Kedamono no ken or Sword of the Beast is a samurai flick directed by Hideo Gosha released in ‘65. It follows the story of a ronin on the run after killing a clan counsellor. He’s chased by the counsellor’s daughter, her fiance and some other samurai. Along the way, he also crosses paths with more characters, a poor but hopeful farmer, a couple that live atop a mountain, thugs, a Rubenesque woman and more.

It’s an interesting look into the Japanese social psyche back in the day. The film is set in 1857, after the Americans invaded Japan with their guns and crap. The film starts with Gennosuke, a ronin cast out from his clan because he killed the counsellor. We learn that he was tricked by an ambitious vice counsellor who made him do the dirty work via suggestion. His motivation to commit murder was one borne out of an ambition to rise up in rank but also in the hope of introducing reforms, that were sweeping the country and bringing Japan into the modern era.

Is murder viable if it makes more people’s lives better? I don’t know but there’s all kinds of motivations for people to break the fixed codes of ethics, particularly the samurai code. From being a man of honor and pride, Gennosuke has turned into a beast. Even in the first scene, you might get disgusted with him seeing as he’s obviously on the run but yet falls into temptation and tries to bone a whore hired to trap him.

Yet the reveal lets you realize what motivated him, the reasons that turn a human into a beast so to speak. Throughout the film, every level of beastliness is explored. Gennosuke’s path is one that ultimately lies in a possible redemption, from man to beast and back to man. Likewise in other characters, who live as beasts but shift back into humanity. The difference being ethical conduct, which is itself debatable but that’s not what the film is about. It’s about what pushes people over the edge. There’s also plenty of other characters who are full fledged beasts in human clothing. There’s random thugs who only care for their own lives and enjoyment and rob and rape and murder. Then there’s also authority figures, men in control who stay in control via force or power. There’s no full humans who perfectly abide by codes and ethics though. Ultimately, it can be suggested that man is not much different from beast but he prefers to think him/herself better than them.

You also consider the women in the film, who throw themselves around, morals completely unbound. It’s not that Gosha thinks of women as playthings, in fact they play an important role in the film. Throughout, they’re just as inclined to throwaway their own bodies in the hope of pure survival or some kind of betterment as much as the men kill, steal or rape. They’re not much different, only they don’t wave big swords around or pretend to be better than they are.

The cinematography is also really good and it’s not painfully slow. Plenty of forest shots like one scene with a guy blowing a horn and you see variously a river, a waterfall and more landscapes. It’s kinda like a man in nature kinda symbolism, unable to really break out of being a “lowly” beast. It’s fast paced and also really brief, at just 85 minutes. There’s also a good amount of kickass action scenes and swordplay. Plus half naked women. So it ain’t all boring schmoring. Which is good enough reason for the beastlier of us I’m sure.

It’s just black and white is all.

The New York eyewear company Moscot has this pair of frames called the Zelig, named after the Woody Allen film. That was how I got to know about the film. It’s an interesting concept, a mockumentary that plays out as part romance as well as part social commentary. It’s a parody and it’s satire and whilst it might come across a little crass and even racist as some points, I don’t think it meant to be like that and honestly, the 20s, when the film was set, was a pretty goddamn racist time anyway. Also, in Allen’s favor, he pokes fun at the Jews just as much as anyone else through the use of stereotypes.

Ignoring that minor hiccup, I have to say I enjoyed the film. The excessive faux-intellectualism garnered from staged interviews with people like Susan Sontag or Irving Howe gives the film a certain authenticity if you will. It helped immensely in making the story about a human chameleon bigger than what it was. Of course the fact that I have no clue who Susan Sontag or Irving Howe are matters not a smidge. I actually wiki-ed them whilst watching hahaha!

Allen’s character is largely shown through flashbacks and mostly through film interviews or footage. Part of this footage is from actual vintage reels with Allen inserted inside. Bear in mind, the film was made in 1983 so it was pretty innovative. Anyway, Allen’s character, Leonard Zelig, is a human chameleon. He changes his physical appearance when in the company of more dominant characters, typically men, to become like them. So when he was with a group of fat guys, he’d swell up a belly. Or when he was with some Chinese, he took on “oriental” features. Likewise with black dudes, doctors, lawyers, American Indians, politicians, actors, Greeks, Jews, you name it. Every stereotype gets lampooned.

I like how the film detached the character till it was granted a near mythical status. Despite the fact that you see Zelig constantly, he is somehow removed from the audience because he’s always a subject, something you’re considering, rather than someone you get to empathize with. This actually plays into the plot itself very well.

I think it’s kinda insane how well Allen was able to transform his idiosyncrasies into a madcap film script that allows him the space to make political statements, deride Hitler, celebrate the music of the 20s and 30s, the definite homage to Kafka and his penchant for Freud Freud Freud. On many levels, I’m very encouraged to try to do what Allen has done with film in what I’m trying to accomplish in future endeavors.

Zelig with his posse, Capone et al.

It’s been forever since I watched a Hitchcock film. I remember Rear Window when I was young and I loved it. I also watched Psycho for a film class once but that was never my thing. Strangers On A Train though, is a thrilling ride. Slow in pace but it’s got a seriously creepy villain character. The film is sorta based around a Patricia Highsmith novel of the same name. She of The Talented Mr. Ripley fame.

Farley Granger is Guy Haines, a slim, tall, handsome amateur tennis player who bumps into Bruno Anthony, played by Robert Walker on a train ride. The excessively inquisitive and talkative Bruno has read about Guy’s affair with a senator’s daughter in the papers and catches on to the idea that he’s going home to get a divorce from his wife so he can marry her instead. Guy’s obviously uncomfortable with this and gets annoyed but stupidly keeps allowing Bruno to get an edge in. Eventually, Bruno proposes the perfect murder, just as a thought at first. By swopping murders, Bruno killing Guy’s wife Miriam and Guy killing Bruno’s father in exchange. Because neither has any motive and no one knows about the swop, it would be “perfect”. Guy thinks he’s loony and leaves him. Of course Bruno then actually commits the murder, before pestering Guy endlessly.

More then just a crime caper, the way Hitchcock frames stuff and puts stuff in, you get this sense of duality. Of the duality in man. In his noted cameo scene, Hitchcock pops up to go onto the train, the fat, lumbering director matched equally by the fat double bass he carries. Bruno, in a sense, is really Guy’s alter ego, a sort of strange culmination of his wanton desires. In truth, Miriam is a hindrance, a flirtatious, loose woman who is only clinging onto Guy for the money whilst she gallivants round town with random men. Guy, on the other hand, is really in love with Anne but can’t be with her because Miriam refuses to budge. If he could have committed the perfect murder and get away with it, he probably would have. He certainly looks like he would consider it.

Bruno is desire unchained by logic or ethics or any systems of understood social conscience. He just does what he wants. His character is a psychopath, devious and evil. He hates his father but adores his mother in a way that overtly displays an Oedipus Complex. She in turn, doesn’t exactly turn him away, which is pretty gross. In some ways, I’m kinda reminded of Dostoevsky’s The Double when I was watching the film.

So we get this chilling, thrilling story about Guy trying to get out of the sticky mess he unwittingly fell into but subconsciously wants to happen but doesn’t want because society says it ain’t ok.

Robert Walker’s Bruno is insane in the membrane. His smarmy, almost gay behaviour is what drives the annoyingness of the chase if you will. He’s relentless and perverse. You hope you never meet a guy like him. The weirdest thing about the film is that it’s got a happy ending! I haven’t seen one in ages! Albeit one that arrives with a violent process as resolution, a certain unintended but desired evil required to bring about an apparent peace.

My first Jean Pierre Melville film was Le Samourai, which I love intensely. It was this fascination with his crime capers that made me initially shun watching L’armee des ombres, or Army Of Shadows. No, Army is about the French resistance in WWII and whilst the subject matter differs, the style and execution is probably better. It’s Melville crafting an excellent, if severely depressing view on things. Normally you get heroes who die gloriously but here it feels a lot more like average joes slowing going out with the barest whimper. Their fates appear embraced right from the beginning. I enjoyed it as a film but also hated it because it feels too awful.

Scene after scene, you get dreary and bleak juxtaposed against the calm insouciance of the characters, or perhaps it’s some innate understanding that there’s no escaping the clutches of death painted on the faces. Yes, everyone dies. Yet, it’s careful pacing, haunting soundtrack and constant subterfuge overpowers the violence and brutality required for the story. So you’re always focused on how these guys keep going on despite what happens and what they must do.

The film reunites Melville with two of his stars from Le Deuxieme Souffle, Lino Ventura and Paul Meurisse. The former is one of the leaders of the underground French resistance and the film starts with him going into an internment camp, only to make a daring break, narrowly avoiding capture. Which feels like most of the film, complicated, detailed operations with lots of set up and always near misses until we reach the inevitable conclusion, where everything is the darkest, subjectively and literally. Along the way, there’s a little questioning morality in war but also honor and courage as well.

In 2006, the film was re released in the US to critical acclaim, having been ignored for its near complete existence before that. Check the trailer.

Stanley Kubrick’s The Killing was made way back in ‘56 and it’s a film noir heist caper about a buncha guys tryin’ ta rob a racetrack. Note the duality in the title in it referring to a windfall as well as to death. Noirs never get a happy ending and this one tells you as much.

I thought the start of the film was a touch confusing as you don’t get introductions to characters, not that it’s necessary. It jumps right into the idea that this was a heist and it starts right about when the robbery takes place, slowly revealing more scene by scene, placing things in a timeframe and not having a linear time scale. One interesting thing was the multiple different views and perspectives the film shows you to build the story and give each character their own story.

Sterling Hayden, whom I previously saw in another noir, The Asphalt Jungle, plays the lead role as Johnny Clay, the guy who just got outta jail and saw his wife after 5 years only to decide it’s time for another ill-advised criminal caper. He strings along a few acquaintances and friends to do a big job, $2million dollars by robbing the racetrack. He hatches an elaborate plan involving a marksman, a wrestler, a bartender, a ticketer and a cop. Each one of ‘em has their own issues and reasons to need the dough.

So we get this interesting play of personalities and needs and the idea that crime doesn’t pay. No one gets away scot free but it’s an intriguing take on how desperation never gets the best out of man. You just know it’s all going to end ugly, but you don’t know how. That’s what the film is really about.