Misfortunes of Imaginary Beings: 08/03/19

A blog formerly known as Bookishness / By Charles Matthews

"Dazzled by so many and such marvelous inventions, the people of Macondo ... became indignant over the living images that the prosperous merchant Bruno Crespi projected in the theater with the lion-head ticket windows, for a character who had died and was buried in one film and for whose misfortune tears had been shed would reappear alive and transformed into an Arab in the next one. The audience, who had paid two cents apiece to share the difficulties of the actors, would not tolerate that outlandish fraud and they broke up the seats. The mayor, at the urging of Bruno Crespi, explained in a proclamation that the cinema was a machine of illusions that did not merit the emotional outbursts of the audience. With that discouraging explanation many ... decided not to return to the movies, considering that they already had too many troubles of their own to weep over the acted-out misfortunes of imaginary beings."
--Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

Saturday, August 3, 2019

Pale Flower (Masahiro Shinoda, 1964)

Mariko Kaga and Ryo Ikebe in Pale Flower

Cast: Ryo Ikebe, Mariko Kaga, Takashi Fujiki, Naoki Sugiura, Shin'ichiro Mikami, Isao Sasaki, Koji Nakahara, Chisako Hara, Saiji Miyaguchi, Eijiro Tono, Mikizo Hirata. Screenplay: Masaru Baba, Masahiro Shinoda, based on a novel by Shintaro Ishihara. Cinematography: Masao Kosugi. Art direction: Shigemasa Toda. Film editing: Yoshi Sugihara. Music: Yuji Takahashi, Toru Takemitsu.

Masahiro Shinoda does noir better than almost anybody in Pale Flower, a lush, brooding film about a middle-aged, burning-out yakuza and a beautiful but damned young woman, both played to perfection by, respectively, Ryo Ikebe and Mariko Kaga. Also near perfection: Masao Kosugi's chiaroscuro cinematography and Toru Takemitsu's nervous score.