The searchers 1956 - Ford's masterpiece, Wayne's definitive role

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IMDB Rating: 8,0

Director: John Ford
Main Cast: John Wayne, Jeffrey Hunter, Vera Miles, Ward Bond, Natalie Wood, John Qualen

"If John Ford is the greatest Western director, The Searchers is arguably his greatest film, at once a grand outdoor spectacle like such Ford classics as She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949) and Rio Grande (1950) and a film about one man's troubling moral codes, a big-screen adventure of the 1950s that anticipated the complex themes and characters that would dominate the 1970s.
Described by the director as a 'psychological epic', The Searchers (1956) is John Ford's most revered Western, for its visual richness and profoundly ambiguous critique of the genre's (and America's) racism. Ford pushed John Wayne's archetypal Westerner into the realm of antiheroism, as Ethan's five-year quest to rescue his niece from Comanche chief Scar mutates into killing her when he discovers her living placidly as Scar's bride. While Ethan's lethal racism signals his insanity, Wayne's charismatic presence and Ethan's desire to salvage the family unit of 'civilized' settlers carries its own sheen of Western heroism. Still, the famous final image of Ethan's departure into the desert reveals that 'civilization' has no place for such an uncompromising figure.
Shot on location in Colorado and Monument Valley, Ford's vividly arid Technicolor vistas render Ethan a man of the magnificent and punishing landscape, unable to reconcile his inner savagery with domestic constraints. Greeted in America as just another quality Ford oater, the film was first reclaimed by French critics for the unresolved tensions and evocative style of Ford's narrative, elevating it to the status of cinematic art.
John Wayne gives perhaps his finest performance in a role that predated screen antiheroes of the 1970s; by the film's conclusion, his single-minded obsession seems less like heroism and more like madness. Wayne bravely refuses to soft-pedal Ethan's ugly side, and the result is a remarkable portrait of a man incapable of answering to anyone but himself, who ultimately has more in common with his despised Indians than with his more 'civilized' brethren. Natalie Wood is striking in her brief role as the 16-year-old Debbie, lost between two worlds, and Winton C. Hoch's Technicolor photography captures Monument Valley's savage beauty with subtle grace.
The Searchers paved the way for such revisionist Westerns as The Wild Bunch (1969) and McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971), and its influence on movies from Taxi Driver (1976) to Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) and Star Wars (1977) testifies to its lasting importance." - www.allmovie.com

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Sansho dayu (Sansho the bailiff) 1954 - An unforgettably sad story of social injustice, family love, and personal sacrifice

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IMDB Rating: 8,3

Director: Kenji Mizoguchi
Main Cast: Kinuyo Tanaka, Yoshiaki Hanayagi, Kyoko Kagawa, Eitaro Shindo

"On its French release in 1960, Sansho the Bailiff was ranked by Cahiers du cinéma as the best film of the year, topping such classics as Breathless, L'avventura, and Psycho. Critics were struck by the film's gorgeous photography, elegant camerawork, and exotic settings and by Kenji Mizoguchi's signature use of imagery that quietly evokes a spiritual transcendence above the suffering of the material world. Unlike Akira Kurosawa's frequent use of close-ups and fast-paced editing, Mizoguchi, here as elsewhere, keeps his camera distant and his takes long, resulting in a contemplative style in which the characters' suffering and pain seem vivid, yet small compared with the immutability of the landscape. The result is a film that is thoroughly engaging up to its devastating finale. Though it was initially more popular in the West than in Japan, this masterpiece has since been widely recognized as one of Mizoguchi's most beautiful works.
The subjugated plight of women in Japanese society was always a subject close to Mizoguchi's heart--never more so than in Sansho Dayu, one of the towering late masterpieces of his final years. Its intensity, compassion, dramatic sweep and breathtaking formal beauty place it among his greatest films. The story is set in the harsh feudal world of 11th-century Japan. A provincial governor is demoted and exiled for showing too much clemency to those he rules; travelling to join him, his wife is kidnapped and forced to become a courtesan and her children are sold into slavery. They grow up under the harsh regime of the bailiff Sansho while their mother (the great actress Kinuyo Tanaka, in a performance of heartbreaking desolation) yearns hopelessly for them. Working with his favourite cameraman, Kazuo Miyagawa, Mizoguchi films this tragic story in long, intricate takes, rarely resorting to close-ups. The visual elegance and formal restraint of his style make the film all the more emotionally harrowing, and the final scene, on a desolate and windswept island, must be one of the most unbearably moving endings in all cinema."

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The story of Temple Drake 1933 - One of the films most responsible for the creation of the Production Code

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IMDB rating: 7,3

Director: Stephen R. Roberts
Main Cast: Miriam Hopkins, William Gargan, Jack La Rue, Florence Eldridge, Guy Standing, Irving Pichel

"William Faulkner's novel Sanctuary was a notorious bestseller upon its publication in 1931, and while it was successful enough that Paramount Pictures quickly snapped up the film rights, they were forced to change enough of the story to make it fit for the screen (even in the pre-code era) that by the time it reached theaters the title had been changed to The Story of Temple Drake. It's a welcome surprise to discover that it's actually an engrossing little drama, even if its melodramatic overtones do get to be a bit on the heavy side in some places. Still, the fact is that Drake's story is more about southern power, class and hypocrisy than it is about sex, and it makes for an effective piece of filmmaking. Although Oliver P. Garrett's screenplay of necessity has to take some liberties with the William Faulkner novel that is its source, it comes across as one of the most successful screen adaptations of a Faulkner work. Things have been toned down a bit, and of necessity shortened, and the ending resolves too quickly, but there's still force and power and heat and drama in what Garrett has written for the screen. Stephen R. Roberts directs well, although with perhaps less 'oomph' than one might wish on occasion. But the film's biggest asset is it terrific star performance from Miriam Hopkins. Sexy, sensual, forthright and a force of nature in her own right, Hopkins' Temple lights up the screen. Her bravura performance is a delight from start to finish, and she is the bedrock that makes Drake a film to watch.
While the most sordid aspects of Sanctuary were excised by screenwriter Oliver H.P. Garrett and director Stephen Roberts, The Story of Temple Drake was still quite controversial on its initial release, and within a few months of its release, Will Hayes and Joseph Breen overhauled the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America's production code and strengthened enforcement of its guidelines on content, making it virtually impossible for a major studio to make a film like it again until the 1960s." - www.allmovie.com

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Murders in the Rue Morgue 1932 - Lugosi in a Poe adaptation

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IMDB rating: 6,3

Director: Robert Florey
Main Cast: Bela Lugosi, Sidney Fox, Leon Ames, Bert Roach, Betty Ross Clarke

"Having missed the opportunity to direct Frankenstein for Universal, Robert Florey was offered Murders in the Rue Morgue as a consolation, whereupon he transformed a pedestrian property into a minor classic.
Bela Lugosi in the prime of his horror career delivers a sublimely evil performance that carries this effective thriller released by Universal in the wake of their horror success of Frankenstein and Dracula. Based on a tale by Edgar Allen Poe, Murders in the Rue Morgue strikes a similar feel to some of Tod Browning's pictures: dark and rather sadistic. Lugosi's Dr. Mirakle is an evil doctor whose prize sideshow attraction is a killer gorilla whose blood he wants to mix with that of a woman (Sidney Fox) for some bizarre reason. While Lugosi takes the role to its horrifying limits, his co-stars pale by comparison playing rote characters in corny performances. Leon Waycoff (aka Leon Ames) is the hero, a medical student whose girlfriend (Fox) is abducted by the runaway ape in an exciting rooftop climax. The film's stronger elements - a woman's death in Mirakle's lab, another who is murdered and left stuffed in a chimney - come across even more powerfully thanks to the fine cinematography of the masterful Karl Freund (Metropolis). In one particularly noteworthy shot, the sound of a woman's screams are intercut with footage of shocked villagers. Director Robert Florey does a solid job of keeping the action moving and the audience on its toes despite a script that does have its occasional lame points. One notable example of this is when Waycoff's friend becomes overly upset that his pal won't eat. John Huston received credit on the film for adding dialogue." - www.allmovie.com

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