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Posts from the ‘1956’ Category

Mar 12

Samurai III: Duel at Ganyru Island

Wrapping up the trilogy, Samurai III: Duel at Ganyru Island is a pull-out-all-the-stops type of film. It charges ahead at all times, packing a wallop in its efforts to wrap up storylines developed in the first two pictures of Hiroshi Inagaki’s Samurai Trilogy. But more than just a wrap up film, Samurai III is about epic encounters, elusive love and finding a sense of self in the midst of constant chaos.

Ikuma Dan’s score rivets from the outside, issuing the familiar refrain that tells us something big is happening. And once again it is Takezo (Toshirō Mifune) as a larger-than-life hero whose humanity is inescapable. He is truly the stuff of legends, yet Mifune’s ability to focus in on the smaller moments and quieter segments of his character is truly compelling.

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Jan 13

The Searchers

There’s no questioning the influence John Ford’s The Searchers has had on modern movies. Named as the AFI’s “Greatest Western of All Time,” this film has influenced everyone from David Lean to Buddy Holly. Its amazing cinematography, shot beautifully in Arizona and Utah by Winton C. Hoch, set the model for broad-scope epic pictures and its dark plot still causes debate and discussion to this very day.

Racism and genocide are common themes that come up in most discussions of The Searchers. There are, indeed, many unfortunate and uncomfortable situations in this motion picture that relate to attitudes towards Native Americans and to cultural differences. Ford’s hero is openly racist and attempts to show his  motivations as a result of some sort of atrocities committed. While The Searchers certainly is a tale of revenge, its coating of racism is awkward when examined today.

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Mar 27

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Baby Doll

baby-doll

Elia Kazan’s Baby Doll is the sexiest film I have ever seen. I have yet to see a movie that parallels this 1956 drama in terms of seething, raw sensuality. The damp sex of it all is in the details, in the off-screen moments, and in the meandering inferences in this Tennessee Williams-penned movie. Williams wrote the screenplay with Kazan and based it on his one act play entitled 27 Wagons Full of Cotton.

Baby Doll generated a considerable amount of controversy upon its release in the Christmas season of 1956. The Catholic League of Decency, one of the most destructive entities ever in terms of censorship and damage to artistic expression, had the film withdrawn from many theatres across the United States because of the sexual themes. While many might view what is actually shown as being far from racy, times were different. Even Time magazine called it the “dirtiest American-made motion picture that had ever been legally exhibited.”

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Oct 3

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Bus Stop

Bus Stop

Bus Stop is a distinctive and gripping character study that focuses in on the relationship between two people with attachment issues and overwrought past-lives. The film captures an imperfect relationship and treats it with comedic regard, often leading to perplexity about the true nature of the film and its characters, but never neglecting to develop the awkward and strained relationship between its two leads. Bus Stop is widely regarded as being one of Marilyn Monroe’s finer performances, but it also features the talents of Don Murray and several others.

Marilyn Monroe plays Cherie, a café singer and “entertainer” that works to bilk naive men out of their money. When we first meet Cherie, she is being pushed around by the bar manager and is told to go talk up an innocent looking gentleman and get him to buy her drinks. Cherie has an interesting past, with lots of “experience” with males. She is portrayed as a girl that can’t say no and a girl that has never really known true security within a relationship. Cherie is the idyllic wounded flower, one that feels so damaged by the winds and ravages of the world that she begins to grasp at anything that comes her way.

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