Princess Yang Kwei Fei

Emperor and concubine: Masayuki Mori and Machiko Kyo

Tubi is streaming a batch of films directed by Kenji Mizoguchi, a master director whose work is neglected in America. All his films are worth seeing, but I particularly urge you to watch such masterpieces as Sisters of the Gion (1936) and Ugetsu (1953) while you can. A masterpiece new to me was Princess Yang Kwei Fei from 1955. The film, in spectacular color, is a historical romance that verges on tragedy. Kwei Fei (Machiko Kyo) is a country bumpkin cousin in the powerful Yang clan. Kwei Fei goes from being a scullery maid to consort for the Emperor, helped along by ambitious men who seek advancement. Once Kwei Fei is ascendent, the Yang clan overreaches and provokes a bloody popular uprising. Kwei-Fei pays the ultimate price in the most elegant and memorable execution scene since Marlene Dietrich's in Dishonored. 

The narrative is based on the legend of the last Chinese Emperor of the T'ang dynasty and his concubine. The English title of this film is misleading in that Kwei Fei never becomes a princess or an empress. Mizoguchi filmed this foreign tale in Hong Kong in the studios of producer Run Run Shaw. The pairing of Kyo and Mori, the leads of Ugetsu which nabbed a Silver Lion at the 1953 Venice Film Festival, seemed to guarantee some kind of international return. Mizoguchi could not help but make a Mizoguchi film and deviated from the 8th Century CE Chinese chronicles and his screenwriter's efforts. Mizoguchi's Kwei Fei is far more idealized than the historical figure, far more a victim of male machinations in an age where women are bartered off by their clans. Kwei Fei's frankness about being a puppet manipulated by her clan endears her to the Emperor who is sick of toadies.

The other bind between the two is music and the use of music helps balance the film's bleakness. Particularly memorable is a festival scene in which the two lovers get a respite from their troubles by sampling street food and partying with the peasantry. However, the Emperor's love of music is a symbol of his indolence and augurs his downfall. He will shirk his official duties to comingle with his muses. The vibrant story book sets seem off-putting, but ultimately is affecting in mapping the plush artifice of the Emperor's cocoon. Certainly the bathing scene in Princess Yang Shei Fei signals a world of utter decadence that is due to be upended.

Mizoguchi works at a deliberate pace, refrains from depictions of violence, eschews spastic tracking and even close-ups: thus, he stands a world apart from popular commercial filmmaking. Characters move through his frame surrounded by screens, curtains, sliding doors, scrims, drapes, and arranged flowers. By film's end, these are all dust or in tatters. Andrew Sarris summed up the film as "Beauty and memory and vanity." I would add transience. On that note, I mourn the death of David Bordwell, a vibrant writer and scholar who was a great champion of Mizoguchi and film in general.

Portrait of Madame Yuki

Michiyo Kogure

Kenji Mizoguchi's Portrait of Madame Yuki is a lacerating melodrama from 1950. Another of Mizoguchi's woeful tales of beleaguered females, Yuki stars Michiyo Kogure as an aristocratic woman brought down by her vulgar and cruel husband. Eijiro Yanagi plays the husband with a pungent ferociousness, dominating a movie filled with passive, self-loathing characters. Yoshiko Kuga plays Hama, an innocent servant girl who is initially delighted to be employed in a grand home, but soon finds that it functions as a well appointed prison for her mistress. Yuki's husband treats her dismissively, lavishing his time and money on his mistress in Kyoto. Soon, the family fortune is spent and Yuki has to pivot and turn her lakeside house into a hotel. Even this desperate act goes for naught and Yuki opts for self-annihilation in a watery grave.

Mizoguchi stresses Yuki's lack of privacy in her own home. Everything she does is surveilled, even when she is ravished by her husband in the film's most shocking sequence. Despite, or because of,  her abode's sliding screens, blinds, and curtains, Yuki's daily humiliations are exposed for all to see. Her former tutor loves her, but he turns out to be too much of an inhibited prig to truly aid Yuki. He, like all of the characters, is unsure of where he fits in a Japan split between modernity and its feudal legacy. Yuki's husband decries Japan's democratization and yearns for the feudal past, but he and his mistress ape Western fashion and behavior in the most craven way possible. In opposition, Yuki and the tutor favor traditional attire and decorum, but yearn for the freedom that the democratization of Japan promises, particularly the opportunity for divorce. The tutor is a koto master, but can also play a Western style rhapsody on the piano. Similarly, Fumio Hayasaka's score mixes Western and Japanese motifs. Hayasaka, one of Mizoguchi and Kurosawa's key collaborators, died a tragically premature death from tuberculosis at the age of 41 in 1955.

Portrait of Madame Yuki suffers from the melodramatic strictures of its source novel. The heroine is so masochistic that I wanted to cry out "suffering succotash" every ten minutes or so. Ms. Kogure's performance seemed more studied than felt to me. Most of the supporting characters, particularly the mistress and juvenile male servant, are too one-dimensional. Still, if this is not Mizoguchi at his absolute best, there are many moments in Portrait of Madame Yuki that are both scarifying and sublime. The rape sequence, Hama enjoying her mistress' luxurious bath, and the finale in which Yuki drifts away to eternity into the lakeside mists. Currently streaming on Tubi.   

A Story from Chikamatsu

Lovers on the run in A Story from Chikamatsu

Kenji Mizoguchi's A Story from Chikamatsu, from 1954, is a masterpiece to rival most of his postwar output, therefore it is near the pinnacle of cinematic achievement. Most memorable is Hiskazu Tsuji's production design, particularly the set design for scroll-master Ishun's home factory which dominates the mise en scene of the film's first section. Ishun's residence, a bourgeoise dream of elegance and workplace efficiency, is a series of grids and mazes that serve to entrap its inhabitants. Mizoguchi's camera utilizes the building's sliding doors to create a field of action amidst three grounds: fore, middle and back. This 3D effect magnifies the sense of societal enclosure that Mizoguchi's doomed lovers must escape from.

They do so by traveling to the country where they can drift for awhile in nature. When they finally consummate their relationship, they tryst in a shed filled with hay which Mizoguchi films as if it were a moonlit bower. Away from the grid, they can indulge apart from the city and the machinations of men. The tragic ending, which is a departure from the source material, reflects the fatalism of Mizoguchi. However, the lovers' fate is triumphant. They go to their end happily because of their shared love, but also because they have found self-knowledge. A Story from Chikamatsu is a powerful rejoinder to Japan's stifling authoritarianism.

Spoiler alert...The US title: The Crucified Lovers

Biff's Best Vintage Films Viewed in 2024

                               

 1)     Princess Yang Kwei-Fei                                     Kenji Mizoguchi                 1955

 2)     Summer Light                                                    Jean Grémillon                   1943

 3)     Chess of the Wind                                           Mohammed Reza Aslani      1976

 4)     How to Be Loved                                                 Wojciech Has                   1963

 5)     Dragnet Girl                                                        Yasujirō Ozu                      1933

 6)     Portrait of Madame Yuki                                   Kenji Mizoguchi                  1950

 7)     Victimas del Pecado                                           Emilio Fernández              1951

 8)     Two Girls on the Street                                         André De Toth                 1939

 9)     Desire                                                                      Sacha Guitry                  1937  

10)    César                                                                      Marcel Pagnol                1936

I also thoroughly enjoyed...

Une Femme Mariee, Samurai Wolf 2: Hell Cut, Red Psalm, 

GA-Ga: Glory to the Heroes, Burning Paradise, China Seas, Un Carnet de Bal, 

Black God, White Devil, The Hawks and the Sparrows, Tokyo Drifter,

The Baby Carriage, The Rite, The Bat Whispers, Desperate, 

The Halliday Brand, The Runner

Best of 1954

         

1. Sansho the Bailiff                                                                       Kenji Mizoguchi
2. Rear Window                                                                               Alfred Hitchcock
3. Voyage to Italy                                                                            Roberto Rossellini
4. Senso                                                                                           Luchino Visconti
5. The Sun Shines Bright                                                              John Ford
6. A Story from Chikamatsu                                                          Kenji Mizoguchi
7. Robinson Crusoe                                                                       Luis Buñuel
8. The Seven Samurai                                                                    Akira Kurosawa
9. Johnny Guitar                                                                            Nicholas Ray
10. Touchez Pas au Grisbi                                                              Jacques Becker

          Honorable Mention

          Black Tuesday -- Fregonese, Anatahan -- Sternberg, 

          The Barefoot Contessa -- Mankiewicz,

          Films I Enjoyed

          On the Waterfront,

          Riot in Cell Block 11, The Raid, 

          Dial M for Murder,

          20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, It Should Happen to You,

          Mr. Hulot's Holiday, Silver Lode,

          Apache, The Far Country, Vera Cruz,

          Magnificent Obsession, A Star is Born,

          The Naked Jungle, Private Hell 36, 

          Brigadoon, River of No Return,

          Sabrina, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers   

         Below the Mendoza Line

         La Strada, Carmen Jones,

         Ulysses, Taza, Son of Cochise,

         Executive Suite, The Last Time I Saw Paris,

         Deep in My Heart, Young at Heart,

         Desiree, There's No Business Like Show Business,

         The Bridges at Toko-Ri, The Glenn Miller Story,

         Animal Farm, The High and the Mighty,

        The Caine Mutiny, Godzilla,

        Three Coins in the Fountain, Southwest Passage,

        The Country Girl    

                                                       

      

The Southerner

Zachary Scott and J. Carrol Naish

Jean Renoir's The Southerner, from 1945, is not in the top rank of his movies, but is awfully close. I would rate Renoir as one of the great directors along with Ford, Mizoguchi, Murnau, and a gaggle of others. Therefore, The Southerner, is an essential picture.

The Southerner is a rural picture much like Renoir's first American feature, Swamp Water. This genre  was in serious decline by 1945, ten years after Variety declared "Sticks Nix Hix Pix". My first exposure to hix pix were the Ma and Pa Kettle films, themselves a spin-off from The Egg and I, of the 40s and early 50s which I could not abide as a child. The hayseed humor of the films seem old hat to me in the 60s.

Beulah Bondi's Granny is the comic relief here and I found her performance, which rankled contemporary critics, to be hilarious. Like Walter Brennan in Rio Bravo, Bondi's performance is a riff on the stereotype of the crusty codger. It is an outsized act which is cognizant of its own ridiculousness. Contrast her work with that of Betty Field. Field is a competent performer, but her work here seems off. She presents her character as is she were the platonic ideal of a farmer's wife and the result is not pathos, but bathos. J. Carrol Naish is wonderful as the neighbor who lacks a communitarian spirit.

Zachary Scott delivers his best performance. His Texas accent comes in handy and he seems more relaxed than usual under Renoir's guidance. This was before the success of Mildred Pierce typecast him as an oleaginous villain and it is a bit sad to consider the downward arc of his career after Flamingo Road. He had an independent nature that did not make him a good cog in the Hollywood machine. Before his premature death at 51 in 1965, he was arrested for violating segregation laws in Louisiana and proudly sported an earring.

The Southerner's rural setting brings out one of Renoir's great strengths as a director: an ability to portray men and women as creature in their environs. Renoir shared with his father a gift for portraying the beauty of the country. This is evident in The Southerner, but so is the harshness of rural farm life. Indeed, the state of Tennessee thought it was too harsh and seamy and banned the picture during its first run. 

A good point of comparison is John Ford's work on The Grapes of Wrath and Tobacco Road. Ford mythologizes the land as a barren hell or a fertile paradise. While the two directors share a humanistic view of rural folks and their plight, Renoir presents a more naturalistic view of their environment compared to the expressionistic force Ford brought to such locales as Ireland, Africa, and Monument Valley. Ford's work is most akin to Renoir's in Swamp Water, thanks to the screenplay by frequent Ford collaborator Dudley Nichols, but there is a wonderful dance sequence towards the end of The Southerner that would fit in many of Ford's films. Ford held Renoir in the highest esteem and once attempted to remake La Grande Illusion. Both filmmakers in the 30s stood as exemplars of Depression era Popular Front humanism. 

Best of 1936

1. My Man Godfrey                                                              Gregory La Cava
2. Sisters of the Gion                                                           Kenji Mizoguchi
3. Story of a Cheat                                                               Sacha Guitry
4. The Prisoner of Shark Island                                          John Ford
5. Modern Times                                                                  Charlie Chaplin
6. Secret Agent                                                                     Alfred Hitchcock
7. Rose Hobart                                                                     Joseph Cornell
8. By the Bluest of Seas                                                       Boris Barnet
9. A Day in the Country                                                       Jean Renoir
10. César                                                                               Marcel Pagnol

                  Film I Enjoyed

                  Swing Time, The Road to Glory, 

                  Desire, Things to Come,

                  Show Boat, Sylvia Scarlett,

                  Charge of the Light Brigade,

                  After the Thin Man, Come and Get It,

                  The Milky Way,

                  Romeo and Juliet, Devil Doll,

                  Fury, Dodsworth,

                  Libeled Lady, Follow the Fleet,

                 Big Brown Eyes, Mr. Deeds Goes to Town

                 Below the Mendoza Line

                 The Petrified Forest, Wife vs, Secretary,

                 These Three,

                 San Francisco

                                                          

I Was Born, But...

A multifaceted silent classic from 1932, Yasujirō Ozu's I Was Born, But...is foremost a family comedy; a "pop up book for grown-ups" as the opening title reads. Much of the exterior footage of young boys getting into hijinks on vacant lots will remind American oldsters of the Our Gang or Little Rascals shorts. There is prepubescent smoking, hunts for sparrows eggs, pinky swears, playing hooky and, something not seen in American comedies of the era, public urination. Despite the underlying themes of class consciousness and modernization, I was Born, But... is chiefly memorable for its depiction of young boys at liberty making mischief. There is an anarchic spirit to the film that is rare in Japanese cinema.

Ozu was, in 1932, a young and energetic filmmaker. His use here of exterior tracking shots would be anathema to the older, more austere Ozu. As with other masters of film whose career spanned decades (Renoir, Ford, Mizoguchi, Lang, Hawks, etc.), things were lost and gained through the years. Renoir's Toni is often cited as the first neorealist feature, but I Was Born, But... could also be cited; as could The Musketeers of Pig Alley for chrissakes. The vagaries of capitalism has lead to the family's recent move. The two young sons react to the change of surroundings by acting out. By film's end, they are reconciled with their family and fully integrated with their peer group. The totems of Japanese modernism: electric plants, commuter trains, automobiles, are omnipresent. As is the specter of poverty and the rigidity of the culture. I Was Born, But... chafes against that rigidity, but it is a note of ominous foreboding that the two young boys want to be generals when they grow up. 

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Best of 1950

1. Wagon Master                                                                        John Ford
2. La Ronde                                                                                Max Ophuls
3. Rashomon                                                                               Akira Kurosawa
4. Los Olvidados                                                                         Luis Buñuel
5. Orphee                                                                                     Jean Cocteau
6. In A Lonely Place                                                                    Nicholas Ray
7. The Asphalt Jungle                                                                 John Huston
8. The Third Man                                                                         Carol Reed
9. Stromboli                                                                                 Roberto Rossellini
10. The Furies                                                                                Anthony Mann

         Honorable Mention

         All About Eve --Mankiewicz, Sunset Boulevard -- Wilder.

         Rio Grande -- Ford, Portrait of Madame Yuki -- Mizoguchi

         Films I Enjoyed

    

         Flowers of St. Francis, 

         Where the Sidewalk Ends, Caged,

         Winchester 73, Stars in My Crown,

         The Breaking Point,

         House by the River, Born to Be Bad,

         The Gunfighter, Broken Arrow,

         Woman on the Run, The Baron of Arizona, 

         Stage Fright, Born Yesterday,

         Twelve O'Clock High, When Willie Comes Marching Home,

         One Way Street, No Man of Her Own,

         Cinderella, Young Man with a Horn,

         La Beaute du diable, Mystery Street,

         Below the Mendoza Line

         Father of the Bride, King Solomon's Mines,

         Armored Car Robbery, The Flame and the Arrow,

         The Men, Harvey,

         Treasure Island,  Annie Get Your Gun,

         Cheaper by the Dozen,

         Cyrano de Bergerac

 

                    

Best of 1952

1. The Golden Coach                                                                     Jean Renoir
2. The Quiet Man                                                                           John Ford
3. Le Plaisir                                                                                     Max Ophuls
4. Ruby Gentry                                                                               King Vidor
5. The White Sheik                                                                         Federico Fellini
6. The Life of Oharu                                                                      Kenji Mizoguchi
7. Singin' in the Rain                                                          Stanley Donen & Gene Kelly
8. Limelight                                                                                     Charlie Chaplin
9. The Big Sky                                                                                 Howard Hawks
10. Casque d'Or                                                                                Jacques Becker

          Honorable Mention

          The Lusty Men -- Ray, The World in His Arms -- Walsh,

          Outcast of the Islands -- Reed, Rancho Notorious --Lang,

          Has Anybody Seen My Gal? -- Sirk, La bestia debe morir -- Barreto

          Films I Enjoyed

         The Marrying Kind, Monkey Business,

         Bend of the River, Five Fingers,

         Viva Zapata, Forbidden Games,

         The Greatest Show on Earth,

         La Macchina Ammazzacattivi,

         Clash by Night, My Son John,

         The Flavor of Green Tea Over Rice,

         Park Row, Scandal Sheet

         Scaramouche, Ikiru

         Below the Mendoza Line

         Moulin Rouge, Macao,

         Umberto D, The Crimson Pirate,

         Don't Ever Open That Door,

         High Noon, Pat and Mike,

         I Dream of Jeanie, My Cousin Rachel,

         O. Henry's Full House, Carbine Williams, 

         Breaking Through the Sound Barrier,

         Plymouth Adventure

                                             

The Ballad of Narayama (1958)

Storybook sets and expressionistic colors in The Ballad of Narayama

Keisuke Kinoshita's The Ballad of Narayama tells the tale of an old woman who, following village tradition, must be taken by her son to the titular mountain to die. This dark tale, derived from the novelization of an old folk tale, is performed on a soundstage lending the film a storybook feel. Kinoshita imbues his film with expressionistic colors, often signaling the changing of seasons and time's passage. He also uses techniques from Kabuki theater, particularly an off-screen narrator who sings his lines. Kinoshita often ends scenes by shutting off the lighting on his characters in the foreground while changing the background sets before our eyes. These effects enliven what is a very lugubrious tale.

Part of the downbeat nature of the story is the scathing portrait of the inhabitants of the poor, rural village. Orin, the old woman doomed to take her fatal trip to Narayama, is portrayed as virtuous and caring as are her son and daughter-in-law, but most of the villagers are portrayed as avaricious and self-centered. When a mistreated old codger resorts to thievery to stay alive, the villagers take advantage of his misdeed by looting his family's supplies. It does not take much imagination to see that Kinoshita is addressing the collective guilt of Japan during the post-war period.

Kinuyo Tanaka is peerless as Orin, matching her superb performances for Mizoguchi. I won't soon forget the scene where she contemplates bashing out her teeth on a stone implement so she can be a toothless old lady ready to hasten her ultimate demise. ...Narayama often resembles a silent melodrama and Tanaka's performance gives the film a still center from which the pathos is wrung. I slightly prefer Imamura's 1983 remake, mostly because his realism makes the ending more shattering and his film has a better balance of humor and tragedy. However, this version is a memorable and moving film.

Best of 1955

1. Lola Montes                                                                               Max Ophuls
2. Smiles of a Summer Night                                                        Ingmar Bergman 
3. Kiss Me Deadly                                                                          Robert Aldrich
4. Princess Yang Kwei-Fei                                                            Kenji Mizoguchi
5. Othello                                                                                        Orson Welles
6. French Can Can                                                                        Jean Renoir
7. Ordet                                                                                          Carl Theodor Dreyer 
8. Pather Panchali                                                                         Satyajit Ray
9. To Catch A Thief                                                                       Alfred Hitchcock
10. Ensayo de un Crimen                                                               Luis Buñuel

         Honorable Mention

         Moonfleet -- Lang, The Long Grey Line -- Ford,

         The Night of the Hunter -- Laughton, Rebel Without A Cause -- Ray,

         The Big Knife --Aldrich, Le Amiche -- Antonioni,

         East of Eden -- Kazan, The Big Combo -- Joseph H. Lewis

         Films I Enjoyed

         The Man From Laramie, The Trouble with Harry,

         House of Bamboo, The Indian Fighter, 

         The Naked Dawn, 

         Land of the Pharaohs, The Cobweb,

         The Phenix City Story, Violent Saturday,

         The Purple Plain, Sawdust and Tinsel,

         Dementia, Razzia sur la chnouf,

         Diabolique, Captain Lightfoot,

         Lady and the Tramp, Summertime,

         Rififi, The Man with the Golden Arm

         Below the Mendoza Line

         Mister Roberts, Pete Kelly's Blues,

         5 Against the House, Pearl of the South Pacific, 

         Kismet, The Blackboard Jungle,

         Wichita, My Sister Eileen, 

         The Rose Tattoo, The Seven Little Foys,

         The Seven Year Itch, Strategic Air Command,

         Oklahoma!, The Girl on the Red Velvet Swing,

         Daddy Long Legs, Love is a Many Splendored Thing,

         Bad Day at Black Rock, I'll Cry Tomorrow,

         The Desperate Hours, The Court Martial of Billy Mitchell,

         The End of the Affair, Marty,

         The Private War of Major Benson, We're No Angels

          

                                                                   

Best of 1953

1. Ugetsu                                                                                    Kenji Mizoguchi
2. Angel Face                                                                             Otto Preminger
3. The Big Heat                                                                          Fritz Lang
4. Pickup on South Street                                                        Sam Fuller
5. Mogambo                                                                              John Ford
6. Take Me to Town                                                                   Douglas Sirk
7. The Naked Spur                                                                    Anthony Mann
8. The Earrings of Madame De...                                             Max Ophuls
9. All I Desire                                                                             Douglas Sirk    
10. The Bad and the Beautiful                                                   Vincente Minnelli     

          Honorable Mention

          A Lion is in the Streets -- Walsh, El Bruto -- Buñuel,

          The Blue Gardenia -- Fritz Lang, I Vitelloni -- Fellini,

          The Band Wagon -- Minnelli, Gate of Hell -- Kinugasa

        Films I Enjoyed

       Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, I Confess,

       The Wages of Fear, Beat the Devil,

       Summer with Monika, 99 River St.,

       Stalag 17, Shane, 

       The Actress, Niagara,

       The 5000 Fingers of Dr. T, Arrowhead,

       Kiss Me Kate, Roman Holiday,

       The Captain's Paradise, I Love Melvin,

       El Vampiro Negro, The Wild One,

       From Here to Eternity, Julius Caesar,

       Peter Pan, Hondo

       Below the Mendoza Line

       Blowing Wild, War Paint,

       Houdini

       House of Wax, Calamity Jane,

       Man in the Attic, The Moon is Blue ("The Moon's a Balloon" is better),

       Titanic, How to Marry a Millionaire,

       Fear and Desire,

       The Long, Long Trailer, Bright Road, 

       The Robe

                                                  

Best of 1941

1. How Green Was My Valley                                                        John Ford
2. Citizen Kane                                                                               Orson Welles
3. The Shanghai Gesture                                                              Josef von Sternberg
4. Swamp Water                                                                             Jean Renoir
5. The Lady Eve                                                                             Preston Sturges
6. Man Hunt                                                                                    Fritz Lang
7. Remorques                                                                                 Jean Grémillon
8. Ball of Fire                                                                                  Howard Hawks
9. The Maltese Falcon                                                                    John Huston
10. The 47 Ronin                                                                              Kenji Mizoguchi

         Films I Enjoyed

         A Woman's Face, Dumbo,

         Tobacco Road, Western Union,

         High Sierra, The Strawberry Blonde,

         Suspicion, 

         H.M. Pulham, Esq., The Little Foxes,

         All That Money Can Buy, That Hamilton Woman,

         Major Barbara, The Flame of New Orleans,

         49th Parallel, They Died With Their Boots On,

         Meet John Doe, Here Comes Mr. Jordan

         Below the Mendoza Line

         Sergeant York, Mr. and Mrs. Smith,

         The Devil and Miss Jones,

I don't usually comment on these lists, but, since I am swimming against the tide of film history, a few comments are in order. I feel that Welles is so intent on portraying the mature Kane as a hollow man that he drains most of the dramatic tension out of the last section of his film. Even the monstrous protagonists of The Magnificent Ambersons and Touch of Evil are viewed with more empathy than Kane and that is why I prefer those films to his allegedly unequalled masterpiece. How Green Was My Valley, like a number of films by Ford, has been criticized as being overly sentimental ("A monstrous slurry of tears and coaldust" wrote David Thompson). I think that Ford's sentimentality and humor, which often seem old-fashioned to modern viewers, counterbalance here what is one of the most bleak finales in all cinema. This pattern continues in most of the best of his later work: The Fugitive, Fort Apache, The Searchers, The Wings of Eagles, Two Rode Together, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence, 7 Women. Is there a happy ending in any of these films? No way, Jose.

I'll cop to being a Ford partisan. I think he is by leaps and bounds the greatest American director. Heck, I even like Tobacco Road, which most view as an abomination. Still, I think there are more similarities than differences between Ford and Welles. Like Welles, Ford considered himself a man of the Left in 1941. It is only because of the persona of John Wayne, who Ford considered an intellectual lummox, that Ford is thought of today as some sort of right-winger. Ford acted as a mentor to Welles (see especially Tag Gallagher's John Ford: The Man and his Films, still the best book on Ford) and was his primary influence; as Welles, many times, graciously noted. The alleged technical innovations of Citizen Kane have been overstated. Welles claimed to have seen Stagecoach over forty times when he was preparing Kane, using it to study film technique. The expressionistic lighting, visible ceilings, depth of field, low-level camera and many other techniques evident in Stagecoach reappear in Kane in a more flamboyant manner. This is not a pejorative criticism, I enjoy Welles' flamboyance, but it is a distinction between directorial styles. 

One of the best and most moving essays I've ever read is Farran Smith Nehme's short piece on How Green Was My Valley entitled "Father's Day with John Ford". It can be found at her wonderful website, Self-Styled Siren.

                                              

 

Best of 1939

1. The Rules of the Game                                                       Jean Renoir
2. Stagecoach                                                                          John Ford
3. The Story of the Last Chrysanthemums                           Kenji Mizoguchi
4. Young Mr. Lincoln                                                               John Ford
5. Only Angels Have Wings                                                    Howard Hawks
6. The Women                                                                          George Cukor
7. Love Affair                                                                           Leo McCarey
8. Mr. Smith Goes to Washington                                          Frank Capra
9. Drums Along the Mohawk                                                  John Ford
10. The Wizard of Oz                                                                 Victor Fleming

          Honorable Mention

          Northwest Passage -- Vidor, Sergeant Madden -- Sternberg

          Films I Enjoyed

          Two Girls on the Street,

          Destry Rides Again, The Roaring Twenties,

          Sans Lendemain, Union Pacific,

          Gone with the Wind, Made for Each Other,

          Wuthering Heights, Jamaica Inn,

          Ninotchka, Gunga Din,

          Dark Victory, Frontier Marshal, 

          Midnight, The Mikado,

          The Hunchback of Notre Dame, 

          Jesse James, Beau Geste,

          Four Feathers

          Below the Mendoza Line

          The Hound of the Baskervilles, Slightly Honorable,

          Each Dawn I Die, 

          The Night Riders, Of Mice and Men,

          Alleghany Uprising