Branded To Kill (1967)

I had become more interested in Japanese noir two Criterion Months ago after watching Pale Flower and realizing there must be more there, especially when stumbling onto the reputation that Seijun Suzuki’s Branded To Kill had within the genre. Also, taking into account that I’d seen and liked Suzuki’s earlier Tokyo Drifter, I figured this film would be a fun time. While I’m not sure I understood large portions of what this movie was going for, I can still see some of the allure of this film that seems to have influenced a fair share of filmmakers. But overall, I just found its plot and intentions a little too indecipherable, which was famously what got Suzuki fired from the Nikkatsu film studio, as they declared that he made “movies that make no sense and no money”. Continue reading →

Juliet of the Spirits (1965)

In terms of discovering classic foreign films as a budding teenage cinephile, Fellini was certainly one of my gateway directors. That said, I gobbled up a bunch of his movies in high school and early college and probably have not watched one of his films since we were still renting DVDs in the mail from Netflix. So since Criterion Month always presents plenty of opportunities for a dip into Fellini-land, I’ve always been curious to see how I feel about the director now, since he’s certainly not namechecked by filmmakers nearly as much as he was 20 or 30 years ago. However, in watching 1965’s Juliet of the Spirits, it’s easy to see how Fellini’s influence on cinema is still quite present, while a latter film like this still has the ability to challenge and disorient.

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Ashes and Diamonds (1958)

For my first foray into the career of Polish director Andrzej Wajda, I’m starting at the end. Not at the end of his career, as he would be a presence on the international film stage even into the ’80s, but more because I’m starting at the end of a trilogy. Wajda’s films A Generation in 1955 and Kanał in 1957 preceded Ashes and Diamonds as commentaries on the effects World War II had on Poland, and all three have appeared together in an early Criterion box set that is now out of print. But Ashes and Diamonds seems to be the most acclaimed of these three films, so it seemed like a good place to start. The film certainly feels like a continuation of something, as there’s an impeccable amount of craft behind it, which managed to slip in some anti-communist sympathies despite being filmed in communist Poland. Continue reading →

Cairo Station (1958)

One fun thing to be reminded of each year when we do Criterion Month is that film is such a rich, wide-ranging, and diverse medium that there are always new pockets of great filmmaking around the world to discover. Namely, I chose to watch Cairo Station for not much reason other than that it was a film produced in Egypt, a country that I don’t believe has been represented yet in Criterion Month. So after watching the film and doing a little bit of digging into its production, I was surprised to find that Egypt actually had a pretty thriving film industry during the mid-20th century, on par with Bollywood.

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Night and the City (1950)

There are plenty of directors that are closely associated with the film noir genre, from John Huston to Billy Wilder to Edward Dmytryk. However, there was really only one great noir director who found themself completely severed from the country that produced the majority of the great noirs. Jules Dassin first made a name for himself in the genre in Hollywood with fellow Criterion Collection entries 1947’s Brute Force and 1948’s The Naked City, but was blacklisted due to being a former member of several American communist party associations in his younger years. This is how Dassin ended up directing his later films in Europe, such as heist classic Rififi. While Dassin was in the midst of being ousted from Hollywood, he made a sojourn to Britain to direct Night and the City, a film fittingly about a desperate man with more than a few walls closing in on him.

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Hell’s Angels (1930)

There is not much value in getting nostalgic for how the ultrarich used to live. Yes, they seemed to have better taste, with their ornate mansions that still stand today and often serve as museums or tourist destinations, as well as their patronage to the arts. But at the same time, a billionaire is still a billionaire. And if we’re adjusting for inflation while talking about the ultra-wealthy of the early 20th century, a millionaire is still a millionaire.

That said, there is something about the image of maverick aviation pioneer Howard Hughes risking his life against the wishes of his stunt coordinator to film one of the marvelous plane combat scenes in 1930’s Hell’s Angels. It was a stunt so dangerous that Hughes crashed his plane and had to have facial surgery, which was immortalized in the 2004 film The Aviator. It’s the type of thing you’d be hard-pressed to imagine one of today’s billionaire tech turds attempting, let alone having the attention span to craft a piece of long-form storytelling, even one that mostly aims to thrill and amaze you. So with that all said, I have to give Mr. Hughes begrudging respect for pulling off one of the more entertaining movies of the early sound era I can remember seeing.

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