Review: "The Asphalt Jungle" is a Film-Noir Gem (Remembering Sterling Hayden)

TRASH IN MY EYE No. 152 (of 2006) by Leroy Douresseaux

The Asphalt Jungle (1950) – B&W
Running time:  112 minutes (1 hour, 52 minutes)
DIRECTOR:  John Huston
WRITERS:  Ben Maddow and John Huston (from the novel by W.R. Burnett)
PRODUCER:  Arthur Hornblow, Jr.
CINEMATOGRAPHER:  Harold Rosson (D.o.P.)
EDITOR:  George Boemler
COMPOSER:  Mikos Rozsa
Academy Award nominee

FILM-NOIR/CRIME/DRAMA/THRILLER

Starring:  Sterling Hayden, Louis Calhern, Jean Hagen, James Whitmore, Sam Jaffe, John McIntire, Marc Lawrence, Barry Kelley, Anthony Caruso, Teresa Celli, and Marilyn Monroe

The subject of this movie review is The Asphalt Jungle, a 1950 film noir and crime drama co-written and directed by John Huston.  The film is based on the 1949 novel, The Asphalt Jungle, written by author W.R. Burnett.  The Asphalt Jungle the movie is a caper film that focuses on an initially-successful jewelry heist that turns sour because of bad luck and double-crossing.

There was a time when an urban crime drama didn’t require massively staged shootouts in which by the time the credits rolled literally hundreds of bullet shell casings had hit the ground.  There was indeed a time before painfully loud gunfire and bodies flying backwards from high impact bullet hits.  That was before Hong Kong produced cop dramas and crime thrillers were the gold standard for crime films.  That was a time when all a director needed was a solid script, a large ensemble cast of character actors, and a gritty, urban American setting.

That simple age yielded a film like director John Huston’s The Asphalt Jungle.  The actor/writer/director best known for such films as The Treasure of the Sierra Madre and The African Queen could also turn a cool trick with such crime films as the timeless flick, The Maltese Falcon, and the Oscar-nominated Prizzi’s Honor.  Released in 1950, fans of the movie genre, Film-Noir, consider The Asphalt Jungle to be a noir classic.

The film follows a band of thieves who plan and execute a million dollar jewelry store heist.  Fresh out of prison, German-born master thief, Doc Erwin Riedenschneider (Sam Jaffe, who earned an Oscar nomination for his performance), takes into his confidence a wily hood named “Cobby” Cobb (Marc Lawrence) who runs an illegal betting parlor.  Cobb helps Doc assemble just the kind of team he needs to execute his crime:  Louis Ciavelli (Anthony Caruso), a safe cracker; Gus Minissi (James Whitmore), a driver; and Dix Handley (Sterling Hayden), a hooligan or thug.

However, they run into complications with the man who is supposed to help them fence (sell) the diamonds on the black market, Alonzo D. “Lon” Emmerich (Louis Calhern), a prominent criminal attorney.  Lon is in deep financial straits.  Broke and desperate for cash, he plots with a shady cohort, to double cross Doc and his gang, which, of course, puts the entire plan on the road to ruin.

John Houston and his crew splendidly create the gritty and grimy world in which skilled thieves and hardened criminals exist.  An underworld, it is indeed as the film’s tagline reads, “The City Under the City,” or at least it is the world behind the backdoors, alleyways, and criminal haunts (like Gus’s restaurant).  The actors superbly play to type the kind of ethnic and poor white characters that fill such stories – career criminals whose jobs or addictions (like Dix’s gambling habit) force them to continue working the streets the same way the needs of a family necessitate that an honest man or woman keep working just about everyday.

The Asphalt Jungle isn’t glossy or shiny noir.  Houston’s film is as matter-of-fact and as tough as Hayden’s Dix Handley – mistrustful of those who might befriend him and ready to put a big hurt on anyone in his way.  The Asphalt Jungle seems not to really care if someone likes it, and that makes this coarse little film truly a gem of a crime film and a gritty Film-Noir treat.

8 of 10
A

NOTES:
1951 Academy Awards:  4 nominations: “Best Actor in a Supporting Role” (Sam Jaffe), “Best Cinematography, Black-and-White” (Harold Rosson), “Best Director” (John Huston), and “Best Writing, Screenplay” (Ben Maddow and John Huston)

1951 BAFTA Awards:  1 nomination:  “Best Film from any Source” (USA)

1951 Golden Globes:  3 nominations: “Best Cinematography - Black and White” (Harold Rosson), “Best Motion Picture Director” (John Huston), and “Best Screenplay” (John Huston and Ben Maddow)

2008 National Film Preservation Board, USA:  National Film Registry

Monday, July 17, 2006

Updated:  Friday, May 23, 2014


The text is copyright © 2014 Leroy Douresseaux. All Rights Reserved. Contact this site for syndication rights and fees.

Review: "Gun Crazy" is Crazy Cool (Remembering Dalton Trumbo)

TRASH IN MY EYE No. 151 (of 2006) by Leroy Douresseaux

Gun Crazy (1950) – B&W
Deadly is the Female (1949) – original title
Running time: 86 minutes (1 hour, 26 minutes)
DIRECTOR:  Joseph H. Lewis
WRITERS:  MacKinlay Kantor, Millard Kaufman, and Dalton Trumbo (based upon the short story by MacKinlay Kantor)
PRODUCERS:  Frank King and Maurice King
CINEMATOGRAPHER:  Russell Harlan (director of photography)
EDITOR:  Harry Gerstad
COMPOSER:  Victor Young

FILM-NOIR/CRIME/DRAMA

Starring:  Peggy Cummings, John Dall, Barry Kroeger, Morris Carnovsky, Anabel Shaw, Harry Lewis, Nedrick Young, and Rusty Tamblyn with (cast that received no screen credit) David Bair, Paul Frison, and Trevor Bardette

The subject of this movie review is Gun Crazy, a 1950 film noir crime drama directed by Joseph H. Lewis.  The film was originally released under the title, Deadly is the Female, apparently sometime in 1949.  Gun Crazy is based on a short story written by MacKinlay Kantor, one of the film’s screenwriters.  Although Millard Kaufman is also credited as a screenwriter on Gun Crazy, he is not.  Kaufman was a “front writer,” meaning he allowed another screenwriter to use his name in order to work on the project.  The writer who used Kaufman’s name was Dalton Trumbo.

Trumbo was one of the “Hollywood 10.”  They were cited for contempt of Congress for refusing to give testimony to the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC) concerning Communist activity in Hollywood in the 1930s and early 1940s.  Trumbo and others were blacklisted from working on Hollywood film productions, or, if they did work on a production, their names were omitted from the film.  Trumbo is credited as the writer who reworked MacKinlay Kantor’s Gun Crazy story into a tale of a doomed love affair, but he could not receive a screen credit for his work on the film.

Gun Crazy the movie introduces Bart Tare (Rusty Tamblyn).  As a boy, Tare was obsessed with guns, although he was loathed to kill anything.  His obsession lands him in a reform school, but he retains the support of his family and especially of his friends, Dave Allister (Paul Frison) and Clyde Boston (Trevor Bardette).  After leaving the reform school and doing a stint in the army, adult Bart (John Dall) returns home to find that the adult Dave Allister (Nedrick Young) is now the editor of their hometown paper and that Clyde is now Sheriff Clyde Boston (Harry Lewis).

The trio attends a traveling carnival where Bart meets the love of his life, Annie Laurie Starr (Peggy Cummings), a carnie trick pistol shooter, who, like Bart, is gun-obsessed.  The two run off and get married, but Laurie is a dangerous girl who wants the high life.  The legitimate jobs that poor Bart can get won’t pay enough to buy her all the things she wants.  He’s too in love to be without her, so it’s easy for her to talk him into a life of crime.  They commit a string of daring robberies across the country that eventually cause them to kill.  Hunted and desperate, Laurie and Bart head back home to Bart’s sister, Ruby (Anabel Shaw), and her family, but Sheriff Clyde and Dave are waiting for them.

Experts and students of the film genre known as Film-Noir consider Gun Crazy to be classic noir.  The film, released initially under the title, Deadly is the Female, is based upon novelist MacKinlay Kantor’s short story that was originally published in The Saturday Evening Post.  Gun Crazy was mostly forgotten until it fell into favor in France with film critics, especially the group of critics who would themselves one day become filmmakers and also become tied to a movement called French New Wave – the most famous of the lot being François Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard.  Godard’s 1960 film, Breathless, apparently references Gun Crazy.

Although many critics and reviewers have praised director Joseph H. Lewis for the film’s documentary feel, used especially during the robbery sequences, Lewis’ film is actually very stylized and expressionistic from a visual point of view.  Everything that is important for the audience to know about Laurie and Bart:  their roles, identities, thoughts, and feelings, as well as the roles of the people around them, Lewis tells through visual cues.  From the titled camera shots early in the film that suggest the mental state of young Bart to the sexualized first encounter of Bart and Laurie – all are stylish.  In fact, Lewis really pushes the idea of sex and the duo’s obsession with guns being interrelated.

The film has some good performances, a few exceptional – especially British actress Peggy Cummings as Laurie and, in two small roles, Barry Kroeger as Laurie’s carnival boss, Packett, and Morris Carnovsky as Judge Willoughby.  The script is a good blueprint for Lewis, but is soft on the dichotomy between Bart’s two worlds – Peggy and crime and Dave and Clyde.  Ultimately this film does fit the auteur theory that Truffaut, Godard, and their contemporaries pushed – the idea that the director is the film’s author.  Joseph H. Lewis takes the best that his cast and crew give him and turn Gun Crazy into a film of notorious love, sexual tension, lust, and the kind of violence that can come from two lovers’ obsessions.  This is definitely a precursor to Bonnie and Clyde.

7 of 10
B+

Saturday, July 15, 2006

NOTES:
1998 National Film Preservation Board, USA:  National Film Registry

Updated: Tuesday, September 10, 2013

The text is copyright © 2013 Leroy Douresseaux. All Rights Reserved. Contact this site for syndication rights and fees.

Walt Disney's "Cinderella" Never Loses its Magic

TRASH IN MY EYE No. 100 (of 2006) by Leroy Douresseaux


Cinderella (1950)
Running time: 72 minutes (1 hour, 12 minutes)
DIRECTORS: Clyde Geronimi, Wilfred Jackson, and Hamilton Luske
WRITERS: William Peed, Ted Sears, Homer Brightman, Kenneth Anderson, Erdman Penner, Winston Hibler, Harry Reeves, and Joe Rinaldi (based upon the story, “Cendrillon” by Charles Perrault)
PRODUCER: Walt Disney
EDITOR: Donald Halliday
COMPOSERS: Paul J. Smith and Oliver Wallace
Academy Award nominee

ANIMATION/FANTASY/COMEDY/FAMILY with elements of romance

Starring: (voices) Ilene Woods, Eleanor Audley, Helene Stanley (live action model), Rhoda Williams, Lucille Bliss, James MacDonald, Luis Van Rooten, June Foray, Clint McCauley, Lucille Williams, Don Barclay, William Phipps, and Betty Lou Gerson (narrator)

The subject of this movie review is Cinderella, a 1950 animated fantasy film from Walt Disney Productions. Based on the fairy tale “Cendrillon” by Charles Perrault, it is the twelfth film in the Walt Disney Animated Classics series.

After her father dies, Cinderella (Ilene Woods), a gentle-hearted girl, faces the jealousy and spite of her wicked stepmother, Lady Tremaine (Eleanor Audley), and her two harpy stepsisters, Drizella (Rhoda Williams) and Anastasia (Lucille Bliss). Cinderella’s friends include a half-dozen mice that do constant battle with Lady Tremaine’s malevolent cat, Lucifer (June Foray). Salvation comes when The King (Luis Van Rooten) declares a palace ball to celebrate the homecoming of his son, The Prince (William Phipps), and he decrees that every eligible maid (unmarried young woman) in the kingdom attend. However, Cinderella’s stepmother doesn’t want her to attend, but a small army of friendly mice and birds and Cinderella’s benevolent Fairy Godmother (Verna Felton) makes sure she can. This magical tale includes many tunes to which the viewer can hum along including “A Dream is a Wish Your Heart Makes,” “So This is Love,” and inimitable “Bibbidy, Bobbidy-Boo.”

Cinderella was Walt Disney Feature Animation’s 12th feature film. It was, at the time, the first full-length animated feature for Disney since 1942’s Bambi, because box office and wartime cutbacks had reduced the studio’s feature film output to package films like Make Mine Music and Fun and Fancy Free, which were made of two or more short films with bridging sequences. Also, according to animator Marc Davis, 90 percent of Cinderella was done in live action before it was animated.

Cinderella comes perhaps at the end of Disney’s “Golden Age” and the beginning of period in which its films received less critical praise. Cinderella retains some of the illustrative and technical aspects that marked Disney’s pre-WWII films (like Bambi and Fantasia) as the pinnacle of hand-drawn animated features. Cinderella’s background paintings, art direction, and sets befit a film with themes of royalty and class distinctions. Most of the animation is geared towards funny animal slapstick comedy. The scenes with the mice, birds, Lucifer the cat, and Bruno (James MacDonald) the dog, etc. reflect the sensibilities of the sketch and gag comedy prevalent in Looney Tunes cartoon shorts featuring Bugs Bunny and Yosemite Sam. The scenes with The King and The Grand Duke (Luis Van Rooten) depend of comic timing between this comical duo, and that reflects the influence of Tex Avery’s cartoons.

The story of course is based on the fairy tale, Cinderella, primarily the version of the story told by Charles Perrault, the 17th century French author who laid the foundations for the literary genre that would be known as “fairy tales.” Disney’s version is a funny, warm-hearted romance that appeals across age categories. The voice acting plays as much a part as the animation in making Cinderella such an outstanding film. The actors make this a palatable and convincing drama when the comic half of the cast isn’t in control. The filmmakers simply do a magnificent job in bringing a film that appeals so much to the heart and to the funny bone and that dazzles with its production values.

There are so many memorable sequences. The birds and mice working in unison to make Cinderella’s dress are magical. The transformation of the animals and pumpkin into an enchanted carriage for Cinderella is a sparkling dream, and Cinderella’s dance with The Prince (who is never referred to in the film as “Prince Charming”) is certainly one of the most lyrically romantic moments in cinema history. The beauty of the animation and story combined with stellar Tin Pan Alley songs make Cinderella a true Walt Disney classic and a classic of American filmmaking.

10 of 10

NOTES:
1951 Academy Awards: 3 nominations: “Best Music, Original Song” (“Bibbidy, Bobbidy-Boo” by Mack David, Al Hoffman, and Jerry Livingston); “Best Music, Scoring of a Musical Picture” (Oliver Wallace and Paul J. Smith); and “Best Sound, Recording” (C.O. Slyfield)

Review: "Sunset Boulevard" is a Hollywood Classic (Happy B'day, William Holden)

TRASH IN MY EYE No. 80 (of 2005) by Leroy Douresseaux

Sunset Blvd. (1950) – Black & White
Running time: 110 minutes (1 hour, 50 minutes)
DIRECTOR: Billy Wilder
WRITERS: Charles Brackett, D.M. Marshman, Jr., and Billy Wilder
PRODUCER: Charles Brackett
CINEMATOGRAPHER: John F. Seitz
EDITOR: Arthur Schmidt
COMPOSER: Franz Waxman
Academy Award winner

DRAMA/FILM-NOIR

Starring: William Holden, Gloria Swanson, Erich von Stroheim, Nancy Olson, Fred Clark, Lloyd Gough, Jack Webb, and Cecil B. DeMille

The subject of this movie review is Sunset Boulevard, the 1950 Film-Noir from director Billy Wilder. The film follows an unsuccessful screenwriter drawn into the fantasy world of a faded silent movie star who dreams of a big screen comeback. Sunset Boulevard, named for the boulevard that runs through Los Angeles and Beverly Hills, California, is widely accepted as one of the greatest films of American cinema.

Joe Gillis (William Holden) was a struggling, journeyman screenwriter in late 1940’s Hollywood. Recently deceased, he begins to narrate the final months of his life. He only has a few films to his credit – B-movies, and he’s a few months behind on both his rent and car payment; in fact, two repo men are tracking him to take his car. Chance takes him into the driveway of a humongous old mansion (an actual mansion once owned by Jean Paul Getty) built at the height of the silent film era.

There, he meets the owner, faded silent film star, Norma Desmond (Gloria Swanson). After a bit of a rocky start to their relationship, Norma hires Joe to help edit a long script she has penned for what she firmly believes will be her comeback film, a movie directed by her old collaborator, director Cecil B. DeMille (playing himself). As the work progresses, however, Norma draws ever so closer to Joe and becomes more dependent on him for support during this trying (for her) time, but her neediness and passionate obsession engulfs him in its fiery throes.

Sunset Blvd. or Sunset Boulevard is famed writer/director Billy Wilder’s ode to the decadence of old, old, Hollywood – the silent film era, and it is am unblinking look at the people on the periphery of Hollywood filmmaking – journeyman (or hack) writers, assistant directors, script readers, and other second and third string behind-the-camera people and studio foot soldiers. Not many individual elements of this film can be called great, with the exception of Holden’s narration, his screen performance, and the film’s art direction and set decoration. The screenplay also daringly tackled the less glamorous side of filmmaking from various angles, and that was groundbreaking.

The magic in Sunset Blvd. is how everything comes together. William Holden’s narration combined with John Seitz’s sultry black and white photography create a film-noir edge that is riveting and engages the audience like a championship wrestler. Billy Wilder’s patient direction seems to slowly gather up all the ingredients, allowing them to blend into a haunting tale of obsession and the ravenous hunger to regain what was lost.

Gloria Swanson’s performance strikes the right note, for the most part, but the performance often seems like it’s too much, annoying even. The truth of the matter is that Ms. Swanson is all surface, and she never gets to the bottom or to the meat of the character; there is no real history or reason why behind her. Gloria Swanson becomes more hysterical as the film advances toward the conclusion; Norman Desmond becomes more pathetic than sympathetic, and that hurts the storytelling. As good as the film is and as good as things come together progressively, about three-quarters of the last hour are redundant.

William Holden’s Joe Gillis, on the other hand, is a great character. Holden creates a man who has no pretensions and has accepted the idea that he’s a hack. He can deal with being a failure without falling apart or feeling like a failure. He’s an extraordinary ordinary Joe. While it’s true that Gillis and Desmond know they need each other, but are either too caught up in himself (or herself) or are blind except for his or her own need, Gillis is a reasonable voice to tell this peculiar story. There is something that keeps me coming back to this near perfect gem, and I think it is Holden. He embodies the thing this film is trying to be (about unrequited want), and his achievement is what we call movie magic.

9 of 10
A+

NOTES:
1951 Academy Awards: 3 wins: “Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, Black-and-White” (Hans Dreier, John Meehan, Sam Comer, and Ray Moyer), “Best Music, Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture” (Franz Waxman), and “Best Writing, Story and Screenplay” (Charles Brackett, Billy Wilder, and D.M. Marshman Jr.); 8 nominations: “Best Picture” ((Paramount), “Best Director” (Billy Wilder), “Best Actor in a Leading Role” (William Holden), “Best Actor in a Supporting Role” (Erich von Stroheim), “Best Actress in a Leading Role” (Gloria Swanson), “Best Actress in a Supporting Role” (Nancy Olson), “Best Cinematography, Black-and-White” (John F. Seitz), and “Best Film Editing” (Arthur P. Schmidt and Doane Harrison)

1951 Golden Globes: 4 wins: “Best Motion Picture – Drama,” “Best Motion Picture Actress – Drama” (Gloria Swanson), “Best Motion Picture Director” (Billy Wilder), and “Best Motion Picture Score” (Franz Waxman); 3 nominations: “Best Cinematography - Black and White” (John F. Seitz), “Best Screenplay” (Charles Brackett, D.M. Marshman Jr., and Billy Wilder), and “Best Supporting Actor” (Erich von Stroheim)

1989 National Film Preservation Board, USA: “National Film Registry”

May 23, 2005

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Review: "All About Eve" is an Eternal Film Classic (Happy B'day, Bette Davis)

TRASH IN MY EYE No. 41 (of 2003) by Leroy Douresseaux

All About Eve (1950) – Black & White
Running time: 138 minutes (2 hour, 18 minutes)
DIRECTOR: Joseph L. Mankiewicz
WRITER: Joseph L. Mankiewicz (based upon the short story, “The Wisdom of Eve” by Mary Orr)
PRODUCER: Daryl F. Zanuck
CINEMATOGRAPHER: Milton R. Krasner
EDITOR: Barbara McLean
Academy Award winner

DRAMA

Starring: Bette Davis, Anne Baxter, George Sanders, Celeste Holm, Gary Merrill, Hugh Marlowe, Gregory Ratoff, Barbara Bates, Marilyn Monroe, and Thelma Ritter

The subject of this movie review is the 1950 American drama, All About Eve. This Oscar-winning “Best Picture” was produced by Daryl F. Zanuck and was based upon Mary Orr’s 1946 short story, “The Wisdom of Eve.”

Considered the great “backstage” movie of all time, Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s All About Eve was recently released in one of those shiny DVD retrospective packages, deservedly so. Filled with an all star cast that is more than up to the challenge of turning on the thespian heat, the film is as mesmerizing, catty, and blunt as it probably was over half a century ago.

Eve Harrington (Anne Baxter), an aspiring actress, insinuates herself into a circle of theatre friends, the most famous of them being the established but aging stage actress Margo Channing (Bette Davis). Eve wants so badly to be an actress that she will manipulate, grovel, connive, lie, cheat, and do whatever it takes to make it as a star of the theatre, including hiding her real name and creating a fictitious past. Before long she is Margo’s unofficial assistant and soon fashions a close relationship with Margo’s best friend, Karen Richard (Celeste Holm), but she has her eyes of Karen’s husband Lloyd (Hugh Marlowe), a popular and critically respected playwright. Margo, in a sense, is Lloyd’s muse, and she has starred in most of Lloyd’s plays; however, Margo is fortyish and beyond the age of some of Lloyd’s youthful fictional female leads. Here is where Eve believes she can step in and capture the essence of a Lloyd character, and with the help of Addison DeWitt (George Sanders), a theatre critic (and the film’s dominant narrator), she makes it to the top of the theatrical world over the bodies of her friends.

All About Eve is a study of where ambition can get you, but it is also an examination of how cut throat a person feels she has to be to get to the top. Ms. Baxter languishes in the early part of her character as the tepid friend who just wants to serve Margo, but the actress bears her fangs and claws when Eve finally gets the proverbial foot in the door. It’s a radical and shocking transformation.

What can I add about the incomparable Bette Davis? Believe me, she shines like a nova, and she chews up her part. Margo is a force of nature and a supernatural force, throwing her weight around the story. The movie is ostensibly about Eve; she is the catalyst for the proceedings, but much of the film deals with Margo’s travails. Ms. Davis’s performance is the work of an actress dominating the screen in the chosen style of the time. Movie lovers, films buffs, and critics – none of them should ever miss this on the strength of Ms. Davis’s performance alone.

It’s a bonus to get star performances by Sanders (who won an Academy Award for his supporting role as DeWitt), drool and witty by turns and slightly menacing and all knowing most of the time. Hugh Marlowe hams it up as the playwright Lloyd Richards, but it’s the only way he can keep up with Ms. Davis.

As the film approaches the end, it really delves into the process of how stars of the stage are born, but it really lays bare the potential for ugliness in a dog eat dog world. By the end of the film, you can’t help but watch Eve’s ascendancy and realize that you have been watching what could be a story similar to Margo’s as a young, struggling actress. All About Eve is about Eve becoming Margo as the latter’s career winds to the end and the former becomes the new star of Broadway and theatre. And as another ingénue walks into the picture as the story closes, we realize that the stage is a vicious circle. Eve is about to experience what she did to Eve and her friends.

There’s only one Margo, and there’s usually only place for one at the top. In the world of performance, one has to climb over everyone else who is also trying to reach the pinnacle. After you’ve reached the top, you can sulk over the bitter feelings and ruthless process. You can wish things hadn’t been so nasty, but at least you get to sulk from the top of the heap.

9 of 10
A+

NOTES:
1951 Academy Awards: 6 wins: “Best Director” (Joseph L. Mankiewicz), “Best Picture” (20th Century Fox), “Best Actor in a Supporting Role” (George Sanders), “Best Costume Design, Black-and-White” (Edith Head and Charles Le Maire), “Best Sound, Recording” ((20th Century-Fox Sound Dept.), and “Best Writing, Screenplay” (Joseph L. Mankiewicz); 8 nominations: “Best Actress in a Leading Role” (Anne Baxter), “Best Actress in a Leading Role” (Bette Davis), “Best Actress in a Supporting Role” (Celeste Holm), “Best Actress in a Supporting Role” (Thelma Ritter), “Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, Black-and-White” (Lyle R. Wheeler, George W. Davis, Thomas Little, and Walter M. Scott), “Best Cinematography, Black-and-White” (Milton R. Krasner), “Best Film Editing” (Barbara McLean), “Best Music, Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture” (Alfred Newman)

1951 BAFTA Awards: 1 win: “Best Film from any Source” (USA)

1951 Golden Globes: 1 win: “Best Screenplay” (Joseph L. Mankiewicz); 5 nominations: “Best Motion Picture – Drama,” “Best Motion Picture Actress – Drama” (Bette Davis), “Best Motion Picture Director” (Joseph L. Mankiewicz), “Best Supporting Actor” (George Sanders), and “Best Supporting Actress” (Thelma Ritter)

1990 National Film Preservation Board: National Film Registry

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Review: "Rashomon" Defies Time (Happy B'day, Akira Kurosawa)

TRASH IN MY EYE No. 60 (of 2004) by Leroy Douresseaux


Rashômon (1950) – Black and white
COUNTRY OF ORIGIN: Japan
Running time: 88 minutes (1 hour, 28 minutes)
Not rated by the MPAA
EDITOR/DIRECTOR: Akira Kurosawa
WRITERS: Shinobu Hashimota and Akira Kurosawa (based upon stories by Ryunosuke Akutagawa)
PRODUCER: Minoru Jingo
CINEMATOGRAPHER: Kazuo Miyagawa
EDITOR: Fumio Hayasaka
Academy Award winner

DRAMA/MYSTERY/CRIME with elements of a thriller

Starring: Toshirô Mifune, Machiko Kyô, Masayuki Mori, Takashi Shimura, Minoru Chiaki, Kichijiro Ueda, Fumiko Honma, Daisuke Katô

Rashômon is a 1950 Japanese crime drama from director Akira Kurosawa. In 1952, the film won an Honorary Academy Award as the best foreign language film released in the United States in 1951. The film is based on two stories by Ryunosuke Akutagawa and is the story of a murder told from differing points of view.

The fact that Akira Kurosawa’s Rashômon is considered by critics to be one of the best films ever made and that it is also one of the most influential films every made should be enough of a recommendation. However, I’m well aware of how put off many people are by “serious film” or movies that critics hail as masterpieces. Rashômon is simply a good movie, and virtually anyone who likes crime dramas or mysteries will love this philosophical and psychological thriller.

An incident involving the murder of a husband and the rape of the wife in the forest is reported to local authorities, but what really happened? The horrible incident is told from the point of view of four witnesses: the alleged murderer/rapist, the wife, the murdered husband (the husband’s spirit speaks through his wife as a medium, nonetheless), and someone who watched part of what happened from a hidden vantage point. Who is telling the truth, and, in this case, just what is truth?

One of the many wonderful things about this film, like all the great stories, is that it spins a good yarn while simultaneously examining the state of man. Why are people selfish? Why do they lie? And are all humans basically selfish creatures who (when it comes down to it) really serve their own individual interests? The film is a fine mystery/crime drama with some amazing twists and turns (the husband’s tortured spirit telling his side of the tale is unforgettable) that will keep the viewer riveted, but that it also makes you think about us, about humanity, pushes it over the top. Except that Rashômon seems a bit too slow from the top, it nears perfection in the art of cinema and in making good use of the medium.

9 of 10
A+

NOTES:
1952 Academy Awards: 1 win: “Honorary Award” (Japan) – Voted by the Board of Governors as the most outstanding foreign language film released in the United States during 1951.

1953 Academy Awards: 1 nomination: “Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, Black-and-White” (Takashi Matsuyama and H. Motsumoto)

1953 BAFTA Awards: 1 nomination: “Best Film from any Source” (Japan)