Kapó

Gillo Pontecorvo, Italy, 1959, bw (8.4*)
A long overlooked holocaust story is now available on dvd. Director Pontecorvo is best known for the ultra-realistic war docudrama The Battle of Algiers, which is a must see for fans of both war films and Italian cinema. Before making that classic, he gave us a smaller war film, yet a universal story no doubt enacted over and over in World War II.

Susan Strasbourg gives a strong and realistic portrayal of a 14-year old Jewish girl thrown into a concentration camp with her parents. She quickly realizes that children and the elderly are being executed, so she assumes the identity of an adult criminal in order to survive. She becomes a favorite of the SS officers due to her youth, and they eventually make her a kapó, prisoners who are quasi-officers above the other prisoners, who basically work for the Nazis and against their own brothers in order to get more food and other benefits.

This is not a pleasant tale, but a heroic and realistic one. Those who enjoyed Schindler's List and Stalag-17 should also like Kapó, it's that good, and belongs on the short list of excellent holocaust and prison films, and films with strong women.

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Big Deal on Madonna Street

Mario Monicelli, 1959, Italy, bw (8.5*)

This spoof of heist films is one of the funniest Italian films ever made. If you've seen the French heist classic Rififi, you'll understand Monicelli's aim here - if you haven't, you'll still be able to appreciate this gang of low-budget crime misfits attempting a major jewel robbery, from the discovery stage, through the planning, then the execution.

A terrific all-star cast is led by Vittorio Gassman as the plan's leader, as he was given the details in prison from another convict who thought Gassman had been denied parole. When out, he recruits a local gang of cons who are all out of jail, including Marcello Mastrianni and Claudia Cardinale. Let's just say that none of the criminals is the sharpest tack in the drawer, so when they are all together it becomes a comedy of errors. Much of the humor is visual, and I found myself laughing out loud several times, which is rare for me, as most comedy is based on terrible one-line jokes and people being drunk.

As Rififi was an early heist classic that "defined the mold", Big Deal is one of the first spoofs of the newly popular genre, so it too defined a style that was later often repeated, with films such as Topkapi and Mad Mad Mad Mad World - think Peter Sellers, Alec Guinness, and the Ealing Brothers (The Ladykillers). Pure entertainment, a must-see classic of this style, and an Oscar® nominee for foreign language film.

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Floating Weeds

aka Ukigusa
Yasujiro Ozu, 1959, Japan (7.8*)
This is a beautifully filmed art film from master Japanese filmmaker Ozu, his first in color after a career of b&w masterpieces. His films are slow-moving yet carefully constructed visual set pieces that slowly reveal his characters motivations and emotions. Ozu has won many Japanese film awards, and the b&w film Tokyo Story is his best known, while Early Summer won the most awards.

In this story, a struggling traveling kabuki theater group (ie, the "weeds" of the title) arrives at a sleepy seaside village, a place they've been before, which revives old memories and relationships, including an important one for their leader Komanjuro. While most are simply trying to find local affairs, for Komanjuro, played by Ganjiro Nakamura, and a local woman, wonderfully played by understated Machiko Kyo, theirs is really a family reunion that involves a son they had together.

This is one of film critic Roger Ebert's favorite ten films, but is really more of an art house than a popular film, so it will please fans of Ozu and Japanese art cinema more than more general audiences, who will want more action and movement. That said, each scene here is carefully constructed visually with much emphasis on the importance of understated colors and compositional balance, something that Ozu excels at achieving.

Note: Ranked 1010 on our survey of net polls.. Tokyo Story is ranked 57th.. Late Spring next at 436.. Early Summer (aka Bakushu) won the most awards, is 978.. Depending on which list I check, I see Ozu is ranked 19th on one list with 7 films, but much lower on another with only 5 films.. hmmm..

The film's page at IMDB, the rating there is 7.9, practically the same as mine

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The 400 Blows

François Truffaut, 1959, France, bw (9.0*)
Excellent first film of François Truffaut that deservedly put him on the map, where he caused quite a stir at Cannes, winning best director. The film was shot in a documentary style about a troubled youth, Antoine, played very naturally and realistically by Jean-Pierre Léaud at only age thirteen; the film succeeds because of his performance, and much of that was improvised by Trauffaut, a former film critic making his debut film at age 25. This is a realistic story about being an alienated teenager in a big city, and it still rings true today, five decades later.

The story is actually partially autobiographical, and Antoine and his best friend Rene would cut school to go to the cinema, just as Trauffaut himself did, then would get in trouble with the school authorities, who would of course notify the parents. Antoine senses that his parents don’t really want him around, so he spends as much time running away as he does in their cramped apartment. This film has some of the more memorable scenes in movies: kids spinning around in a roundabout amusement ride, shot from their vantage point and that of the spectators watching them from above, glued by centrifugal force to the ride's walls; another of kids faces while watching a puppet show, some with open-mouth astonishment, the same looks you’d see from a cinema audience as well, especially in a children’s film. Perhaps my favorite: Antoine's face staring out from the back of a police bus, at the city lights of Paris rolling by.

I just watched this for the third time, and it actually gets better each time, as I notice new things on each viewing. This is a bona fide cinema masterpiece (ranked #60 on our survey, the 5th French film, just after his own Jules and Jim), with terrific camerawork, a very natural style, with a total lack of pretension or self-awareness. Winner of several international awards, with one Oscar nomination for screenplay. The awards page at IMDB

[Note: don't be deterred by the title, he's not a victim of abuse, he only gets slapped a couple of times, once by the police. Be sure to watch the interviews on the Criterion dvd if possible. Most will recognize Truffaut as the actor playing the scientist in Close Encounters who invented the musical method of communication with the aliens.]

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North by Northwest

Alfred Hitchcock, 1959, (8.0*)
The master of suspense as they like to call him branched out to pure action-adventure of the Hollywood variety with this audience favorite of his. Cary Grant proved not too old to play that era's equivalent of an everyman thrown into a Bondish plot involving secret agents from both sides. Eva Marie Saint is the bait used to ensure his entrapment, so there was more than a little romance as well, as the two spend the night together on a train, and as she says 'with nothing to do since I don't like the book I brought.'

This is the old fish out of water tale, with Roger Thornhill (Grant) as the fish. There are some baffling scenes, there just for action. My fave has Roger being chased on a deserted South Dakoka highway by a low-flying crop duster which apparently is trying to either chase him to death or catch him in a prop as they have no guns or grenades. The pilot manages to hit the only object visible for miles: a gasoline tanker strategically placed on the highway by Hitch. Later the two heroes end up climbing all over the heads carved at Mt. Rushmore without any equipment - nice stunt work. These shots and others, such as a pine forest, have a dreamy, special effect quality that has a sort of b-movie, studio look but also the stuff of matinee Saturdays, when you needed a little fantasy to escape the gray cold war world outside.

With Grant, we had enough humor that we knew not to take this all too seriously, and we also had Hitchcock's most-used actor Leo G. Carroll as the wise old watchdog. This is the Indy Jones of its era, and though it will look slow and tame by comparison, it still has enough action and plot twists to provide an entertaining popcorn flick as along with Vertigo, it's one of the best two of Hitchcock's Hollywood era. This is #30 at IMDB, #49 in the Critics 1000. Oscar® nominations for editing, sound, and screenplay.

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Some Like It Hot

Billy Wilder, 1959, bw (8.4*)
A ludicrious premise like this in the hands of anyone short of a master director like Wilder and this classic comedy could have been another forgettable farce, or even a tv show like Bosom Buddies, which obviously borrowed from this. Two musicians, played by Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis, witness a gangland slaying and flee to avoid being the next victims. Naturally, the best place to hide out? An all-female big band, with none other than Marilyn Monroe around to tempt the guys to shed their female impersonations and reveal their macho studliness. They occasionally forget and speak in deep male voices.

In a funny twist, to top off the insanity, the wealthy Joe E. Brown falls for Jack Lemmon as a woman, so we get some great gender-bending jokes about the aggressive male tactics in romance, as well as the film’s hilarious closing line. This is another Wilder gem, and they’re still trying to make a similar film today, as Tootsie and Big Mama and Mrs. Doubtfire all proved. How ironic that gay heartthrob Tony Curtis was both in drag and played the debonair playboy courting Marilyn on the side. This pokes great fun at the superficiality and materialistically driven American romantic ritual.

Wilder is one of the great directors, here's a small list of his best films:
The Front Page, Double Indemnity, Sunset Boulevard, Lost Weekend, The Spirit of St. Louis, One Two Three, Ace in the Hole, Sabrina, The Apartment, Witness For the Prosecution, The Fortune Cookie.

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Ballad of a Soldier

Grigori Chukhrai, Russia, 1959 (9.1*)
This is a simply beautiful black and white Russian film. Among the first to be released in the U.S. after the Stalin reign of censorship ended, it’s a simple anti-war tale of a nineteen year old soldier, played by Vladimir Ivashov. Really nothing more than a travel or ‘road film’, the story concerns a pass he receives to visit home after destroying two German tanks in the film’s opening sequence. From then on, we are away from the war, witnessing a young hero’s journey home to see his mother, at times having to bribe train guards with cans of food, which was that scarce, even for soldiers. Shanna Prokharenko plays a gorgeous,m wholesome young Russian woman he meets on the train and travels with.

Somehow, Chukhrai avoids sentimentality, but tells a story with a lot of heart and optimism, while at the same time showing the fortitude with which the Russian people, mostly rural peasants, faces the massive Nazi invasion of their homeland, which created a 1500-mile war front, something we can’t imagine here – akin to two armies facing off along the entire length of the Mississippi River. There’s much beautiful cinematography and amateur faces as much of the film involves a train trip, so the viewer is taken along the same journey home to the prairie. Some call it propaganda; then watch some John Wayne or other U.S. war films, even worse with lots of yankee bravado; this is far more subtle and effective. One of the best Russian films , unfortunately no other films of Chukhrai's are available.

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Ben-Hur

Dir: William Wyler, 1959 (8.2*)
Best Picture (AA, BAA, GG)

AFI Top 100

I expected more from Wyler, this should have been better than it turned out. Maybe trim a half-hour or more and you have a tighter film, and no less an epic. The sea battle and the chariot race are superb movie-making, but not a lot else is very compelling. Charlton Heston (Oscar) is ok, but overacting as usual. We get a (by then) Hollywood cliché Crucifixion sequence that is anti-climactic by the time it comes. I thought this when I first saw it in the theater the week it premiered; I think I was nine! Still, major "Bigness" on film, it helped define the Hollywood epic. 11 Oscars (a record)

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