The Outlaw (Howard Hughes, 1943)

The Outlaw (Howard Hughes, 1943)

Cast: Jack Buetel, Jane Russell, Thomas Mitchell, Walter Huston, Mimi Aguglia, Joe Sawyer, Gene Rizzi. Screenplay: Jules Furthman. Cinematography: Gregg Toland. Art direction: Perry Ferguson. Film editing: Wallace Grissell. Music: Victor Young.

Any list of great bad movies that doesn't include The Outlaw is not to be trusted. Because it is certainly bad, with a callow performance by Jack Buetel as Billy the Kid, a one-note (sultry pouting) performance by Jane Russell as Rio, and disappointing ones from old pros Thomas Mitchell and Walter Huston. It's ineptly directed by Howard Hughes, with awkward blocking and an abundance of scenes that don't go much of anywhere. It was weakened by Hughes's battles with the censors over Russell's cleavage and over the sexual innuendos -- an inept explanation that Rio and Billy were married while he was in a coma serves to legitimate the fact that they are sleeping together after he revives. It also implies that Billy rapes Rio, but she falls in love with him anyway. It's laden with a gay subtext, suggesting that Pat Garrett and Doc Holliday are in love with Billy -- and with each other. It's full of Western clichés and one of the corniest music tracks ever provided by a major film composer: Victor Young shamelessly borrows a theme from Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 6 as a love motif for Rio and Billy, falls back on "Bury Me Not on the Lone Prairie" at dramatic moments, and "mickey mouses" a lot of the action, including bassoons and "wah-wah" sounds from the trumpets to punch up comic moments. And yet, it's kind of a great bad movie for all of these reasons, and because it reflects its producer-director's megalomania, resulting in countless stories about his behind-the-scenes manipulation, his hyped-up "talent search" for stars that produced Russell (who became one) and Buetel (who didn't), and most famously, his use of his engineering talents to construct a brassiere for Russell that would perk up her breasts the way he wanted. (Russell apparently found it so uncomfortable that she secretly ditched it and adjusted her own bra to his specifications.)

The Third Murder (Hirokazu Koreeda, 2017)

The Third Murder (Hirokazu Koreeda, 2017)

Cast: Masaharu Fukuyama, Koji Yakusho, Shinnosuke Mitsushima, Mikako Ichikawa, Izumi Matsuoka, Suzu Hirose, Isao Hashizume. Screenplay: Hirokazu Koreeda. Cinematography: Mikiya Takimoto. Production design: Yohei Taneda. Film editing: Hirokazu Koreeda. Music: Ludovico Einaudi.

"The truth is rarely pure and never simple." Oscar Wilde's pronouncement could stand as an epigraph for The Third Murder, which could be just a murder mystery in which the defense attorney, Shigemori, serves as detective as well, but tries to make serious points about the relationship between truth and justice. Shigemori is faced with defending Misumi, who has apparently committed his third murder. Moreover, his trial for the first two, a double murder, was presided over by Shigemori's father, who now feels that he was too lenient in not sentencing Misumi to death that time. Shigemori's defense of Misumi is also complicated by the fact that Misumi confessed to the killing. So it seems that the best Shigemori can do is to try to get the man sentenced to life imprisonment instead of death. Things begin to get complicated when Shigemori encounters Sakie, the daughter of Misumi's victim, at the site of the murder. She is the same age, 14, as Shigemori's own daughter, from whom he has been separated by divorce and by his addiction to his work. The growing relationship between lawyer and client is visually manifested in the gradual merging of their two faces, which are reflected in the glass panel that separates them in their conferences at the prison. Shigemori is drawn much deeper into the case than he expected, and the film becomes laden (if not overburdened) with revelations about why Misumi murdered Sakie's father -- if in fact he did. It's an absorbing story, even if it doesn't quite fulfill its intellectual and moral ambitions, and the film is strengthened by beautifully subtle performances by Masaharu Fukuyama as Shigemori and Koji Yakusho as Misumi.

The Man in the White Suit (Alexander Mackendrick, 1951)

The Man in the White Suit (Alexander Mackendrick, 1951)

Cast: Alec Guinness, Joan Greenwood, Cecil Parker, Michael Gough, Ernest Thesiger, Howard Marion-Crawford, Henry Morrison, Vida Hope. Screenplay: Roger MacDougall, John Dighton, Alexander Mackendrick. Cinematography: Douglas Slocombe. Art direction: Jim Morahan. Film editing: Bernard Gribble.
Music: Benjamin Frankel.

When I first saw The Man in the White Suit many years ago, I thought it was a satire on the short-sightedness of those who resist scientific and technological progress. But now, after having worked in an industry threatened with obsolescence by technology, I have much greater sympathy for the film's ostensible villains, capital and labor, who try to suppress the innovation discovered by Alec Guinness's Sidney Stratton. He develops a "miracle fabric" that repels dirt and is seemingly indestructible. At first, the idea is welcomed by textile manufacturers who hope to obliterate the competition with the product. But it doesn't take long for the manufacturers to realize that an indestructible fabric would eventually put them out of business. At the same time, the labor unions realize that it would also put them out of work. It's not hard to see the parallels to our own experiences after the revolution brought about by computer technology, but in 1951 that was nothing more than a glimmer in the eyes of the fathers of Bill Gates and Steve Jobs. So be careful about what's funny today. It may be your nightmare tomorrow.

Belladonna of Sadness (Eiichi Yamamoto, 1973)

Belladonna of Sadness (Eiichi Yamamoto, 1973)

Cast: voices of Tatsuya Nakadai, Aiko Nagayama, Katsuyuki Ito, Shigako Shimegi, Masaya Takahashi, Natsuka Yashiro, Masakane Yonekura. Screenplay: Yoshiyuki Fukuda, Eiichi Yamamoto. Cinematography: Shigeru Yamazaki. Production design: Kuni Fukai. Animation: Gisburo Sugii. Music: Masahiko Sato.

There are images of extraordinary beauty and sinister power in Belladonna of Sadness, but they are also mixed with Pop Art clichés; psychedelia borrowed from Peter Max and his acolytes, album covers, and the Beatles' film Yellow Submarine (George Dunning, 1968); and kitsch reminiscent of greeting cards and nudie illustrations from back issues of Playboy. That is to say, it's a mixed bag. There seems to have been at some point an attempt to turn the film's fable into a feminist statement, but the link of the story of a violated woman who turns into a witch with the role of women in the French Revolution is tacked on unconvincingly at the film's end. Nevertheless, it's like no other animated film I've seen, and not just because its images have a striking, violent erotic content. The story is about Jeanne, who on the night of her wedding to Jean is subjected to the ruler's droit de seigneur, but not just to him: She is raped by his courtiers as well. Trigger warnings are appropriate at this moment, because the rape is signified by images of Jeanne being torn apart with a torrent of blood that fills the screen. Eventually, Jeanne is tempted by the devil (a terrific voice performance by Tatsuya Nakadai), who appears to her in the form of a penis (no kidding). She allows him to possess her body but not her soul, and through various episodes, including a harrowing treatment of the Black Death, she prevails, striking out against nobility and the church. At one point she "liberates" the peasantry by means of an orgy, a sexual fantasy that is both astonishing and sometimes hilarious. Eventually, she is caught and burned at the stake, but the implication is that, like her namesake Jeanne D'Arc's, her cause will prevail. The film's vision is ultimately incoherent, but its audacity is worth experiencing.