My Favorite Films, Plague Edition (Part 3): Why Family is Important
The Wizard of Oz (1939)
Directed by Victor Fleming (and Norman Taurog, Richard Thorpe, George Cukor, King Vidor)
Songs by Harold Arlen
Score by Herbert Slothart
Starring Judy Garland
Sansho the Baliff (1954)
Written and Directed by Kenji Mizoguchi
Photography by Kazuo Miyagawa
Starring Kyōko Kagawa and Kinuyo Tanaka
I was in an atypical mood for an upbeat film last night, so, for the first time in years saw The Wizard of Oz in a spectacular restoration that makes each detail and color pop. Rather than putting me in a mood for other musicals, or happy endings, it made me think of the Mizoguchi classic film of death and despair Sansho the Bailiff. Lest you think I am deranged, I will now explain myself. Relax, settle back, and free yourself up a little time to look as some wonderful film clips in this review.
Both of these immortal films are depictions of the importance of family, but each is done from its own special cultural perspective. In Oz, Dorothy experiences adolescent rebellion and discontent, and flees her conservative farm home. A concussion lands her in the Land of Oz, a surreal technicolor world of metaphors (fun, singing metaphors at that). As I see it, her personality dissolves into adolescent, doubting parts: is she smart enough? (the Scarecrow). Is she compassionate enough, having abandoned her family? (The Tinman). And is she courageous enough to get home? (The Cowardly Lion). She even experiments with drugs (“Poppies!”). This dissection of her teen personality into individual “characters” reminded me of the excellent animated Pixar film Inside Out. The quartet of Dorothy’s fractured personality then gradually is united and affirmed, but in a very Greatest Generation way. This was filmed in 1939, just as the Great Depression was ending. That generation believed strongly in unity and the collective common will as solutions to problems, not the personalized (narcissistic) individualism of this century. So how does the film resolve? Dorothy rejoins her family (“There’s no place like home”), the Tin Man gets a testimonial, the Lion gets a medal, and the Scarecrow gets a diploma. The Wizard, in issuing these, affirms with just a touch of cynicism that it is not your actual qualities that matter, but what society perceives as your qualities. The Collective Will rules. No wonder this amazing film has been so admired as the core of American values.
Sansho the Bailiff also reaffirms family, but darkly, through the lens of post -WWII Japan. The traditional, conservative, family base of Japanese society had been shattered by the atom bomb, surrender, and the death of a young generation of men. In such an era, American-style optimism rang false. So we instead get Godzilla, a creature of nuclear mutations, rampaging through Tokyo. And in Sansho, we get the family of a noble lord driven into slavery and suicide, as the evil of medieval Japan consumes them. Only two family members survive: the mother who had been made into a slave-prostitute, and the son. He had been separated from his family and enslaved in brutal labor, only to briefly rise to become a lord as successor to his father, only to then be driven from office because he progressively bans slavery and thus offends the ruling class. Mother and son movingly reunite at the end, individually broken, but collectively united in family. If Oz sees family as an island of repose amidst confusion and adolescent doubt, Sansho sees it as the only repose amidst death and carnage.
Why are these films great? Oz is one of those 1930s Hollywood miracles. It was an eagerly anticipated film adaptation of a wildly popular novel, rather like the Harry Potter of its day. It ran through a crew of 5-6 directors, a multitude of writers, and many rethinkings. Most such hodgepodge Hollywood efforts from that era turn out mediocre or terrible, but somehow, the pieces fell into place here. I was stunned how each scene was so integral and irreplaceable, much as in The Godfather. In my childhood, I was doubtlessly eagerly awaiting the transition to Oz, so neglected to notice that the Kansas versions of the Scarecrow, Tinman, and Lion each do little prequels of their later moves during the opening scene on the farm. The transition from the sepia-colored Kansas opening to the hallucinogenic Technicolor of Oz is perhaps the greatest technical moment in all of film, and is even more stunning in the new restoration, which you should see. As the foils for Judy Garland’s Dorothy, MGM recruited some of the great vaudevillian stars of the era, usually for a single big song and dance number (“If I Only had a Brain”, “If I were King of the Forest”, “If I Only had a Heart”). The film therefore is also a museum of Vaudeville in its final days. Note that each of these character actors had distinctive “moves” and voices that were ideally used in the movie. Here are some examples of their work prior to this movie; watch these clips—they will make you smile and are a museum of the great 1930s era of filmed song and dance: Jack Haley (the Tin Man) , and his work in Oz; Burt Lahr (the Lion) and his work in Oz–you can see in 1938 where the Lion character came from!; and my favorite, Ray Bolger, the ever-flexible Scarecrow and his work in Oz. And here’s a Criticulture bonus. Buddy Ebson (much later known for The Beverley Hillbillies) was originally hired as the Scarecrow, but migrated to the Tinman, then had to drop out after he had a near-fatal reaction to the aluminum makeup. You see why he was the original Scarecrow choice in this earlier Gumby-like performance. What’s fascinating to me about these excepts is that you can see that the film’s directors allowed these artists to bring their own schtick to the movie, rather than having the director impose a given style or choreography upon them. This was the era of Big Stars, and they were respected as the main audience draw. Instead, it was the directors who were interchangeable, unlike the controlling auteurs of European or Japanese cinema. While this led to lots of unfocused bad movies, occasionally, as in Oz, the planets aligned.
Sansho the Bailiff is creatively just the opposite. Every element of composition was tightly controlled by the great Mizoguchi, except the actual camerawork, executed by an equally brilliant artist Kazuo Miyagawa. This film is about isolation finally uniting into family reunion, and Mizoguchi amplifies this theme by his famous for his use of cameras on cranes, filming intimate moments from above, isolating the participants in their own world. It feels like each scene is an artistic composition. Mizoguchi rarely shows long solo closeups; instead he pairs characters so you can see them react to one another. He may, along with Bergman, be the greatest portrayer of human interaction. Nature is always dominant in this move: haunting forests, isolated beaches, and the famed suicide of the daughter, as she disappears into the pond Kabuki-style, with only the ripples of water left, with the haunting song of her mother echoing. . And here is the striking ending of the film, after the reunion of son and blind, dying mother. No melodrama, just Nature and the surreal Japanese pipe music Mizoguchi can certainly do drama—watch the frightening abduction and separation of the family by boatmen for these two minutes: . But the overriding feel of Sansho is isolation and focused, introverted emotion. About as far from Oz as you can get, yet equally persuasive.
The other thing to compare and admire about these films is their wonderful visual palettes. Sansho uses a full range of black and white, much like an expert photographer. This range and depth is essential to the film. The Wizard of Oz is famous for its early technicolor version of Oz, now excitingly restored with colors even more primary and brilliant, rather like the uncovering of the Sistine Chapel. I remember when, in my 1960s family’s annual viewing of the film (this was the days of network TV, no video or on-demand), my joy when we finally got a color TV and the joke on the “horse of a different color” finally made sense. The Emerald City is an architectural fantasy on the then-new Rockefeller Center in Manhattan, with details that you can see if you go there now. Of course, the Rockefeller Center is not green. But interestingly the opening black and white scenes of the movie, as the tornado approaches, looks almost Sansho-like with menacing treetrunks and ominous nature. The tornado scene is brilliant and convincing even now. If The Wizard of Oz is the perfect filmed comic book, Sansho is the perfect Japanese print. So, these films are both monuments to the art of photography, color, and cinematography, besides being almost perfectly acted and executed movies overall. Depending on my mood, both are favorites.
Directed by Victor Fleming (and Norman Taurog, Richard Thorpe, George Cukor, King Vidor)
Songs by Harold Arlen
Score by Herbert Slothart
Starring Judy Garland
Sansho the Baliff (1954)
Written and Directed by Kenji Mizoguchi
Photography by Kazuo Miyagawa
Starring Kyōko Kagawa and Kinuyo Tanaka
I was in an atypical mood for an upbeat film last night, so, for the first time in years saw The Wizard of Oz in a spectacular restoration that makes each detail and color pop. Rather than putting me in a mood for other musicals, or happy endings, it made me think of the Mizoguchi classic film of death and despair Sansho the Bailiff. Lest you think I am deranged, I will now explain myself. Relax, settle back, and free yourself up a little time to look as some wonderful film clips in this review.
Both of these immortal films are depictions of the importance of family, but each is done from its own special cultural perspective. In Oz, Dorothy experiences adolescent rebellion and discontent, and flees her conservative farm home. A concussion lands her in the Land of Oz, a surreal technicolor world of metaphors (fun, singing metaphors at that). As I see it, her personality dissolves into adolescent, doubting parts: is she smart enough? (the Scarecrow). Is she compassionate enough, having abandoned her family? (The Tinman). And is she courageous enough to get home? (The Cowardly Lion). She even experiments with drugs (“Poppies!”). This dissection of her teen personality into individual “characters” reminded me of the excellent animated Pixar film Inside Out. The quartet of Dorothy’s fractured personality then gradually is united and affirmed, but in a very Greatest Generation way. This was filmed in 1939, just as the Great Depression was ending. That generation believed strongly in unity and the collective common will as solutions to problems, not the personalized (narcissistic) individualism of this century. So how does the film resolve? Dorothy rejoins her family (“There’s no place like home”), the Tin Man gets a testimonial, the Lion gets a medal, and the Scarecrow gets a diploma. The Wizard, in issuing these, affirms with just a touch of cynicism that it is not your actual qualities that matter, but what society perceives as your qualities. The Collective Will rules. No wonder this amazing film has been so admired as the core of American values.
Sansho the Bailiff also reaffirms family, but darkly, through the lens of post -WWII Japan. The traditional, conservative, family base of Japanese society had been shattered by the atom bomb, surrender, and the death of a young generation of men. In such an era, American-style optimism rang false. So we instead get Godzilla, a creature of nuclear mutations, rampaging through Tokyo. And in Sansho, we get the family of a noble lord driven into slavery and suicide, as the evil of medieval Japan consumes them. Only two family members survive: the mother who had been made into a slave-prostitute, and the son. He had been separated from his family and enslaved in brutal labor, only to briefly rise to become a lord as successor to his father, only to then be driven from office because he progressively bans slavery and thus offends the ruling class. Mother and son movingly reunite at the end, individually broken, but collectively united in family. If Oz sees family as an island of repose amidst confusion and adolescent doubt, Sansho sees it as the only repose amidst death and carnage.
Why are these films great? Oz is one of those 1930s Hollywood miracles. It was an eagerly anticipated film adaptation of a wildly popular novel, rather like the Harry Potter of its day. It ran through a crew of 5-6 directors, a multitude of writers, and many rethinkings. Most such hodgepodge Hollywood efforts from that era turn out mediocre or terrible, but somehow, the pieces fell into place here. I was stunned how each scene was so integral and irreplaceable, much as in The Godfather. In my childhood, I was doubtlessly eagerly awaiting the transition to Oz, so neglected to notice that the Kansas versions of the Scarecrow, Tinman, and Lion each do little prequels of their later moves during the opening scene on the farm. The transition from the sepia-colored Kansas opening to the hallucinogenic Technicolor of Oz is perhaps the greatest technical moment in all of film, and is even more stunning in the new restoration, which you should see. As the foils for Judy Garland’s Dorothy, MGM recruited some of the great vaudevillian stars of the era, usually for a single big song and dance number (“If I Only had a Brain”, “If I were King of the Forest”, “If I Only had a Heart”). The film therefore is also a museum of Vaudeville in its final days. Note that each of these character actors had distinctive “moves” and voices that were ideally used in the movie. Here are some examples of their work prior to this movie; watch these clips—they will make you smile and are a museum of the great 1930s era of filmed song and dance: Jack Haley (the Tin Man) , and his work in Oz; Burt Lahr (the Lion) and his work in Oz–you can see in 1938 where the Lion character came from!; and my favorite, Ray Bolger, the ever-flexible Scarecrow and his work in Oz. And here’s a Criticulture bonus. Buddy Ebson (much later known for The Beverley Hillbillies) was originally hired as the Scarecrow, but migrated to the Tinman, then had to drop out after he had a near-fatal reaction to the aluminum makeup. You see why he was the original Scarecrow choice in this earlier Gumby-like performance. What’s fascinating to me about these excepts is that you can see that the film’s directors allowed these artists to bring their own schtick to the movie, rather than having the director impose a given style or choreography upon them. This was the era of Big Stars, and they were respected as the main audience draw. Instead, it was the directors who were interchangeable, unlike the controlling auteurs of European or Japanese cinema. While this led to lots of unfocused bad movies, occasionally, as in Oz, the planets aligned.
Sansho the Bailiff is creatively just the opposite. Every element of composition was tightly controlled by the great Mizoguchi, except the actual camerawork, executed by an equally brilliant artist Kazuo Miyagawa. This film is about isolation finally uniting into family reunion, and Mizoguchi amplifies this theme by his famous for his use of cameras on cranes, filming intimate moments from above, isolating the participants in their own world. It feels like each scene is an artistic composition. Mizoguchi rarely shows long solo closeups; instead he pairs characters so you can see them react to one another. He may, along with Bergman, be the greatest portrayer of human interaction. Nature is always dominant in this move: haunting forests, isolated beaches, and the famed suicide of the daughter, as she disappears into the pond Kabuki-style, with only the ripples of water left, with the haunting song of her mother echoing. . And here is the striking ending of the film, after the reunion of son and blind, dying mother. No melodrama, just Nature and the surreal Japanese pipe music Mizoguchi can certainly do drama—watch the frightening abduction and separation of the family by boatmen for these two minutes: . But the overriding feel of Sansho is isolation and focused, introverted emotion. About as far from Oz as you can get, yet equally persuasive.
The other thing to compare and admire about these films is their wonderful visual palettes. Sansho uses a full range of black and white, much like an expert photographer. This range and depth is essential to the film. The Wizard of Oz is famous for its early technicolor version of Oz, now excitingly restored with colors even more primary and brilliant, rather like the uncovering of the Sistine Chapel. I remember when, in my 1960s family’s annual viewing of the film (this was the days of network TV, no video or on-demand), my joy when we finally got a color TV and the joke on the “horse of a different color” finally made sense. The Emerald City is an architectural fantasy on the then-new Rockefeller Center in Manhattan, with details that you can see if you go there now. Of course, the Rockefeller Center is not green. But interestingly the opening black and white scenes of the movie, as the tornado approaches, looks almost Sansho-like with menacing treetrunks and ominous nature. The tornado scene is brilliant and convincing even now. If The Wizard of Oz is the perfect filmed comic book, Sansho is the perfect Japanese print. So, these films are both monuments to the art of photography, color, and cinematography, besides being almost perfectly acted and executed movies overall. Depending on my mood, both are favorites.
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