Mikio Naruse | 夜ごとの夢 (Yogoto no yume) (Every-Night Dreams) / 1933

the weak and the strong

by Douglas Messerli

 

Tadao Ikeda (screenplay, based on a story by Mikio Naruse), Mikio Naruse (director)  夜ごとの夢

Yogoto no yume (Every-Night Dreams) / 1933

 

Mikio Naruse and Kenji Mizoguchi created, as I have stated previously, a sub-genre dealing with women suffering financial destitution who have forced to work as prostitutes. Omitsu (Sumiko Kurishima) in Naruse’s famed silent from 1933 is just such a woman, whose husband having abandoned her, has been forced to work at a Ginza bar catering to sailors in order to support her son, Fumio (the charming Teruko Kojima).

       As the movie opens, she is returning from a trip of what was evidently several weeks. Although it is never explained where she has been, we clearly perceive that she has probably gone away with client on a sexual tryst. In her absence Fumio has been cared for by the kind unnamed elderly couple (Jun Arai and Mitsuko Yoshikawa) who also rent her a room, and think of the child almost as a grandson.                    Fumio is delighted by his mother’s return, and asks if she has brought him a present. She apologizes, but explains she will soon bring him another “toy,” even though it is clear she has so little money that everything she makes goes for food and rent; she is forced to attempt to borrow on her “salary” from the mean-spirited proprietress of the bar where she works. A seedy denizen of that bar, a Captain (Takeshi Sakamoto) intercedes, providing her with the money, but obviously expecting favors in return.

    Like the hostess featured in Naruse’s wonderful film of three decades later, When a Woman Descends the Stairs, it is obvious that Omitsu is a skilled worker, who is popular with the men, but who would also prefer to be free from her work living simply as a loving mother.

     The neighbor encourages her to find a regular job or to marry a man who will provide for her, but it is also clear that Omitsu sees herself as a fallen woman for whom there are no other choices left. At several times, she excuses herself from the sexual advances of clients by describing herself as an “old hag.” It is, after all, the depression era when choices for working women, as Naruse makes clear, were few.

 

     Suddenly into this stew of repressed desires and dreams comes Omitsu’s former husband, Mizuhara, a handsome but frail individual who regrets his previous choices, and is desperate to simply see his son. At first, Omitsu, still hurt by his abonnement, absolutely rejects him. She argues that his behavior alone has helped her to be hard and strong; pleading and tears no longer affect her. Indeed, if there is any one “theme” of this film it is her inner strength and her determination that her young son grow up to be an equally “strong” man.

        Yet when, accidently, Fumio enters the room during their conversation, and she sees the immediate bond between the two, Omitsu displays her own weakness; she still loves the man who has failed her, who can find no new employment. As Mizuhara, himself, puts it, he has “no luck with work.” Most of the available jobs demand hard labor, and his thin, almost sickly frame, immediately disqualifies him from those jobs.

        His wife allows him back into her life if for no other reason that he can play the doting father, and, with few illusions, even if he might wish to he be able to free her from her nightly role as a kind of geisha—the only traditionally dressed woman in the jazz-and-dance loving bar. Naruse is particularly wonderful in presenting the lively life of the bar and conveying to us, through the language of the silent screen, just how bifurcated Omitsu’s life is between her precious daylight hours with her son and her free-wheeling night life.

      The director also begins to build up, through subtle directorial moments, the very precariousness of Fumio’s life, poising the child, at one point, on a huge concrete tube as he watches his father clumsily playing baseball with slightly older children. In this marvelous scene, we not only recognize that Mizuhara is still a child at heart, unable to even participate in the adult world wherein he might protect his son, but also observe, in the strange positioning of the child, just how dangerous Fumio’s young life is; and, of necessity, we can foretell that he may suffer some sort of disaster.

      Hit by a car, Fumio survives nonetheless, but the needed hospital care spirals his already poverty-stricken family into a situation from which they can never escape. Since Mizuhara has failed at finding a job, even though he vaguely attempts to find one, it is clear that Omitsu will have to give in the demands of the much-hated Captain.

     But, even worse, determining to take his share of the responsibility, Mizuhara commits a robbery, attempting to reward Omitsu with the money not only to live up to his patriarchal duties, but to protect the life of his beloved son.

      If as an immoral woman, Omitsu is strong, as a mother she is highly moral and committed, and will not except his stolen gains, insisting that he turn himself into police, and serve out what ever sentence they may invoke. Recognizing that he has failed yet again, Mizuhara determines to leave, if nothing else than to allow Omitsu to support her son in a way that does not involve in his criminal behavior.

      He leaves her, but this time forever, by drowning himself in the nearby ocean, and, even worse, with his punishing act of writing a desperate suicide note. His wife returns to her suffering son to answer his questions as to where his father has gone, angrily declaiming him as a coward and weakling, once again instructing her son to grow up to be strong. She will certainly have to be, since she clearly will never find salvation from the life she hates.

      Along with Ozu’s silent works, this film is perhaps one of the most-loved silent films of Japan cinematic history. And one can see why. Naruse reveals an unforgiving world, not only for women, but for men who cannot live up to how the society might wish to define them. No loving society can ever survive on a dichotomy of the weak and the strong; even the resilient Omitsu knows that, but has no choice but to reiterate that cultural lie. Surely, we realize, Fumio will also suffer for its absurd demands.

 

Orange, California, February 17, 2017

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (February 2017).  

Chantal Akerman | Saute ma ville / 1968

a letter that denies its own significance

by Douglas Messerli

 

Chantal Akerman (screenwriter and director) Saute ma ville / 1968

 

What is amazing about Chantal Akerman’s first film from 1968, Saute ma ville (which I’ll translate as Burn Down My Town), is that she was only 18 at the time of its creation. And yet the statement she makes in this short work is so profound that you might think she had an entire career behind it.

     A young woman (Akerman) arrives home to her apartment building, flowers in hand, quickly checking the mail before she pushes the elevator. Immediately determining to outrun it by tripping up the stairs for several levels, she inexplicably checks on the progress of the elevator as she moves upward, all the time humming a sharp pitched noise as if she were almost attempting to irritate the viewer—which, in fact, she may well be attempting to accomplish.

      As critic Felicity Chaplin describes these opening sequences:

"Saute ma ville is supported by images constructed like a burlesque and the performance of an actress that seems to come straight out of a slapstick comedy. This exuberant character is played by the filmmaker herself, who literally bursts in front of a large building (the sounds of the city being omnipresent there), flowers in hand, to get back to her apartment. Akerman’s humming adds an enthusiastic and light touch to this jaunty entrance."

 

     Finally reaching her door, she enters, throwing most of her purchases upon the kitchen counter before tacking the now-opened letter she has received to the cabinet, soon after cooking up a meal of pasta which she will chow down with a rapidity that is spell-binding before leaping up, seemingly driven by an inner voice repeating the word “Scotch.”

      Even prior to our awareness, she has pulled out a role of thick scotch tape and begun to thoroughly seal up the door of her kitchen, stopping only briefly to pick up her cat, pet it for a moment, open a nearby window, and send the poor beast, presumably, on its way through a long fall unto the street to die.

      While munching on an apple, she quickly dons a raincoat and a scarf while picking up a sponge mop and tossing all the contents of a lower cabinet to the floor. Showering some water upon the mess, she shoves the various mixers, blenders, and whatever else she has kept there, with the mop toward to door.

      A moment later she has decided to shine her shoes, leaving a heavy lacquer of the black paste on her legs and hands. She reaches for a copy of the newspaper Le Soir and, as if speed-reading way through its pages, sets it aside to continue taping up a nearby window.

        Had she performed these same tasks in a more normative pattern, we realize, she might have reminded us of the actions of any housewife or single woman caught up in doing her daily chores. But this 18-year-old is more like Raymond Queneau’s Zazie (of Zazie dans le Métro) rather than an adult setting out to accomplish the routine requirements of keeping a good house.

       If there had been any question, at first, of what this young apartment- dweller was up to, we now know that in her chaotic accomplishment of these meaningless tasks she is decentering and revolting against any of the so-called necessities of good home-making.

       From one of her cabinets, she takes out a white substance which may be anything from a mix of flour to mayonnaise and applies it to her face as if were a beauty lotion, appealing to her mirror for approval of her attempts to properly take care of her body.  

      Denying even the rationality of these acts, this seemingly crazed teenager is a bit like a robotized version of “the good housewife,” undoing the very methodical patterns demanded by a hegemonic society, particularly a patriarchal one.

      Having focused explicitly on the domain of the woman, the kitchen and all it represents, the girl somewhat madly giggles and laughs, repeating the words “Bang, Bang!” while lighting the stove. We hear the hiss the gas only as we watch her through the mirror, one hand over head, the other holding the flowers she has brought with her before the final explosion results in the screen going black.

       The only narrative explanation of her acts might have existed in the letter upon which the camera has focused several times and to which Akerman herself has given a special credence of place. But to create any imaginary narrative from that letter’s contents—a statement of love abandoned or lost, a diaristic explanation of what has led her to destroy her artificed world, or even a simple list of instructions of how to “blow her city up”—would only make her revolutionary denial of all societal definitions of what it means to be female meaningless. The letter itself, I would argue, denies any narrational logic.

     Unlike Scheherazade desperately trying to appease her master with just one more nightly story, Akerman has openly refused to allow any more attempts of explanation or myth-making. She has shattered all conventions, including the actions represented in her film. She has blown up not just the town, but her own recreation of a normative self.

 

Los Angeles, August 31, 2020

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (August 2020).

Jean Renoir | Le Crime de Monsieur Lange (The Crime of Monsieur Lange) / 1936

the dreamer awakes

by Douglas Messerli

 

Jean Castanyer, Jacques Prévert, and Jean Renoir (screenplay), Jean Renoir (director) Le Crime de Monsieur Lange (The Crime of Monsieur Lange) / 1936

 

Jean Renoir’s 1936 film, The Crime of Monsieur Lange, is a hefty mix of a murder tale and comedy, dipped in a syrup of politics and love.

    The hero, Amédée Lange (René Lefèvre) begins the film as a frightened editorial assistant to publisher Paul Batala (Jules Berry), secretly writing his “Arizona Jim” series during the nights, growing, by film’s end, into to a confidant lover to the local laundress, Valentine Cardès (Florelle) and confidant to the concierge’s love-stricken son, Charles (Maurice Baquet), who spends most of the film in bed after being struck by a lorry.

     Batala, like almost every publisher I know (including myself), constantly in debt, spends much of his time creating new schemes to raise yet more funds, but seems permanently behind in all his promised projects. But unlike most publishers I know, Batala, spends most of the money on himself and wastes his days attempting to seduce every pretty woman he encounters, at one point even raping the innocent laundry worker with whom Charles is in love.

 

     In order to satisfy the demands one of his creditors, Meunier—represented in the film by his son (Henry Guisol)—he suddenly decides to publish Lange’s ridiculous western fantasies, which strangely enough become a huge hit with the public. Yet before he can even begin to reap the benefits of his newest scam, the police show up, forcing Batala to go on the lamb. His train trip away from Paris ends in a horrific accident which kills several travelers, including, so the newspapers report, Batala.

      Suddenly, the staff of Batala’s publishing house are faced with unemployment, until the son of Meunier returns to make claim to the company and is convinced by the staff to run the company as a cooperative. He’s immediately convinced, but must take Lange aside to ask: “What is a cooperative?” Renoir’s political statements are not without their humorous side.

     The failed publishing house soon is raking in the money, based on the popularity of Lange’s populist story, as events spin into delight for all involved. An offer to turn “Arizona Jim” into a film brings together most of the remaining cast members as they celebrate their success at a grand dinner party, punctuated by the Christmas songs of the drunken concierge (Marcel Lévesque).

      Everything has now turned into a kind permanent holiday, so it seems—that is until Lange runs into Batala, who has evidently survived the crash and switched his garb with a priest who he was talking to at the time of the accident. The publisher has returned to claim the company as his own, based on the fraudulent agreement he has made with Lange. Suddenly the joyous Marxist community the workers have created is threatened by the greedy capitalist who nearly destroyed their lives. Lange, now a man of some surety and new belief, grabs the opportunity to steal away the publisher’s gun and shoot the man. As Valentine asks the French peasants gathered round the table to hear and judge her story in the small bar near the Belgian border to where she and Lange have escaped, who could dare to blame the crazy dreamer, Lange for his acts? 

     Certainly the villagers find him innocent, despite the bartender’s idiot son’s demand that they call the police; and the last scene of this film shows the couple crossing over the border, free from the ramifications of the murder.

 

    Made during Renoir’s flirtation with and, soon, open embracement with the Communist Party (the very next year Renoir made a promotional film for the Party), it is one of the loveliest films of his early period. In this light story, there are only a couple of dark scenes, but they are among the most important. One, is the scene in which Charles’ girlfriend, having been impregnated by Battala’s rape, is giving birth: the child dies, but the mother thankfully survives. The other is the scene of the crime. As Battala, revealing himself to Lange, moves toward the right and out of the frame, Renoir pans his camera on a circular arc to the left, revealing the collective still celebrating within, before returning to the source of their previous distress, the villain finally showing his face to Lange. Battala is represented through angles, at a pitch; he is, we recall, a man who has angled and pitched his way through life. Lange, on the other hand, has been strengthened and emboldened by the circle of his friends. In this remarkable cinematic encounter, we realize that the dreamer has finally awakened. He acts to kill a man who has already long been spiritually dead.

 

Los Angeles, May 18, 2017

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (Mary 2017)

 

Eyal Resh | Boys / 2016

afraid of the dark

by Douglas Messerli

 

Eyal Resh (screenwriter and director) Boys / 2016 [15 minutes]

 

In Eyal Resh’s Boys (2016) absolutely nothing happens; everything happens. The two 12 or 13-year-old friends, living just a few blocks apart, play in the sprinkler system with a young girl, and when she goes home continue their play, escalating into minor rough-housing.                  

     When called in to get ready for dinner, Jake (Pearce Joza) asks if his friend Brian (Wyatt Griswold) might stay over for the night. Permission is quickly given, and Brian runs back home to pack up a toothbrush, etc. and returns.

     The two make prank telephone calls, wrestle a bit, count their growing underarm hairs—the dark-haired Jake definitely has more than the redheaded Brian—and continue in their meaningless conversations until Jake’s mother enters, ordering them to be quieter and go to sleep.

     They lay in the dark for a while, Brian finally getting up a nerve to tell his friend that he is afraid of the dark. Jakes puts his hand on his friend’s chest and lets it lay there for a long while.

    Brian eventually sits up and straddles Jake, leaning over somewhat close to his face as if debating whether to kiss his friend or not, but certainly allowing their midsections to touch and even moving in a slow rhythm, that might be described as frotting, for a significant amount of time, but finally coming to a stop.

     He turns back to his side of the bed, soon reporting “Jake, I have to go home.”

     He attempts to call his parents to expect him, but gets no answer.      

    Jake does not try to stop him, and merely pulls the cover over his head, inwardly realizing what has happened but pretending that he wants to know nothing about it.

     Brian gets his backpack and sneaks out of the house, not wanting to be questioned by adults.

     He begins slowly walking the few blocks home, but as he reaches the last part of the trip, he shifts into a run.

     You might say that that evening is the first of a long series of realizations that will plague him through puberty into adulthood about his sexuality. He has enjoyed the almost nonexistent sexual contact with his friend, and he has comprehended, more importantly, that he does enjoy it, that he has initiated the contact and will want to again and again. He has no choice but to proceed next time or again run.

     And so, we realize, Brian has begun in a series of engagements and escapes that will exhaust him until he can accept what he has come to realize that night as being something from which he no longer needs to run.

     How can he possibly explain that to his parents, to his friend, to anyone else? It is a matter to deal with in the dark, that as he has stated, terrorizes him.

 

Los Angeles, March 20, 2022

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (March 2022).

Michael Simon | Is One of You Eddie? / 2006

the master of sex

by Douglas Messerli

 

Michael Simon (screenwriter and director) Is One of You Eddie? / 2006 [8 minutes]

 

The four gay neighbors in their 30s or early 40s, Alex, Josh, Mick, and Phillip (Robert Laughlin, Craig Olsen, Leif Lillehaugen, and Felix Montano) have gathered as they probably do every Saturday or Sunday afternoon for a brunch. Alex has once again put together the perfect mix of meats, cheeses, and desserts, beautifully displayed and served on his outdoor table to the gathering of his attractive friends. They speak the language of a gay coterie, almost as if they had never left the closet,  one of them telling of his most recent gay encounter at the upscale clothing store Barneys, where the boy measuring his inseam was interested in exploring other parts of his body—a tale interrupted when the neighbor who lives upstairs in their West Hollywood apartment complex drops by on his way back for his day job, clearly not wanted, particularly since it has interrupted the salacious tale that would surely end as everyone hoped and expected.

      Eddie (Bill Jacobson) is clearly not attractive, a bruiser of a guy, with a head almost smaller than his thick arms and hands, trying to be friendly as he pulls off his clip-on tie, tired from an unexpected shift of his job but on his way to perform his part off-hours work as a masseur. As if they were all back in high school, they make it clear that Eddie is not one of their “group,” definitely not their equal, and he feels it, expressing in his apologetic explanation that he was just trying to be friendly.

      The moment he climbs the stairs to his own apartment, they quickly dish him like the gossipy and snippy gay boys they are.    

       Yet a moment later a man shows up, a true beauty in a leather jacket and sunglasses, someone almost out of a gay porn movie, an idol in the old-fashioned gay sense. They are as stunned by his beauty as if an angel had just dropped from the sky, but even more startled when he calls out, “Is one of you Eddie?”

 

       The spell is almost broken, as they point upstairs, giggling a bit in their imagining of the meet up between a gay god and their neighborhood thug. But they can’t help but watch the newcomer strip off his shirt through the window, trying imagine what he must think of his new masseur.

       Soon they turn back to their tarts.

 

       A short while later Chad (Jared Edwards), the leather god, staggers out of the room, seeming still in a kind of daze. He describes in detail from his position above how sublime his erotic rub was, how with his tender fingers Eddie had gone over this entire body, almost oblivious to his growing erection but increasing the pleasure with his sensuous fingers until finally...yet another sexual story that doesn’t need completion for us to better imagine its result. 

       His description appears to send the diners into a tizzy as the three of them, once Chad finishes his story and leaves, rush towards the stairs after overhearing that Eddie’s following appointment has cancelled, their host reminding them that he has slaved all day to prepare their lunch.       

     Michael Simon’s 8-minute fable reminds us that when it comes to love-making one cannot always to trust one’s eyes, and that we certainly cannot define friends by appearances. The four are true to stereotype, not Eddie. If nothing else, this cute if trivial short redefines what it is to be a neighbor.

 

Los Angeles, March 20, 2022

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (March 2022).