreplay, before invading their personal space and claiming their valued possessions as his own. This loveless world which cannot draw so much as an empathetic close-up from Bresson’s camera has effectively left deviancy as the only remaining source of connection.
Tight, economic editing in the mid-shots of Michel’s focused, unblinking face, intercut with the movement of his hands reaching into purses and coats.
The time that Michel spends training with a more skilled pickpocket marks the height of his ecstatic freedom in the film. There is often a rhythmic flow to Bresson’s editing, cutting between the excited action of hands and that stillness of Michel’s detached gaze, and here it is smoothly distilled into a montage of methodical focus as we watch his tuition. The camerawork is as nimble as the actors themselves, studying the subtle movement of a watch slipping off a wrist or the latch on a purse clicking open. Bresson is even happy to let go of all dialogue and voiceover in these moments as well to advance his narrative visually, accompanied only by a subtly augmented sound design or excerpts of Jean-Baptiste Lully’s French Baroque symphonies.
What could ruin such an invigorating streak of successful robberies as this then? For Michel, a conscience comes in the form of two women, neither of whom necessarily imprint their own principles on him and yet still unknowingly impart a sense of disappointment. The first is his mother, who he has emotionally distanced himself from over the years and is now lies deathly ill in her apartment. She has been happily accepting his financial support for some time, but so too has he been stealing from her own funds – a cruel exploitation of power that he has been happy getting away with for as long as she remains ignorant. Only after her passing does he realise that he had not been so subtle, and that she had protected him from authorities when one of these thefts was reported by her neighbour, Jeanne.
There is distance between Michel and Jeanne, much like every other character relationship in Pickpocket. This is a world of disconnection and loneliness.
The attraction that Michel shares with this other woman is marked by an ambiguous apprehension on both sides. The distance that he keeps with every other person outside of his victims divides them too, and yet this is also a recognition here that to pursue romance with her while pickpocketing would be to lead a double life – almost like an affair, if we are to equate his theft with intimacy. The guilt that he feels does not emerge from those arbitrary social norms he has shunned, but rather an internal, authentic care for the wellbeing of others, which now drives him to run away in shame. Like so much of this narrative, Michel’s time away flits by with little more than an ellipsis, communicated once again through a diary entry that brings him back where he started.
“From Milan, I went to Rome, before continuing on to England. I spent two years in London pulling off good jobs. But I lost my earnings at cards or wasted them on women. I ended up in Paris, drifting and penniless.”
Only by finding Jeanne again is Michel inspired to actually pursue honest work back home, and yet his impulse to carry out old transgressions remains a compelling desire he cannot shake. The site of his first pickpocketing at the start of the film is also his last – Longchamp Racecourse is a prime location for stealing from rich citizens, and once again Bresson submits us to tantalising close-ups of Michel’s hand delicately reaching for and withdrawing a giant wad of cash. This time though, we are struck with a quiet chill as a second hand reaches into the frame, slowly descending from above like a predator creeping up on its prey. There is no cut back to a wide shot after the handcuffs are slapped on his wrists. Just another dissolve to black, like so many other elliptical scene transitions in the film, excising whatever sensational thrills might have been implied in a direct depiction of his arrest.
Seeing another hand chase down Michel’s in this shot is shocking, turning him into the prey for the first time.
In prison, Michel admits that it isn’t the physical restraints which disturb him so much as the mere idea that he dropped his guard. Running away from his guilt is no longer an option, now that it has trapped him in a permanent reminder of his own moral failings. Bars divide him from Jeanne when she comes to visit, prohibiting that closeness which he could only ever attain through pickpocketing. As both sidle up to each other now though, Bresson accomplishes a sincere affection we have not yet seen in the film. An imperceptibly slow dolly shot draws us into a close-up of their faces nestled against each other, touching through the gaps in the bars between them, and formally breaking from the constant mid-shots of cool dispassion. “Oh Jeanne, to reach you at last, what a strange path I had to take,” Michel reflects in voiceover. For a man who so eagerly draws pleasure from violating the physical space of others, the journey to finding genuine love free from intimacy is a very strange path indeed.
The closest the camera has gotten to anyone’s face, and the closest Michel gets to any other character without pickpocketing them – real transformation is accomplished in Bresson’s blocking.
Pickpocket is currently streaming on The Criterion Channel and SBS On Demand.
Famous actors and directors may come and go, but the giant soundstage that Guru Dutt so frequently returns to throughout Kaagaz Ke Phool is seemingly immortal, becoming a glorious, unageing monument to India’s entertainment industry. It is the site that former director Suresh Sinha returns to as an elderly man at the end of his life, walking its rafters and lyrically lamenting those who have parted from his life. It is the studio where he once operated at the height of his powers, shooting an adaptation of the novel Devdas and cementing himself as one of India’s most acclaimed filmmakers. And in the film’s most inspired musical number ‘Waqt Ne Kiya Kya Haseen Sitam’, it also hosts a blossoming romance between Suresh and his hand-picked rising star, Shanti.
The piercing beam of light which bursts through its open doors and dramatically cuts out silhouettes of its characters dims at the start of this sequence, and in its place Dutt shines a heavenly spotlight down from above. What unfolds is a beautifully understated sequence of affectionate longing so inexpressible that these two lovers cannot even verbalise their deep sentiment, leaving Geeta Dutt’s singing voiceover to express their most heartfelt desires. Guru Dutt meanwhile dollies in on the lovers’ yearning gazes and circles them with crane shots, imbuing the scene with a magical realist quality which sees their souls step out of their bodies and move into the spotlight. After this neat bit of film trickery, their physical selves are quick to follow. With his frame obstructions and depth of field, Dutt keeps on hitting one brilliant composition after another throughout this silent dance, before finally separating Suresh and Shanti on either side the studio, her in the light and him in darkness.
‘Waqt Ne Kiya Kya Haseen Sitam’ is the musical and visual highlight of Kaagaz Ke Phool – a song that unfolds with minimal choreography and not a word sung by either lead, but rather composed of longing gazes and a love story communicated through blocking.
In essence, this is the story of their relationship compressed into a few minutes and rendered purely through Dutt’s majestic visual artistry. One successful star discovers a hidden talent in an unknown woman, brings her into the spotlight, and eventually fades from public view while she continues to flourish – it is a fable that Hollywood has told through the generations in remakes of A Star is Born, and which is recontextualised here in Kaagaz Ke Phool with the Hindi film industry. Given the actual circumstances that surrounded Dutt’s professional relationship with his co-star Waheeda Rehman, there is an added poignancy here. This sweeping musical epic was a box office failure at the time, ending Dutt’s remarkable run of films five years before his suicide in 1964, while Rehman would keep working for another sixty years, right into the present day.
There is brilliant circular form built into this narrative structure, and Dutt does well to emphasise it even further in Suresh and Shanti’s individual arcs, marking the heights of both their successes with masses of zealous fans. They invasively look down the lens through crowded point-of-view shots, feeding Suresh’s aloof ego the first time around, and later halting Shanti in her tracks as she chases down her now-obscure lover fleeing from this life. The music that plays out here is also where Kaagaz Ke Phool gets its title, as he sorrowfully sings of a thirsty bee searching for nectar yet finding only “paper flowers” – artificial imitations of true beauty.
If A Star is Born is the template for this film’s narrative, then Dutt mirrors the inverse rise and fall with fans swarming Suresh, and then later Shanti.
Indeed, the false glamour of this industry takes its toll on Suresh and Shanti. Gossip columns linking them together while Suresh is in the process of separating from his wife make his daughter Pammi a target for bullies at school, and this subplot evolves into a melodrama which pushes Shanti away from the industry. With contracts locking her in place though, she cannot leave for good, and Suresh too grows depressed when he loses custody of Pammi in court and turns to alcohol. As magnificently sentimental as this romantic tragedy is, the comic relief that Johnny Walker offers in his role as Suresh’s brother-in-law does not land with the same impact as it did in Aar Paar or Pyaasa, and unfortunately marks a small flaw in an otherwise intoxicating film.
Much like his contemporary Douglas Sirk, Dutt works well with melodrama, offering great pathos to Pammi’s struggles – divorcing parents, gossip over her father’s new romance, and savage school bullies to top it off.
Beyond the performances and narrative, the key to the swelling emotions of Dutt’s characters lies in his imposing cinematic spectacle, connecting them to a dynamic style of rousing camera movements and striking visual frames. New to his repertoire as well are deep focus, low-angle shots which turn ceilings into exquisite backdrops much like Orson Welles before him.
Wellesian low angles and blocking, turning ceilings into mise-en-scène.Dutt knows how to light and block his actors with great visual impact, composing some rich imagery on studio sets.
There is no doubting his ability as a craftsman of grand aesthetics, but it is equally his ability to tie them so affectingly to his story which lands Kaagaz Ke Phool so smoothly in its final minutes, taking us back to the soundstage in the present day where the elderly Suresh has been nostalgically reminiscing his youth, success, and lost love. Descending from the rafters, he takes his place in the director chair among the scattered props, lights, and cameras. As he passes away and the giant doors rolls open to begin another day of work, the sun hits him one last time, drawing all eyes to his slouched figure. Almost like an ascension to an afterlife, the camera lifts into the rafters, punctuating the end of his life with the blinding white flash of the spotlight. There is certainly something poignantly poetic in the way Dutt’s premature passing mirrors the ending of his final film, and yet Kaagaz Ke Phool also captures the essence of an artistic imagination profuse with creative joy, reminiscing the love which inspired him to craft some of India’s finest cinema.
Aar Paar was the film where Dutt pushed the envelope with visual obstructions, but it is still very much on show here in Kaagaz Ke Phool, crowding out foregrounds with clutter.A final crane shot lifting us up into the light – a melancholy end to Suresh’s fall from grace.
Kaagaz Ke Phool is currently streaming on Amazon Prime Video.
