Comments on: 40’s movies marathon – part 124 http://max256.bearstrong.net/2010/09/27/40s-movies-marathon-part-124/ 256 words or less - or your money back! Sat, 04 May 2013 17:25:46 +0000 hourly 1 By: Bjørn Stærk http://max256.bearstrong.net/2010/09/27/40s-movies-marathon-part-124/#comment-881 Wed, 29 Sep 2010 03:40:37 +0000 https://max256.wordpress.com/?p=2997#comment-881 Interesting. And while we’re on the topic: There’s a scene in Yasujiro Ozu’s 1947 movie Record of a Tenement Gentleman where it looks like he managed to slip through a sly reference to the occupation. A carpet or something has been hung up outdoors, and a boy goes out to beat on it. And the carpet kind of looks exactly like the American flag:

http://max256.files.wordpress.com/2010/09/record-of-a-tenement-gentleman-1947-yasujiro-ozu-american-flag.jpg

It isn’t really used to make a point, (at least not in the part I saw), but it made me laugh.

]]>
By: John http://max256.bearstrong.net/2010/09/27/40s-movies-marathon-part-124/#comment-880 Wed, 29 Sep 2010 03:10:37 +0000 https://max256.wordpress.com/?p=2997#comment-880 The wiki page for DrunkenAngel goes into some detail about it:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drunken_Angel

I haven’t seen the film you reference but now I’m very curious about it. Too bad you didn’t enjoy Devil’s Wanton, but your point about it the Betgman parody is funny and poignant. I blogged about something similar not too long ago re: the same movie. How perfectly Bergmanesque was it that ehen the couple goes to the theater to see a comedy, it had the devil, a skeleton, and a giant spider? In Bergman’s world, those things are passed off as comedy.

]]>
By: Bjørn Stærk http://max256.bearstrong.net/2010/09/27/40s-movies-marathon-part-124/#comment-879 Tue, 28 Sep 2010 19:33:08 +0000 https://max256.wordpress.com/?p=2997#comment-879 Do you have any examples? I haven’t noticed anything, but perhaps it’s too subtle.

The most interesting Kurosawa movie with regard to the war is in my view The Men Who Tread on the Tiger’s Tail from 1945, which isn’t well known because it’s not at all up to his later movies. It was made right at the moment when the war ended, and it’s about a group of warriors who have been defeated, and encounter a guard post. And they must decide if they’re going to attack it, and die fighting honorably, or trick their way past it. They decide not to fight, because they realize that dying honorably in a pointless battle isn’t such a wonderful thing after all, and that’s how it ends.

It may be just me, but this seems to capture pretty well what happened in Japan at that moment. A shift in attitude. And the irony is that the movie was banned because the warriors happened to have a lord with them, and that represented dangerous feudal attitudes. The censors of the occupation government were not particularly clever, but then I guess censors rarely are.

]]>
By: John http://max256.bearstrong.net/2010/09/27/40s-movies-marathon-part-124/#comment-878 Tue, 28 Sep 2010 19:06:27 +0000 https://max256.wordpress.com/?p=2997#comment-878 I love how Kurosawa managed to sneak critiques of American censorship past the censors.

]]>