For the first half hour of Letter Never Sent, the most pressing dramas that arises on our four adventurers’ journey into the wilderness are their romantic tensions and jealousies. Tanya’s affection for Andrei particularly irritates the insecure Sergei, resulting in a physical altercation that leaves Andrei picking himself up out of a swamp, and further complicating their already challenging quest for diamonds in the secluded mountains and forests of central Siberia.
Perhaps the only level-headed member of this party is their guide, Konstantin. Unlike the others, he is not a geologist, yet he has traversed this region many times before. It is clear from the letter he is writing to his wife that their juvenile antics are of little interest to him, and instead his heart and mind linger elsewhere.
“Remembered sitting in the hallway with you. I saw love and anxiety in your eyes. But again and again some overpowering voice keeps carrying me off. I’m even glad not to have sent this letter. Now during every stop near every campfire I’ll write to you about our itinerant life in the taiga.”
Each character is beautifully established in the opening scenes, as Kalatozov creates intimate arrangements from their faces.
Konstantin knows better than anyone how unpredictable the natural world can be, though even he isn’t prepared for the overwhelming turn of events which shrinks these emotions into minor trivialities. This rugged environment does not exist to profit humans, but is indifferent to their aspirations and suffering, tenderising vulnerable minds with its unfathomable, primordial chaos before swallowing them whole.
Where Mikhail Kalatozov once dedicated his handheld camerawork and canted angles to the soul-destroying grief of war in The Cranes Are Flying, here his aesthetic revels in a maddening struggle for survival, bowing down before ravaging elemental forces. We can feel every breath and shiver through his ultra wide-angle lens, pressing intimately against actors’ faces while stretching out daunting landscapes behind their weary expressions. His shift in location away from the urban centres of Russia only further demonstrates the versatility of his high-contrast photography as well, studying the evocative textures of rippling water, fresh fallen snow, and charred forests with equal parts wonder and terror.
Textured ripples in the water – a Tarkovsky trademark here that precedes his first film by two years.Low angles as well point up at overcast skies, forming these gorgeous, minimalist compositions.Griffith, Dreyer, Bergman – Kalatozov joins that list of directors who perfected and innovated the art of the close-up.
Even before these explorers begin dropping though, Kalatozov is already wearing away at their sanity, sinking his majestic orchestral score into a crashing, dissonant cacophony of strings, woodwinds, and percussion. “We are straining ourselves to wrench out the mystery from the bowels of the earth,” Konstantin continues to write in his letter, his voiceover playing beneath a frenetic montage of the party trekking across mountains and fruitlessly hacking at the earth, while the faint, double-exposed imprint of a fire rages over the top. The foreshadowing should not go unnoted here. As if sparked by this raging delirium, the forest itself catches alight shortly after, tragically dooming Sergei to perish beneath a fallen tree.
Foreshadowing in the double exposure effect of a raging fire.
“Nature has turned herself against us,” Konstantin’s voiceover poignantly reflects, though truthfully it was never on their side. Black smoke and haze rises into the air, and Kalatozov uncharacteristically uses a telephoto lens to cut out the survivors’ silhouettes against a grey sky, creating the impression of a two-dimensional image as they vainly call for help into a radio. The smog is far too thick for even a passing search helicopter to pick them out, and so they soon find themselves isolated once again, with nothing but their wits and stamina to outlast whatever the land should throw at them next.
A rare instance of Kalatozov using a telephoto lens, pressing his actors’ silhouettes against a dark, smoky sky to create a two-dimensional effect.
The cleansing rain that falls in the wake of this devastation helps to douse the remaining embers and quench the adventurers’ thirst, though it is little more than temporary relief as they trudge through the spindly, black trees of the forest’s ashy remains. Weakened to the point of total exhaustion, Andrei’s dazed expression floats by in close-up as he is carried on a makeshift gurney, and we too take his immediate point-of-view as he gazes up at the trees in a trance. Realising the burden that he is inflicting on his companions, he decides to disappear into the misty swamp one night and, much to Tanya’s horror, becomes the second to perish.
Letter Never Sent covers a huge range of natural environments, revealing central Siberia’s vast scope of danger.Kalatozov specifically styled these mounds for this shot – painstaking attention to detail, even when shooting in nature.
As the party’s numbers dwindle throughout Letter Never Sent, Kalatozov reveals a robust formal structure, not so concerned with narrative convention than his characters’ psychological disintegration. That each should meet their end in a totally different environment only further reveals the vast scope of the peril which encompasses them, particularly when winter falls and Tanya succumbs to the cold. As Konstantin carries her through the snow, Kalatozov recalls Andrei’s floating close-ups and point-of-view shots, though this time taking her perspective with a blurred lens that fades into a deep, empty darkness.
Horizontal close-ups and disorientated point-of-view shots formally connect these two devastatingdeaths.A lonely trudge through snowy wastelands, accompanied by a sparse quiver of strings.
By the time Konstantin is left as the party’s sole survivor, the score has settled into a sparse, lonely quiver of strings, accompanied by that constant voiceover. Unlike his companions, he was never motivated by the promise of riches – he has something far more valuable waiting for him back home, driving him to persevere against all odds.
“Vera! My darling Vera! My life doesn’t belong to me. I must deliver the map to people. I can’t die. I can’t. I must live. Too much has been lost. Too much has been found.”
Floating on a makeshift raft down an icy river, hallucinations of industrial ports, cranes, and boats entice Konstantin in haunting long dissolves, while a warm vision of Vera gently calls him back to the harsh reality he must face to survive. This is just as much a psychological struggle as it is a physical one, and only those who are prepared to fight both battles may live long enough to find salvation on the other end.
Breathtaking vistas in central Siberia as Konstantin floats down icy rapids. Hallucinations of industrial ports, cranes, and boats entice Konstantin in haunting long dissolves, evoking Murnau’s masterpiece Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans.This is as much a psychological struggle as it is a physical one, manifesting visions of Konstantin’s wife as he is on the verge of giving up.
For Konstantin, it takes reaching the brink of death for that lifeline to finally arrive, and the deep focus image of a rescue worker descending from a helicopter above his unconscious face in the foreground is all the sweeter for it. Suddenly, our weary explorer’s eyes flutter open, and Kalatozov ends his film the way it began. Flying through the air in a reverse tracking shot, all we can do is admire the terrible beauty of this desolate, untamed land, and the chilling insignificance of those who dare to challenge it.
Salvation arrives in this incredible shot, foregrounding Konstantin’s unconscious face while his rescuer descends from a helicopter in the background.Bookended helicopter tracking shots, flying out from the personal to the epic.
Letter Never Sent is currently streaming on The Criterion Channel.
Flora and Miles may only be children, but by the time Miss Giddens meets them in the opening of The Innocents, they have already suffered more than most their age. Besides being orphaned as infants, their uncle and legal guardian prefers to keep an emotional distance, letting hired help carry the heavy load of parenting instead. The recent deaths of his valet Peter Quint and their previous governess Mary Jessel have no doubt also left them traumatised, and so it is little wonder why Miss Giddens is so concerned for their welfare when she is hired as the latter’s replacement.
On top of all that, there seems to be another sinister influence taking hold of Bly Manor which is not so easy for her to pin down. The children’s behaviours are atypical, if not downright disturbed, especially with Flora being oddly drawn to the lake where Jessel supposedly drowned herself. Miles on the other hand acts strangely grownup for his age, unsettling Miss Giddens with inappropriately intimate gestures and hiding the dead body of one of his beloved pet pigeons beneath his pillow. Even more chilling though are the two ethereal figures flitting in and out of view, not only convincing Miss Giddens that Bly Manor is haunted by the spirits of Quint and Jessel, but that they are also possessing the children. These ghosts were lovers when they were alive, she learns from the housekeeper Mrs Grose, and now it seems that taking human vessels is the only way they can remain together.
Lacey bed curtains framing Miss Giddens and Flora, easing into the girl’s unsettling behaviours.Martin Stephens delivers an impressively creepy performance at the age of 11, his mannerisms suggesting an older, more sophisticated man living in his mind.Glimpses of spirits manifesting around the manor, convincing Miss Giddens of ethereal forces possessing the children.
Still, the doubt which Jack Clayton infuses in this supernatural mystery is hard to shake, especially given that much of it surrounds Miss Giddens herself. Beyond Deborah Kerr’s nervous infatuation when she meets the children’s uncle in the opening scene, she also carries a general uneasiness around any hint of carnal desire, hinting at a sexual repression stemming from her own conservative youth. If she is to preserve Flora and Miles’ innocence, then she must first release them from the spirits which seek to corrupt it, exposing their true nature once and for all.
Hints of sexual repression in this initial meeting between Miss Giddens and the children’s uncle, subtly expressed in Deborah Kerr’s delicate performance.Remarkable blocking and framing made possible by the deep focus lens, set design, and camera angle, looming the two creepy children over Miss Giddens further down the stairway.
That Kerr also plays Miss Giddens with such warmth and sensitivity though only obscures our judgement of her weaknesses. She does not project the image of some deluded, Victorian relic, but rather a woman whose maternal instincts grant her empathetic insight into the lives of children and the dangers of their environment. From the moment she enters Bly Manor, she is at odds with its menacing atmosphere, blinded by the light in its picturesque gardens and absorbed into the darkness of its Gothic hallways. The sets that Clayton constructs here are remarkably detailed, filling out backgrounds with paintings, statues, and patterned wallpaper, and elsewhere framing characters within gaping archways.
A marvellous feat of Gothic production design, filling the frame with Victorian clutter that divides the characters.An incredible array of set pieces all throughout the manor, one standout being the statue garden that surrounds characters with grotesque, stone figures.Picturesque flowers gardens and beautifully reflective ponds, offering up these eerie compositions even in broad daylight.The gazebo becomes another prime location for the spirits to visit, and Clayton puts its pillars to excellent use in this framing.
Just as astounding though is also his rendering of this space through delicately subjective camerawork, quietly revealing its grim, ominous nature. Despite making excellent use of the CinemaScope format, Clayton’s cinematographer Freddie Francis chose to selectively hand-paint the edge of his lenses, slightly narrowing the wide frame and creating a claustrophobic vignette effect. The impact is understated but powerful, suggesting a pervasive darkness that closes in on Miss Giddens’ very presence. The clarity that Clayton offers us in his deep focus photography of two shots is also deceptive in its apparent objectivity, in one composition positioning her nervous expression behind Flora who curiously studies a spider devouring a butterfly. Alternately, her anxious expressions are frequently foregrounded in intimate close-ups, subtly warping her face through wide-angle lenses.
Freddie Francis hand-painted the edge of his lenses to create a vignette effect, letting the darkness creep in.Exceptional use of deep focus lenses worthy of comparison to Orson Welles or William Wyler, particular in these two shots which separate Kerr from her fellow actors.
These are piercing images worthy of comparison to Orson Welles or William Wyler, and with Clayton’s surreal long dissolves, candle-lit interiors, and creeping camera movements in the mix as well, The Innocents effectively develops its own unsettling visual character. By the time Jessel and Quint fully reveal themselves to Miss Giddens, the psychological horror has already set in – though how much of this is merely the disintegration of a tortured mind remains agonisingly ambiguous. The governess is ready to save the children no matter the cost, and so after sending Flora to her uncle’s place in London with Mrs Grose, she is finally ready to directly address these ghostly disturbances with Miles one-on-one.
Long dissolves slip us between scenes and into Miss Giddens’ haunted dreams.Dark corridors lit only by the blazing candlelight from Miss Giddens’ candelabra as she moves with the creeping camera.
As the orphaned boy wanders through the greenhouse to the sound of trickling water and chirping crickets, Miss Giddens pursues him with an intensive line of questioning. “Sometimes I heard things,” he nervously confesses. “And when did you first see and hear of such things?” she pushes, only to be met with an unsatisfying reversal.
“Why, I made them up.”
Their faces grow clammy with sweat through this interrogation, and the glass panes of the greenhouse gradually fog up – though not enough to obscure the manifestation of Quint’s creepy, malicious grin pressing in from the outside. As if possessed by his wickedness, Miles launches into a brutally honest outburst, and drastically shifts away from his typically cool, sophisticated demeanour.
“You don’t fool me. I know why you keep on and on. It’s because you’re afraid, you’re afraid you might be mad. So you keep on and on. Trying to make me admit something that isn’t true. Trying to frighten me the way you frighten Flora. But I’m not Flora, I’m no baby. You think you can run to my uncle with a lot of lies. But he won’t believe you, not when I tell him what you are. A damned hussy! A damned dirty minded hag! You never fooled us. We always knew.”
Perspiration forms on Kerr’s face in the greenhouse as Miles’ vitriol spills forth.Deeply terrifying imagery – Quint’s grinning face slowly comes into view over Miles’ shoulder, obscured only by the fogged up greenhouse windows.
Miles and Quint maliciously cackle in unison at the terror on Miss Giddens’ face, and even after the young boy has seemingly managed to regain his senses, the malevolent spirit does not let go so easily. Gazing down from a high angle in the statue garden, Clayton’s camera suddenly adopts a new perspective for the first time in The Innocents – that of Quint himself, his hand raised in the foreground as if casting a spell over Miles. We might almost assume this to be confirmation of Miss Giddens’ supernatural suspicions were it not for Clayton’s reiteration of this same shot a few seconds later, revealing little more than a stone statue where Quint once stood. From this dizzying height, we helplessly watch as Miles falls to the ground dead, though who or what is truly responsible for his demise remains woefully unclear.
Clayton plays a trick of perspective here as he divorces us from Miss Giddens’ point-of-view, first taking this high angle as we look over the ghost’s shoulder……and then cutting back to the exact same angle two shots later, only to find a statue in its place.Sexual repression bursting forth, or the ghost passing into her? Miss Giddens’ kiss on Miles’ dead lips remains an unsettling enigma.
Has Miss Giddens been justified in her concern, trying to save these children from unholy evils? Are these merely ghosts of past traumas, manifesting as paranoid delusions? Does the kiss she plants on Miles’ cold lips come from her, or one of the spirits entering her body? Clayton offers few answers as this governess clasps her hands together in prayer, mirroring the image from the opening credits and sinking her into an unforgiving darkness. In their place, The Innocents simply haunts us with a stifled, neurotic madness, blurring the lines between sinful corruption and the efforts of those who obsessively seek to conquer it.
The final shot echoing the first, encompassing Miss Giddens in darkness as she helplessly prays.
The Innocents is not currently streaming in Australia.
Even before Blow-Up, Michelangelo Antonioni was already demonstrating the powerful tool of perception that is a photographer’s eye, angling his camera at the oppressive structures of modern civilisation. By placing one such artist at the centre of a psychological mystery though, the question is raised as to whether this intensive scrutiny may also give birth to fabrications, imposing form and purpose on an existence ungoverned by cosmic harmony. This is not necessarily an inherent human weakness – our storytelling sets us apart from less developed lifeforms after all – but to mistake a collection of unrelated artefacts for reality will only ever lead to further distortions, revealing more about the mind of the observer than the observed.
When fashion photographer Thomas begins developing the film stock of an impromptu shoot in a local park, we too find ourselves swept away by the tantalising prospect of conspiracy. Laying his celluloid strips over a light table, he passes a magnifying glass across them frame by frame, before projecting negatives onto photographic paper and submerging the undeveloped prints in a chemical bath. This is a process to be undertaken alone, methodically dedicating one’s utmost attention to each step, and yet it is only after he has meditated on these photos for some period of time that something catches his eye.
Thomas approaches his art with methodical purpose, and Antonioni uses this sequence to similarly raise our own suspicions without a single line of dialogue.
In the first photograph, the female subject, Jane, is leading her partner by the hand. In the second, they are holding each other in a tight embrace. When it is enlarged though, he can see her eyeline directed elsewhere. He sections off the small section of bush where he believes she is looking, and then blows that up as well into an abstract array of black and white smudges that still don’t make much sense. Nevertheless, the more he pieces together fragments of his photos, the more previously hidden details begin to emerge – until he unveils the face of a third party hiding in the shadows, and a pistol pointing directly at the male subject.
Flitting between two black-and-white images until we, like Thomas, begin to impose our own contrived ideas onto them.Thomas literally caught between the two blown-up photos, both becoming the object of his obsession.Antonioni plays with the pareidolia effect – the tendency to see patterns in random stimuli, and piece together meaningful conclusions. Of course here, it is the static array of black and white smudges which tangibly form evidence of a murder.
Antonioni’s construction of this sequence is tightly measured, alternating between the photos, close-ups of Thomas’s sweaty face, and wide shots of his frantic pacing through the studio. That last photo may have saved the man’s life, he decides, seeing as it coincided with the exact moment Jane realised they were being watched. No doubt her persistence in later charming him into handing over the negatives is only further proof of her guilt, he believes, though perhaps her erratic behaviour is conversely what put the idea in his mind to begin with. Either way, such fervent curiosity is hard to stop once it is set in motion, setting Thomas down a path of obsessive investigation.
Blow-Up is Antonioni’s second film shot in colour, and he immediately flexes an impressive control over its stylish potential.
It is no great surprise that Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window should play such a crucial role in Antonioni’s direction of Blow-Up, which itself would inspire more paranoid thrillers in years to come such as The Conversation and Blow Out. Even beyond the compelling mystery narrative, Antonioni is using his camera to manipulate our point-of-view, voyeuristically peering through frame obstructions at the subjects of our focus. The use of a deep focus lens also takes notes from Hitchcock’s classic masterpieces, staging Jane in the distance of one shot that also eyes off Thomas’ sought-after camera in the foreground, thus drawing great suspense from her concerted attempt to steal back whatever secrets it contains.
Hitchcock would often use deep focus like this to create tension, though here Antonioni is also impressively creating a split screen effect with his meticulous framing.
Even with these influences in play though, Antonioni’s established style of incredible architectural designs remains dominant, melding perfectly with his depiction of the Swinging Sixties as an era of vibrant self-expression and profound existentialism. Thomas’ studio is a handsomely chaotic mess of colours and textures, the centrepiece of which is a long stand of vibrant ostrich feathers running from the floor to the ceiling, and outside his location shooting continues to find a geometric synchronicity in London’s natural and manufactured aesthetics. Patterns reveal themselves in the repetition of objects, organically framing Thomas through a symmetrical line of trees and segmenting a backdrop of city streets with Venetian blinds, while negative spaces ease the weight that these shapes impose upon the mise-en-scène.
Thomas’ studio is a handsomely chaotic mess of colours and textures, the centrepiece of which is a long stand of vibrant ostrich feathers running from the floor to the ceiling.Antonioni reveals his photographer’s eye in his immaculate framing and location shooting, using these evenly spaced trees to design this shot.Venetian blinds segment a backdrop of London’s streets – geometric synchronicity in manufactured aesthetics.
Architecture is of course not all about physical buildings for Antonioni, but rather extends to the composition of bodies, ornaments, vehicles, and vegetation in any given shot, taking on the quality of a still life artwork in their representation of something larger – a social critique for instance, or a subtle paranoia. Especially when actors are partially concealed by their environments, we often find ourselves leaning forward and filling in the missing information, consequently adopting the perspective that drives Thomas forward in his quest for a greater understanding of an uncertain world.
Posing bodies in the frame like models, turning them into part of the mise-en-scène.Obstructions force us to fill in the missing visual information.Thomas’ reality warps as his obsession grows, trapping him in these magnificently designed shots within his own studio.
This is what it means to adopt the eye of a photographer, Antonioni posits – recognising that what remains unseen is just as significant as that which is visible. When interpreting a piece of art, one must essentially become a detective to unearth tangible proof of one’s hypothesis, though which comes first makes all the difference. It is difficult to dispute Thomas’ discovery of the body at the crime scene for instance, now convincing him that the murder was successful, just as the trashing of his studio by an unknown perpetrator suggests he is getting too close to the truth. Nevertheless, when evidence seems to evaporate into thin air, Thomas’ reality seems to collapse into paradox.
Such is life in the British counterculture of the 60s though, bleeding with metaphysical contradictions. While Thomas indulges in the sexual liberty and consumerism of the fashion industry, so too does he engage with more socially conscious pursuits on the side, photographing the homeless people of London for a book project. Subscribing to both escapism and performative activism is all one can do to avoid confronting the dread of Cold War-era politics, and even when seeds of existential doubt do begin to sprout, parsing truth from deception remains extraordinarily difficult.
The Swinging Sixties bleed into Antonioni’s pop aesthetics, indulging in the sexual liberty and consumerism of the fashion industry.Thomas’ attempts reach a more authentic truth by way of addressing social issues only results in more artifice.
As such, this artist suddenly finds himself unable to trust his own eyes and ears. Is that the sound of someone stepping on a twig at the park, or is his paranoid mind playing tricks? Does the unexpected absence of a dead body suggest that he was only imagining it the first time around? With the negatives finally being stolen, the prospect of reassessing evidence to arrive at some definitive conclusion is ruled out as well.
Perhaps there really is a grand conspiracy manipulating Thomas’ perception of the world, or maybe he has just convinced himself of one. There is no doubt that there is at least some sort of illusion at play, though this knowledge doesn’t help in exposing it, as Antonioni demonstrates in his confounding final scene. Lost for answers, Thomas finds himself wandering by a tennis court where a troupe of mimes silently act out a game, and soon overcomes his confusion to participate in the imaginary act. We are not exemption from this mirage either, following the invisible ball’s arc through the air and even hearing it hit the make-believe racquets.
A reality-defying finale as Thomas reaches the tennis game performed by mimes, eventually engaging in their imaginary act – the metaphoric implications upon the rest of his story are sweeping.
The effect is disorientating, and yet to accept a collective fantasy is to find one’s home in a false reality, fading tangible truths into non-existence. That this should also be Thomas’ fate in a narrative that already keeps us at arm’s length from decisive answers is perfectly enigmatic, undermining whatever confidence we have left in identifying where Blow-Up’s slyly crafted illusion starts and ends. If nothing on its surface is a true representation of itself, then there may ultimately be very little keeping us too from becoming distortions in the eyes of others, spuriously skewing our very identities to the point of uncanny, elusive abstraction.
Thomas too becomes little more than a distortion in the eye of the observer, eroding his very identity in the confounding final shot.
Blow-Up is currently streaming on The Criterion Channel, and is available to rent or buy on Apple TV, YouTube, and Amazon Video.
Few words are exchanged by rival bounty hunters Manco and Colonel Douglas Mortimer when they finally come face to face in the rural settlement of El Paso. For the first fifty minutes of For a Few Dollars More, Sergio Leone has been intertwining their paths in search of escaped bank robber El Indio, each scoping out their common target while remaining largely ignorant of each other’s presence. From their raised vantage points on either side of the main road, they spy on the outlaw’s gang gathering outside a bank, before incidentally turning their telescope and binoculars on each other. That evening, Manco sends the porter to packed Mortimer’s belongings and bring them outside where he is waiting, consequently leading to the pivotal confrontation that will ultimately decide the fate of both their quests.
Ennio Morricone’s score is sparse here, though the few notes he does play unite a pair of musical motifs. When we cut to Manco, a flute skims through a terse, cautionary phrase, while the Jew’s harp we have come to associate with Mortimer reverberates a piercing twang. The Colonel is framed in the classic Leone shot between Manco’s spread legs, before they take turns scuffing each other’s shoes. As much as this peacocking is an attempt to mark their territory, the prospect of either backing off seems increasingly unlikely, especially when they begin shooting at each other’s hats to prove who is the better gunslinger. The editing is taut, but with Morricone’s majestic score largely absent, we recognise that this sequence is not building to one of his deadly quick draws. From this rivalry, a begrudging respect is born between Manco and Mortimer, who soon begin negotiating the terms of their professional partnership over drinks.
Rival bounty hunters spy each other, their paths colliding in this POV shot.The classic Leone low angle, foregrounding the feet and framing the opposition.
This willingness to cooperate may be the greatest virtue which our heroes possess in For a Few Dollars More, contrasting heavily against the villain’s treacherous manipulation of his own gang. El Indio acts purely on greed and self-preservation, stoking mistrust among his henchmen in the hopes that they all end up murdering each other. If he and his lieutenant’s plans work out, then he need only split the loot they have stolen from the bank two ways.
Unfortunately, El Indio’s shrewdness is not so forward-thinking. The fracturing of his gang drastically weakens his position against Manco and Mortimer, placing him in a precarious position by the time their final showdown arrives. In the Old West, this choice between unity and division is the only shot anyone has at finding order in anarchy, and may be all that stands in the way of life and death.
Treachery runs rampant within El Indio’s gang, stoking divisions and distinctlysetting them apart from our protagonists.
After the extraordinary hit that was A Fistful of Dollars, it was only natural that Leone should continue probing these blurred binaries of Americana. With twice the budget, he is no longer restricted to a single location, but rather sprawls his narrative scope across multiple settings and expands his ensemble. The only point of continuity to carry over between films is Clint Eastwood as The Man With no Name, informally recognised here as Manco, and this time sharing the lead role with Lee van Cleef. Together, they form a stoic duo as they infiltrate, outsmart, and outshoot El Indio’s gang, seeking to claim the bounty that has been placed on the bandit’s head.
Clint Eastwood and Lee van Cleef make for a compelling screen duo, reluctantly cooperating in their efforts to infiltrate, outsmart, and outshoot El Indio’s gang.
Despite this narrow character link between A Fistful of Dollars and For a Few Dollars More, there is no doubt that both films inhabit the same dusty, lawless world of Leone’s American frontier. Far from the polished black-and-white cinematography or the blazing Technicolor beauty of classical Hollywood Westerns, this sequel maintains the faded colours and coarse textures of its precursor, using the natural rugged terrains of the Spanish desert to stand in for the harsh Texan wilderness. The only moisture to be found in this environment is that which drips down the faces of Leone’s actors, pressed up against the camera lens in deep focus close-ups that simultaneously track the action unfolding in the background.
For a Few Dollars more has a larger scope than A Fistful of Dollars, giving Leone many opportunities to bask in these natural, rugged terrains.Rural Spanish settlements stand in for the Old West, setting the stage for meetings and skirmishes.A mastery of deep focus on display, pressing faces up against the lens while action unfolds in the background.
There is much tension to be drawn from such lively staging, layering shots with dynamic motion and nervous stillness, though it is once again Leone’s editing which most crucially navigates each moving part of his staggering set pieces. Beyond even his John Ford or Akira Kurosawa influence, Leone’s montages call all the way back to Sergei Eisenstein, patiently cutting between twitching hands, holstered pistols, and apprehensive faces as they anticipate an outburst of action. Suspense is also rife in his constant cutaways to the safe that the gang is planning to steal from the bank, while the rapid cutting between Mortimer’s eyes and El Indio’s wanted poster when the bounty hunter first learns of his prison break lands like bullets, binding their destinies together in a cacophony of gunshots.
Rapid-fire cutting volleys between these shots, viciously binding Mortimer and El Indio’s destinies.
After all, the Colonel is not merely in this for the payout, as handsome as it is. His stakes are personal, and although we don’t learn the details until Leone’s climactic conclusion, the foundations of this grand reveal are woven throughout El Indio’s backstory. Most prominently, flashbacks to the time he raped a woman, murdered her family, and stole her musical pocket watch as a memento sit like a pit in his stomach, hinting at a shred of guilt. Whenever it is opened, memories of that tragedy return in its delicate, tinkling melody, effortlessly weaving a haunting sadness into Morricone’s otherwise majestic score of electric guitars, percussive chants, and piercing whistles. This is the melancholy which resides in all these characters, his motif reminds us, feeding the vengeful sorrow which has transformed the frontier into a battlefield of personal vendettas. On a more sadistic level, so too is it a cruel countdown that El Indio frequently uses in duels, challenging his opponents to only draw their pistols when its wind-up tune has run out.
El Indio’s flashbacks arrive as dreamy, disconnected montages, giving ambiguous background to the pocket watch motif.
This pocket watch thus makes for a fitting accompaniment to his and Mortimer’s eventual showdown, staged within the circular boundaries of a low stone wall. As its melody slows to a halt though, an identical tune suddenly starts up elsewhere, and Leone cuts to a magnificent wide shot of both men on either side of the frame with Manco’s hand in the centre. There, a second pocket watch he pilfered earlier from Mortimer is flipped open, and the historic connection between hero and villain comes to light. El Indio’s eyes move between the pocket watch’s photo of his victim and his adversary, and recognition of a family resemblance crosses his face – yet this is not his story to see through to its completion. For the first time in his life, he is the slowest to draw, and Mortimer chooses not to claim the monetary reward, but rather the inner peace he has long pursued.
Flawless editing matched by meticulous framing during the final shootout, brought to a standstill by Manco’s reveal – a second, identical pocket watch raised in the foreground between both men.
With set pieces as awe-inspiring as these, it is virtually impossible to separate Leone’s cinematic style and mythic storytelling. Character emerges from action, which is in turn born from a flawless synthesis of staging, music, and editing, revitalising the Western genre with the countercultural vigour of the 1960s. Manco is not a classical hero serving righteous ideals for the betterment of society, but a killer who sees death as little more than a commodity to be traded, though at the very least there is some grace to be found in Mortimer’s consideration of murder as an act of moral justice – however bloody it may be. In the absence of men living by virtuous principles, For a Few Dollars More gives us gunslingers choosing to wield their darkness as weapons, and strengthened by the coalition they form against greater, far more rotten evils.
For a Few Dollars More is currently streaming on SBS On Demand, and is available to rent or buy on YouTube and Amazon Video.
When the Stranger first arrives in the rural border town of San Miguel, the reception from its locals is foreboding. A noose hangs from a withered tree, warning visitors away from the lawless justice that runs rampant. From a distance, he observes a small child trying to sneak into a building, only to be kicked out and shot at as he runs back to his mother. As he rides down the street, the civilians aren’t much friendlier to him either. “I reckon he picked the wrong trail,” one mouthy bandit scoffs. “Or he could have picked the wrong town,” his companion retorts, before their small gang sends the Stranger’s galloping off in a panic.
It only takes a couple of minutes for our hero to deliver fierce retribution. With four swift gunshots, he wins the quick draw against their entire crew, and sends them to early graves. It is also in this moment that we see three separate artists make their first major step towards culture-defining excellence.
Leone works magnificently in scenes with minimal dialogue, stretching out the silence of this opening scene with taut suspense, and offering nothing but a few signifiers of the danger that lurks ahead.
As the Stranger stands alone in his poncho against a daunting arrangement of outlaws along a wooden fence, Sergio Leone’s fine orchestration of his editing and staging ominously build their interaction to an impasse, before shattering the tension with an angry, violent bloodbath. This sequence was not only a resounding artistic breakthrough, but also marked the beginning of the Western genre’s most significant shake-up to date. Where America sought to define its own national mythology through fables of good vs evil, Leone’s importation of these archetypes into Italy infused them with a harsher, grittier edge, cynically leaning into the moral grey areas of history that never found easy resolutions. Perhaps even more impactful on his style though was the cinematic nihilism of Akira Kurosawa, with samurai film Yojimbo providing the narrative template upon which A Fistful of Dollars is based.
Superb blocking of faces in the frame, inventively using the full horizontal scope of the widescreen format for something other than a landscape.Leone was a huge admirer of Kurosawa’s action and editing, though where his idol often drew out the cinematic brilliance of sword fights, Leone built scenes towards sudden, jarring shootouts that explode with violence.
Also key to this pivotal scene are the distinctive musical cues of Ennio Morricone – and of course the accompanying silence that he wields with solemn purpose. A sharp, short series of descending notes on a flute accompanies the Stranger’s slight head raise, matching his piercing glare as it emerges from beneath his hat brim, and a high-pitched whining on strings carries us all the way to the inevitable gunfire. From there, Morricone continues weaving textured layers all through his score for A Fistful of Dollars, creating a sound which in decades to come would be recognised as the quintessential ‘sound’ of the Western genre. Whips crack, bells toll, and male voices chant in robust unison, while underscoring the bold, silent presence of the Stranger with blaring trumpets as he daringly strides into hostile territory.
Clint Eastwood was not yet a star in 1964, but his breakout role here would ensure he would be one for many decades to come, defining the new image of a Western hero for a generation.
It is impossible to imagine A Fistful of Dollars without either Leone or Morricone at the helm, but the final part of their trio would in time become the face of Spaghetti Westerns, and eventually transcend even that niche. Clint Eastwood’s screen presence is undeniable as the Stranger, squinting into glary landscapes and mumbling past a cigar that sits in the corner of his mouth. Faced with a town that is split between two rival families vying for control, he uses his sharp mind and sharpshooting skills to orchestrate their downfalls, though it is also the mystery that shrouds his stoic demeanour which turns him into such a compelling figure. After all, he is the Man with No Name, unbeholden to any title, status, or allegiance. When asked by the captive Marisol why he is helping her escaping the factions she has been traded between, his response is vague, yet hints at a past that has hardened him into an aggrieved, avenging angel.
“Because I knew someone like you once. There was no one there to help.”
This is a man driven by an internal sense of right and wrong, and Leone holds no regard for whether we believe he goes too far in certain instances. His quick anger and readiness to kill mars the image of the classic Western hero upheld by Hollywood throughout its Golden Age, yet he is nevertheless the closest thing to a saviour that San Miguel has. Even after being brutally beaten by his enemies, still he refuses to yield, instead recuperating in a cave and eventually being reborn from it as a Christ figure destined to deliver the town from evil.
Only when the Stranger is brought to his lowest can he rise again to claim victory – it is the story of Christ and so many other mythological figures of history.Only with his wide-angle lenses and wide aspect ratio can Leone achieve shots like these, essentially capturing both a wide and close-up in one.
After all, the feud which divides San Miguel is deeply entwined with matters of prejudice, greed, and corruption. On one side, the Mexican Rojo brothers control the flow of liquor, while the white American Baxter family smuggle guns across the nearby border. Outside of both, the Stranger proves his wits in outsmarting them equally, spreading a rumour in the wake of a recent assault from the Rojos that two survivors escaped and are willing to testify against their attackers. After he props a pair of exhumed corpses against a gravestone outside town to appear alive, both families race to the cemetery and engage in a gunfight, shooting the ‘survivors’ in the process.
The distraction couldn’t have worked better for the Stranger. This is the opportunity he needed to empty the town and poke around the Rojos’ base, which Leone deftly intercuts with the battle he instigated unfolding several miles away.
Perhaps the Stranger’s most ingenious trick, setting up two dead bodies as survivors from a recent massacre, and forcing both rival families to meet at the graveyard.
It is ultimately this mutual, self-destructive hostility between the clans of San Miguel which sets in motion their own demise. Falsely believing that the Baxters helped the Stranger free Marisol from their grip, the Rojos retaliate with unrelenting fury, setting their house on fire and mercilessly massacring those who try to escape. If it weren’t for this display of utter cruelty, perhaps the Stranger’s attempt to dismantle these corrupt power structures might have been a little more forgiving. Now as they sadistically torture his closest ally Silvanito out in the open though, Eastwood projects a ferocity unlike anything we have seen from him before, commanding a wide shot that establishes him as the true law and order of this town.
Low angle, centre frame, dust swirling in the air – the Stranger’s return is an image of indomitable power.
Bullets cannot harm him as he fearlessly strides down the main road to face his would-be killers, instead lodging in the handmade plate armour protecting his torso. The rhythmic, accelerating pace of Leone’s montage, Morricone’s score, and the magnificent blocking of actors once again drive up the tension, though with a few added camera zooms and extreme close-ups studying each bead of sweat, the suspense also becomes unflinchingly visceral. With six gunshots, the Stranger disarms the leader Ramón, and dispatches his band of cronies. With a seventh, he severs the rope binding Silvanito’s wrists, and after challenging Ramón to a quick draw, the eighth takes his life.
Leone plays the final shootout to perfection, using every cinematic tool as his disposal – including his trademark extreme close-ups which study every bead of sweat glistening on these brows.
In using every cinematic element at his disposal to craft suspense and set pieces, Leone stands right next to a select few elite filmmakers in cinema history, including both Hitchcock and Kurosawa. Even outside of these gripping sequences though, A Fistful of Dollars also reveals his magnificent command of establishing shots, particularly using Techniscope technology to stretch vast, dusty landscapes across a wide canvas and draw dynamic compositions from beautifully designed interiors. When the arresting majesty of his crane shots is considered next to his creative framing of faces, Leone can’t help but reveal the influence of D.W. Griffith in his camerawork as well, proving his similarly extraordinary mastery in capturing both the epic and the intimate.
Three layers to Leone’s depth of field, pressing faces up against the camera while others linger in the background.An arrangement of bodies in the frame to rival the masters of Old Hollywood.Horizons stretch far across Leone’s long shots, revelling in dusty, desaturated landscapes.
The cumulative result of such varied techniques is operatic, serving a narrative that carries a far greater scope than its 100-minute runtime would suggest. Next to such grand achievements, the awful voice dubbing in A Fistful of Dollars barely warrants a mention, besides an appreciation for Leone and his crew’s perseverance through such a trying production. It seems that all it took to push the genre forward was the voice of an outsider who had never stepped foot in America, yet nevertheless had the talent and vision to cynically undermine its revered mythology, delivering a portrait of the Old West drenched in blood, sweat, and violent anarchy.
The perfect crane shot to end this Western fable, lifting us far above the carnage that litters the main road.
A Fistful of Dollars is available to rent or buy on Apple TV, YouTube, and Amazon Video.
Marriage within the Kohayagawa family takes on multiple meanings throughout The End of Summer, always dependent on the individual in question. For younger daughter Noriko it is an aspiration hindered by her sweetheart Teramoto’s decision to move away for work, while her elder sister Fumiko performs her duty loyally, raising a son with her husband Hisao. The pressure for their widowed sister-in-law Akiko to remarry is also quietly mounting, even as she quietly resists with the sincere acknowledgement that her youth is long gone – not that patriarch Manbei sees this as an issue when he controversially tries to reconnect with his old mistress. A widower of his age should not be considering the prospect of marriage, his family proclaims, lest he should embarrass them all.
As is the case in most Yasujirō Ozu films, Japanese tradition is at the forefront here, merging The End of Summer’s rigorous form, style, and content into a gentle meditation on those longstanding cultural values that have ensured stability across generations. Where his penultimate film sets itself apart is in the astounding elegance of the execution, even by his own standards. In terms of pure visual storytelling, this competes with only a handful of his greatest works, while pushing his geometrically precise style forward through rejuvenating colour photography.
Ozu rpresents the entire Kohayagawa family through the brown, earthy tones of their home and sake bar – dark wooden flooring, furniture, and panelling are the dominant aesthetic in The End of Summer.An elegant frame beyond the crowded angles of the family home, gently imposing the tree trunk and branches on these characters as we join their conversation.
Ozu’s layering of frames through corridors and doorways remains one of his most potent visual devices here, often containing his characters within the spaces of work, leisure, and domestic duty which define their day-to-day routines. There is often an extraordinary graphic harmony between people and their surrounding décor, symmetrically dividing a table at one of Noriko’s work lunches by gender, while running a pattern of brightly coloured bottles beneath them parallel to their staging.
Extraordinary graphic harmony in Ozu’s mise-en-scène, symmetrically dividing a table at one of Noriko’s work lunches by gender while running a pattern of brightly coloured bottles beneath them.
The End of Summer’s mise-en-scène also transcends conventional blocking choices, often suggesting the presence of specific characters despite their physical absence. When we transition into a scene with Akiko at an art gallery for instance, Ozu gently delivers a montage of floral paintings in an art gallery, while on a broader level he represents the entire Kohayagawa family through the brown, earthy tones that encompass them. Within their home, dark wooden flooring, furniture, and panelling are the dominant aesthetic, complementing their light bamboo drapes and striking an extraordinary contrast against their exquisitely patterned wallpaper and textiles.
Ozu uses mise-en-scène to suggest the presence of specific characters despite their physical absence, delivering a montage of floral paintings in an art gallery when we transition into a scene with Akiko at an art gallery.Patterned wallpaper becomes a trend towards the end of Ozu’s career, delicately framing his immaculately blocked ensemble.Bamboo drapes weave light, organic textures through domestic spaces, complementing the dark wooden décor.
As for Manbei himself, his personality and power are most strongly signified in the family sake brewery, often seen with barrels leaning obliquely against its wall in Ozu’s pillow shots. Their contents are the foundation of his small business, though in this modern era its future is looking frighteningly uncertain, as the need to merge into a larger corporation seems more inevitable with each passing week.
Marvellous pillow shots set around the family brewery, leaning rounded barrels up against the outside wall when business is prospering.
When Manbei suffers a heart attack, these shots consequently draw a parallel between the health of his body and his company. As Noriko rushes to call an ambulance, Ozu cuts through a series of familiar locations in their home that are now gloomily dimmed and emptied, before returning to the brewery’s exterior where the absence of barrels is poignantly noted. The graveyard shot that is additionally inserted here isn’t to be passed over either – Ozu’s careful editing weaves a mournful foreboding in the wake of this sudden illness, quietly hinting at the tragedy that has already taken the family’s beloved mother, and which will soon claim their patriarch and business as well.
Immediately following Manbei’s heart attack, Ozu lingers in this melancholy montage of the empty doctor’s office and family home, now void of life.The family business’ health is tied directly to Manbei’s – no more barrels after he is struck down by illness.
Throughout Ozu’s career, the encroachment of the modern world into traditional Japanese spaces has steadily become more central to his narrative conflicts, even as he maintains a nuanced standpoint on the issue. With a piece of the Kohayagawa family’s identity at stake, the threat of post-war industrialism is felt especially deeply here, yet at the same time Ozu savours the incongruence of this cultural clash. The blinking neon lights of Kyoto’s cityscapes are searingly beautiful, while views of temples through Venetian blinds and pagodas peeking over tiled roofs further develop the uneasy interactions between Japan’s past and present.
Kyoto’s dazzling cityscapes look to Japan’s future, stripped of those family businesses which were once the economy’s lifeblood.Ancient temples framed through office windows, depicting a clash of eras and values.
Quite unusually though, it is not just the younger generations subverting cultural customs in The End of Summer, but even Manbei himself. Every so often Ozu dismisses his characters’ polite reservations with glimpses of spirited humour, watching the elderly sake brewer play hide and seek with his grandchild, and elsewhere try to shake his employee’s tail while running off to his mistress’ home. His children’s concerns about this rekindled romance are understandable given its history, though now that their mother has passed, so too can we understand Manbei’s renewed desire for companionship.
Moments of levity in Manbei’s games with his grandson.Light comedy in Manbei’s sly escape to his mistress’ home, shaking the tail of his younger employee – even here, Ozu repeats shots to establish a sense of geography.
It is obvious upon meeting Tsune that we realise she is no wily seductress, but just another lonely parent seeking love, and ultimately proving her dedication to Manbei as she nurses him through his sickness. Happiness and fulfilment can clearly be found outside the family unit in The End of Summer, even if certain relationships are left ambiguous, such as the question of whether he fathered her daughter Yuriko. The rebellious streak that he and Yuriko both share only supports this speculation, particularly manifesting in her as a rejection of Japanese culture and adoption of a heavily Westernised lifestyle. Rather than the loose-fitting and slimming garb worn by Manbei’s daughters, she wears bright, eye-catching dresses that accentuate her curved figure, and her dating life primarily revolves around white American men.
Japan’s youth are adopting a Westernised culture, typified in Yuriko who dresses in bright dresses and dates primarily American men.
The two sequences where Ozu takes the Kohayagawa family outside the city and into the countryside thus mark a reprieve from this modern cultural conflict, even if it is exchanged for profound mourning in both instances. In the first instance, they hold a memorial service for their late mother in Arashiyama, where Ozu’s pillow shots turn their focus to forests and hills that have barely been touched by human civilisation. The second time they venture beyond their home though, the grief is far more potent, commemorating the passing of their beloved father.
Pillow shots as we transition to the countryside – note the formal rigour of these compositions, flooding the frame with greenery while running a brown, vertical beam through each shot.Foreground and background detail in Ozu’s compositions, running a line of gravestones diagonally across the frame while two lonely figures in mourning clothes keep their distance.
The small appearance of Ozu regular Chishû Ryû as a farmer observing the crematorium chimney with his wife is notable here, despite there being no direct interaction between them and our main characters. Judging by the crows gathering along the river where they work, they surmise that someone has died, and soon their suspicions are confirmed when smoke from that giant pillar begins rising into the air. “It’s not a big deal if an elderly person were to have died, but it would be tragic if it were somebody young,” the woman ponders, while the man takes a more positive spin on her indifference.
“Yes, but no matter how many die, new lives will be born to take their place.”
Chishû Ryû cameos as a farmer commenting on Manbei’s death from afar, bringing Ozu’s musings on mortality to a close.The crematory chimney is a poignant visual motif, marking Manbei’s final departure from the world.
It is merely the cycle of life, his wife acknowledges – a comforting assertion given the confirmation in these final scenes that the Kohayagawa brewery will indeed be sold off, ending an era in this family’s history. No longer do these adult children wear light colours and delicate patterns, but instead exchange them for pitch-black, funereal garments. Even after they leave the graveyard, the severe imprints they cast against the pale blue sky poetically resonate into Ozu’s sombre final shot, revealing two crows cawing upon a pair of headstones. They are the grief of the living that lingers with the deceased, but so too are they the souls of husband and wife joined in death, marking the resting spot where their bodies lay. Perhaps the celebrated traditions of marriage and family can secure a longstanding stability through this loss, yet The End of Summer does not underestimate the sorrow that it entails, composing wistful lamentations of life’s transient, bittersweet joys.
Manbei’s adult children no longer wear light colours and delicate patterns, but instead exchange them for pitch-black, funereal garments, imprinted against a light blue sky.Crows gather at the cemetery, and Ozu nails his final shot – these birds are the grief of the living that lingers with the deceased, but so too are they the souls of husband and wife joined in death, marking the resting spot where their bodies lay.
The End of Summer is currently streaming on The Criterion Channel.
Through the lens of our contemporary world, the past often looks like an alien civilisation, abiding by absurd customs and exotic fashions conceptualised by some bizarre foreign entity. Though Federico Fellini acutely identifies traces of modern decadence in his distorted refraction of Ancient Rome, this is the position he maintains throughout Fellini Satyricon, while slowly revealing an even more audacious statement at the heart of its manic weirdness. It is not merely our distant ancestors who are aliens to an impartial outsider, but humanity itself, bound to the same trivial obsessions and primal impulses across history. This age of decadence we live through today is merely an echo of many others that have come before, Fellini posits, each time heralding a socioeconomic decline brought about by gluttonous appetites and egos.
This landscape of widespread moral corruption is of course not unique in his filmography, especially given that Satyricon and La Dolce Vita both trace the journey of two lone men through episodes exposing Rome’s shameless depravity. Where Catholic iconography and ethics guided the narrative of Fellini’s 1960 masterpiece though, Satyricon’s tales draw directly from ancient pagan beliefs, and specifically the eponymous novel penned by Roman writer Petronius as a satire of Greco-Roman mythology. More specifically, this text directly parodied the majestic heroism and fantastical adventures of Homer’s Odyssey, which by the 1st century AD was several hundred years old. While its lost segments somewhat hinder Fellini’s interpretation from mustering up much formal rigour, there is still an immense dedication to epic storytelling on display within the picaresque narrative chaos, reassembling the remains of a decaying world that is only barely hanging together.
Fellini’s mise-en-scène in Satyricon stands with some of his best, using his ludicrously theatrical set designs and blocking to compose off-kilter landscapes of moral debauchery and suffering. In effect, this is an ancient apocalypse – the downward slide of the once-powerful Roman Empire.
In place of the brave, charismatic hero that Odysseus typified in the Epic Cycle, Encolpius represents a far more ambiguous protagonist in Satyricon, motivated more by epicurean pleasure than love or honour. This is a man who will slaughter a temple of worshippers and kidnap a hermaphroditic demigod in hope of a obtaining a ransom, and yet who is also incompetent enough to carelessly let them die of dehydration in a scorching desert. He does not stand out from this moral cesspool, but rather blends in with its depraved surroundings, feebly falling into the off-kilter orbit of egocentric patricians, lecherous merchants, and bloodthirsty spectators who seek nothing but their own gratification. Given the self-indulgent behaviour of the Roman gods, it is fitting that their followers should celebrate them with such blatant acts of hedonism, transforming their once-glorious empire into a carnival of violence and debauchery.
Murals and graffiti become stunning backdrops to Encolpius’ journey, rendering him as another two-dimensional figure next to those painted on walls.
Now fully consumed by his love of Technicolour photography, Fellini doesn’t hold back either in his frenetic visual recreation of Satyricon’s Rome, especially with genius cinematographer Giuseppe Rotunno joining his troupe. This is expressionistic world building at its most imposing, based around colossal, anachronistic sets that might almost belong in a theatre were it not for their vast expansion in all directions. The giant ziggurat of apartments where Encolpius lives with his slave and lover Gitón towers menacingly in the darkness above a grey courtyard, and of course to reach it from the other side of the city one must pass through a brothel where strange sexual acts unfold in full view of the public. Where 8 ½ and Juliet of the Spirits once blended reality and surrealism in fragmented dreams, Fellini immerses Satyricon in a feverish hallucination that has taken over the lives of the Roman people, and even infected the skies with a deep red that casts the land below as an infernal underworld.
The giant ziggurat where Encolpius lives with Gitón towers menacingly above a grey courtyard, appearing strikingly apocalyptic with its darkness and crowds.Red skies shed a hellish glow over the infernal underworld of Ancient Rome, damning its lost souls to endless torment and suffering.Fellini indulges in the artifice of his lighting, sets, and costuming. This is not an authentic recreation of Ancient Rome, but an anachronistic refraction of a satirical text, underlining the hypocrisies which led to its downfall.
It is no coincidence that some of Fellini’s most demented imagery arrives with the novel’s most famous episode, set at a banquet held by wealthy freeman Trimalchio for the entertainment of the commonfolk. Encolpius has been invited by his new friend, the eccentric poet Eumolpus, and as they venture towards the meeting place they come across an absurdly confronting sight – a hundred nude men and women waiting outside in a giant, steamy bath, surrounded by an even greater number of candles. The erotic of nature of Fellini’s blocking here is crucial to the carnal madness of Satyricon, bringing together bare bodies in uncomfortably intimate arrangements which simultaneously satiate and disturb the senses.
Satyricon signals a shift in Fellini’s surrealism, moving away from depictions of dreams and fully bombarding us with maddening, expressionistic landscapes without narrative explanation.
Inside Trimalchio’s gaudy manor, he continues this staging as guests lounge around the edges of the room in extravagant costumes and makeup, imprinted against red walls and enveloped in thick clouds of steam. Insanity reigns when the crowd frenetic dances to dissonant live music and organs spill across the floor from a giant roast hog, yet Fellini’s focus never wavers from the codependent relationship between the narcissistic host and his guests. Supposedly based on Emperor Nero, the insecure Trimalchio holds these lavish parties for no other purpose than to be adored by the commonfolk. He is evidently little more than a talentless, egotistic fraud using his wealth to gain respect, though his patience is short when they do not play according to his rules, even having Eumolpus tortured in the furnace for calling out his plagiarised poetry.
“In my house, I’m the poet!”
Insanity reigns in Trimalchio’s gaudy manor, where Fellini stages guests lounge around the edges of the room in extravagant costumes and makeup, imprinted against red walls and enveloped in thick clouds of steam. This is the novel’s most famous episode, and is given a bold cinematic treatment.
These characters are not actively engaged with the political climate of Ancient Rome, yet at every turn Fellini is placing Encolpius’ fate in the hands of more powerful men. The few times he does take an active role in his own story, his efforts are rapidly undercut by the turmoil of a crumbling world, whether depicted literally in the earthquake that violently tears down his home or the insurgents who install a usurper as their new emperor.
That Encolpius is the closest thing to a Greek hero that Imperial Rome has to offer is pathetic indeed, making for a comparison that only cuts deeper in Fellini’s bastardised recreation of King Minos’ Labyrinth and its fearsome Minotaur, seeing our protagonist escape only by begging for his life and confessing that he is no Theseus. Through Satyricon’s retelling of the Widow of Ephesus myth, Christian doctrine does not entirely escape Fellini’s scathing satire here either, though his most direct parody is reserved for the final minutes where Eumolpus requests for his body to be devoured by the beneficiaries of his will.
Bloodthirsty crowds recreate the myth of Theseus and the Minotaur for their own cheap entertainment – Fellini draws on powerful iconography in these myths and legends.A pair of moral fables further embed the notion of storytelling and its rich history into this tale, and even take aim at the still-nascent form of Christianity in the 1st century AD.
True to the source material which records this as the final scene, missing segments notwithstanding, Fellini abandons his narrative mid-sentence with Encolpius leaving on Eumolpus’ ship to Africa. It is difficult to label this an anticlimax when we were never promised a great catharsis to begin with, though by taking a step back to reveal Satyricon‘s characters painted in frescoes upon ancient ruins, Fellini breaks the immersion to acknowledge that plot was never paramount in this absurd dreamscape. Cinematic surrealists like David Lynch and Alejandro Jodorowsky would later centralise this tenet in their own filmmaking too, adapting archetypes and allegories with a subversive, Felliniesque irreverence that believes greater truth lies in the fanciful stories we fashion from skewed perceptions of our past rather than history itself. Through its surreal blend of modern art and classical antiquity, Fellini Satyricon not only examines this grand paradox of truth and fiction – it becomes a direct embodiment of our most maddening psychological conflict, farcically recognising the indelibly primal self-contradictions of humanity across all ages.
Fellini ends his narrative exactly where the text finishes – mid-sentence – before revealing the film’s characters painted in frescoes upon ancient ruins. If Satyricon is a surreal interrogation of historical legends, then we must look to their artifice and limitations to understand the true nature of the people who composed them.
Fellini Satyricon is currently available to purchase on Amazon.
Given how notoriously private Yasujirō Ozu was as a public figure, it is impossible to speculate with any certainty the reason why he never married. Considering that he was supposedly expelled from his boarding school for writing love letters to another boy, it is conceivable that he was a queer man living in conservative times. Alternatively, perhaps he simply valued his relationship with his mother over any romantic attachment, seeing as how he lived with her throughout his adulthood. His films never featured any surrogate characters explicitly representing him, and yet they were nevertheless a medium through which he deeply pondered those cultural Japanese traditions that he simultaneously was at odds with and adored.
With this context in mind, An Autumn Afternoon becomes all the more fascinating as Ozu’s last film in an incredibly vast career – not that he necessarily knew it would be at the time. His decline from throat cancer was sudden, seeing him pass away only a few months after his mother on his sixtieth birthday, leaving this as his final testament to the enduring purpose, duties, and conflicts of family and marriage. In its observations of a widowed father’s reluctant attempts to marry off his daughter Michiko, Late Spring’s narrative is specifically recaptured here, though the updated setting to 1960s also reveals Ozu’s complex relationship with the advance of Western modernity into Japanese civilisation.
Commercial indulgences are an irrevocable part of these characters’ lives, filling Shūhei and his companions with alcohol to the point of excess.Ozu’s camera adores the colourful nightlife of the urban setting in An Autumn Afternoon, recognising the shift to Westernised market capitalism with flashing signs and vibrant graphics arranged in superb compositions.Visual storytelling in the mise-en-scène details – a set of golf clubs referenced in an earlier argument appear in this corridor, subtly tying off this subplot.
The pillow shots that herald the restaurant where Shūhei drinks with his friends consistently bathe in flashing signs and vibrant graphics that light up storefronts, poignantly recognising the shift to market capitalism that has been imported from America and Europe. Commercial indulgences are an irrevocable part of these characters’ lives, filling Shūhei’s companions with alcohol to the point of excess, and sparking arguments in his son Kōichi’s marriage over a set of golf clubs he desperately desires. Later, those same clubs are integrated into one of Ozu’s trademark hallway shots among other perfectly arranged household items, economically tying off this subplot and signalling a broader shift towards consumerism.
Towards the end of Ozu’s career he began plastering his sets with patterned wallpaper, injecting his mise-en-scène with lively detail and colour.
Above all else though, the colour cinematography which Ozu had begun using four years prior in Equinox Flower may be the strongest stylistic decision made in An Autumn Afternoon, vividly accentuating the organised patterns and contrasts that he had already mastered in black-and-white. While the interior architecture is handsomely captured with patterned wallpaper around shoji doors and geometric frames, it is more frequently the small props and ornaments which inject bursts of primary colours into his muted scenery, each set with absolute precision. At the restaurant, mid-shots of Shūhei and his friends are lined along the bottom with a full rainbow assortment of ceramic cups and saucers, while an impeccably composed wide shot leads a line of yellow bar stools towards an alleyway washed in neon red lighting. Even when there are no humans in sight, every vivid detail points to their presence, quietly littering pillow shots as beautifully simple as embroidered rugs draped over apartment balconies and empty slippers laying outside closed doors.
A simple frame that scatters brown, green, yellow, and blue hues along the bottom with ceramic cups and saucers.Subtle colour schemes developed in shots like these, mirroring the red across the giant lantern outside the window and the slippers, and blue through the slippers and walls.An impeccably composed wide shot leads a line of yellow bar stools towards an alleyway washed in neon red lighting – after many decades of working in black-and-white, Ozu also proved his hand at colour photography.Ozu’s pillow shots are never simply thrown away, contrasting multiple patterns across beautifully embroidered rugs over these balconies.
Most crucially, it is Ozu’s pairing of red and white which suggests a uniformity between Japanese tradition and industry in An Autumn Afternoon, mirrored between the striped smokestacks and steel drums of the very first shot. This palette continues to punctuate the mise-en-scène in sweaters, lanterns, and signs, before boldly arriving in Michiko’s elaborate white wedding gown and headdress accented with notes of crimson.
Perfect formal harmony in Ozu’s colours, with the red-and-white steel drums matching the red-and-white smokestacks. As the pillow shots take us inside an office building, still he continues that palette with the walls and decor.A white wedding dress with flecks of red, continuing to develop Ozu’s striking colour palette.
Visual patterns such as these are important to connecting the public and private lives of Ozu’s characters, further revealing the unity of the two in pillow shots that steadily cut between several frames associated with a new scene, and gradually edge closer to its characters. Quite significantly, this approach maintains a soothing, consistent flow in the editing, rather than falling back on the sort of establishing shots that a more conventional director might turn to. As a result, Ozu can recall these compositions as shorthand whenever he returns to a familiar location – the smokestacks viewed from Shūhei’s office window for example, or the surrounding restaurants outside Tory’s Bar.
After initially introducing Tory’s Bar through pillow shots, Ozu simply refers to this frame as shorthand whenever we return there – astounding formal economy.
Narratively, this formal poetry is also reflected through multiple characters who signal some shift in the status quo, underscored by the two instances of current and former naval officers mockingly sending up patriotic military anthems. Although Japan’s national spirit was broken after losing World War II and replaced with scathing cynicism among younger generations, Shūhei continues to mourn its loss, and sorrowfully responds in private with songs about floating castles guarding the Land of the Rising Sun.
A pair of encounters in the bar confront Shūhei with the reality of Japan’s broken national spirit after its terrible losses – a poignant realisation for the former naval officer.
Through the character of the Gourd, a respected teacher who mentored Shūhei and his friends on Chinese classics, Ozu continues to reckon with Japan’s changing culture by envisioning the future that awaits our protagonist should Michiko never marry. Not only has the Gourd’s middle-aged daughter become a lonely spinster due to his desire to keep her for himself, but his own life has also fallen into disarray by limiting her prospects, condemning him to run a cheap noodle shop and suffer humiliation every day from his customers.
A noticeable shift in location when we move to the Gourd’s noodle shop in a rundown part of town, as Ozu’s pillow shots dwell on piles of debris and steel drums.
The catalyst for the second half of An Autumn Afternoon’s narrative is thus set off, spurring Shūhei to secure a husband for Michiko. The fact that Ozu only dwells on the moments when her wedding finally arrives is telling of what he truly values within these cherished relationships, as a montage moves through the vacant home to dwell on a standing mirror, Venetian blinds, and a red-cushioned stool. These are domestic items that don’t hold dramatic weight on their own, yet peacefully evoke Michiko’s absence, and disappear from view as the camera cuts to a view just outside the window.
Michiko’s marriage and departure from the family home leaves behind a wistful emptiness, as Ozu’s montage moves through the vacant home to dwell on a standing mirror, Venetian blinds, and a red-cushioned stool. These are domestic items that don’t hold dramatic weight on their own, yet peacefully evoke Michiko’s absence, and disappear from view as the camera cuts to a view just outside the window.
In the closing scene when Shūhei returns as an empty nester, Ozu frames him in a distant, wooden corridor of his last hallway shot, his back turned to the camera and slightly darkened by shadows. Ozu never inserted explicit representations of himself into his films, and yet Shūhei’s poignant resignation to change is one that this ageing director knows too well, having essentially spent the past thirty-five years recording Japan’s enormous cultural shifts on camera. If his life’s work is a cinematic suite testifying to the ongoing tension between tradition and progress, then An Autumn Afternoon makes for a tender final movement, resonating formal harmonies across generations to ultimately savour an undying faith in their shared humanity.
A mournful final shot as Ozu frames Shūhei in a distant, wooden doorway of the corridor, his back turned to the camera and slightly darkened by shadows.
An Autumn Afternoon is currently streaming on The Criterion Channel, and is available to purchase on Amazon.
Coming off the heels of his widely acclaimed triumph 8 ½, it seemed that Federico Fellini was done with neorealism. By delving into the fantastical dreams of a surrogate character, he had constructed a kaleidoscopic self-portrait of immense depth and ambition, while shamefully exposing his own infidelity to the world. As such, his next project Juliet of the Spirits essentially held up a feminine mirror to 8 ½, contemplating the other side of his marriage to Giulietta Masina and filtering it through an equally surreal lens. It shouldn’t come as a surprise then that he derived Juliet’s name from his wife’s, and additionally cast her as the spurned housewife whose entire identity has been defined by her relationship to men. In fact, it isn’t even until Juliet’s husband Giorgio arrives home in the first scene that her face even appears on camera, having up until then been concealed by camera movements, obstructions, and shadows conveniently rendering her non-existent in his absence.
By the time Juliet of the Spirits was released in 1965, it had been eight years since Masina’s previous collaboration with Fellini, having last starred as jaded prostitute Maria in Nights of Cabiria. Now with a few extra lines on her face, she carries a mellow wisdom in her round, dark eyes as Juliet, saddened but not embittered by her husband’s extramarital affairs. The whispered name “Gabriella” first piques her suspicion one night when he is sleep talking, and the multiple phone calls that come through with no one on the other end only feeds it, sending her to seek out the services of a private detective who might provide answers. None of this can take away from the fact that Giorgio has been her “Husband, lover, father, friend, my home,” but even now as she lists everything she is losing, she does so with a wistful smile.
In the absence of her husband, Juliet’s face is concealed by camera movements, obstructions, and shadows, barely even present on her own terms.Juliet’s house is dominated by clean white tones sharply punctured by the crimson hues of flowers, setting up a visual clash between virginal purity and sexual passion.
Though Juliet tries to explore facets of her suppressed identity through an assortment of vibrant costumes, within her home she is most often garbed in chaste white tones, while guests light up the mise-en-scène with purples, greens, and pinks. Most of all though, it is Fellini’s radiant crimson hues which dominate his palette in Juliet of the Spirits, opposing our protagonist’s virginal neutrality with a sexual passion considered dangerously out-of-bounds. With so many clashing visual elements, his production design is deliriously chaotic, yet also flamboyantly united under an aesthetic that blends circus-like extravagance with regal Baroque architecture in varying proportions. While Juliet’s lavish, upper-class house is adorned with lighter tones, Sylva’s grand manor makes for a magnificent recurring set piece, each time hosting an orgiastic fever dream of wild hedonists revelling in rowdy opulence. Further bringing these extraordinary settings to life is the slow, dollying movement of Fellini’s camera too, peering through the multicoloured gauze curtains draped around Sylva’s bed as it slowly drifts past, and dollying in on actors with dramatic grandeur.
Few directors can capture chaos with the control and beauty that Fellini brings to his mise-en-scène here. Josef von Sternberg comes to mind as a fair comparison, but he largely shot his films in black-and-white – the patterns and colours of Fellini’s scenery are distinctive and gorgeous.This ornate wedding banquet that Juliet stumbles across sets a stark contrast against her lifeless marriage – the hopes and ideals that she once clung to in her youth are beautifully visualised.
This bold venture into Technicolor filmmaking is no doubt a breathtaking visual achievement for cinematographer Gianni Di Venanzo, but even more crucially it commences Fellini’s trajectory into manic expressionism, evocatively painting out his characters’ reminiscences and hallucinations. For Juliet, these only really begin taking over her life following a séance on her fifteenth wedding anniversary, conducted by the gate-crashing friends of her husband who has entirely forgotten the occasion. From there, the spirits Iris and Olaf are summoned into her life as conflicting voices in her mind and surreal visions interrupt her reality with increasing ambiguity, beginning with a dead raft of horses and a sunken tank of studly weirdos dredged up from the ocean.
The first of many explicitly surreal sequences, dredging up a tank of weirdos onto the shoreline.Juliet of the Spirits is a largely maximalist in style, but Fellini’s shot compositions of these stripped back landscapes often astound as well.
With Juliet’s stream-of-consciousness voiceover often running through her life and dreams though, fortunately not all these visions are so impenetrably abstract. Many of these fragments are rooted directly in childhood memories that have become foundational to her identity, unfolding like reveries distorted by decades of distance and Fellini’s purposefully disjointed editing. In particular, her recollections of a circus and a pageant play formally mirror each other as a pair of theatrical performances sitting on either side of a moral divide – one being a gaudy spectacle of feathers and sparkles that satiates the senses, and the other starring Juliet herself as a virgin martyr being executed for her faith.
A pair of theatrical performances united in the red-and-white colour palette, but diametrically opposed in morality – a circus spectacle, and a religious pageant play.
In the former, Fellini constructs a visual extravaganza that pays homage to Italy’s rich tradition of performing arts, and the seductiveness of this lifestyle that lured her grandfather into an affair with a beautiful dancer. The career he had built as a respected professor was thrown out with this decision, and by the decree of Juliet’s disapproving mother, so too was his relationship with his family. As he runs with his mistress towards a stunt plane, each of these figures chase him from behind, playfully staged in a long shot that evokes Ingmar Bergman’s ‘Dance of Death’ from The Seventh Seal. It is clear to see here how infidelity has impacted Juliet’s life once before, and yet quite curiously her feelings towards her philandering grandfather are far more positive than those towards her controlling mother, who in her mind represents an unattainable standard of self-righteous morality and untouchable beauty.
Fellini irreverently calls back to the Dance of the Death from The Seventh Seal in this fine composition, as Juliet’s grandfather elopes with his mistress.
In comparison, Juliet’s pageant play arrives as a far more modest affair, surrounding her with spectral nuns in purple hooded cloaks who planted the seed of Catholic guilt in her mind. As she watches her child self be sacrifice on a pyre of paper flames and lifted to the heavens, the adult Juliet similarly recites her lines, and perhaps even finds some inspiration in them – “I don’t care about the salvation you offer me, but about the salvation of my soul.” As it is though, both versions of Juliet have essentially been sacrificed to society’s gender expectations and forced to become a virginal Madonna, serving men as a sexless, maternal figure.
Hooded nuns designed like ethereal spectres, haunting Juliet into her adulthood.The adult Juliet takes her child self’s place on the burning grill, becoming a sacrificial martyr in both life and the play.
While Juliet’s hallucinatory flashbacks begin as self-contained vignettes, each one introduces spirits that linger through her waking life, tormenting her with obscure reminders of her psychological self-doubt. Just as she is about to give up her marital vows and have sex with a guest in Sylva’s manor, the camera swings down from the reflection of their romantic liaison on the ceiling mirror to reveal the horrifying image of a demonic girl in white robes, roasting above a fire. Whenever Juliet feels she is straying too far from her morals, that demonic vision of her younger self from the play arouses a disturbing guilt, while nude women hiding around her bedroom conversely laugh and sneer at her insecurity.
A truly shocking jump scare as the camera swings down from the ceiling mirror to a horrific rendering of her child self in the pageant play, burning on the grill like a virginal demon.Spirits follow Juliet everywhere she goes, as Fellini goes all in with his outrageous character designs.
To complicate the conflicting pressures further, Fellini challenges Juliet’s belief in Christian salvation with a mixture of pagan alternatives, including the aforementioned séance, an Egyptian rite of passage, and an oracle named Bishma who is said to enlighten those who are lost. Speaking in a raspy voice from behind transparent white drapes though, this raving clairvoyant offers nothing but shallow advice to submit to one’s husband, even at the expense of Juliet’s own welfare.
“Love is a religion, Juliet. Your husband is your god. You are the priestess of this cult. Your spirit must burn up like this incense, go up in smoke on the altar of your loving body.”
Fellini injects religion and new age spirituality with camp ornamentations, underscoring the emptiness in their claims to great wisdom.
As for the private detective who represents a more secular approach to seeking truth, there is no doubt that he offers far more practical answers, yet hard proof of Giorgio’s affair does not bring with it the spiritual guidance that Juliet craves. It seems as though every character she meets is following their own path to self-fulfilment, and while many are convinced of their own eminent wisdom, few are able to satisfy her longing to reconcile moral virtue, carnal desire, and holistic enlightenment. By giving tangible form to the intangible Christian God for instance, her sculptress friend Dolores seems close to comprehending the infinite bounds of His grace, and yet Juliet also realises that she has degraded a divine beauty into objects of lust.
“Let’s give back to God his physicality. I was afraid of God before. He crushed me, terrified me. And why? Because I imagined him theoretically, abstractly. But no. God has the most superb body ever. In my statues, that’s how I sculpt him. A physical, corporeal God, a perfectly shaped hero who I can desire and make my lover.”
Confirmation of her husband’s affairs does not bring Juliet emotional resolution, but only sinks her deeper into despair in this bleak, monochrome room.Juliet’s friend tries to grasp the divine concept of God by reducing him to physical form in her sculptures, yet there is still something intangible lost in the process.
Even easier still is ignoring the existence of God altogether as Sylva and her hedonistic guests seem to do, encouraging a similar attitude in Juliet. “I fulfil my desires in life. I don’t deny myself a thing,” this glamourous starlet proclaims, and though she is clearly out-of-touch with any spirituality, Fellini does not paint her as a wholly negative influence. The confidence she instils in Juliet is absolutely crucial to her journey, driving her to pursue an independent life that sources happiness from within, rather than from her husband or any religious authorities. It is not that she is afraid of being alone, one American therapist who regularly attends Giorgio’s parties explains, but her only true fear is rather of the happiness she might find in independence that allows her “to breathe, to live, to become yourself.”
Sylva is a compelling foil to Juliet – outwardly expressive and confident in her sexuality, sourcing happiness from within rather than from fulfilling the expectations of others.
That Giorgio is the one to eventually pack up and leave at least eases the burden on Juliet to instigate the separation, though there are no tears to be shed on her part anyway. Left alone, she must venture into her soul one last time, but this time not to confront any new memories or insecurities. A small, previously unseen door in her bedroom wall opens up, and against her mother’s demands, she enters to find a long, narrow corridor. There, her inner child is strapped to that flaming grill, alone and scared. Finally untying the ropes that have kept her bound to society’s scalding judgement all these years, she lets her run free, right into the arms of the man her mother had kept her from all these years. “Farewell, Juliet,” her grandfather warmly imparts. “Don’t hold me back. You don’t need me anymore. I’m just another one of your inventions. But you are life itself.”
A beautiful dream to formally resolve Juliet’s trauma, freeing her younger self from the fiery grill which society has tried to martyr her upon.
As present-day Juliet walks outside the large white gates of her home, so too does she find liberation from its persistent spirits. Suddenly, new voices she had never heard before begin speaking to her, coming from a deep sense of self-acceptance rather than the nagging judgement of others. There is no aggressive expressionism or cluttered opulence to found in the green, natural expanse that she walks into, and much like the final seconds of Nights of Cabiria, Masina’s eyes once again drift towards the fourth wall in poignant recognition of our presence in her story. With a simple glance, Juliet takes control of her narrative, finally escaping into new beginnings away from the imposing gaze of society, religion, and Fellini’s own prying camera.
Much like the ending of Nights of Cabiria, Giulietta Masina looks right at the camera – freedom granted from the removal of the restrictive fourth wall, allowing her to become a full person outside cinematic and social convention.
Juliet of the Spirits is currently streaming on The Criterion Channel, and is available to purchase on Amazon.
When dessert finally arrives at the wedding reception of Yoshiko and Koichi Nishi, it would surely seem as if someone is pulling a cruel prank on the father of the bride, Iwabuchi. The day has already been tainted by the arrest of the senior businessman’s assistant Wada in full view of the guests and reporters, and now as the cake is wheeled out to reveal an elaborate design modelled after the Public Development Corporation headquarters, a single rose sitting in a top-floor window draws hushed whispers. It is no secret that this is where Assistant Chief Furuya jumped from some years earlier, bringing a standstill to the investigation that implicated Iwabuchi and several other executives. Meanwhile, suspicions that his colleagues pressured him into taking his own life are only ever uttered behind closed doors, with absolute confidence that no one is eavesdropping.
Only by methodically peeling back the layers of conspiracies guarding the upper-class plutocrats can the truth be revealed, though this is not a job for the police, courts, or even the media. True to his fondness for Shakespeare, Akira Kurosawa places this colossal objective on the shoulders of a single man seeking retribution for his deceased father, and thus reveals The Bad Sleep Well to be a contemporary, noir-tinted adaptation of Hamlet starring Toshiro Mifune as the vengeful son. Posing as Iwabuchi’s secretary, Koichi Nishi stands alone against the corrupt corporate culture of mid-century Japan, working from the shadows as he blackmails, intimidates, and investigates his way to the top.
Astounding depth of field in Kurosawa’s compositions, stretching the entire span of the dining hall where Nishi is celebrating his wedding to Iwabucha’s daughter Yoshiko. Kurosawa knows how to build tension without even cutting.Roses and crosses in that top floor window become something of a visual motif in The Bad Sleep Well, calling up the past to propel Nishi forward in his vengeful mission.
Even by Kurosawa’s standards, The Bad Sleep Well’s plot is remarkably dense, sprawling across a vast ensemble of characters who bring personal stakes to each gear in the narrative vehicle. The wedding itself is a tremendous setup, introducing the relevant parties through a Greek chorus of journalists offering backstory and commentary, while remarkably steering clear of convoluted exposition. In his meticulous arrangement of these nameless reporters among the masses of wedding guests, Kurosawa’s extraordinary eye for blocking bodies across the full horizontal length of his widescreen canvas is immediately revealed, developing a sharp aesthetic that carries through virtually every frame of the film with astounding consistency.
A tremendous use of blocking to draw our eye to the small details of Kurosawa’s scenery, but he also isn’t afraid to reframe his camera without cutting.
The shapes and lines that form in Kurosawa’s crowded staging here effectively draw our eyes to the subjects of his focus, highlighting even the smallest details within his ensemble such as Nishi’s quiet surveillance of his guests, and the suspicious reactions of executives when the cake makes its damning appearance. “Best one act I’ve ever seen,” a reporter wryly acclaims at this grand twist, and if this were a short film he wouldn’t be wrong – yet the witty response from his colleague might as well be Kurosawa impishly promising to follow up with an even more magnificent pay-off.
“One act? This is just the prelude.”
A superb arrangement of facial profiles to cap off the first act, staggered at four different layers in the frame.
Indeed, The Bad Sleep Well is only just getting started, as from here Kurosawa effortlessly shifts between multiple narrative threads and carefully weaves them into Nishi ‘s single-minded endeavour to take down his father’s killers. After Wada is released from police custody and rescued from a suicide attempt atop a live volcano by Nishi, he quickly becomes one of our protagonist’s greatest resources, faking his own death and psychologically tormenting contract officer Shirai by appearing as a ghost. Unfortunately, Nishi is not so quick to save company accountant Miura from his superiors, who demonstrate their chilling efficiency through a single, written message – “I know you will see this through to the bitter end.” It might as well be a bullet from a sniper’s rifle, one reporter comments, as it isn’t long afterwards that Miura willingly runs in front of a truck.
The volcano is a tremendously bleak set piece, shrinking Wada against its rocky terrain and leading him right to the edge of the crater.You have to feel sorry for Shirai – the most paranoid and tormented of the lot, driven mad by the mind games being played on him by both sides. Kurosawa plays out the manifestation of Wada’s ‘ghost’ with ethereal horror, even though we know exactly what is going on.
With Venetian blinds imposing severe backdrops inside corporate offices and Masaru Sato’s band of brass and percussion rhythmically carrying through a dark, jazzy ambience, Kurosawa’s admiration of Hollywood film noirs bleeds through his nihilistic take on Hamlet, positioning Nishi himself as a morally questionable antihero. This is a man who didn’t even realise how much his father loved him until after receiving a huge inheritance in his will, and yet has nevertheless taken it on himself to sacrifice innocence bystanders, marry a woman he doesn’t truly love, and implement cruel methods of torture to avenge his murder. “It’s not easy hating evil. You have to stoke your own fury until you become evil yourself,” he ponders in a shot that sinks his profile in darkness, flanking him with Wada and his friend Itakura in the background like two conflicting sides of his conscience. Even when Itakura is furiously chastising Wada in another tightly framed composition, Mifune continues to dominate the shot from the foreground like a hardboiled Humphrey Bogart detective, coolly smoking a cigarette and radiating a bitter stoicism.
Nishi’s darkened, foregrounded profile flanked by Itakura and Wada behind him, like two conflicting sides of his conscience.Tightly framed compositions maintain a visual relationship between each character – the boss, the underling, the bully.
By this point, keen-eyed viewers will have picked up on a visual device that reliably teases out the complex character dynamics in Kurosawa’s blocking, and subtly underscores Nishi’s position as a covertly powerful player in this game. In many of The Bad Sleep Well’s most crucial scenes, Kurosawa prominently features three individuals in triangulated compositions, with each point being defined by its relative position and movement around the others. When Shirai becomes Nishi’s newest target in his scheme for instance, Kurosawa’s camera holds on a long take of his panicked discovery of stolen money planted in his briefcase, and follows him edgily through the office as his supervisor Muriyama grows more suspicious of his behaviour. Of course though, this scene would not be complete without Mifune’s confident, unobtrusive presence in the background, sitting lower in the shot as he quietly observes the disturbance. He does not say a single word, and yet this painstakingly geometric approach to composing the frame ensures that he is always at the front of our minds, crediting him as the man responsible for Shirai’s guilt-ridden, psychological breakdown.
The scene of Shirai discovering the stolen money in his briefcase is a masterclass in blocking, particularly showcasing Kurosawa’s use of triangulated arrangements.
Still, the cunning manipulations and exorbitant privilege of Japan’s wealthy elite are not to be underestimated either. As Nishi hides out with his small crew in the dark, dank ruins of a bombed out factory, Iwabuchi operates from a well-resourced office with countless disposable minions working beneath him, ready to get their hands dirty. Like Nishi, he too proves that he is willing to manipulate and even drug his daughter Yoshiko to save himself, drawing a dead heat between them in terms of sheer determination.
More triangulated structures from here down, in this case using the formation of the reporters’ heads to centre the entire scene around Iwabuchi who has unlimited resources at his disposal.Kurosawa locates Nishi’s base of operations in this bombed out factory, far beneath the corrupt corporation they are fighting from the shadows.Kurosawa using the full horizontal length and depth of the frame here to create an astounding composition, using the scarred scenery to reveal the lingering impact of World War II.
Even once all parties have finally caught up to each other and the finish line has come into view in the final act of The Bad Sleep Well, the competition between Nishi and Iwabuchi remains neck-and-neck. Within the Public Development Corporations’ bank books is the undeniable proof of Furuya’s assassination – all it comes down to is whether Nishi or Iwabuchi will win the race to their respective targets, infusing the climax with an uneasy suspense that Kurosawa finally resolves with a brutal, cynical gut punch. We are not even given the closure of witnessing the train collision which flattens Nishi’s car, set up by Iwabucha’s lackeys as a drink driving accident. Instead, Kurosawa simply leaves us to observe the lifeless wreckage of its aftermath, with the only survivors who know the truth being those too powerless to do anything about it.
Like his father, Nishi’s murder chillingly takes place offscreen, with his smashed up car being the only remnant of his death.
That Nishi should suffer the same fate as his father at the hands of the same men makes for a poetically devastating end to this saga, though within Kurosawa’s cutthroat world of corporate collusion, the ruling class’s total subjugation of the underdog is merely the way society works. At Iwabuchi’s press conference, the reporters who opened the film return to bookend it as well, reflecting upon Nishi’s life with a wary acceptance of the Vice President’s cover story in much the same way they once spoke of Furuya’s tragic suicide. Perhaps they are conscious of the corruption that runs deep in Japan’s bureaucracy to some extent, and yet its bloodied foundations remain shrouded in myth right to the end, resting upon the obedience, sacrifices, and bloodshed of disposable civilians.
One of Kurosawa’s most cynical, devastating endings, bringing back the reporters into the final scene as Nishi joins his father on Public Development Corporation’s list of casualties.
The Bad Sleep Well is currently streaming on The Criterion Channel, and the DVD and Blu-ray are available to purchase on Amazon.
