Stracke Reviews

The Mikado (1939)

Great singing, wonderful production.

[10/10 · 22 October 2000]

At the conclusion of the wonderful prologue (A Wand'ring Minstrel I), my wife and I broke into applause right there in the den. Can't remember our doing that before. One reason it's so good is that the director found a way to keep it in its stage home without being stagey. The key to this is editing -- lots of fast cuts among faces and angles. Given these, the camera can rejoice in the operetta's stage-centeredness: the chorus can file onstage in glorious pageant and wondrous costume; the singers can face the audience and extend their arms in that wonderful G&S take on the hamminess that underlies the proper Englishman. That's another great thing about this production. It's clearly about how *Englishmen* would look and act if someone transported them to a magical imaginary Japan whose dimensions are constrained only by only the few wisps of knowledge in the *English* mind. The singing is tops, the physical comedy is wonderful, and there's more good feeling in it than in the next 20 Hollywood feel-good movies you'll see.

The Cider House Rules (1999)

Manipulative assault on human dignity

[1/10 · 19 March 2000]

A friend warned me once to stay away from John Irving, that he was an author who created characters only so he could bounce them off walls, kill them in intriguing ways, and generally use them to show off. She was right. In this movie, you think you're watching characters, but really you're just being jacked around, and unless you sit up straight and grip your armrests really hard, the movie will in no time have you admiring yourself as the kind of person who is warm and open and understanding enough to see the deep goodness in addicts, abortionists, and incest perpetrators.

The Lady Eve (1941)

Master of Snappy Dialogue

[29 April 1999]

Sturges proves once again that he is the master of snappy dialogue, through both ingenious wordplay and faultless timing. I love the way he will have two or three characters toss a catch phrase back and forth until its full absurdity flows forth. His physical comedy also benefits from perfect timing and grace, especially in the hilarious dinner scene, which is as fine a piece of balletic clownery as one will see outside of Chaplin. Another example of the Sturges touch is the way he segues into the third and final segment of the film: Stanwyck's "Eve" sits back and fantasizes about how she will avenge herself on Fonda, and then as one shot follows another it slowly dawns on the audience that we are watching not the fantasy but the reality. Tricks like this and the way Sturges writes dialogue show why "artificiality" can be a hallmark of fine art. As with a Dickens or a Hugo, we always have the feeling that the artist himself is talking to us in a voice uniquely his own, that the story is not an end in itself but a way for artist and audience to join in communal appreciation of the human comedy.

Woman Sesame Oil Maker (1993)

Powerful but complex feminist statement

[9/10 · 12 April 1999]

This movie explores the moral dilemmas of a woman who has beaten the system on its own terms. Madame Xiang was sold at the age of 7 to the drunken lout who is now her husband of 20 years. She says she cried when she was a child, but long ago she became a stolid seeker of opportunities, with a secret lover and a successful business. Now her life comes full circle as, playing the solid patriarch that her husband could never be, she buys her retarded son a lovely young bride. Instead of preaching, Xie Fei builds powerful dramatic episodes that make the viewer feel equally strong sympathy for Madame Xiang and horror at what she is doing. The film's last moment, when she can no longer close her eyes to the horror, is very powerful. The cinematography is especially effective: the lake of the title is filmed with a lyrical beauty that serves primarily to provide an ironic contrast with the unfolding events but also underpins the characters' sense that beauty and dignity in life are somehow possible, somehow their right.

Dr. Akagi (1998)

The search for truth vindicated

[10/10 · 11 February 1999]

This movie is outstanding both as art and as philosophy. Artistically, Imamura has great range and is able to make quick switches of tone and style without losing the thread, or the audience. There is a similar yoking of divergent feelings in the relationship that develops between the two main characters. They are wildly incompatible to the end, yet together they form something that we know is right. Philosophically, Imamura does what no one in Hollywood would dare attempt. In the atmosphere of moral relativism that American films have promoted since the 60s, nothing is more preposterous than to hunger and thirst after justice. But Imamura's final film vindicates that hunger and makes us want to share it. The story's surprises are so intricately prepared that I can't say much more without ruining it, but I left the theater profoundly exhilarated.

The Birth of a Nation (1915)

Griffith and the Nazis

[1 February 1999]

Eeriest of all, this film foreshadows numerous elements of Nazism. Hitler was an unknown corporal at the time, but look at all the parallels. The klan go on their climactic ride to save the South to the tune of the "Ride of the Valkyries" by Wagner, Hitler's favorite composer. Also proto-Nazi is an intertitle's comment when the northern and southern whites join up against their common enemy. Since this moment seems to be the "birth of a nation" that the film's name refers to, one would expect a comment to that effect. Instead, the intertitle emphasizes the two groups' common "Aryan heritage." Even decorative elements anticipate Nazi tastes. The cross-in-circle emblems on the klansmen's breasts look like the ones that would be later be painted on Luftwaffe aircraft. The tall spikes on the klansmen's hoods are penis-envy versions of what the little corporal would have worn on his WWI helmet. Even the symbolic use of fire sends the mind backward to Wagner's operas and forward to Riefenstall's "Triumph of the Will." Most tellingly, when the mulatto politician's corpse is dumped at his sponsor's door the camera lingers for a moment in exultation over this casual brutality. The quick slump of the newly inanimate body onto the porch expresses precisely the kind of deliberately inhuman (but supposedly super-human) attitude that Nietzsche urged in the 19th century and the SS willed themselves into in the 20th. This film is more than a lesson in cinema history; in hindsight it shows us one of the paths that opened itself before an America at the crossroads in 1915. Next time you watch "Triumph of the Will," think, "there but for the grace of God go we."

Easy Living (1937)

Sentiment plus Sophistication

[9/10 · 11 January 1999]

One of the best film moments of the 1930s occurs just after the beginning of the film when wealthy J. B. Ball, exasperated by his spoiled family's spending habits, tosses the wife's new sable coat from a window high in their 5th Avenue mansion. As if with a mind set on its own destiny, the falling coat spreads out on the air and lands like an enchanted parachute on the head of the Mary Smith, the working girl who will be our main character (Jean Arthur), and who is riding on the upper deck of a double-decker bus. What is a double-decker doing in New York City? No one asks; the coat just does its magic and the enchanted plot is underway. Best of all, screenwriter Sturges balances the magic and sentimentality with his usual crisp, witty, no-nonsense approach to dialogue and character. This "yin / yang" harmony is similar to what he achieved in directing "Sullivan's Travels."