Force of Evil (Abraham Polonsky, 1948)

John Garfield in Force of Evil

Joe Morse: John Garfield
Leo Morse: Thomas Gomez
Doris Lowry: Beatrice Pearson
Freddie Bauer: Howland Chamberlain
Ben Tucker: Roy Roberts
Edna Tucker: Marie Windsor
Bill Ficco: Paul Fix
Detective Egan: Barry Kelley
Hobe Wheelock: Paul McVeigh
Wally: Stanley Prager

Director: Abraham Polonsky
Screenplay: Abraham Polonsky, Ira Wolfert
Based on a novel by Ira Wolfert
Cinematography: George Barnes
Art direction: Richard Day
Film editing: Art Seid
Music: David Raksin

John Garfield was one of the few movie stars who could play leading man to Joan Crawford and Lana Turner, and then turn around and appear in a gritty drama like Force of Evil without letting his star power outshine the supporting cast of character actors and unknowns. In Abraham Polonsky's film, he's a lawyer connected to the big players in the numbers racket, an illegal lottery that flourished before the legal ones took over. Joe Morse is torn in two directions: his work for the gangster Ben Tucker, who wants to take over the numbers game from the smaller "banks" that work in New York City neighborhoods, and his ties to his brother, Leo, who runs one of those banks. The numbers, posted in the daily newspapers, are based on the amount of bets placed on a day's horse races. Theoretically, the trio of numbers -- the last digits in the amount -- should be completely random. But Tucker has discovered a way to rig the numbers so that they'll come up 776 on Independence Day -- a day when a lot of bettors choose that number -- thereby causing a lot of the banks to go bust. When Joe learns of the scheme, he tries to tip off Leo, but his brother is having none of it. Joe also becomes involved with one of Leo's employees, Doris Lowry, who is grateful to Leo for having given her a job when she first came to New York, but now wishes to quit the shady business. Beatrice Pearson, who made her debut in the film but gave up movies for the stage, is a fresh and engaging presence, making the "love interest" feel less obligatory than it might. Garfield, of course, is terrific in one of his best roles, striking the right note of moral corruption while still retaining an essential attractiveness. George Barnes's cinematography is superb, whether he's working with Richard Day's sets or New York City locations. There's a haunting shot of Joe Morse in a deserted Wall Street, and the film's emotional climax is Joe's descent to the river beneath the George Washington Bridge to find where his brother's body has been dumped. Force of Evil is a downer, but a surprising one, and it makes one feel all the more bitter about the damage that the blacklist did to Polonsky and to Garfield, whose persecution by the commie-hunters may have contributed to his early death.

All These Women (Ingmar Bergman, 1964)

Jarl Kulle in All These Women

Cornelius: Jarl Kulle
Humlan (Bumblebee): Bibi Andersson
Isolde: Harriet Andersson
Adelaide: Eva Dahlbeck
Madame Tussaud: Karin Kavli
Traviata: Gertrud Fridh
Cecilia: Mona Malm
Beatrica: Barbro Hiort af Ornäs
Jillker: Allan Edwall
Tristan: Georg Funkquist
The Young Man: Carl Billquist

Director: Ingmar Bergman
Screenplay: Erland Josephson, Ingmar Bergman
Cinematography: Sven Nykvist
Production design: P.A. Lundgren
Film editing: Ulla Ryghe

Roger Ebert called Ingmar Bergman's All These Women "the worst film he has ever made," and I don't think it's because the butt of so many of the jokes in the movie was a critic. It's an arch, highly stylized comedy, supposedly inspired by Federico Fellini's 8 1/2 (1963), though apart from the zings at critics and the gathering together of the various women in an artist's life, there's not much that Bergman's film has in common with Fellini's. Bergman's artist, a cellist named Felix, has just died, and the film opens at his funeral through which a number of his "widows" parade to view the corpse. The funeral is presided over by Cornelius, Felix's supposed biographer, actually a music critic who was trying to persuade Felix to perform one of his compositions: "A Fish's Dream, Abstraction #4." The film flashes back to the days before Felix's death when Cornelius arrived at the cellist's estate and encountered his wife, Adelaide; his mistress, called "Bumblebee"; and several other women who had various connections, presumably sexual, to Felix. What follows is much running about, some slapstick, some misfired attempts by Cornelius to bed Bumblebee while trying to gather information about Felix's private life, and much tiresome and unfunny ado set to music cues ranging from Bach to "Yes, We Have No Bananas." All These Women was Bergman's first film in color, but the print shown on Turner Classic Movies is sadly faded, with captions that are hard to read. I also sampled the print on the Criterion Channel; it's better, but still rather washed-out looking. The cinematographer, Sven Nykvist, is a celebrated master, so the color flaws may be that of the aging Eastmancolor negative. Only the fact that the film is a lesser work of the director who gave us The Seventh Seal (1957), Persona (1966), and Fanny and Alexander (1982) really argues for restoring it, however.

Legend (Brian Helgeland, 2015)

Tom Hardy in Legend

Reggie Kray / Ronnie Kray: Tom Hardy
Frances Shea: Emily Browning
"Nipper" Read: Christopher Eccleston
Leslie Payne: David Thewlis
Mad Teddy Smith: Taron Edgerton
Angelo Bruno: Chazz Palminteri
Charlie Richardson: Paul Bettany
Frank Shea: Colin Morgan
Mrs. Shea: Tara Fitzgerald
Albert Donoghue: Paul Anderson
Jack MacVitie: Sam Spruell
Violet Kray: Jane Wood

Director: Brian Helgeland
Screenplay: Brian Helgeland
Based on a book by John Pearson
Cinematography: Dick Pope
Production design: Tom Conroy
Music: Carter Burwell

Perhaps if Brian Helgeland's screenplay and direction had been stronger, Tom Hardy's performance as the Kray twins, Reggie and Ronnie, might have made more impact. Hardy is an always watchable actor, and he makes a sharp delineation between the two brothers, one psychotic and the other more charmingly deadly. But Helgeland has missed an opportunity to put the Krays in the context of their era: the "swinging London" of the 1960s. There are some superficial name-dropping attempts: Reggie's girlfriend, Frances Shea, spots Joan Collins in a nightclub, and there are some other pop notables on the scene. But the script is too preoccupied with Reggie's affair with and marriage to Frances to give the Krays' kind of gangsterism any larger significance, the way Francis Ford Coppola's Godfather films (1972, 1974, 1980) integrated the relationship of Michael and Kay Corleone into the greater social and political context. Helgeland also makes a serious misstep with a voiceover narration -- often a sign of weakness in screenplays, a suggestion that the writer hasn't worked out a way to provide exposition dramatically. That the narrator is Frances, who dies three-quarters of the way into the film, only compounds the error: Narrative by a dead person rarely works, except in fantasy films or in the sardonic context of Billy Wilder's Sunset Blvd. (1950). The device loses its point after Frances's death: Her function in the screenplay is first to humanize Reggie Kray -- the film lays on Carter Burwell's score a little too thickly in their love scenes -- and then to suggest that he has suddenly somehow lost his soul when he rapes and beats her. Ronnie is a one-note character throughout, with his retinue of lethal boyfriends, including a standout Taron Edgerton as the giggling "Mad Teddy" Smith. Hardy fills him with silent menace, but he's a good enough actor to make the decision to give him a false nose and to stuff his cheeks like Marlon Brando's in The Godfather (Coppola, 1972) all the more regrettable.

Laila (George Schnéevoigt, 1929)

Harald Schwenzen, Alice O'Fredericks, Mona Mårtenson, and Peter Malberg in Laila

Laila: Mona Mårtenson
Jåmpa: Tryggve Larssen
Anders: Harald Schwenzen
Aslag Laagje: Peter Malberg
Aslag's wife: Cally Monrad
Mellet: Henry Gleditsch
The merchant Lind: Finn Bernhoff
Lind's wife: Lily Larson-Lund
Inger: Alice O'Fredericks
Anders and Inger's father: Rasmus Christiansen
Magga: Inge Brekke

Director: George Schnéevoigt
Screenplay: George Schnéevoigt
Based on a novel by Jens Andreas Friis
Cinematography: Waldemar Christensen, Allan Lynge

Exciting but overlong, Laila is a landmark film in Norway, but its cultural conflicts are universal. The story takes place in an unspecified past, when tensions between the Norwegians and the Sami (we usually call them Lapps, as do the intertitles, but that seems to have become a pejorative) have reached a kind of uneasy truce. The Norwegians want to settle down and build towns, while the Sami remain nomadic, moving their reindeer herds about freely in search of feeding grounds. At the film's beginning, the Norwegian merchant Lind and his wife set out to have their infant daughter baptized, but as they're traveling in their reindeer-drawn sleds across the winter landscape, they're attacked by wolves. The nursemaid Magga, who is carrying the baby, is separated from the others and her sled overturns; she loses her grip on the child, who is tossed into some bushes, but before she can cut the rope that tethers the sled to the reindeer, she is towed away. Night is falling, and the little company must wait until morning until they can search for the baby. They find only the empty basket in which the child was swaddled. Director George Schnéevoigt makes the most of this sequence, as he does with several other action scenes, including a hair's-breadth rescue when a boat traverses some rapids and goes over a waterfall later in the film. Fortunately, one of the Sami, Jåmpa, who works for the wealthy herder Aslag Laagje, comes upon the baby and takes it to be raised by the childless Aslag and his wife, who name the girl Laila. A year goes by before Aslag discovers that Laila is actually the Linds' lost child, and he reluctantly gives her up to them. But then the land is struck by an outbreak of plague which kills both of the Linds, and the elderly couple who are looking after Laila allow Aslag to take her home with him. She grows up with no knowledge of her birth parentage, traveling with the Sami as one of their own. Mona Mårtenson gives a boisterous, athletic performance as the grownup Laila, reminding me a bit of  Mary Pickford's inexhaustible energy in films like The Love Light (Frances Marion, 1921). She softens when she falls in love with Anders Lind, who runs a trading post the Sami visit during an annual market. But neither she nor Anders knows that they're really cousins -- his father and hers were brothers. Meanwhile, Aslag and his wife have been planning a marriage between Laila and Mellet, a foundling who had been taken in by the Laagjes even before Laila arrived. The rest of the film is a typical melodramatic stew of jealousy and prejudice: Norwegians, known to the Sami as "daro," don't marry Sami girls, Laila is told. There's a big Dramatic Moment when Laila is supposed to meet Anders at midnight by a cross-topped cairn, and when he fails to show (his father is dying and he can't leave the deathbed), she flings her arms out in a crucified pose. And there's a last-minute chase to reach the church after Laila agrees to marry Mellet: Jåmpa, who has always adored Laila, reveals to Anders her true parentage, and together they rush to tell her, only to be set upon by yet another wolf pack. Apparently, consanguinity is of less significance than intermarriage between Sami and daro, because Anders arrives in time to snatch his cousin Laila away from Mellet, who disappears in the general rejoicing. Even the conventional melodramatics, however, can't detract from the splendid documentary-like footage of life in the far northern mountains, the real reason to watch Laila.

Wife (Mikio Naruse, 1953)

Yatsuko Tan'ami and Ken Uehara in Wife

Mihoko Nakagawa: Mieko Takamine
Toichi Nakagawa: Ken Uehara
Fusako Sawara: Yatsuko Tan'ami
Tadashi Tanimura: Rentaro Mikuni
Yoshimi Niemura: Michiyo Aratama
Setsuko Sakarai: Sanae Takasugi
Eiko Matsuyama: Chieko Nakakita
Hirohiso Matsuyama: Hajime Izu
Taeko Niemura: Yoshiko Tsubouchi

Director: Mikio Naruse
Screenplay: Toshiro Ide
Based on a novel by Fumiko Hayashi
Cinematography: Masao Tamai
Production design: Satoru Chuko
Music: Ichiro Saito

I was well into Mikio Naruse's Wife when I had a sudden feeling of déjà vu: I felt like I had seen this film before. It struck me when Nakagawa goes to a cafe with Sawara, a typist who works in his office, and she identifies the music playing in the background as a violin concerto by Édouard Lalo. I thought I had seen the cafe setting before: It's distinctively divided into two levels, with some ornamental ironwork separating the upper from the lower level where Nakagawa and Sawara are sitting. Later in the film, when Tanimura, the painter and art student who rents a room from the Nakagawas, appears, and still later when Nakagawa's wife, Mihoko, rents another room to a young woman who's the mistress of an older man, I knew I'd seen Wife before. At my age, any memory lapse like this can be disturbing, but I also thought it told me something about the kind of film Wife is. For the main story of the film, about the stagnant marriage of Toichi and Mihoko Nakagawa, is so low-key that it's hard to latch onto anything specific about it. We've seen troubled marriages and illicit affairs before, but the Nakagawas hold their emotions in such tight check that they never explode into memorable scenes. The parts of Wife that the memory holds onto are the unique ones -- a classical melody, a distinctive set (as contrasted with the Nakagawas' typically boxlike home), or colorful characters. Even the title, Wife, has a generic quality to it -- like some of Yasujiro Ozu's titles, it doesn't give the mind much to hold onto. This is not meant to be a knock on Naruse's film, however. The pain experienced by Mihoko when she learns of her husband's affair, and that felt by Toichi and Sawara when they're forced to part, is very real and quite delicately observed. And there's something particularly devastating about the lack of resolution at the film's end, when, having achieved a kind of stalemate, the Nakagawas return to routine. He goes off to work and she stays home, both condemned to trying to work things out. In a way, I'm glad I had forgotten that I'd seen Wife before: It gave me a chance to rediscover a work whose subtlety and finesse outweigh its lack of flashy memory hooks.

The Band's Visit (Eran Kolirin, 2007)

Rinat Matatov, Shlomi Avraham, and Saleh Bakri in The Band's Visit

Tawfiq Zacharya: Sasson Gabal
Dina: Ronit Elkabetz
Haled: Saleh Bakri
Simon: Khalifa Natour
Avrum: Uri Gavriel
Papi: Shlomi Avraham
Yula: Rinat Matatov
Iris: Hilla Sarjon
Lea: Ahuva Keren
Ars: Tomer Josef

Director: Eran Kolirin
Screenplay: Eran Kolirin
Cinematography: Shai Goldman
Film editing: Arik Leibovitch
Music: Habib Shadah

The Band's Visit is a cats-and-dogs movie: a meeting of two supposedly antagonistic cultures, in which each side learns something from the confrontation. But it avoids formula by fresh performances and a wry directorial distancing. Eight members of a police force orchestra from Alexandria, Egypt, find themselves stranded in the Israeli desert because of a misunderstanding about the name of their destination. They are supposed to play at the opening of an Arab Cultural Center in Israel, but they get off the bus by the side of the highway, across from a small cafe. The owner of the cafe, Dina, scoffs at the notion that they are there to play at a cultural center: "Here there is no Arab culture. Also, no Israeli culture. Here there is no culture at all." The bleak little town is mostly modern high-rise apartments and the "park" has neither grass nor trees. She discovers the source of the error -- they were supposed to go to a town whose name sounded similar -- and tells them that there's not another bus until the next morning. The stubborn, autocratic leader of the band, Tawfiq, decides to set out on foot, and the other seven band members, dressed in light blue uniforms, follow until Haled, a handsome young violinist, complains that they haven't eaten all day. Tawfiq blows his top and puts Haled on report, but when the other band members confess their hunger, relents and returns to the cafe, where Dina feeds them and suggests that she and some of the men who hang around the cafe can put them up for the night. And so the film tracks the experiences of these strangers in a strange land through the night. We learn, for example, why Tawfiq is such a sourpuss and why the clarinetist, Simon, is blocked in his attempts to compose a concerto. The most charming and funny scene involves Haled, who has already been established as something of a ladies' man, who goes out as a fifth wheel with Ars and Papi on their double date. Papi is upset because he has been stuck with Yula, whom he regards as depressing. But then Papi is a virgin with no experience of women, and Haled takes it on himself to show Papi the ropes. At a small roller disco, Papi and Haled, who don't know how to skate, are sidelined. Yula tries to get Papi out on the floor, but he rebuffs her. As closing time draws near, an attendant starts packing up the plastic chairs, and Yula, who is in tears, is forced to sit on a bench with Papi and Haled, who takes a handkerchief out of his pocket and hands it to Papi, who hands it to Yula. Then Haled takes a small airline liquor bottle out of his pocket, hands it to Papi, prompting him to offer Yula a drink. She accepts and Papi returns the bottle to Haled after both have drunk from it. Then Haled places his hand on Papi's knee as a suggestion that he follow suit with Yula. Then he begins to caress Papi's knee as another suggestion. Finally, when Yula puts her hand on Papi's, Papi puts his hand on Haled's. Haled removes it: lesson over. This long single take is characteristic of director Eran Kolirin's sly style throughout the film, which was a huge hit in Israel and would have been that country's Oscar nominee for best foreign language film except that it was ruled ineligible because half of the dialogue is in English -- the language the Egyptians and Israelis use to communicate with one another. 

Sergeant York (Howard Hawks, 1941)

Gary Cooper and Joan Leslie in Sergeant York

Alvin C. York: Gary Cooper
Pastor Rosier Pile: Walter Brennan
Gracie Williams: Joan Leslie
Mother York: Margaret Wycherly
"Pusher" Ross: George Tobias
Major Buxton: Stanley Ridges
Ike Botkin: Ward Bond
Buck Lipscomb: Noah Beery Jr.
Rosie York: June Lockhart
George York: Dickie Moore
Zeke: Clem Bevans
Lem: Howard Da Silva

Director: Howard Hawks
Screenplay: Abem Finkel, Harry Chandlee, Howard Koch, John Huston
Based on a diary by Alvin C. York edited by Tom Skeyhill
Cinematography: Sol Polito
Art direction: John Hughes
Film editing: William Holmes
Music: Max Steiner

Sheer Hollywood biopic hokum made watchable by Howard Hawks and Gary Cooper, along with a colorful supporting cast. Sergeant York earned Hawks his one and only Oscar nomination for directing -- not Bringing Up Baby (1938) or Only Angels Have Wings (1939) or His Girl Friday (1940) or To Have and Have Not (1944) or The Big Sleep (1946) or Red River (1948) or Rio Bravo (1959), more than two decades of the most entertaining movies anyone ever made. It was in fact Hawks's lack of the kind of high seriousness so often rewarded with Oscars that makes Sergeant York still entertaining today, which is why he lost to John Ford for How Green Was My Valley, a directing Oscar that by rights should have gone to Orson Welles for Citizen Kane. It's fairly clear that Hawks doesn't take Sergeant York entirely seriously, with its exteriors built on the soundstage, its well-scrubbed hillbillies, its cornpone hijinks and caricature religiosity, not to mention dialogue that sounds straight out of Al Capp's "Li'l Abner." But it also takes a Gary Cooper to deliver speeches like "I believe in the bible and I'm a-believin' that this here life we're a-livin' is something the good lord done give us and we got to be a-livin' it the best we can, and I'm a-figurin' that killing other folks ain't no part of what he was intendin' for us to be a-doin' here." Granted, Cooper had just turned 40 and was a good deal too old to play Alvin C. York, but his characteristic sly, shy self-effacement is essential to the role. The old story that York himself said that he wouldn't allow himself to be played on film by anyone else but Cooper sounds like the work of a Warner Bros. publicist, and one biographer has suggested that it was a hoax cooked up by producer Jesse L. Lasky to persuade Cooper to take the part, but se non è vero, è ben trovato -- if it's not true, it ought to be. Sergeant York cleaned up at the box office, especially when it got a second run after the attack on Pearl Harbor, and raked in 11 Oscar nominations, winning for Cooper and for film editing. Other nominees include Margaret Wycherly as Mother York -- a far cry from her killer mama in Raoul Walsh's White Heat (1949) -- and Walter Brennan, with his false teeth in and his eyebrows darkened, as Pastor Pile, along with the screenwriters, cinematographer Sol Polito, the art direction, the sound, and Max Steiner's patriotic tune-quoting score. It can't be taken seriously today, but it can be enjoyed.

The Best Years of Our Lives (William Wyler, 1946)

Dana Andrews, Teresa Wright, Myrna Loy, Fredric March, Harold Russell, and Cathy O'Donnell in The Best Years of Our Lives

Al Stephenson: Fredric March
Milly Stephenson: Myrna Loy
Peggy Stephenson: Teresa Wright
Fred Derry: Dana Andrews
Marie Derry: Virginia Mayo
Homer Parrish: Harold Russell
Wilma Cameron: Cathy O'Donnell
Butch Engle: Hoagy Carmichael
Hortense Derry: Gladys George
Pat Derry: Roman Bohnen
Mr. MiltonI: Ray Collins
Cliff: Steve Cochran

Director: William Wyler
Screenplay: Robert E. Sherwood
Based on a novel by MacKinlay Kantor
Cinematography: Gregg Toland
Film editing: Daniel Mandell
Music: Hugo Friedhofer

The Best Years of Our Lives is a very good movie, rich in characters and provocative incidents. It's not a great movie, but it's such a satisfying work of popular moviemaking that I'm surprised in this age of sequels and reboots, especially after the recent enthusiasm for the "Greatest Generation," no one has attempted a follow-up on the lives of its characters, taking them into the era of the Korean War, the nuclear buildup of the Soviet Union, the Cold War, McCarthyism, the civil rights struggle, and so on. Because there is something unfinished about the stories of Al, Fred, and Homer, not to mention Milly, Peggy, Marie, and Wilma, that perhaps director William Wyler and screenwriter Robert E. Sherwood couldn't possibly have foreseen in 1946. On the other hand, that's what makes The Best Years of Our Lives such a fascinating and useful document of its times. It's anything but an antiwar film -- although Homer Parrish has been mutilated, Fred Derry suffers PTSD nightmares, and Al Stephenson is well on his way to alcoholism, the film makes no effort to suggest that the war that inflicted these injuries on them was anything but just. The one naysayer, the "America Firster" who tangles with Homer and Fred in the drugstore, gets his just deserts, even if it costs Fred his job. What wins us over most is the performances: Fredric March overacts just a touch, but it won him the best actor Oscar. Harold Russell, the non-actor who received both a supporting actor Oscar and a special award, is engagingly real. And Dana Andrews proves once again that he was one of the best of the forgotten stars of the 1950s, carrying the film through from the beginning in which he seeks a ride home to the end in which he pays a nostalgic visit to the kind of plane from which he used to drop bombs. Neither Andrews nor Myrna Loy ever received an Oscar nomination, but their work in the film exhibits the kind of acting depth that makes showier award-winners look a little silly. Loy makes the most of her part as the wryly patient spouse, Teresa Wright manages to make a role somewhat handicapped by Production Code squeamishness about extramarital affairs convincing, and Virginia Mayo once again demonstrates her skill in "bad-girl" roles.  Wyler was a director much celebrated by the industry, with a record-setting total of 12 nominations, including three wins: for this film, Mrs. Miniver (1942), and Ben-Hur (1959). He's not so much admired by those of us who cling to the idea that a director should provide a central consciousness in his films, being regarded as an impersonal technician. But Best Years is a deeply personal film for Wyler, who had just spent the war serving in the army air force, flying dangerous missions over Germany to make documentary films, during which he suffered serious hearing loss that threatened his postwar directing career. His experiences inform the film, especially the character of Fred Derry. In addition to the best picture Oscar and the ones for Wyler, March, and Russell, Best Years also won for Sherwood's screenplay, Daniel Mandell's film editing, and for Hugo Friedhofer's score. The last, I think, is questionable: Friedhofer seems determined to make sure we don't miss the emotional content of any scene, almost "mickey-mousing" the feelings of the characters with his music. It feels intrusive in some of the film's best moments, such as the beautifully staged reunion of Al and Milly, or the scene in which Homer, fearful that the hooks that replace his hands have destroyed his engagement to Wilma, invites her up to his room to help him get ready for bed, demonstrating the harness that holds his prostheses in place. It's a moment with an oddly erotic tension that doesn't need Friedhofer's strings to tell us what the characters are feeling.

Lincoln (Steven Spielberg, 2012)

Sally Field and Daniel Day-Lewis in Lincoln

Abraham Lincoln: Daniel Day-Lewis
Mary Todd Lincoln: Sally Field
William Seward: David Strathairn
Robert Lincoln: Joseph Gordon-Levitt
W.N. Bilbo: James Spader
Preston Blair: Hal Holbrook
Thaddeus Stevens: Tommy Lee Jones
Robert Latham: John Hawkes
Alexander Stephens: Jackie Earle Haley
Edwin Stanton: Bruce McGill
Richard Schell: Tim Blake Nelson
John Hay: Joseph Cross
Ulysses S. Grant: Jared Harris
Fernando Wood: Lee Pace
George Pendleton: Peter McRobbie
Elizabeth Keckley: Gloria Reuben
George Yeaman: Michael Stuhlbarg
Clay Hoggins: Walton Goggins
Corporal Ira Clark: David Oyelowo
First White Soldier: Lukas Haas
Second White Soldier: Dane DeHaan
Samuel Beckwith: Adam Driver
Lydia Smith: S. Epatha Merkerson

Director: Steven Spielberg
Screenplay: Tony Kushner
Based on a book by Doris Kearns Goodwin
Cinematography: Janusz Kaminski
Production design: Rick Carter
Film editing: Michael Kahn
Music: John Williams

The all-star patriotic historical pageant celebrating American democracy had long been a featured genre of Hollywood films until the disillusionments of Vietnam and Watergate put it pretty much out of favor. But during the brief resurgence of liberal optimism after the election of Barack Obama, Steven Spielberg decided to bring it out of mothballs with a film about Abraham Lincoln's struggles to pass the 13th amendment, banning slavery in the United States. He initially planned to star Liam Neeson in the title role, but when Neeson decided he was too old for the part, the choice fell on Daniel Day-Lewis, the most chameleonic of actors. Lincoln has been played on screen by actors as varied as Walter Huston, Henry Fonda, and Raymond Massey, but Day-Lewis covered himself with glory and encumbered himself with a third Oscar in the role. It is in fact a superb performance, emphasizing the humanity of the man with depictions of his marital problems, his earthy sense of humor (no previous movie Lincoln was ever heard to utter the word "shit"), and above all his willingness to play down-and-dirty politics. The bulk of the drama is in the maneuverings to get a two-thirds majority in the House of Representatives to ratify the amendment, which has substantial opposition even within the president's own party, the Republicans. This means maneuvering some of the holdouts with promises of government jobs and patronage, a task that falls to a team of lobbyists led by W.N. Bilbo, played beautifully by James Spader. It also involves persuading the most volatile of abolitionists, Thaddeus Stevens, to utter compromising language on the floor of the House, in which he asserts that all men are equal before the law, but not necessarily equal "in all things," creating a fiery, funny scene for Tommy Lee Jones as Stevens. Lincoln is also forced to conceal that he is engaged in peace negotiations with the Confederates, fearing that this would lead to postponement of the vote on the amendment. Tony Kushner's screenplay is more cerebral than most, focusing on points of law and political maneuverings, which is why some reviewers and audiences were not fully enthusiastic about it. Though it was nominated for 12 Oscars, it won only two, for Day-Lewis and for production design, losing best picture to Argo (Ben Affleck) and best director to Ang Lee for Life of Pi. Both losses, I think, are inexcusable, as was Sally Field's loss as the fragile Mary Todd Lincoln to Anne Hathaway's lachrymose Fantine in Les Misérables (Tom Hooper). I suspect Lincoln will grow in esteem over the years, thanks to its many finely detailed performances, the superb re-creation of a period in its sets and costumes, and a general lack of cinematic clichés: John Williams even manages to compose a score without quoting from "The Battle Hymn of the Republic," "The Star-Spangled Banner," or any number of other sure-fire, heart-tugging patriotic melodies.

The Burmese Harp (Kon Ichikawa, 1956)

Shoji Yasui in The Burmese Harp

Capt. Inouye: Rentaro Mikuni
Pvt. Mizushima: Shoji Yasui
Ito: Jun Hamamura
Kobayashi: Taketoshi Naito
Maki: Shunji Kasuga
Baba: Ko Nishimura
Oyama: Tomio Aoki
Old Woman: Tanie Kitabayashi

Director: Kon Ichikawa
Screenplay: Natto Wada
Based on a novel by Michio Takeyama
Cinematography: Minoru Yokayama
Film editing: Masanori Tsujii
Music: Akira Ifukube

No film that contains as many reprises of Henry Bishop's old parlor song "Home, Sweet Home" as Kon Ichikawa's The Burmese Harp does can escape charges of sentimentality. It's sung in both Japanese and English by male choruses accompanied by the titular harp -- which sounds a lot more like a full-size orchestral harp than the smaller Burmese saung that appears on the screen. But although the film contains scenes of the carnage of war, Ichikawa is clearly not aiming for realism here. The source of the film was a novel serialized in a children's magazine in 1946 that became an adult bestseller when it was published as a book. The book was designed as antiwar statement, a corrective to the militarism that had plunged Japan into disaster, and Ichikawa's film, which elaborates on the book's themes of Buddhist pacifism, still retains some of the power to stir sentiments in that direction. It focuses on Mizushima, member of a company of Japanese soldiers led by Capt. Inouye, who had been a music teacher before by war and tries to keep up morale as they trek through the Burmese jungle by having the men sing. Mizushima has found a harp and learned to play it extremely well, accompanying the singing as well as using the harp when he goes on reconnaissance missions, playing one tune for "all clear" and another for "danger." When the war ends, the company is sent to a temporary prison camp, from which Mizushima is sent out to try to persuade a recalcitrant group of Japanese soldiers that the war is over and they should surrender. The fanatics refuse, but Mizushima is unable to leave their hillside stronghold before the deadline passes and the place is shelled, killing most of the holdouts and leaving Mizushima unconscious. The company moves on, thinking Mizushima dead, and are about to be repatriated when they discover that he has survived. A flashback tells how Mizushima became a Buddhist monk, so devoted to the task of burying the Japanese corpses that still remain in the Burmese countryside that he refuses to return to Japan. The Burmese Harp is beautifully filmed by Minoru Yokayama, and became an international hit. There have been charges that the film "whitewashes" the Japanese campaign in Burma, ignoring atrocities committed under orders from the Japanese high command, and this criticism deserves to be heard. But the underlying antiwar fable of the film still holds its strength.