Though Masaki Kobayashi wasn’t really a member
of the Japanese New Wave, the renowned portmanteau film Kwaidan, arguably his most famous work alongside his previous film Harakari, is considered by many to
belong to the breakthrough movement. It comprised of four separate supernatural
(ghost) stories set in feudal Japan and was adapted from the folktales written
by Greek-born Japanese writer Lafcadio Hearn. The first short, ‘The Black
Hair’, was about a man who deserts his wife in search of greater fortunes, leading
to a shocking climax; the second, ‘The Woman of the Snow’, was about a young
woodcutter who marries an enigmatic woman who may have links to a sinister
event from his past; the third, ‘Hoichi the Earless’, was about a blind temple
boy with exquisite musical talents who ends up singing songs about a devastating
battle from long back to those who died in it; and the final short, ‘In A Cup
of Tea’, was about a samurai guard who inadvertently ends up consuming a man’s
soul. The quality of the stories, as can be expected, swung considerably from
one to the other. The third story wasn’t just the longest of the lot, it was
also quite easily the best of the four. It begun with a highly stylized and an almost
surreal depiction of a bloody war, with the minimally used but decidedly melancholic
folksong being played in the background. The story’s spiritual content was beautifully
counterbalanced by its audio-visual splendour. The first short, too, was quite good,
especially in its commentary on man’s lust for fame, and the tragic
consequences of delayed attempts at redemption.
Director: Masaki Kobayashi
Genre: Fantasy/Horror/Surreal Drama
Language: Japanese
Country: Japan
Resnais’ debut feature Hiroshima Mon Amour and his follow-up film Last Year at Marienbad remain as not just his most renowned works,
but also seminal products of the French Nouvelle Vague. A head-scratcher if
there ever was one, this was a formally challenging, delectably enigmatic and
strangely engaging film exploring his pet themes of time and memory. Set in a
palatial and opulent hotel where a huge crowd has gathered for some unexplained
reason. There we find a suave unnamed man (Giorgio Albertazzi)
trying to convince an alluring nameless lady (Delphine Seyrig), that they had had
a brief romantic tryst in this hotel a year back, even though she has
absolutely no memory of him (or is it that she is feigning ignorance, or
perhaps even that he’s simply cooking up a fake story?). The narrative
regularly jumped from the present to a past that could either be true or simply
a figment of the man’s imaginations or a projection of what he’s trying to
convince her of or an alternate reality. There are simply too many permutations
possible, any of which could be true. Meanwhile, a mysterious and stoic man,
who maybe her husband, goes around involving his fellow guests in a simple but
interesting game that, in fact, became very popular upon the film’s release. Written
by nouveau roman author Alain
Robbe-Grillet and beautifully shot in luminous B/W, this dream-like,
self-reflexive film, where the director’s intent could have been anything from meditations on ‘truth’ in cinema, to playing truant with his audience,
continues to remain as captivating and as confounding as the elegant, maze-like
hotel it was set in.
Director: Alain Resnais
Genre: Drama/Psychological Drama/Surreal Drama/Romance/Experimental Film/Avant-Garde
Language: French
Country: France
The much awaited Django Unchained, Tarantino’s eighth film in two decades, is not
anything if not a Tarantino-film, despite it being his first tryst with
Westerns. With its protagonist’s name and opening song borrowed from Sergio
Corbucci’s iconic Spaghetti B-Western Django,
this is an ambitious (in terms of scale), unabashedly violent, genre-bending
and deliriously entertaining work of love. The revenge and rescue story is
about Django (Jamie Foxx), a freed slave during the Civil War era, who, with
the training and help of a smooth-talking German bounty-hunter (Christopher
Waltz), goes about saving his wife from the harem of slaves of Calvin Candie
(Leonardo Di Caprio), a wealthy cotton plantation owner. Interestingly, instead
of the nefarious white slave-owner, the bigger foe for the protagonist turns
out to be one of his fraternity so to speak – the slimy head-slave of Candie
(Samuel L. Jackson) and one of the most loathsome character imaginable. Restraint
has never been one of Tarantino’s qualities. So, understandably, the film wasn’t
without its fair share of “fat”. But, at the same time, it was
his propensity for cheeky humour and over-indulgence that also laced the film
with a number of inspired moments – the scene involving the bunch of nincompoop
Klu Klux Klan members was particularly hilarious. An African American cowboy or
a rap song accompanying a brutal carnage, were quintessential Tarantino. The
sudden zoom-ins and zoom-outs, the grand outdoor vistas, and the high-octane
gunfights were added bonuses. Waltz and Jackson provided spectacular turns,
while Di Caprio was good too, and the eclectic soundtrack, comprising of both
originals and covers, and traversing across various genres, was quite brilliantly
designed.
Director: Quentin Tarantino
Genre: Western/Revisionist Western/Action
Language: English
Country: US
Jules Dassin’ Thieves’ Highway was sandwiched between three of his greatest
classic noirs, viz. The Naked City,
on one side, and Night and the City
and Rififi on the other. However,
unlike the other two, this was as much a social melodrama as it was a crime film,
and certainly no where as tar-drenched or nightmarish as them. This was also
his final film in the US for a while on account of being blacklisted by HUAC. Richard
Conte, in one of his rare good guy roles, essayed the character of Nick, an
Italian American war veteran who returns from abroad to find that his father,
who was a trucker, hasn’t just been cheated of money, but has also lost his
legs, courtesy Figlia (Lee J. Cobb), a thoroughly corrupt fruits dealer. He
cuts a deal with another trucker, puts all his money into it, and sets out to
exact revenge and street justice – but not before he experiences numerous
roadblocks on the way in the form of a perilous and incredibly tiring journey,
a ruthlessly conniving Figlia, personal loss, and unlikely romance with a local
prostitute as opposed to an all-American blonde. Dassin painted a very
convincing picture of capitalistic exploitation of the working class and the
reverse American Dream, as well as an accurate portrait of long distance
trucking and the way California fruit wholesaling market worked then. The
staccato dialogues and the sharp B/W photography ensured that this just about
managed to contain the flavours of a noir, even if it lacked enough power,
punch or fatalism. Conte gave a measured turn as the exasperated hero, while Cobb
was quite terrific as the bullying, thuggish, slimy and quietly menacing antagonist.
Director: Jules Dassin
Genre: Crime Drama/Film Noir
Language: English
Country: US
The Slovakian film The Sun in a Net, directed by Stefan Uher, was one of the earliest
products of the Czech New Wave, as also one of the most acclaimed. Yet, with
its freewheeling style, urban charm, and delectable formalistic playfulness, it
was rather reminiscent of the French Nouvelle Vague. The film portrayed a few days in
the lives of two Bratislava youths, Fajalo (Marian Bielik), an aimless amateur photographer,
and the sad-eyed fickle-minded girl Bela (Jana Belakova), with whom he has an
on-and-off relationship. The two made for an interesting couple bound to have a
torrid time together – she is prone to emotional outbursts, explained by her
absent father and her blind mother, while he isn’t the expressive or emotive
kind, and nor was his familial or personal background revealed except his fetish
for human hands. When they have a fall-out, he, like a well-behaved Socialist,
goes for voluntary summer work, starts a casual fling with a sassy lady and befriends
a likeable aged man who, as it turns out, is Bela’s paternal grandfather. The
strangely complicated teenage love story of the two, their general sense of ennui,
angst and rudderlessness, and coming to terms with their hormonal desires, were
brilliantly complemented by the film’s stylistic flourishes. The tone, style and
spirit of the film, on lack of a better word, were singularly jazzy. The striking, expressionistic B/W photography, with all the heavy close-ups, deep
focus, and marvelously captured images through canted angles and reflections,
along with the minimal score that seemed to be emanating from an old radio
and the discordant editing, furthered its delightfully subversive
nature.
Director: Stefan Uher
Genre: Drama/Psychological Drama/Urban Drama
Language: Slovak
Country: Slovakia (erstwhile Czechoslovakia)
