The 1950s List: Discussion and Suggestions (Decade Project Vol. 4)

[domino harvey]

I mean, that movie is three hours of someone struggling and working very hard to be average in the face of a preternatural talent who is effortlessly brilliant, so no, not the exact same thing, but the feeling and idea are close enough

[knives]

I strongly disagree that that is the film's assumption of Salieri. It gives the result of his effort a lot of credit in scenes such as the hearing of the read notes. The film instead seems to assess him as someone without natural talent trying to succeed through effort and hating those he sees as having a silver spoon of talent. Sort a Nixon/ Kennedy relationship.

[domino harvey]

Yeah, I don't think we're going to see eye to eye on this one

[knives]

Just as a last word this film convinced me to seek out Salieri's music which I now love.

[Michael Kerpan]

Salieri was the most generous and helpful "senior musician" in Vienna during his time -- in giving advice and support to younger musicians (including Beethoven and Schubert as well as Mozart). He was an ardent promoter of the music (and career) of Mozart -- and a good (if not "great") composer. Nothing in his real life behavior resembles the creature depicted by Schaffer and Forman.

Just saying...

[Mr Sausage]

(note: I hate the beats).

I’d love to hear why, if you don’t mind going into it.

[domino harvey]

I used to be more blase and tolerant but these days I'm out of rope and find their self-conscious seriousness masquerading as aloofness tiring, their rule breaking rather juvenile, and their prose tortuous and embarrassing in its zaniness and outre shock (that could double as ineptitude depending on who's penning it). They broke ground for "different" in an era that needed them, so I know they served a function, but it's a bit like listening to a Lenny Bruce album these days looking for a laff

[barryconvex]

Wow, hugely disagree-- it'll be in my Top Ten for the Horror List, and somewhere in the mix lower down for the decade list. I think it's miles better than Amadeus at portraying the anxiety and anguish of the untalented, and the beat scene jokes land pretty well I think and don't come off as anti-intellectual (note: I hate the beats). I've never read Miller's character as uncharitably as you either-- jeez, the poor guy is so bad at art that you think he's "semi retarded"? Are you the owner of that cafe?

"Semi-retarded" was a really poor choice of words. Aside from being crude It's just unnecessarily mean spirited to call anyone that but what sprang to mind almost immediately while watching Miller was Cliff Robertson's performance in Charly, a character who is on the lowest end of the IQ spectrum. For whatever reason, I just don't respond to these types of roles. That's my problem and if I should ever overcome it I'll get a lot more out of this movie.

I should say that while I'm not overly enamored with all things beatnik, I definitely see it as a worthwhile movement. They did produce some great works and if Burroughs is counted among them at least one masterpiece-Junky. The bongo playing, lousy poetry spewing, coffee drinking stereotype that was perfected by The Simpsons, I think has unfortunately become the face of a subculture that had a lot more to offer.

[domino harvey]

I agree that not all beats are bad: I do like Maynard G Krebs!

[barryconvex]

Fires on the Plain (Kon Ichikawa 1959)

An extremely difficult film to watch, this story of Japanese soldiers stranded without food (or much else) on the island of Leyte in February of 1945 (the "fires on the plain" seemingly indicate where those spots of earth have eroded away completely and can no longer contain the fires of hell) keeps burrowing further and further into the depths of human misery until it arrives at an end scene that's as devastating as any climax to a war film I've seen. The lead actor-Eiji Funakoshi-has the most amazing eyes: bewildered and weary; bearing the weight of a thousand defeats. They're the same eyes that Timothy Carey brought to Paths Of Glory. Based solely upon this gaze one would think Funakoshi's character, Pvt. Tamura, has seen it all by this point in the war but as he trudges futilely through the slop and the corpses towards what may be an imaginary extraction point Ichikawa shows us how much deeper this abyss goes and to his great credit, he does it without choosing sides and without moralizing or flinching. Ichikawa isn't here to point fingers and the film has a documentary feel to it. Nobody here is fighting for the glory of their homeland or looking to avenge a fallen comrade, this is a portrait of defeated men fighting to retain their humanity. Some have long since abandoned theirs or bartered it off for food with the poorest souls eventually resorting to cannibalism. Others have reached a point of insanity they'll never return from and through all these circles of hell, marching forever onward is Tamura. His happiest moment in the whole film comes when he abandons his boots and walks barefoot.

The horrors of war have been well documented by countless films but Ichikawa brings a unique perspective and handles the material with such skill (his stagings of the battle scenes are especially strong) that the movie never feels like it's covering someone else's ground. His wide shots of lifeless bodies littering fields and hillsides become nearly abstract in their composition. In one blackly comic scene Tamura stumbles across a fallen soldier face down in the mud. When he mutters to himself, "Is that how I'll end up" the soldier, using his last bit of strength, lifts his head up, looks at Tamura in a puzzled way and then submerges his face into a puddle. There are a few other moments of gallows humor mixed into the film but I'd hardly categorize any of the comedic attempts as "relief".

Special mention for the riveting score by Yasushi Akutagawa- a composer whose work I don't think I've heard before despite the dozens of credits to his name. This will make my final list, probably in a fairly high position.

[Mr Sausage]

Make sure to check out The Burmese Harp, if you haven't already. Ichikawa brings the sames strengths to it, tho' he offers a less despairing if no less unflinching and impartial examination. Both films are about men whom war has shunted into a role that exists outside the social roles they're meant to inhabit. In Fires it's more metaphysical, the lead being in some sense a dead man from the beginning who just hasn't left his body yet; in Harp, it's as a Burmese priest. There is a sense, too, in Harp that, at least for some, the future and the prospect of rebuilding cannot be embraced without first properly witnessing and dealing with the past.

[Michael Kerpan]

Ichikawa during this period (concurrent with his wife being his primary script-writing collaborator) is really splendid -- it is criminal that most of his work from this era has never gotten a subbed release.

I would agree that the humor in Fire on the Plain is deepest black in nature -- definitely NOT comic relief. Ichikawa apparently re-made this decades later in color -- I've never felt much urge to see this version (as I don't find his later work all that appealing).

According to IMDB, Ichikawa made over 30 movies in the 50s -- I've only managed to see 9 (many thanks to a retrospective 15 or so years ago).

[therewillbeblus]

"Semi-retarded" was a really poor choice of words. Aside from being crude It's just unnecessarily mean spirited to call anyone that but what sprang to mind almost immediately while watching Miller was Cliff Robertson's performance in Charly, a character who is on the lowest end of the IQ spectrum.

Although it’s become a social taboo linguistically due to overuse and moreso mean-spirited misuse over time, the word “retarded” is still a clinical term used to diagnose people based on IQ levels in mental health communities, so I’m not sure if you should be so hard on yourself depending on what you were actually trying to say (I haven’t seen the film yet but given your context, it sounded like you may have used it appropriately?)

Nobody here is fighting for the glory of their homeland or looking to avenge a fallen comrade, this is a portrait of defeated men fighting to retain their humanity. Some have long since abandoned theirs or bartered it off for food with the poorest souls eventually resorting to cannibalism. Others have reached a point of insanity they'll never return from and through all these circles of hell, marching forever onward is Tamura. His happiest moment in the whole film comes when he abandons his boots and walks barefoot.

You really hit why this film made such a strong impression on me when I first saw it. One of my favorite themes is this experience of ‘surrender’ and how it impacts identity along psychological and existential lines. This film does an amazing job at diffusing all that “meaning” (of trying to say anything; politicizing, as you mentioned) and stripping a person down to this breaking point of holding onto the only thing left, signs of humanity. It’s my favorite theme of war films, given the intensity of the foreign context human beings find themselves trapped in, and done expertly here.

I have to revisit this before seeing if it’ll place on my list, and haven’t seen many of his other works, so I’ll be checking out Sausage’s rec (thanks!)

[domino harvey]

Miller’s character is extremely naive and socially awkward and has trouble with social cues. He also latches onto and fixates on certain lines of the beat poetry he hears his “friends” perform and repeats them constantly as mantras. If we’re going to diagnose fictional characters, Miller is probably what we’d now identify as autistic, not mentally retarded. I really don’t see much commonality between Miller here and Robertson in Charly other than both being sweet but doomed objects of pity for other characters and the audience

[therewillbeblus]

I’m realizing I’ve seen it but have no recollection whatsoever of the content. Excited to revisit soon, especially curious now considering the high placement on your horror list.

[knives]

I should say that while I'm not overly enamored with all things beatnik, I definitely see it as a worthwhile movement. They did produce some great works and if Burroughs is counted among them at least one masterpiece-Junky. The bongo playing, lousy poetry spewing, coffee drinking stereotype that was perfected by The Simpsons, I think has unfortunately become the face of a subculture that had a lot more to offer.

Queer's also one of the best books I've ever read. Burroughs style is probably too far from the beats to seriously be seen as such more than socially. I'd connect him much more with the world queer literature that was budding at the time with artists like Mishima having a deeper thematic and presentational connection than with Ginsberg, yes I get the irony of that example which is a deliberate one.

[Mr Sausage]

I dunno, I'd say Burroughs' bohemianism, rejection of social norms, and focus on hedonism are squarely Beat.

[barryconvex]

Make sure to check out The Burmese Harp, if you haven't already. Ichikawa brings the sames strengths to it, tho' he offers a less despairing if no less unflinching and impartial examination. Both films are about men whom war has shunted into a role that exists outside the social roles they're meant to inhabit. In Fires it's more metaphysical, the lead being in some sense a dead man from the beginning who just hasn't left his body yet; in Harp, it's as a Burmese priest. There is a sense, too, in Harp that, at least for some, the future and the prospect of rebuilding cannot be embraced without first properly witnessing and dealing with the past.

Thanks for the rec, sausage. That's a really excellent point about Tamura being basically a revenant that hadn't occurred to me while watching. It totally makes sense and might even apply to the rest of the Japanese army stranded on that island. I watched Harp years ago when I first bought the Criterion dvd and I was planning on a revisit for this list anyway but after watching Fires it will be among the next handful of films I watch. Aside from Tokyo Olympiad I don't think I've seen any Ichikawa. I have An Actor's Revenge but haven't sat down with it. Does anybody know the film MoC released awhile back called Alone on the Pacific? It's about a man trying to reach San Francisco from Japan in a small sailboat and is the type of thing I usually gravitate towards.

[barryconvex]

"Semi-retarded" was a really poor choice of words. Aside from being crude It's just unnecessarily mean spirited to call anyone that but what sprang to mind almost immediately while watching Miller was Cliff Robertson's performance in Charly, a character who is on the lowest end of the IQ spectrum.

Although it’s become a social taboo linguistically due to overuse and moreso mean-spirited misuse over time, the word “retarded” is still a clinical term used to diagnose people based on IQ levels in mental health communities, so I’m not sure if you should be so hard on yourself depending on what you were actually trying to say (I haven’t seen the film yet but given your context, it sounded like you may have used it appropriately?)

There is definitely a certain degree of discomfort I've acquired that comes from the nastiness and overuse you mentioned (although I didn't realize it was still in use as a clinical term) but I also was waffling between using that term or something else because I didn't want to apply it to a character who may not fall into that category. And while I'm still not entirely sure if that term should be applied to Walter (all the more reason to avoid it) and calling someone "semi-retarded" is a lot different that calling someone a "retard" there are just plain better ways to describe a mental state that wouldn't be potentially unfair to Miller's character and that don't have the odor of playground name calling on top of it.

[Mr Sausage]

Make sure to check out The Burmese Harp, if you haven't already. Ichikawa brings the sames strengths to it, tho' he offers a less despairing if no less unflinching and impartial examination. Both films are about men whom war has shunted into a role that exists outside the social roles they're meant to inhabit. In Fires it's more metaphysical, the lead being in some sense a dead man from the beginning who just hasn't left his body yet; in Harp, it's as a Burmese priest. There is a sense, too, in Harp that, at least for some, the future and the prospect of rebuilding cannot be embraced without first properly witnessing and dealing with the past.

Thanks for the rec, sausage. That's a really excellent point about Tamura being basically a revenant that hadn't occurred to me while watching. It totally makes sense and might even apply to the rest of the Japanese army stranded on that island.

I go into a bit more detail in the thread for the film:

On a structural level, it's picaresque. There is no unified narrative; it's a loosely connected series of adventures involving various characters and situations. The protagonist simply walks between situations that illustrate variations on the same themes. This is possible because the movie removes the protagonist from the factions or identities operating in his world and places him on the outside, at the limits of it: he is refused by both his company and the hospital and therefore denied any coherent space as a soldier. He belongs nowhere. He is commended to death by his commander, but as a suicide rather than a casualty.

His sickness, tho' identified as tuberculosis, is a non-issue for the character as a character since it doesn't affect him in any specific way physically or spiritually. The specific diagnosis hardly matters; it may as well be anything. Its purpose is to maneuver him into the margins where he can experience and bear witness without being held to any allegiance or purpose that could limit his wanderings. He can join, leave, and rejoin groups of men as he chooses, an ability none of the others seem to possess (every group of men he runs into stays joined to each other throughout the narrative; they always refuse or deny the ability to part from one another). He is continually gifted with food by the narrative to keep him going and allow him to bargain his way into groups (he's gifted yams in the beginning, food from a villager, salt in the abandoned village, yams from a yam field) until the movie robs him of the ability to eat in order to spare him from cannibalism. To remain a free-floating witness, he cannot fully join any group, including cannibals.

In many ways, he is already out of the world. He tells us he chooses death, yet he continues on. This is an act of delay on the narrative's part. He is dead; he just stays around in order to witness the final degradation of everything. When he desires to see, finally, some glimpse of warmth and humanity (or at least some social structure), he is released from the narrative and back to death, his purpose over. We never see him outright shot in that final barrage. He just collapses. It hardly matters exactly what happened: he has borne witness long enough and is returned to the death that was his from the beginning.

[knives]

I dunno, I'd say Burroughs' bohemianism, rejection of social norms, and focus on hedonism are squarely Beat.

That's what I meant as social if that's not clear. I was separating the work and the man a bit. Only Naked Lunch really rings as pure beat to me though even that one I like a fair bit.

[Mr Sausage]

I dunno, I'd say Burroughs' bohemianism, rejection of social norms, and focus on hedonism are squarely Beat.

That's what I meant as social if that's not clear. I was separating the work and the man a bit. Only Naked Lunch really rings as pure beat to me though even that one I like a fair bit.

I wasn't being very clear, sorry. I did mean the work. The above qualities seem like the ethos or animating principle behind his writing, or at least Naked Lunch and onward. To go further, his cut ups and other experimental techniques are in line with the Beats' cultivation of the spontaneous and the accidental as a way to get past the the inherited conventions of communication.

Naked Lunch was the only Beat work I found merit in back when I read it, Howl, and On the Road in my late teens, tho' it never had any personal reverberations and I regarded it somewhat at arm's length. It was a transformative experience for other people I knew, one of whom went so far as to get a back tattoo of a Burroughs' quote. I don't know if I'd like the book much now; looking back, it seems decadent and baroque in a overly familiar way. Many of the celebrated bits seem like tedious elaborations on small jokes and anecdotes, and the down-and-outness too similar to Henry Miller even with the surrealist paint job.

[knives]

Yeah, it's definitely the one of his that I find has reduced in touchingness though some of the queer themes really work for me. Even his cut ups which I've read feel different from say On the Road's first draft conception as at least originating from a deeper feeling.

[Michael Kerpan]

Does anybody know the film MoC released awhile back called Alone on the Pacific? It's about a man trying to reach San Francisco from Japan in a small sailboat and is the type of thing I usually gravitate towards.

A very different sort of film, very quirky, with the real solo sailor as its main (often only) "performer". Very much worth watching.

Actor's Revenge is absolutely wonderful. My affection for it (and its star) has grown with each revisit. What we need is a loaded-with-extras release of this which included Kinugasa's 1935 version (also starring Hasegawa).

[barryconvex]

Thank you Michael. The copies of Pacific.. on Amazon are outrageously priced and there's only one copy currently on eBay. I'm bidding on it but not holding my breath.