Here’s a scene from Ikiru (1952) that illustrates. The protagonist Watanabe (Takashi Shimura) has been having stomach pains; he has finally gone to the doctor. The scene takes place in the waiting room and proceeds in four movements, each one characterized by a different composition.

In part one, he enters the room; note the multiplane composition at which Kurosawa excelled. Notice also the newspaper in the foreground — it punctuates the scene, at the beginning and end, like bookends.

After Watanabe is seated, the man with the newspaper moves to sit opposite him. The composition is more or less symmetrical: another patient is between, forming the apex of a triangle, and a “window” on either side (the one on the right is actually the glass door to the waiting room). Although the composition is symmetrical, it’s not quite centered — the the entrance to the doctor’s office is to the right, waiting for him.

The man between them is called into the office; the third movement begins when Newspaper Man moves to sit beside Watanabe. The camera shifts slightly; now the composition is unbalanced; the weight is to the right, with another patient and the door to the office on that side. Newspaper Man begins to talk about the poor guy who just got up, about his symptoms, how the doctors said its just an ulcer, but that it’s really stomach cancer. As he describes the fatal symptoms, Watanabe becomes increasingly distressed and agitated, sliding down the couch to get away, and finally moving to another seat.

In the fourth movement, we get the first close-up of the scene, of Watanabe’s distressed face. The other patient is out-of-frame, all that remains is Watanabe and his tormentor, the yawning maw of the office, where his fate will be sealed. Watanabe crumples his hat as newspaper man prattles obliviously away. Our perspective is distorted so that a third of the frame is filled with Watanabe’s face; we cannot miss his agony.

Finally, newspaper man figures out what’s going on and, with a wonderful “Oh, crap!” expression, sits back and raises his newspaper to cover his face. With that, Watanabe’s isolation is complete.

The composition supports and augments the growing mood of despair in the scene, underlining and clarifying Watanabe’s anguish. At first, the composition is relatively balanced, as Watanabe has no reason not to believe that he has a relatively benign, though possibly chronic, condition. Then it becomes increasingly asymmetrical as it becomes clear to Watanabe — and us — that his symptoms are the same as the fatal ones Newspaper Man describes.  Another thing to notice is that as the scene progresses, the weight of the composition falls increasingly upon Watanabe; eventually, he’s completely isolated in the frame, courtesy of that newspaper.

Even though we are told the protagonist’s symptoms in exposition, they are underlined and driven home by the staging and composition.  Here’s the entire scene for your viewing pleasure. Note how it evolves organically, flowing from bad to worse within the frame. It’s a single shot, and although Kurosawa could have cut from composition to composition, he did not, preferring to do it by moving his actors around instead. Enjoy!

(note: Ikiru is every bit a masterpiece as Rashomon or The Seven Samurai; it is available in a very good Criterion edition. Highly recommended)

The film is an highly fictionalized account of the creation of the Moulin Rouge, with the great Jean Gabin starring as Harold-Ziegler-surrogate Henri Danglard. Danglard meets laundry-worker Nini (Françoise Arnoul) whom he takes under his wing and eventually into his bed. The film follows Nini’s rise to stardom, paralleled by Danglard’s dogged attempts to get the nightclub off the ground. Gabin is simply wonderful as the impresario, and the beautiful Arnoul brings a charming naiveté to her roll as the ingenue.

Like Renoir’s other early Technicolor films, French Cancan is stunningly beautiful. Though shot entirely on sound stages, the production and set design are such that it feels and looks authentic. Here is where Renoir’s painterly eye, developed at the feet of his famous father Pierre-August, comes into play. His naturalistic, rowdy compositions, coupled with the hand-painted Paris street sets, produce scene after scene of Impressionist beauty.

When Renoir returned to European film-making with The River, and especially with subsequent trio of show-biz/commerce films [Coach, Cancan and Elena and her Men (1956)], some found them altogether too light-weight. This is especially considering his output of the 1930s, which included Boudu Saved from Drowning, The Grand Illusion, and La Bête Humaine. I must admit I feel a bit that way myself. However, French Cancan is a marvelous entertainment, both lighter on its feet and more sincere than Baz Luhrman’s frenetic retelling of the same story. Powered by the smooth, effortless performance by Gabin, it is a rewarding and enjoyable way to spend a couple of hours and leave all your troubles behind.

Here’s one more clip from Jean Renoir’s Boudu Saved from Drowning (1932). Unlike the indoor tracking shot from yesterday’s post, it’s a pan (i.e., the camera remains still and rotates around its vertical axis). It takes place near the beginning of the movie as the homeless Boudu wanders aimlessly along the Left Bank, in front of the used book sellers that line the Seine even today.

The shot’s documentary look was novel for the day. Coupled with Michel Simon’s one-of-a-kind performance, it gives it an absolutely authentic feel. Boudu is there yet not there, as detached from the booksellers’ world as would be a Martian. It serves to illustrate the idea of class-separation that is one of the film’s themes; Boudu, the marginal, the outcast, wandering in the very heart of intellectual, bourgeois Paris. Note the extremely foreshortened, 2-dimensional space produced by the camera’s telephoto lens. It enhances the painterly compositions Renoir learned from his Impressionist father.

Enjoy!

Those who’ve read this blog before (and you know who you are!) will know that I’ve made a case for Jean Renoir being perhaps the greatest director of all time. As Peter Bogdanovich has noted, during the 1930s he made a virtually unprecedented string of masterpieces, including Grand Illusion, La Bête Humaine and The Rules of the Game.

Here’s a clip from one of those films, Boudu Saved from Drowning (1932), that illustrates some of Renoir’s genius. It’s a tracking shot through the halls of a typical Paris apartment of the period. The maid leaves the table of her employers, pauses in the intermediate hall, then reappears doubly-framed in the kitchen window. The camera glides over and between these spaces, emphasizing the differences in social class — a major theme of the film — as the maid moves from living spaces to hallway to kitchen, from the realm of her employers to her own domain. At the end of the track, the camera pushes in, and then a reverse shot brings us into the maid’s point of view. Notice the deep focus Renoir helped pioneer, and the use of frames within frames to suggest enclosure and confinement; in Renoir’s world, even the bourgeoisie are trapped in their own milieu.

Enjoy!

(Unlike many of Renoir’s 1930s masterpieces, Boudu is available on DVD in a fine Criterion Collection edition.)

And though I’m not going to mess with him either (at least not until there’s a cold day in HBO Hell), according to Aron Heller of the the AP there’s a whole nation filled with Zohan love:

“You Don’t Mess With The Zohan” looks to be a big hit in the Holy Land. Billboards bearing the leading man’s split-legged, blowdryer-wielding image are plastered across city walls and numerous stories have been written and broadcast in the local media, which has called it the “most Israeli film in Hollywood.”

Indeed, says Yair Raveh at Cinemascope, Zohan was number one at the Israeli box office over the weekend, selling 37,529 tickets. If that doesn’t seem like many, think about how small the country is, and that it’s just a bit under their numbers for Indiana Jones and Sex in the City.

And while us pointy-headed liberals might fret over the blatant stereotypes that reportedly abound in the film, Heller reports that Israelis in general don’t seem worried:

Israelis didn’t seem too slighted by the not-too-favorable portrayal of them. At Wednesday’s premiere in Tel Aviv, the packed crowd burst out in ovation and laughter at each sighting of an Israeli actor and at each over-the-top cliche of their behavior — like when Zohan brushes his teeth with hummus, disco dances with a huge bulge in his pants or plays paddle ball with hand grenades.

“I wasn’t insulted at all. It was funny. Exaggerated, but funny,” said Guy Ben-Yaacov, 23. “Besides, I know a few guys like Zohan.”

Don’t we all.

(Don’t forget to go to Cinemascope to see the hilarious (if over-long) Sabra Price is Right, the SNL sketch upon which Zohan is based)

Anyway, that just goes to show you about Joe and Ethan Cohan: they really suck as movie-makers. I mean, really, really suck. Over their five-film career, they have ran the gamet from stupid bar-room movies (Blood Simple) to stupid desert comedies (Raising Arizona) to idiotic hat films (Miller’s Crossing) to movies about bowling, hoola-hoops and cereal killers (The Big Lebowski, The Hudsucker Proxy and No Country for Old Men, respectfully), and you would think that with all that experience, their movies would be better, but they’re not. They’re all just crappy and despite the variety, all the same.

Let me adjudicate: their cinematography — by the brothers themselves under the pseudonym “Roger Deakins” — is decidedly third rate: it’s as flat and uninviting as a tranny hooker (not that this reviewer knows anything at all about tranny hookers). And whoever thought it was a good idea to let Carter Burwell write the music for all four movies? It makes me question Joe and Ethan’s judgment right alongside their talent.

But the heart of the matter is, the brothers just can’t direct their way out of a paper bag. They have no sense of pacing, their movies either go at a walk (and not fast like a race-walker walks, either, but more like a slow, arthritic, old-lady walk) or gallops along like a thoroughbred on steroids. There’s just no in between. And don’t get me started on their work — or lack of it, haha — with actors. To site just one horrid example, in Raising Arizona they made the normally sophisticated, erudite Nicholas Cage look like a hick, and Holly Hunter appear as if she were from the South. Now that’s bad directing!

To some it up, though I’ve seen all eight of their films — and three of their rock videos — I haven’t seen one thing I thought was worth the price of tea in China. But I will persist, gentile reader, because it is my mission to sacrifice myself for the sake of your knowledge and enjoyment. If you see the words “A Joe and Ethan Cohan Joint” on a movie trailer, run to the ticket window to get your money back.

I’m just glad that they haven’t won any Oscars!

(Note: this is an entry in the Bizarro Days blogathon over at Lazy Eye Theater. What? You thought I really wrote like this? Don’t answer that . . .)

The third of the Ocean movies by Soderbergh and company, Ocean’s Thirteen follows the formula laid out in the first two: Danny Ocean (George Clooney) and his cronies set out to accomplish an un-accomplishable heist. In the first one (Ocean’s Eleven) they take down the Bellagio Hotel in Vegas (I’m not spoiling anything … do you really think they wouldn’t succeed?), thus setting its understandably pissed-off owner Terry Benedict (Andy Garcia) on their tails. In the second installment (Ocean’s Twelve), Benedict has caught up with them and demanded their money or their lives, and to pay him back they steal a Fabregé egg. Or something.

In Ocean’s Thirteen, they’re out for revenge: their pal Reuben (Elliott Gould) has been ripped off by his erstwhile partner Willy Banks (Al Pacino) and is near death with grief. So the boys set out to destroy Banks and the casino he stole from their buddy. Along the way, they use a boring machine (two, actually) to cause an earthquake under the hotel, rig all the gaming tables to bleed Banks dry, steal his beloved diamonds, and a lot of other things that most of the time don’t make much sense.

No matter. Soderbergh’s direction is snappy, and the pacing is such that we aren’t left too long to wonder at the huge, gaping plot holes before we’re on to the next gag. Clooney and co-star Brad Pitt are as cool as proverbial cucumbers, and comic-relief Matt Damon is appropriately klutzy as he tries to impress dear old dad. It’s an uncommonly beautiful movie: nobody frames shots with the casual grace of Sodrbergh, and Vegas looks burnished through his lighting and Philip Messina’s production design. If the film is mainly an excuse to have a good time and funnel a little money the boys’ way, then so be it. It’s also a pleasant way to spend a couple of hours.

I confess a fondness for romantic comedies. (That’s right — I’m male and I like rom-coms. Wanna make something of it?) And one of the reasons, I suspect, is their predictability: they are as formal and mannered as Kabuki theater. And there’s something comforting in that. You know the structure, you know where the emotional beats are going to be, and you expect them, you fit into the film like a warm blanket, or a well-worn sofa.

In an above-average rom-com (Notting Hill, Four Weddings and a Funeral, and My Best Friend’s Wedding come immediately to mind), the pleasures sometimes lie in sharp, witty dialog. That is not the case with 27 Dresses. At other times, those pleasures will be in how the script playfully subverts the genre. Although 27 Dresses aspires to this, again — no cigar. About the only thing the film has going for it is Katherine Heigl, so stunning in Knocked Up. Here, her looks have been been dialed down a bit, perhaps to support the utterly ridiculous premise that she is always the bridesmaid but never the bride.

The direction, from Anne Fletcher, is plodding and arrhythmic, and the dialog is only fitfully funny. Ed Burns (the other guy, as usual) does his nice-but-bland shtick, and as the guy she gets, James Marsden is nothing but a good-looking cipher. As a film this is way below par; as a rom-com, slightly below average. Now that it’s out on DVD, and you can rent it for a fraction of what you’d have to pay in the theaters, it might not be a bad investment. Or maybe it’ll do if you’re trapped on a plane for 5 hours like I was.

On the film side of things, these are the last few days of the Seattle International Film Festival, and I think I’m going to manage to see at least one. Now let’s see … should I see The Unknown Woman, the trés serious offering by Giuseppe Tornatore? I don’t particularly care for his not-so-trés serious stuff (e.g., Cinema Paradiso, Il Postino), and this sounds a little like “I’ll show them, I don’t have to be treacly!”

Or maybe I should see Triangle, the latest Hong Kong gangster flick from Johnnie To and company, billed as “Three giants of Hong Kong crime cinema—Tsui Hark, Ringo Lam, and Johnnie To—join forces to create Triangle.” I do love me some Hong Kong crime movies.

Decisions, decisions . . . but whatever, I’ll be back blogging soon enough, as soon as I get this wedding thingy out of the way.

It must be nice being Martin Scorsese. He’s acclaimed as one of the greatest filmmakers in the world, he finally won the Oscar he’s been pining for, and best of all, he gets to make movies about his rock n’ roll idols. Well, once in a while, anyway. First there wasThe Last Waltz (1978), and damned if he didn’t hit it right out of the park, making one of the greatest concert films ever.

In the intervening years, he made the odd rock video, and a well-received television documentary of Bob Dylan (No Direction Home: Bob Dylan, 2005). Now, thirty years after The Last Waltz, he gets to make a movie about the band who, after outlasting the Beatles, declared themselves the Greatest Rock n’ Roll Band In the World. And it seems like a match made in heaven: Marty obviously loves the Stones (his soundtracks sound like Rolling Stones compilation discs) and Mick and the boys are still going at 60+ years of age, still producing records and touring. And anybody who has any fondness for The Last Waltz is probably wondering: did lightning strike twice? Did Scorsese make another masterpiece in Shine a Light?

It pains me to say this, but no. It’s not that it’s a bad film, it just that it’s not exceptional. It’s a pretty run of the mill concert film. And the problem is several-fold. First is the presence of Scorsese himself, injected as a character in the proceedings. While his motor-mouth schtick is always amusing, and it’s fun seeing him fussing and fuming about the lack of a song list, the film is about the Stones, after all. The second problem is the band itself: they’re just not very good. When they swing into the opening number (Jumpin’ Jack Flash) it’s like a garage band messing around, clinking guitar notes and all. They do get better as the evening progresses . . . by the time they get to Sympathy for the Devil, they’re cooking, albeit on a low heat.

But it takes a long time to get there, and for the first hour and a half or so, the principle pleasures are watching Jagger swagger and strut and generally belie his 64 years of age. And that brings us to another problem: on stage, Mick is as electric as ever, but off screen he’s a bore. Or at least the (mostly archival) clips Scorsese has chosen are boring, it’s hard to say which. They all seem to revolve around the fact that the band is still going after all these years, and though it could have been an examination of age and ego and determination, it isn’t. Instead, we get the same question asked in slight variations: how much longer do you want to keep doing this? And while it’s initially amusing to see a young Jagger saying stuff like “Probably only another year,” it gets old fast. We get it, Marty, they’re old.

On the positive side, it is a very beautiful film (Keith Richards’ wattles notwithstanding}. The colors are rich blues and browns and blacks, and the cinematography by Bob Richardson gives them a fine burnish. Scorsese’s direction is typically fine, with the camera tracking along with Jagger or swooping in onto the stage or capturing the bright spots just at the moment they are extinguished, leaving an afterglow like a cathedral window. And there’s one magical scene at the end, where the camera assumes Jagger’s POV, that is pure Scorsese.

Looking back over what I’ve just written, it sounds more negative than I mean it to be. True, as a vibrant rock n’ roll experience, Shine a Light leaves something to be desired. But as a record of the passing of an era — how much longer can these guys go? — it’s not so bad. If you can forgive the fact that they’re getting old (and who isn’t?) and accept the fact that they aren’t the musicians they once were, it’s not a terrible way to spend a couple of hours. But The Last Waltz it ain’t.