The Awful Truth (1937) ****

 

Cary Grant and Irene Dunne were a match made in screwball heaven. Her impeccable comedic timing and his gift for physical comedy made them an irresistible pair. While The Lady Eve (1941) is my all-time favorite screwball comedy, The Awful Truth (1937) comes in as a close second. Perhaps there aren’t any spectacular cinematographic shots or jaw-dropping dramatic performances, but to pull off a comedy filled with such sophisticated wit and engaging execution is something to be admired.

Nominated for six Academy Awards, The Awful Truth is about a New York couple who find themselves in divorce court after a slight misunderstanding: did the car really break down and cause Lucy Warriner (Irene Dunne) to have to stay out all night with her handsome music teacher Armand (Alexander D’Arcy), and why was Jerry Warriner in California when he said he was in Florida? High-strung and hot-tempered are bad traits in one person, let alone two who are married to one another, and so they are granted a divorce with a 90-day waiting period. The only thing that keeps them connected is their adorably smart dog Mr. Smith (Asta/Skippy), for whom they share joint custody. When Lucy becomes involved with slow-witted Oklahoma oil man Dan Leeson (Ralph Bellamy) Jerry becomes jealous and tries to point out why the man is all wrong for Lucy (which he is). And, when Jerry starts spending time with beautiful rich socialite Barbara Vance (Molly Lamont) Lucy literally puts on a show of jealousy for the ages. Does the couple get back together? I think you probably can guess the answer, but how they reunite is a bedroom tale left unspoken—let’s just say they figure out that they were cuckoo for ever doubting their love.

Okay, so what is so great about The Awful Truth? First and foremost, Dunne sparkles as Lucy. Playing a somewhat kooky, flighty woman was nothing new for Dunne, who’d been nominated for a Best Actress Oscar the year before in Theodora Goes Wild (1936), but she elevated her game slightly for the role of Lucy (although she lost yet again to Luise Rainer for Best Actress—really, two years in a row…was Rainer sleeping with everyone in Hollywood?). With masterful facial expressions and expertly delivered lines, Dunne makes Lucy the perfect screwball heroine. Her ability to play both a capricious woman driven beyond the point of exasperation by her husband’s jealousy and a caricature of a low-class cabaret singer bent on destroying Jerry’s romance with Barbara is a delightful study in character contrast.

Grant’s combination of sophistication and buffoonery plays exceedingly well. One minute he is the picture of debonair suaveness and the next he is Jitsu fighting with a butler or falling off a chair in the middle of an intimate parlor concert. Grant said that Dunne was his favorite actress to work with, and it shows here, as he and Dunne have perfect chemistry. Every scene flows evenly and neither actor gets the best of the other.

Who doesn’t love a cute dog? And, when you combine cute with smart, you get the perfect canine, and that is what Mr. Smith is. His interactions with both Dunne and Grant are hilarious. Of particular note is the “Two Hat” scene where Lucy tries to hide Armand’s hat from Jerry and Mr. Smith keeps finding it. When he climbs up on a mirrored table to gain access to the hat it is priceless.

The supporting characters are also one of the reasons The Awful Truth is so successful. Bellamy earned a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination for his portrayal of a gullible, slow-witted cowboy. From his horrible rendition of “Home on the Range” to his mama boy discussions with his domineering mother (Esther Dale), Bellamy is a delight. Cecil Cunningham is also wickedly entertaining as Lucy’s Aunt Patsy, who is stone-faced and straight talking. While her lines are few and far between, they are always delivered with just the right tone and gusto.

Finally, I must also say something about Dunne’s wardrobe, which was designed by Robert Kalloch. Dunne always wore clothes well, but some of the outfits/hats she wore in The Awful Truth took a certain type of woman to wear. From the gigantic white mink coat she enters the film in to a pajama lounging outfit made for the ages, Dunne wears Lucy’s crazy clothes stylishly and confidently. Really, she had to know how ridiculously bizarre some of the hats placed on her head looked, but I expect she realized the clothes fit her character’s slightly-off personality well.

Overall, I adore The Awful Truth. It is a stylish, devilishly funny film filled with memorable scenes and lines. Dunne and Grant’s onscreen chemistry pulls the viewer in and makes everyone root for the couple’s reunion—which is done in a perfectly cuckoo way.

Read More

I Walked with a Zombie (1943) **

Producer Val Lewton and director Jacques Tourneur made three low-budget ‘horror’ films together for RKO: Cat People (1942), I Walked with a Zombie (1943), and The Leopard Man (1943).  For me, they are slightly amusing looks at the supernatural with a heavy dose of eerie cheese on the side.  The acting is always less than stellar and the set productions are minimal, but the stories are always oddly entertaining and told in a highly unusual way.  Still, with far superior films left off the 1001 List, I find it a tad galling that two out of their three films together made the cut.

I Walked with a Zombie is a tale of voodoo and love. Nurse Betsy Connell (Frances Dee) is dispatched to Saint Sebastian in the Caribbean to care for Jessica Holland (Christine Gordon), a catatonic woman who walks around like a zombie (hence the film’s title). Jessica’s husband, Paul (Tom Conway), is a morose sugar plantation owner who tells anyone who will listen that everything good dies on St. Sebastian.  I suppose he had a reason to be bitter, as before his wife fell ill she planned to run away with his half-brother, Wesley Rand (James Ellison). Anyway, Jessica’s a zombie, Paul is a bore and Wesley is a drunk—oh, and their mother (Edith Barrett) is a pretend voodoo priestess to the superstitious locals.  Obviously attracted to the bizarre, Betsy soon falls in love with Paul and does all she can do to heal Jessica—even going so far as to take Jessica to the voodoo priest (although at the time she wasn’t aware that Jessica’s mother-in-law could have just been called to the house).

Okay, so what can I say good about I Walked with a Zombie?  Betsy and Jessica’s perilous jaunt into the sugar cane fields to reach the houmfort (it’s where the voodooers gather) is creepy.  Jungle drums fill the air and the wind is swirling, oh, and there’s a beyond frightening gatekeeper (Darby Jones) who they must pass to gain entry to the houmfort. Once there, they encounter possessed looking people gyrating about and a devilish-looking fellow wielding a saber for some ceremony.  While it is interesting that Tourneur and Lewton take a stab at calypso culture, I don’t know how realistic a depiction it was—personally, I hope they let their imaginations get a bit carried away.

Nothing good can really be said about the acting, although Frances Dee does a passable job.  She was pretty much a B-actress her entire career, but this was one of her better performances.  If anyone deserves any kudos it would have to be Theresa Harris as Alma, the house servant who tells Betsy how to find the houmfort.  Perhaps if there hadn’t been such a color barrier in Hollywood she could have found more meaningful roles. 

Yet, the bad acting is not the thing that most troubles me about I Walked with a Zombie. For the life of me I can’t figure out when, why or how Betsy fell in love with Paul. One minute he’s saying the world is full of doom and playing the piano rather poorly, and the next Betsy is declaring her undying love for him—what? Oh, and how didn’t Mrs. Rand’s sons know their mother played voodoo priestess in her free time when they seemed to know everything else that went on on the island?  There are just too many plot holes that go left unexplained. I suppose this was budget related, but still…

Overall, I Walked with a Zombie takes an amusing and unusual look at the world of voodoo. It is one of the better B-films to come out of Hollywood in the 1940s, but it surely isn’t one of the movies I had to see before my death. 

Read More

Gaslight (1944) ***

(There may be spoilers in this post.)

What man would choose jewels over Ingrid Bergman? Liberace does not count…

Director George Cukor’s Gaslight (1944) is a taut drama filled with suspense and anxiety.  Blessed by a spectacular cast of Hollywood heavyweights, Cukor, with the help of MGM’s suppression team, totally eclipsed the 1940 British film version of Patrick Hamilton’s play Gas Light, which was called Angel Street on Broadway. Nominated for seven Academy Awards, Gaslight is an excellent example of what a tight script, good acting, and superb art direction can do to create a truly memorable movie.

Screenwriters John Van Durten, Walter Reisch, and John L. Balderston’s adapted screenplay tells the story of Paula Alquist Anton (Ingrid Bergman), a young bride driven to believe she’s going insane by her manipulative, murderous husband Gregory (Charles Boyer).  It is a dark tale of one man’s obsession with finding Paula’s aunt’s jewels at any cost.  What I most admire about the story is that you don’t know exactly what Gregory is up to until the last 20 minutes of the film. Is Paula really going insane or is Gregory gaslighting her? Gaslight is one of those films that when you see it for a second time you pick up on all the clues that point to Gregory’s true intentions.  I’m not sure this is exactly a good thing, because some people might get miffed when the clues aren’t as obvious the first time they watch.  Personally, it doesn’t bother me because I like suspense films that aren’t so clear-cut that you can figure out the mystery in the first 20 minutes. 

Who better to play a fresh, young bride driven to the brink of insanity than Bergman—with her angelic beauty and sweet temperament (mind you, this was pre-Rossellini)? Bergman was so enthralled by the Broadway play that she lobbied her Hollywood captor David O. Selznick to loan her out to MGM so that she could play the part of Paula. Whatever poor Ingrid had to do to convince Selznick paid off, as she won her first Best Actress Academy Award for her searing performance.  As someone who has watched first-hand as someone goes off the deep end, I have to say that Bergman’s fluctuations between rational and irrational behavior are spot on.  When a person starts to believe that they are losing their grip on reality they fluctuate between extremes.  The best example of this is when Paula confidently decides she is going to the music recital.  Once there she is tricked into believing that she has stolen Gregory’s watch and bursts into hysterical tears. 

Boyer plays his suave conniving part well, too.  It took a lot of restraint not to play Gregory too darkly, as this would have hindered the suspense of the story.  Instead, Boyer straddles the line between being a concerned husband and a ruthless manipulator.  Personally, I would have liked to have seen him be a bit more menacing at the end of the film, because it would have added credibility to the idea that he’d strangled Paula’s aunt to death years before.

And then there’s an 18-year old Angela Lansbury, playing the couple’s impertinent maid Nancy in her film debut. If her Cockney accent doesn’t surprise you, then the saucy way she plays the flirtatious maid will.  What a way to start a career—giving Bergman dirty looks and engaging in light-sexual banter with Boyer.  Cukor said that from Lansbury’s first day on the set it was obvious that she was a born actress. She earned a Best Supporting Actress Oscar nomination for a part that was supposed to be quite small, but Cukor had it expanded when he saw her acting potential. 

Joseph Cotton and Dame May Whitty fill out the rest of the cast.  While Cotton’s Brian Cameron plays an integral part at the conclusion, his role is a rather minor one.  Whitty, for her part, plays the stereotypical nosy neighbor Ms. Thwaites.  I’m not exactly sure what purpose she serves other than mild comic relief. Still, as with any Cotton or Whitty performance, they make their presences known.

Finally, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the Oscar-winning black and white art direction of Cedric Gibbons, William Ferrari, Edwin Willis, and Paul Huldschinsky.  The plot is Gothic in tone and dressed in Victorian décor, which creates a cluttered, creepy essence.  Their use of fog to literally and metaphorically mask Gregory’s shady behavior is inspired, and their set decorations—especially the over-decorated home—are wonderfully thought out, too. 

Overall, Ingrid Bergman’s strong performance and the engaging script are the main reasons I enjoyed Gaslight.  Still, the vagueness of Gregory’s intentions could be off-putting to some.  And, while cinematographer Joseph Ruttenberg earned an Academy Award nomination for his work, I believe the film falls a bit short when it comes to its overall photography. 

Read More

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) ***

Walt Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) holds a special place in my heart, as it was the first film my mother ever took me to see.  Mind you, I saw it in re-issue, and only after I was so frightened by the newspaper advertisement for Charlotte’s Web (1973, also in re-issue) that I refused to see a film with a menacing-looking spider. In retrospect, I now know that I saw the more frightening of the two.  As a child it was easy to adore the dwarfs and to idolize the beautiful Snow White. As an adult, however, I find many troubling elements.

While I’ve always been a fan of the Magic Mirror—he was the thing I most looked forward to on Disney Sunday nights—he was ultra-creepy in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. So, anytime I watch the movie it’s unnerving to see my beloved Mirror sell Snow White (Adrianna Caselotti) out to Queen Grimhilde (Lucille La Verne). I know it’s a small thing, but it’s sort of like watching Atticus Finch (Gregory Peck) play evil Nazi Dr. Josef Mengele in The Boys from Brazil (1978)—something just isn’t kosher!

Then there’s the unsettling fixation of beauty that everyone in the film has—except Snow White, of course.  The Queen spends her days asking the Mirror who’s the fairest in the land, and her nights disguised as an old crone casting spells to kill her rivals.  This, obviously, does not send a positive message to young girls in a culture fixated on their outward appearances.  Ordering the execution of your step-daughter because she has surpassed your beauty seemed ridiculous in 1937, but today it doesn’t seem so far-fetched when beauty queens and cheerleaders have plotted to kill their rivals.  The dwarfs get in the act, too, by allowing Snow White’s beauty to endanger their lives and to put them out of their beds. Really, in what world should seven miners (don’t let their ‘happy’ singing of “Heigh-Ho” fool you, they did back-breaking work) give up their bed for one woman?  Why? Because Heigh HOE she was a good-looking woman.  Bad message…

Oh, and then there’s the carnivorous slavery issue—not so much Snow White, but the forest animals.  After her foray into the creepy woods after the Woodsman (Stuart Buchanan) told her to run for her life, Snow White befriends a whole host of adorable animals.  Not long after this she puts them to work cleaning the dwarfs’ scuzzy cottage so she can live there.  Yes, they hung out with her in the day, but at what price?  Snow White was the dwarfs’ cook, right?  I ask you this: did the Dwarfs look like vegans to you?  I‘m sure having animal ‘friends’ came in handy for her…

Finally, after Snow White ate the poisoned apple and succumbed to the ‘Sleeping Death’ spell, who was it that built her that gold and glass coffin and sat in constant vigil?  Prince Charming?  No, it was the seven dwarfs. Yet, as soon as the handsome prince came and broke the spell with a kiss, Snow White was waving goodbye and riding off into the sunset on his white horse. What message does that send?  Bald dwarfs, no matter how devoted, just can’t compare to tall, handsome princes?  As such, now countless women dream of the day when their princes will come and take them away from housework and less-attractive men. Hmmm…

Still, in all seriousness, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs is a delightful film.  As the first feature-length animated movie, it is historically significant. It launched Walt Disney as one of the most important (and bankable) film companies, too.  What they did with animation in 1937 has to be admired as well.  For several children, like myself, it has served as an introduction to the amazing worlds that cinema can create. Even if I give it a hard time as an adult, that does not minimize the lasting memory that it created for me back in 1975, when my mother took me to see my very first movie. 

Read More

The Third Man (1949) ***

(There possibly could be spoilers contained within this post.)

If anyone ever deserved an Oscar for Best Cinematography it was Robert Krasker for his outstanding work on The Third Man (1949). Yes, the story is intriguing and the actors are engaging, but it’s the cinematogrphy that makes this film the preeminent film noir. 

Director Carol Reed was a visual genius and a great handler of enormous egos.  His bold use of off-angle shots and keen understanding of lighting are two of the features that make The Third Man such an original movie. His ability to ‘handle’ the likes of Orson Welles, Joseph Cotton, Trevor Howard, and Alida Valli is what brings the whole production into one cohesive visual masterpiece.  Oh, and he did it primarily on location in a rubble covered Vienna.

The story, penned by Graham Greene, finds American Holly Martins (Cotton) arriving in Vienna to meet his childhood friend Harry Lime (Welles), who has promised him a job. Unfortunately for Martins, Lime has just been killed and is being buried.  A writer of pulp Westerns, Martins finds the story behind Lime’s death suspicious and starts his own investigation.  He meets an eccentric cast of characters as he searches for the truth.  First, there is Major Calloway (Howard), a British officer who claims that Lime was a no-good black marketer who sold tainted penicillin to hospitals which killed and/or maimed hundreds of people.  Then there’s Baron Kurtz (Ernst Deutsch), a friend of Lime’s who carries a small dog around and attempts to convince Martins that Lime’s death was a freak accident.  The problem is that there are conflicting reports about who saw what and when.  The big point of contention is whether two or three men carried Lime’s body out of the street after it was struck by a truck.  Kurtz is accounted for and so is Popescu (Siegfried Breuer), but who was the third man (hence the title)?  It obviously wasn’t Anna Schmidt (Valli), Lime’s actress girlfriend who Martins soon falls for.  It takes a dangerous ride on a Ferris Wheel to reveal the truth, and a claustrophobic manhunt through the Vienna sewers to bring the third man to justice.

Krasker was highly influenced by German Expressionism and it shows.  When Reed decided that they would use off-angle shots throughout most of the movie I expect Krasker brushed up on the work of Robert Wiene (most notably The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari) and Fritz Lang (probably his Dr. Mabuse). When asked about the off-angle shots Reed replied that he “shot most of the film with a wide-angle lens that distorted the buildings and emphasized the wet cobblestone streets. But the angle of vision was just to suggest that something crooked was going on.” Oddly enough he also said he decided this device wasn’t a good idea and that he pretty much abandoned it for the remainder of his career.  Of course, he may have been influenced by William Wyler’s spirit level gift, which Reed was given after Wyler viewed the picture. I, for one, think it was a brilliant idea and adds a visual uniqueness to the film.

The German Expressionists also knew how to use light and shadow, and what noir worth it’s salt wouldn’t employ the manipulation of light to create lasting images?  There are several scenes in The Third Man that I could point to to illustrate my point, but I’ll just discuss my two favorite ones.  The first is when the third man is revealed standing in the shadows of a doorway by a beaming light.  His face is fittingly half-lit with a wonderful smirk.  The second is when what seems like the entire police force is staked out to capture the third man and a larger than life shadow emerges at the top of a dark street and slowly becomes smaller as it comes closer to them to reveal that it is a balloon vendor. 

All of these wonderful shots are set to Anton Karas’ memorable “Third Man Theme”. The story behind this could have also been made into a film. Karas was discovered by Reed after the director heard him playing a zither in a Vienna beer garden while Reed was location scouting. Thinking the zither sound an apt representation of Vienna, Reed asked Karas to write and record the film’s score. When the song was released in the United States it topped the charts for eleven weeks—really.

The acting in The Third Man is top-notch, too. Cotton plays disillusioned well and Valli is convincing as a somber, realistic woman of the world.  Howard’s Calloway is the quintessential British officer and Deutsch is exceptionally smarmy as a dilettante manipulator. But the standout performance belongs to Welles, who had the audacity to make his vile character one of the most likable villains to grace the silver screen. There’s pep in his step and a wicked gleam in his eye in his few scenes, but they are so freaking memorable.

But, Welles does not have the honor of being in THE most memorable scene in The Third Man—and THE most memorable closing shot in all of film.  That honor belongs to Cotton and Valli—and a tree-lined street adjacent to the Friedhof Cemetery.  It is a 65-second stagnant long-shot of “Martins leaning against a wagon in the left foreground as Anna approaches from a great distance, getting progressively closer, and - without so much as a glance in his direction - finally walking past him and out of frame. Martins then lights a cigarette and in exasperation, throws the match to the ground, after which the picture fades to black. The strains of Karas's zither music are heard throughout the shot,” (from Richard Raskin’s Closure in The Third Man: On the Dynamics of an Unhappy Ending). Quite simply, it is an unforgettable way to end a movie.

Overall, I adore the visual elements of The Third Man. The acting is good, as well. Yet, what prevents me from pushing this film into four-star status is that it does drag at points.  I don’t know if this is because there are so many awesome shots without dialogue, which seems to make me wish the characters would stop talking so I can concentrate on the visuals or what.  Yes, I know that sounds strange (or perhaps stupid), but there must be something lacking in a film if what I remember most are the shots without any dialogue. 

Read More

The Life of Emile Zola (1937) **1/2

For me, director William Dieterle’s The Life of Emile Zola (1937) is one of those films that I admire but don’t really want to watch over and over again. As a former history teacher it provided a nice tool to visually educate my students about the Dreyfuss Affair, but that’s really it. Yes, it won a Best Picture Oscar, but that had more to do with Heinz Herald, Geza Herczeg, and Norman Reilly Raine’s Oscar-winning screenplay about one of the most scandalous real-life cover-ups to rock France ever, than the overall film production itself.

The title of the movie is a misnomer, as the story isn’t really about Emile Zola’s life. It does open with a young Zola (Paul Muni) and Paul Cézanne (Vladimir Sokoloff) freezing in a Parisian garret, but other than a passing reference to how Zola became famous by writing about the debasement of a downtrodden prostitute (Nana, 1880), the story is about the Dreyfuss Affair. Captain Alfred Dreyfuss (Best-Supporting Actor winner Joseph Schildkraut) was accused of being a spy after a note was intercepted by the French General Command. Because he was a foreigner and a Jew, he seemed like the most obvious candidate and so he was court-martialed and publicly denounced. After he is sent to rot on Devil’s Island, his wife (Gale Sondergaard) asks Zola to look into her husband’s case. By this time in his life Zola is fat, gray and a bit complacent in his duties as Paris’ town crier of injustices, but eventually he becomes outraged when he learns that the Army knowingly allowed an innocent man to be tortured in prison for years, while they have acquitted the actual traitor (Robert Barrat) to avoid a scandal. As a result, he penned his most lasting prose, “J’accuse”—an open letter in L’Aurore in which he accused the General Command of covering up the scandal.

The best parts of the film (and the bulk of the plot) take place at Zola’s trial for libeling the Army. Mainly, this is due to Donald Crisp’s brilliant performance as Zola’s lawyer, Maitre Labori. For me, he was more deserving of a Best Supporting Actor than Schildkraut, but I think Hollywood was becoming politicized by the anti-Semitism running rampant in Europe in the late 1930s and wanted to make a statement. What makes Crisp’s performance so compelling is that it requires him to be glib, consternated, outraged, and flabbergasted by a trial that is orchestrated in such a way that he knows he cannot win.

Still, what most people remember about the trial is the closing argument Zola delivers to the jury. Muni was known for his biopic portrayals of famous men (James Allen, Louis Pasteur, Benito Juarez and many more), so it is no surprise that his turn as Zola was so good that he was nominated for a Best Actor Oscar (he lost to Spencer Tracy in Captains Courageous). The impassioned argument he delivers is captured in an extended long take that draws you in. This is achieved by Dieterle placing the camera in what is supposed to be the jury box and having Muni speak directly into it with no cuts. This works effectively well at making the audience outraged, too.

Yet, if it were not for the trial section of this film I don’t think it would merit much consideration. I love Cézanne’s art, but find he gets short-shrift here, which I find disturbing for irrational reasons. I ask you, who is more remembered today: Cézanne or Zola? Ah, but let’s step away from that peeve and mention that we appreciate what Dieterle and his screenwriters did with the Dreyfuss Affair. In a world that was slowly becoming ensnared in anti-Semitism this served as a reminder of how misguided and dangerous it could really be.

Read More

Throne of Blood (Kumonosu Jo) 1957 **

Long before Tony Montana went down in a blaze of bullets in Scarface (1983), Taketoki Washizu (Toshiro Mifune) went out in a flurry of arrows in Throne of Blood (1957). There are memorable death scenes, and then there are extraordinary comeuppances that fell insane Japanese feudal lords.  Of course, famed director Akira Kurosawa was quite adept at staging furious and glorious battle scenes, but for me Washizu’s timely end is unforgettable.

The premise behind Throne of Blood (also known as Spider’s Web Castle) is Shakespeare’s Macbeth. Kurosawa and fellow screenwriters Shinobu Hashimoto, Ryuzo Kikushima, and Hideo Oguni do a wonderful job of refashioning Shakespeare’s play to feudal Japan.  Unfortunately, the corrupting power of unchecked ambition is a universal theme, so the machinations of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth seamlessly transfers to Washizu and Asaji (Isuzu Yamada). This timeless story is enhanced by an ambitious production design and expertly crafted costumes. 

The impenetrable Spider’s Web Castle was built high on Mount Fuji in a location known for its fogginess. The thick mist is a character in itself, in that it foretells when something ominous is about to unfold.  Whether it be when Washizu and his friend and fellow military leader Miki (Minoru Chiaki) get lost in Spider’s Web Forest and meet the creepy Forest Spirit (Chieko Naniwa), or when Lady Asaji plots to have her husband kill the reigning lord (Hiroshi Tachikawa), thick fog eerily seeps over the landscape. On building the castle, Kurosawa has said that it was one of the most difficult productions of his film career, as the location was quite remote and getting enough workers and materials proved difficult. Fortunately for him there was a U.S. Marine base nearby who helped build the towering set. 

However, the Marines could not be counted on to design and make historically accurate costumes for a cast of hundreds. That monumental task fell to Taiki Mori, who clothed hundreds of men in feudal battle regalia and designed delicate, intricate kimonos for Asaji and others. One particular kimono of Asaji’s is fashioned in such a way as to make her appear and move like an actual spider, which is apt, as she is no doubt something of a black widow, always spinning webs of deceit to ensnare her perceived enemies.

For a film called Throne of Blood you don’t really see a lot of bloodshed. Instead blood is used more metaphorically than anything (although we do see blood on Washizu’s hands after he kills the Lord).  This theme is epitomized when the Forest Spirit says, “If you choose the path of bloodshed, then climb to the very pinnacle of evil.” It’s interesting that he would say that, of course, because he’s the one who set Washizu off to capture a throne covered in blood by prophesizing that Washizu was destined to rule Spider’s Web Castle. 

While I was thoroughly enthralled with Washizu’s death scene, there is too much overacting in Throne of Blood for me. Perhaps it’s a cultural thing, or Kurosawa instructed Mifune to ham it up because he wanted to show the depths of Washizu’s madness, but there was too much bulging eyes and maniacal laughs for my liking.  Also, it puzzles me why Kurosawa incorporated Noh theatre into the story with Asaji’s restricted, orchestrated movements, but then at other times she is free to run about unencumbered.  Still, the ending is worth sitting through 105 minutes of overacting. 

Read More