allyclow

The Killers is a high watermark in film noir and Hollywood cinema in general. The opening scene is full of shadows and misty light; metaphors for the film and the plot which only becomes clear when we edge further into the film and by that time we're as trapped as the characters within. We follow an insurance investigator, Jim Reardon (Edmond O'Brien), working on behalf of the Tristate oil company after an employee with life insurance has been killed. Reardon is ambitious, wants to make a name for himself and sees an interesting case begin to unfold that may or may not have a lot of money at the bottom of it.

We see the dead man, Pete 'The Swede' Lund played by Burt Lancaster killed in his bed in a small town, Brentwood, New Jersey. He almost wants to die and has resigned himself to this most brutal of ends. Two hit men load him with lead but not before an electrifying scene at a diner where they calmly enquire about Lund and tell the men at the diner they were 'lucky' to avoid being caught in the potential crossfire. This is a key scene in the movie and sets the film up with beautiful deep-focus cinematography and killer dialogue.

As Reardon discovers more about Lund's life, for essentially this is a biopic of The Swede, we learn what he does through flashback scenes. Lund was a boxer who never quite made the big time and when he could no longer fight, fell in with a gangster called Jim Colfax. He became Colfax's heavy and when he fell for Kitty Collins (played with suitable vamp by Ava Gardner), he was jailed for three years for covering for her in a stolen jewellery rap. In jail, we see Lund hold on to a handkerchief Collins gave him. It represents her, it represents freedom.

At this point in the film, the audience has already seen the plot from three or four different time-frames, and we piece the picture together as if we were the investigator in the movie. Although the film is about the Swede, it is also about a heist and it is this job and its consequences that brings the film together. I always think the greatest heist movie is The Killers, Stanley Kubrick's foray into noir headed by Sterling Hayden but the scene of the payroll robbery in The Killers is just as good - a single shot with voice-over reports the scene and it was a great choice by the director to execute it in this fashion.

The final third of the movie cannot be revealed here but it finishes with flawless pacing and acting with a chilling end-scene for one of the characters. Siodmak was to be blacklisted in the McCarthy HUAC trials but not before he made this influential and electric contribution to cinema.

Bunuel's 1962 film revolves (almost literally) around a group of middle-class people at a dinner party. This theme would be explored further in The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie but works better in his earlier piece. The premise of the film is playfully simple. The guests of Nobille are trapped in a room at the end of the evening unwilling or unable to leave. That's it. Until the third reel of the film when the epilogue gives us another context in which to view the previous 80 minutes worth of action.

The characters are placed within this Kafkaesque narrative, seemingly of their own accord at first. There is no barrier to the next room yet no one can pass its borders. There is no science-fiction at play here, more an existential angst keeping them from what lies beyond. Some of the players half-heartedly try and make their escape but some give-up without trying or stall at the last, crying, unable to move further. Their predicament is not one of comfort either, there is death, starvation and thirst within the group and their ordeal goes on for weeks.

Occasionally Bunuel brings the audience out of the room and we see people on the outside staring at the house with as much perplexity as those trapped inside. A rescue attempt is made but again, no one really tries to just walk in, open the doors and let the poor wretches out.

What are we to make of the situation. Obviously there is a metaphor that Bunuel wants us to read. Is it a simple case of the middle classes being trapped within their own understanding of the world, with the desire to understand other kinds of people merely an act of lip-service to their supposed ideals? Is it a comment on the Spanish Civil War whereby those on the streets were forced to fight as the middle classes ate their lamb? The ending reveals more than I will say but I think this is Bunuel's best film of those I've seen and it is a crisp, timeless watch which asks more questions than it answers.

This Transient Life (Mujo) is, on the surface, a sordid tale about the interaction between incest, immorality and Buddhism. Dig a little deeper and that's exactly what it continues to turn out to be. The lead character is Masao, a young man who shuns the path laid down by his rich father to take over his trading business, instead we see him idolise Buddhist sculpture and spend his days laconically with prostitutes and reading books. His sister Yuri similarly lives how she chooses having turned down two marriage proposals preferring to be close to home and the local monastery. When a playful scene between Yuri and Masao turns into a lustful embrace, the siblings' bond becomes sexual rather than familial and this sets the tone for the rest of the film.

When the monk Ogino discovers their secret, he urges Masao to leave the village and he does so to become the apprentice of a master sculpture of icons of the Buddha. Throughout the film, Buddhism shows us that life fades quickly and existential questions of how to live ones life are asked. Should one be pure and live by the codes set by religion, or should those very teachings, of the impermanence of life and its swift passing, be a reason to create ones own morality and fear no hell and covet no afterlife?

Director Jissoji Akio develops these stories masterfully with constantly shifting camera movements (Ozu he is not) and angles that would make Orson Welles brim with admiration. The expressive film language ranges from pendulum-like tracking shots to extreme close- ups reminding us of the film's arts roots. The film is stunningly crisp and beautifully shot and it is this style that carries the viewer into the heart of the story's conclusion. At times surreal, always spellbinding, this film deserves to be among the pantheon of the greats of 60's and 70's Japanese cinema.