Lone Wolf and Cub: Baby Cart in Peril (Buichi Saito, 1972)

Tomisaburo Wakayama and Akihiro Tomikawa in Lone Wolf and Cub: Baby Cart in Peril

Cast: Tomisaburo Wakayama, Yoichi Hayashi, Michi Azuma, Akihiro Tomikawa, Asao Koike, Hiroshi Tanaka, Tatsuo Endo, Shin Kishida, So Yamamura. Screenplay: Kazuo Koike, Goseki Kojima. Cinematography: Kazuo Miyagawa. Art direction: Shigenori Shimoishizaka. Film editing: Toshio Taniguchi. Music: Hideaki Sakurai.

Like any movie-lover in these days of streaming venues, I am encumbered with choices. So I resort to a kind of enforced choice, namely, making lists. So I have queues of available films on my DVR as well as on the Criterion Channel, Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime, and potentially others in the expanding streaming universe. I try to rotate steadily among them, usually on a first-in, first out basis -- meaning the one that has been on the list the longest gets watched next. (Yes, the rotation is occasionally broken, especially when a film I've been wanting to watch suddenly pops up.) And so I wind up watching some oddities that I probably wouldn't have chosen other than because their time on the queue had come. Like four of the six Lone Wolf and Cub films. It's not that I have any special love for Japanese samurai warrior films; I can take them or leave them. It's the result of my devotion to Turner Classic Movies and its somewhat fitful programming of foreign and silent films. Whenever one of those turns up on the schedule I put it on my queue. Hence, Lone Wolf and Cub: Baby Cart in Peril, a movie that sorely tests my tolerance of its genre. I enjoyed the first three films in the series, but Baby Cart in Peril feels a little tired. (I note here that the first three in the series were directed by Kenji Misumi, but this one by Buichi Saito, about whom I know nothing.) Once again, Ogami Itto (Tomisaburo Wakayama) is wheeling little Daigoro (Akihiro Tomikawa) along the Demon Way in Hell -- his vision of the chaotic world of feudal Japan. Once again, there is a beautiful female assassin to be dealt with, along with various representatives of his enemy, the Yagyu clan. Once again, blood is shed and spurted and sprayed. Once again, there is a rape scene. And once again, Ogami single-handedly vanquishes an entire army. The film plays a bit with the formulas: Ogami and Daigoro are separated for a while in the film, during which time the cub Daigoro proves to be a worthy successor to his lone wolf father. And the film ends on an inconclusive note, as an exhausted, wounded Ogami pushes the baby cart along its way. Will he survive into a fifth film? Of course. Will I be there to watch it if TCM programs it? Let me think about that.

Zatoichi and the Chest of Gold (Kazuo Ikehiro, 1964)

Zatoichi and the Chest of Gold (Kazuo Ikehiro, 1964)

Cast: Shintaro Katsu, Shogo Shimada, Machiko Hasegawa, Tomisaburo Wakayama, Tatsuya Ishiguro, Matasaburo Niwa, Hikosaburo Kataoka, Mikiko Tsubouchi. Screenplay: Shozaburo Asai, Akikazu Ota, based on a story by Kan Shimozawa. Art direction: Yoshinobu Nishioka. Cinematography: Kazuo Miyagawa. Film editing: Takashi Taniguchi. Music: Ichiro Saito.

Silence (Masahiro Shinoda, 1971)

Silence (Masahiro Shinoda, 1971)

Cast: David Lampson, Don Kenny, Tetsuro Tanba, Mako, Shima Iwashita, Eiji Okada. Screenplay: Masahiro Shinoda, Shusaku Endo, based on a novel by Shusaku Endo. Cinematography: Kazuo Miyagawa. Production design: Mako, Masahiro Shinoda. Music: Toru Takemitsu.

Rashomon (Akira Kurosawa, 1950)

Toshiro Mifune in Rashomon

Tajomaru: Toshiro Mifune
Masako Kanazawa: Machiko Kyo
Takehiro Kanazawa: Masayuki Mori
Woodcutter: Takashi Shimura
Priest: Minoru Chiaki
Commoner: Kichijiro Ueda
Medium: Noriko Homma
Policeman: Daisuke Kato

Director: Akira Kurosawa
Screenplay: Akira Kurosawa, Shinobu Hashimoto
Based on stories by Ryunosuke Akutagawa
Cinematography: Kazuo Miyagawa
Production design: Takashi Matsuyama
Film editing: Akira Kurosawa
Music: Fumio Hayasaka

Rashomon is one of those films like Federico Fellini's La Dolce Vita (1960) and Ingmar Bergman's The Seventh Seal (1957) that you had to have seen just to be considered culturally literate. So I was a bit surprised when, watching one of the Criterion Channel supplements to Rashomon that featured Robert Altman commenting on the film, Altman praised the acting of Toshiro Mifune by name but funked it on Machiko Kyo, referring to her as "the actress." For if there's any key to the success of Rashomon as drama it's Kyo's performance. It's not like she was an unknown, either: She's the star of another 1950s imported hit, Teinosuke Kinugasa's Gate of Hell (1953), and gave memorable performances for Kenji Mizoguchi in Street of Shame (1956) and especially Ugetsu (1953) as well as for Yasujiro Ozu in Floating Weeds (1959). She even crossed the Pacific to play opposite Glenn Ford and Marlon Brando (in yellowface) in the film version of The Teahouse of the August Moon (Daniel Mann, 1956) -- though that's one that Altman might well have forgotten seeing. I don't want to labor the point too much, but it's the nuances of Kyo's performance that make Rashomon work, that keep us guessing whether she was the dutiful wife or the savage wanton. As I steep myself more and more in Japanese film of the late 1940s, '50s, and '60s, it becomes ever clearer that this was a great period for female actors like Kyo, Setsuko Hara, Kyoko Kagawa, Kinuyo Tanaka, Isuzu Yamada, Hideko Takamine, and many others -- most of whose names are unknown to Americans today. As for the film itself, it was a career breakthrough for Akira Kurosawa and Mifune, and while it remains essential viewing for the cinematically literate, I don't hold it in as high esteem as I do such Kurosawa/Mifune collaborations as  Drunken Angel (1948), Stray Dog (1949), Seven Samurai (1954), Throne of Blood (1957), The Lower Depths (1957), The Hidden Fortress (1958), Yojimbo (1961), Sanjuro (1962), or High and Low (1963). Rashomon feels arty and remote in ways that those don't.

Street of Shame (Kenji Mizoguchi, 1956)

Yosuke Irie and Aiko Mimasu in Street of Shame

Mickey: Machiko Kyo
Yasumi: Ayako Wakao
Hanae: Michiyo Kogure
Yumiko: Aiko Mimasu
Yorie: Hiroko Machida
Eiko: Kenji Sugawara
Otane: Kumeko Urabe
Kawadaki: Yosuke Irie
Tatsuko Taya: Sadako Sawamura
Kurazo Taya: Eitaro Shindo
Shizuko: Yasuko Kawakami

Director: Kenji Mizoguchi
Screenplay: Masahige Narusawa
Based on a novel by Yoshiko Shibaki
Cinematography: Kazuo Miyagawa
Production design: Hisao Ichikawa, Hiroshi Mizutani
Film editing: Kanji Suganuma
Music: Toshiro Mayuzumi

In his last film, Kenji Mizoguchi returned to one of his most frequent settings, the world of prostitutes. The English-language title, Street of Shame, is slightly more exploitative than the Japanese, Akasen Chitai, which means "red-light district," although even that one is inevitably freighted with sensationalism. But Mizoguchi is hardly shaming his prostitutes -- whom we would call today, in a not entirely successful attempt at neutralizing the stigma, "sex workers." He wants us to understand who they are and why they pursue their occupation. He focuses on five women in the brothel known as "Dreamland," each of whom has dreams of her own, even if the most fundamental dream is that of survival in a world of exploitation and corruption. In the end, some of them triumph, some are crushed, and some stoically continue in a routine they can't rise above. Mizoguchi punctuates their stories with news of the ongoing debate in the Japanese parliament over the abolition of prostitution, which actually took effect after the film was released. At the film's end, we see a new young woman, fresh from the country, timidly taking her place in Dreamland, calling out in a weak and nervous voice for the clients who prowl the street. It's a heartbreaking moment, particularly since she has been given the job as a replacement for one of the women who suffered a nervous breakdown after being rejected by her son, ashamed of his mother's work. But Mizoguchi is no sentimentalist, and Street of Shame is not a conventional "message movie." Instead, it's a richly ironic and keen-eyed look at a fact of life: Sexual desire is universal, and as long as it exists, there will be those who take advantage of it.

Conflagration (Kon Ichikawa, 1958)

Tatsuya Nakadai and Raizo Ichikawa in Conflagration 

Goichi Mizoguchi: Raizo Ichikawa
Tokari: Tatsuya Nakadai
Tayama Dosen: Ganjiro Nakamura
Tsurukawa: Yoichi Funaki
Goichi's Mother: Tanie Kitabayashi
Goichi's Father: Jun Hamamura

Director: Kon Ichikawa
Screenplay: Keiji Hasebe, Kon Ichikawa, Notto Wada
Based on a novel by Yukio Mishima
Cinematography: Kazuo Miyagawa
Music: Toshiro Mayuzumi

I haven't read the Yukio Mishima novel, The Temple of the Golden Pavilion, on which Conflagration is based, but the film has the earmarks of an adaptation from a novel, including incidents, such as Goichi's vandalizing the sword of a naval cadet who mocked him, and such secondary characters as Tsurukawa, the fellow acolyte who befriends him, whose treatment feels truncated, as if their narrative and symbolic weight was greater in the book than Kon Ichikawa was able to give them in the film. But the fine performances of Raizo Ichikawa, Ganjiro Nakamura, and Tatsuya Nakadai help Conflagration succeed on its own. Ichikawa plays a young Buddhist acolyte, Goichi, whose stammer has made him an outcast, and whose troubled childhood only worsens his sense of alienation. Nakamura plays the head priest at a temple, who studied with Goichi's father and takes the young man in out of a sense of duty, eventually paying his way to the university. There, Goichi meets another outcast, Tokari, whose deformed leg has caused him to become bitter and cynical. Although Goichi retains his shyness and naïveté, the two bond as outcasts, with Tokari's darkly rebellious philosophy eventually infecting the young acolyte, provoking him to the destructive act that gives the film its title. Nakadai's intensity in the role gives the sometimes plodding narrative, with its flashbacks within flashbacks, a needed jolt.

Watched on Turner Classic Movies

Odd Obsession (Kon Ichikawa, 1959)

Tatsuya Nakadai in Odd Obsession 

Ikuko Kenmochi: Machiko Kyo
Kenji Kenmochi: Ganjiro Nakamura
Toshiko Kenmochi: Junko Kano
Kimura: Tatsuya Nakadai
Hana: Tanie Kitabayashi
Masseur: Ichiro Sugai
Dr. Kodama: Mantaro Ushio
Dr. Soma: Jun Hamamura

Director: Kon Ichikawa
Screenplay: Keiji Hasebe, Kon Ichikawa, Notto Wada
Based on a novel by Jun'ichiro Tanizaki
Cinematography: Kazuo Miyagawa
Music: Yasushi Akutagawa

As with so many foreign-language films, the English title Odd Obsession seems to miss the mark a little, but the Japanese title, Kagi, which means "The Key," also seems a little off-target, even though it was taken from the novel on which the film was based. If I were retitling it, I'd call the film something like "The Jealousy Cure," which is not only in keeping with the plot but is also supported by the way the film opens, as if presenting a case study: We see a man in a physician's white coat standing before an anatomy chart, speaking directly at the camera. He describes the various effects of aging on the body before turning away to enter the action of the scene. We learn that he is Kimura, an intern in the clinic of Dr. Soma, who is treating a post-middle-aged man, Kenji Kenmochi, for sexual dysfunction. The doctor advises Kenji that the injections he has been giving him are probably ineffective, and that he should try to find other ways of dealing with the problem. Kimura has also been dating Kenji's daughter, Toshiko, and he has let slip to her that her father is seeing Dr. Soma. She passes the information along to her mother, Ikuko, whom we then see visiting Dr. Soma to find out if there is something she can do for her husband. It's an awkward encounter: Ikuko is rather embarrassed by the subject of their sex life, but she resolves to do what she can to help. Kenji then discovers that his libido is stirred by the thought of anyone having sex with his much younger wife, and when Kimura comes to dinner, Kenji begins to plot ways of bringing his wife and the young and handsome intern together. As Kimura and Ikuko begin an affair -- the key from the Japanese title is the one she gives Kimura to the back gate -- Kenji's sex drive reawakens, with the added consequence of dangerously elevating his blood pressure. Odd Obsession is not so much a case study, however, as an ironic dark comedy, one in which the follies of the various characters lead to what might be a tragic conclusion if viewed from another angle than the one Ichikawa chooses. It's also a showcase for the versatility of Tatsuya Nakadai and Michiko Kyo, who reteamed seven years later for the more serious The Face of Another (Hiroshi Teshigahara, 1966). I think Ichikawa is a little too interested in "trying things out," such as the opening segue from breaking the fourth wall into starting the action of the film, or the freeze frames that interrupt the action in the opening section, tricks that don't feel consistent with the rest of Odd Obsession.

Watched on Turner Classic Movies

A Story From Chikamatsu (Kenji Mizoguchi, 1954)

Kyoko Kagawa and Kazuo Hasegawa in A Story From Chikamatsu

Mohei: Kazuo Hasegawa
Osan: Kyoko Kagawa
Ishun: Eitaro Shindo
Sukeemon: Eitaro Ozawa
Otama: Yoko Minamida

Director: Kenji Mizoguchi
Screenplay: Matsutaro Kawaguchi, Yoshikata Yoda
Based on a play by Chikamatsu Monzaemon
Cinematography: Kazuo Miyagawa
Production design: Hisakaza Tsuji

Kenji Mizoguchi's A Story From Chikamatsu, which has also been released under the built-in-spoiler title The Crucified Lovers, is based on Chikamatsu Monzaemon's 18th-century play The Legend of the Grand Scroll-Maker. It's a romantic drama about doomed lovers that Mizoguchi and screenwriters Matsutaro Kawaguchi and Yoshikata Yoda have expanded into a fable about greed, injustice, and the subjugation of women. The lovers don't even start out as lovers, but circumstances force them together. Mohei is a somewhat overworked apprentice scroll-maker who is thrown together with his master's wife, Osan, almost by accident. The master, Ishun, is a miser and a philanderer, and the circumstances that initially put Mohei and Osan together are almost the stuff of farce: Osan knows that Ishun has been harassing the pretty maid Otama, trying to persuade her to become his mistress, so Osan hides in the young woman's room one night to try to catch her husband in the act. Instead, Mohei goes to Otama's room and is discovered there with Osan. When Ishun finds out he accuses her of adultery, which as we've been shown earlier in the film is a crime punishable by crucifixion. In addition to this crime, Mohei has also been accused of forgery: Ishun had refused to give Osan's brother a loan, so Mohei agreed to help Osan by using Ishun's seal on a receipt, having been assured that the money would be repaid quickly. When confronted with the forgery, Otama intervenes on behalf of Mohei (whom she secretly loves) and says that she asked for the money. The upshot of all this complex of subterfuges, ultimately caused by Ishun's greed and lechery, is that both Osan and Mohei are forced to flee Ishun's household. They determine that suicide would be more honorable than crucifixion, but when they discover that they are in love with each other, they decide that life in hiding would be preferable to death. Things do not go well, of course, but in the end Ishun gets his comeuppance too. There is perhaps a little too much plot and the outcome is foreseeable, but Mizoguchi's mastery of atmosphere, aided by Kazuo Miyagawa's cinematography, lifts the film high above the melodrama. It's at times a strikingly claustrophobic film, whose boxlike interiors sometimes suggest the grids of Mondrian paintings, underscoring the entrapment not only of the lovers but also of those victims of their own avarice, indifference, or subservience who would punish them. When we're not inside, we're on crowded streets, and even when the lovers escape into the countryside, they're adrift on a fog-shrouded lake or framed by the stalks of a bamboo forest, hinting at prison bars. For some reason, perhaps the overcomplexity of the narrative, A Story From Chikamatsu doesn't hold the honored place in the Mizoguchi canon of Ugetsu (1953), The Life of Oharu (1952), or Sansho the Bailiff (1954), but it's still the work of a master filmmaker.

Ugetsu (Kenji Mizoguchi, 1953)

When does beauty become a flaw? To put it another way, if beauty is only skin deep, how does an artist present it so that we don't linger on the surface of a work and fail to comprehend its depths? I raise this in connection with a viewing of Kenji Mizoguchi's Ugetsu, a film universally praised for its beauty. It's easy to be mesmerized by Mizoguchi's visual compositions and by the sinuous fluidity of Kazuo Miyagawa's cinematography, as well as the poetry of Yoshikata Yoda's screenplay, all at the expense of feeling the coherence of the film's story and characters and ideas with our own lives. I find myself preferring Mizoguchi's less exquisite films to Ugetsu: Sansho the Bailiff (1954), surely, but also The Life of Oharu (1952) and even an earlier film like Osaka Elegy (1936). A case in point: The scene in which Genjuro (Masayuki Mori) returns home after his dalliance with the ghostly Lady Wasaka (Machiko Kyo) is a crucial and mythic one, evoking among other things Odysseus's return to Ithaca. And Mizoguchi stages it memorably: Genjuro enters the near-ruin of his house and finds it empty and littered, the fire pit cold. The camera follows him through the house in a long unbroken take, watches as he goes out the back door and sees him through the windows as he circles the house and re-enters. Only this time when he enters, the room is clean and the fire is burning brightly; his wife, Miyagi (Kinuyo Tanaka), embraces him. Overwhelmed and exhausted, he lies down and falls into a deep sleep beside his son, only to wake in the morning to find the cold empty room he first entered and to learn that Miyagi is dead. It's a magnificent sequence, a tour de force of acting, directing, camerawork and editing (by Mitsuzo Miyata). It makes a larger, deeper point: that Genjuro will never escape from ghosts. A less gifted director than Mizoguchi would have used conventional techniques like dissolves or double exposures to make the point. But there's also something distracting about instead employing a long, circular tracking shot with an invisible cut: We marvel at the technique at the expense of sharing Genjuro's experience. There is an art that conceals art, and I don't think Mizoguchi attains it here.

Sansho the Bailiff (Kenji Mizoguchi, 1954)

It's rare to see a film whose title character is the villain -- unless you count monster movies like the many versions of Dracula -- but Sansho (Eitaro Shindo) is decidedly that, the slave-driving administrator of a medieval Japanese manor. (It's as if Uncle Tom's Cabin had been called Simon Legree.) But in fact, Sansho serves as a catalyst for the story that centers on an aristocratic family. The father displeases his feudal lord by being too merciful to the people he governs, so he's banished to a distant province while his wife, Tamaki (Kinuyo Tanaka), and their children, Zushio and Anju, remain behind with her brother until the children are old enough to make the dangerous cross-country journey. But when they set out, they are betrayed and sold into slavery. Tamaki is forced into prostitution and separated from the children, who grow up as slaves on the estate administered by Sansho. One day, Anju (Kyoko Kagawa) hears a new slave, brought from the island of Sado, singing a song about a woman who mourns the loss of her children named Zushio and Anju, and learns that her mother is still alive. Meanwhile, Zushio (Yoshiaki Hanayagi) has decided that the best way to survive in slavery is to go along with Sansho's demands, which include punishing an elderly slave by branding him on the forehead. Anju is appalled by what her brother has become, because he has turned against the principles of mercy and human equality that their father taught them, but when the opportunity to escape presents itself, she persuades him to do so. Staying behind, and facing the wrath of Sansho, she drowns herself. Eventually, Zushio wreaks revenge on Sansho and liberates the slaves, then goes in search of his mother. This reworking of an ancient fable is one of the most miraculous of films, an exquisitely photographed (by Kazuo Miyagawa), designed (by Hisakazu Tsuji), and acted work, radiating Mizoguchi's deep human sympathy. Tanaka, who starred in Ugetsu (1953) and The Life of Oharu (1952), the other two films usually ranked alongside Sansho the Bailiff as Mizoguchi's greatest works, has a smaller role than in the others, but her final scene in this film is one of the most heart-breaking performances in all movies.

Floating Weeds (Yasujiro Ozu, 1959)

Machiko Kyo and Ganjiro Nakamura in Floating Weeds

A remake of Ozu's 1934 silent, A Story of Floating Weeds, which adds not only the technological advances of sound and color, but also shows the maturing of Ozu's sensibility. It's clear that the director feels a deep identification with Komajuro (Ganjiro Nakamura), the "master" of the group of traveling players, who finds himself worried not only about his responsibility to the actors but also about his responsibility to his unacknowledged son, Kiyoshi (Hiroshi Kawaguchi), now that the young man is of an age to make the kind of mistakes Komajuro has made. The wonderful Machiko Kyo also brings great depth to the role of Sumiko, an actress in the troupe and Komajuro's current mistress. When she susses out the fact that Komajuro has a former mistress, Oyoshi (Haruko Sugimura), in the town where they're currently performing, and that Kiyoshi is his son by Oyoshi, she takes revenge by having the pretty young actress Kayo (Ayako Wakao) seduce the young man. It's a fairly conventional plot, to be sure, devised for the earlier film by Ozu and Tadao Ikeda, but it reverberates beautifully with the film's theme: a celebration of acting and all that it involves. Komajuro, after all, has been playing the role of Kiyoshi's "uncle," with Oyoshi's aid. And Kayo's acting as the seductress turns into a real love affair. Above all, though, it's the quiet mastery of film that shines through every frame of Ozu's work, made magical by Kazuo Miyagawa's cinematography and Hideo Matsuyama's production design. One of the great works by one of film's great humanists.