DVD Review: Shuji Kataoka's "S&M Hunter"

S&M Hunter. 1986. Written and directed by Shuji Kataoka, based on an original story by Yoki Haruno. Produced by Daisuke Asakura. Cinematography by Toshio Shimura. Edited by Shoji Sakai. Music by Takashi Akutagawa.

Cast: Shiro Shimomoto (S&M Hunter), Hiromi Saotome (Meg), Ayu Kiyokawa (Machi), Bunmei Tobayama (Joe), Akira Fukuda (Jack), Noami Sugishita (Maria), Yoshie Mogami, Utako Sarashina ("The Bombers" Girls), Yutaka Ikejima (S&M Dungeon Master).

Shuji Kataoka’s 1986 “pink film” S&M Hunter is a mesmerizing, subversive, and gleefully offensive film which the word “twisted” doesn’t even begin to describe. The film is one of the inaugural releases from Pink Eiga, a new DVD label dedicated to this genre, and if the descriptions and trailers to be found on their site are any indication, we are in store for some intriguingly strange films to look forward to. Pink film, for those not in the know, is a genre of Japanese softcore pornography shot on 35 millimeter with very tight budgets and limited shooting schedules (generally a week), and usually are about an hour or so long, exhibited in theaters on triple bills. The genre dates back to at least the early 1960’s, and the first examples were released by small independent studios, and such was the case until the 1970’s when major film studios, most notably Toei and Nikkatsu, entered the genre to combat the loss of their audiences to television and Hollywood films. Sex films were at that time practically the only sector guaranteed sizeable audiences and steady profits. Nikkatsu Studios in the 1970’s introduced the pink film subgenre roman porno, which had generally higher production values than regular pink films. While many pink film directors remained in the genre their entire careers, others, such as Hideo Nakata and Kiyoshi Kurosawa, used it as a launching pad to mainstream careers. Pink films and roman porno afforded directors great freedom in style and subject matter, as long as they supplied the standardized number of sex scenes and stayed within their budgets. Some directors such as Ryuichi Hiroki (Vibrator, It’s Only Talk, Love on Sunday) and Takahisa Zeze (Moon Child, A Gap in the Skin) move back and forth between pink and mainstream features. And then there are the cases of Koji Wakamatsu (Go Go Second Time Virgin, United Red Army) and Masao Adachi (The Prisoner), who were less interested in the pink film genre per se than its usefulness to express very radical politics in ways that would have not been possible in other commercial genres. Pink films continue to be produced and exhibited in Japan, although of course the audiences are much smaller after the advent of home video and the Internet.

S&M Hunter was the middle section of a trilogy (which also included S&M Hunter Begins [1995] and S&M Hunter Chronicles – The Legend of the Yakuza [1986]) featuring the titular hero (Shiro Shimomoto), a self-described “generous sadist” who wields his ropes like a Western movie gunslinger, using these ropes to conquer women and tie them up in ever elaborate and extreme ways. This film exhibits the economy of narrative structure and visual inventiveness that is a hallmark of such films. Also, its taboo-breaking philosophy, tongue planted firmly in cheek, is a crucial part of this film’s eccentric charm. Visual inventiveness is a must in pink films, since despite their subversive nature they ironically must adhere to their own special taboos, namely the legal prohibition against visible genitalia and public hair. When filming sex scenes, pink film directors must devise ways to shield the naughty bits of their actors from the camera lens, usually with some sort of physical obstruction or a strategically placed beam of light:
(BTW, some of the images below are most definitely NSFW. As if you needed me to tell you that.)

Here, Kataoka fractures screen space by using a mirror:

Kataoka is very fond of compositions that place frames within the larger frame:

The film wastes no time in getting down to the perversions. It begins with a S&M dungeon master (Yutaka Ikejima) introducing a client, Joe (Bunmei Tobayama) to his sex menu, demonstrating what is on offer, and featuring himself in successive tableaux, highlighting the film’s willingness to suspend spatial and narrative sense in its striving for maximum sexploitation:

Note the cross in the background of the first still. A perverted form of Catholicism is vigorously practiced here, with the S&M Hunter, the Dungeon Master and the willowy sex slave Maria (Noami Sugishita) donning clerical outfits:

The S&M Hunter is enlisted to free Joe’s boyfriend Jack (Akira Fukuda) from the clutches of the Bombers, a tough female gang, led by Machi (Ayu Kiyokawa), who have kidnapped Jack and forced him to be their sex slave.

The S&M Hunter frees Jack by infiltrating the Bombers’ lair and using his ropes to entrap the gang, and later seducing Machi with his rope handling skill:

The film takes the form of a western, culminating in a showdown with his nemesis Meg (Hiromi Saotome), who has joined the Bombers in order to gain revenge for enslaving her, and who had blinded him in one eye (presumably in the previous film). Kataoka uses the standard Western film visual style in the latter stages of the film, in the final showdown between the S&M Hunter and Meg:

Also, Kataoka includes this shot reminiscent of John Ford’s doorway framing in The Searchers:

The shot of Machi through the wagon wheel above also recalls iconic Western film imagery.

The film also traffics in taboo imagery with abandon, the most extreme example occurring when Meg, apropos of nothing, dons Nazi gear in preparation for her battle with her enemy:

A battle she decisively loses, when in the final, outrageous, “can you top this” sequence, Meg is hoisted from a 200-ft crane, a scene which gained instant notoriety and anticipated a real-life stunt the following year in which actress Hiromi Saotome, a S&M performer as well as a prolific pink film actress, had herself hung naked upside down in front of the Harajuku train station in Tokyo:

S&M Hunter, in its compact one-hour running time, is a blast, its single-minded emphasis on copious sex scenes that top each other in extreme outrageousness steamrollering such sacred cows as religion and political correctness in the process. The film takes full advantage of the elasticity that the pink film genre allows in playing with visual and narrative forms, lending it a fascination well beyond its prurient qualities.

S&M Hunter can be purchased from the Pink Eiga website, where you can find trailers and other info on their future releases. Here’s hoping that in this precarious economy, that this company can stick around long enough to release the rest of the films they are promising.

You can find the full, uncensored trailer here.

The Bourne Cinema Filmography: Shin Sang-ok, "A Romantic Papa" (1960)

A Romantic Papa (Romance Papa). 1960. Produced and directed by Shin Sang-ok. Written by Kim Hee-chang, based on his novel. Cinematography by Jeong Hae-jun. Edited by Kim Young-hee. Music by Kim Sung-dae. Art direction by Im Myung-sun. Sound recording by Sohn In-ho and Lee Sang-man.

Cast: Kim Seung-ho (Father), Joo Jeung-nyeo (Mother), Choi Eun-hee (Eum-jeon), Kim Jin-kyu (Jeon Woo-taek), Won Nam-gung (Ue-jin), Do Geum-bong (Gob-dan), Shin Seong-il (Baruen), Um Aeng-ran (Ebbun), Kim Seok-hoon (Mr. Lee), Joo Sun-tae (Thief).

Shin Sang-ok’s 1960 feature A Romantic Papa was the first production from his newly established company, Shin Films. Shin had already established himself as one of the most successful Korean producer/directors with such films as A Flower in Hell (1958), a hybrid melodrama/neorealist film set in a U.S. Army base, and depicting the lives of the so-called yanggongju, or prostitutes who served U.S. soldiers. A Romantic Papa was no less successful, a remarkable fact considering that this film was one of Shin’s most boldly experimental works. In this and the films that followed during the 1960’s, his most creatively and commercially fertile period, Shin managed to retain his popularity while continuing to experiment with genre and narrative structures, as well as introducing such technical innovations to Korea as color cinemascope (1961’s Seong Chunhyang) and sync sound (1968’s King’s Father). A Romantic Papa infused the family melodrama genre (which included elements not dissimilar to many of Ozu’s films, although most likely this wasn’t a direct influence) with stylistic elements that tugged against this structure: a melding of theatrical and cinematic space, and parodies of other popular film genres, such as romantic melodrama, historical drama, and “literary” films. Shin achieved this by almost entirely jettisoning plot in favor of a loose, episodic structure, essentially a series of set-ups and punchlines.

The film begins very much like a play, with all of the major characters introducing themselves directly to the audience, standing against a dark curtain:

All these characters are appropriately introduced in a hierarchical fashion. Kim, the titular “Romance Papa,” was played by Kim Seung-ho, a popular actor of the time who essayed the father role in many other films (including others for Shin) and television series. This portly man with a booming voice is the patriarch of this large clan, but he is an authority by tradition only. He is considered senile (at 52!) by his family, and called “Romance Papa” because of his sentimental nature. His wife (Joo Jeung-nyeo) frequently argues with him and loves to puncture his authority with dismissive and withering remarks, although it soon becomes clear there is no real rancor; it’s become a comfortable pattern they have fallen into, which their children eagerly encourage. The parents are followed by the eldest daughter Eum-jeon (Choi Eun-hee, Shin’s wife and a star of many of his films) and her fiancé Woo-taek (Kim Jin-kyu), a meteorologist whose profession becomes the butt of jokes. The eldest son Ue-jin (Won Nam-gung) has secretly dropped out of college to pursue a filmmaking career, and his girlfriend Mary is an actress on the film he is currently working on. The middle daughter Gob-dan (Do Geum-bong) studies English at college and is embarrassed by her father’s low wages, which put her at a lower standard of living than her schoolmates. The fact that she studies English becomes a significant detail, since English words are used at key points, starting with the English of the film’s title, and later in the film where the words “girlfriend” (to describe Mary) and “boyfriend” (to describe Woo-taek) are used. Baruen (Shin Seong-il), the youngest son, suffers from an acute inferiority complex in relation to his older brother Ue-jin, since he is forced to live on his brother’s hand-me-downs (a detail that reinforce the fact that this is far from a rich family), and feels like a hand-me-down himself, or in his words, a “remnant.” An early scene in the film in which he and his brother argue over shoes serves to illustrate this point. (More on this later.) Ebbun (Um Aeng-ran), the youngest daughter, whose name sounds like (and I think actually is, if my hearing is correct) yeppun, the Korean word meaning “pretty,” makes fun of her parents for giving her that name, since she obviously is pretty. (As an aside, it is interesting to note that Shin Seong-il and Um Aeng-ran, who play siblings in this film, were in fact a real-life couple.) The film’s extended family is encompassing enough to include not only Mr. Lee (Kim Seok-hoon), Papa’s favorite co-worker, but most amusingly, a house thief (Joo Sun-tae) who will appear later in the film.

This opening establishes the narrative strategy of the rest of the film, a series of set-ups that will receive their pay-offs later in the film. A Romantic Papa is essentially an episodic series of extended comic riffs that flesh out the characters and situations that have been laid out so succinctly at the beginning. Shin greatly admired classical Hollywood montage techniques and emulated this in his films, which makes it all the more remarkable that, at least in this film, he used these techniques to such radically experimental ends, leaving us with a very different impression than a typical Hollywood film. The effect is much closer to television drama, and this episodic structure and style of characterization survives in the form of many of today’s Korean TV series.

The front of the traditional Korean house where most of the film’s scenes take place looks very much like a stage set:

This theatrical presentation of the family home conveys the notion that this is a very orderly and controlled space, a site of comfort and respite from the often cruel and chaotic world outside. Papa insists on keeping the realms of work and home strictly separated; late in the film, when he finds the rest of the family working jobs in the house, he demands that the work signs on the door be taken down. Shin often shoots his characters from low angles:

Again, á la Ozu. The camera moves very little, just enough to follow a character or a movement. The characters move in and out of the large family room and into smaller, more private spaces. Much of the humor occurs when these boundaries are breached, as in one scene where the children cheer on their parents as they argue. Shin sometimes also crowds the frame with as many of the family members as he can, to underline just how populated this small house is:

After the opening, after the family leaves the house in the morning (except the mother, of course, who stays behind), there is a quick succession of short scenes, establishing the non-home spaces which each family member inhabits: Papa arriving early to work, lovingly arranging flowers for the office, which his boss steals; Ebbun haughtily snubbing an admiring boy on the bus ride to the school (even a brief scene such as this has a pay-off – the boy later sends Ebbun a hilariously ardent love letter); Ue-jin as an assistant director, filming a typical melodramatic scene with fake snow; Baruen in wrestling class (in later scenes, he often is holding some sort of exercise equipment); Gob-dan and her friends discuss going hiking, and she complains that she can’t go because she doesn’t own a pair of pants that she can wear. Even the smallest details and character traits echo in later parts of the film, and the fact that the film is nearly plotless helps to emphasize these small details, and Shin carefully builds them to create a rich tapestry that resonate in a very artful way. In a way, this aspect of the film brings to mind (though the style is very different) Hong Sang-soo’s films, since he very similarly transforms very ordinary details into quite lovely patterns.

One example of how the smallest situations are spun into something quite funny occurs when Baruen complains about the hand-me-down old shoes he has to wear, and asks his father to buy him new ones. Ue-jin asks for new shoes also, and tries to pass his old shoes once again to Baruen. The conversation expands into a philosophical debate and a historical discussion. The banter between these characters is punctuated with very subtle camera and character movement, and illustrates the relationship between the characters, and also between them and the rest of the family, all of whom get a chance to chime in:

The mother’s jealous reactions to what she imagines is Papa’s interest in other women occasions a couple of humorous scenes, for example in a brief bit where the film delves into psychic space as Papa visualizes, and the film shows us, the directions his wife gives to a gisaeng’s (a female entertainer analogous to Japanese geisha) house. His reveries are angrily interrupted by his wife, who demands to know why he is so interested in where this woman lives.

Shin also parodies the film industry in a scene where Ue-jin reads his screenplay to the rest of the family, and while his original story is the sort of tragic melodrama prevalent in Korean films at the time, in which the lovers commit suicide since that is the only way they can be together, his parents rewrite the script into their own versions. They cast themselves, naturally – Papa as a venerable poet, complete with a beret, and his wife as the nagging scold in a historical drama. In this and the other examples I have cited above, Shin is able to encompass many forms of storytelling into this scenario (scripted by Kim Hee-chang, based on his own novel) within the very elastic structure he has created. All is not light humor, however; darker shades occur in the latter scenes of the film, in which a crisis occurs that directly affects Papa’s ability to provide for his family, and he ends up trudging through the streets, robbed of the liveliness he had earlier in the film. But the family is his savior, and all conflicts are resolved in the end. A Romantic Papa is one of the most impressive films of this prolific major director of the so-called “Golden Age” of Korean cinema, generally considered to be the 1950’s and 1960’s. It also fascinates with its exhilarating sense of play and its beautiful, generous spirit, and is an excellent introduction to the films of Shin Sang-ok.

A Romantic Papa is part of the “Shin Sang-ok Collection” box set released by the Korean Film Archive, in a typically well-made package. The set consists of five of Shin’s films from the 1960’s. The others are his masterpiece Mother and a Guest (1961), Seong Chunhyang (1961), Deaf Samryongi (1964), and One Thousand Years Old Fox (1969). The set can be purchased at YesAsia.com.

DVD Review: Thospol Siriwiwat and Piraphan Laoyont's "Sick Nurses"

Sick Nurses (Suay Laak Sai). 2007. Directed by Thospol Siriwiwat and Piraphan Laoyont. Written by Thospol Siriwat, Piraphan Laoyont, Chanop Sirikamolmas, Buddhiporn Boossabarati, and Yuthtana Lopanpajbul. Produced by Prachya Pinkaew, Sukanya Vongsthapat, and Akarapol Techaratanaprasert. Cinematography by Chitti Urnorakankij. Edited by Piraphan Laoyont, Chalerm Wongpim, and Manussa Vorasingha. Music by Lullaby Production Co. Production designed by Sira Talthong. Art direction by Thawachachai Phutsri. Costume design by Punchalee Pinthong. Make-up effects by Arporn Meebangyang. Sound by Mickey Eugene Chaval, Somsak Pimpalaj, and Sooksun Klinchajohn.

Cast: Vichaya Jarujinda (Dr. Tah), Chidjun Rujiphan (Nook), Chol Wachananont (Tahwaan), Ase Wang (Yim), Dollaros Dechapratumwon (Joe), Kanya Rattanapetch (Ae), Ampaiwan Techapoowapat (Am), Ampairat Techapoowapat (Orn), Tanapol Nimthisuk (Toung-wit).

The tired conventions of East Asian horror films are given a few clever and satirical twists in Thospol Siriwiwat and Piraphan Laoyont’s Sick Nurses, a hospital-set flick that is essentially a series of murderous set pieces executed with an impressive flair for luridly-colored visuals and sharp editing. The titular nurses surround an apparently bisexual doctor, Dr. Tah (Vichaya Jarujinda), who has a lucrative side gig harvesting organs on the black market. At the film’s start, one of the nurses, Tahwaan (Chol Wajananont), is being held down and murdered by the doctor and other nurses for threatening to expose the scheme after she catches him two-timing her with one of the other nurses, who happens to be her sister Nook (Chidjun Rujiphan). Tahwaan’s body has to be kept for a week because Dr. Tah’s supplier isn’t yet ready for it, which forms the basis for the film’s main conceit, the belief that a dead person returns for their loved ones within a week. The time frame of the film, peppered with flashbacks filling in the relationships between the characters, is the final half-hour leading up to midnight on the seventh day. Tahwaan, now a green-skinned, long-haired ghoul, returns to wreak vengeance on the other nurses, viciously exploiting their vanities and turning their obsessions with beauty, body image, and materialistic pursuits against them in ever more vicious and cleverly staged ways.

The oddly empty hospital corridors are the stage for a series of deaths that in their lurid pink and blood-red color schemes recall Dario Argento’s giallo horror films. Some are the most memorable here are the deaths by handbag, cell phone, and a particularly nasty bit of business wherein one of the nurses’ lower part of her face is shredded by razors, topped off with her cat nibbling at her severed tongue. Also, an elaborate dismemberment befalls one of a pair of incestuous lesbian twin sisters, Am and Orn (Amipairut and Ampaivan Techapoowapat). Sick Nurses is as lurid and titillating as it possibly can be without running afoul of Thai censors, focusing on these alluring nurses in anatomical close-ups but being careful to shy away from nudity, resulting in an odd scene where one of the nurses showers with her clothes on. All of this leads up to an ending that recalls Takashi Miike’s Gozu.

Sick Nurses surprisingly finds new variations on the clichéd J-horror conventions of long-haired, vengeful ghosts, sustaining maximum tension and concisely rendering its very simple story. The far inferior Hollywood version should be arriving any day now.

Sick Nurses can be purchased from Amazon.

Nobody Knows Anything

Happy New Year! And now on to my first review of 2009.



Burn After Reading. 2008. Written, produced and directed by Joel Coen and Ethan Coen. Cinematography by Emmanuel Lubezki. Edited by Roderick Jaynes. Music by Carter Burwell. Production designed by Jess Gonchor. Costume design by Mary Zophres.

Cast: George Clooney (Harry Pfarrer), Frances McDormand (Linda Litzke), John Malkovich (Osborne Cox), Tilda Swinton (Katie Cox), Brad Pitt (Chad Feldheimer), Richard Jenkins (Ted), Elizabeth Marvel (Sandy Pfarrer), David Rasche (CIA Officer), JK Simmons (CIA Superior), Jeffrey DeMunn (Cosmetic Surgeon), Olek Krupa (Krapotkin).

After their Cormac McCarthy adaptation No Country for Old Men, and its attendant raft of rapturous critical notices and multiple Oscars, the Coen Brothers return to high farcical mode with Burn After Reading, an arch send-up of post-9/11 intelligence that spins a convoluted tale involving cheating spouses, dim-witted gym enthusiasts, revolving around a floating CD of “secret CIA shit,” that beloved MacGuffin of espionage thrillers. Everyone in the film holds a piece of the puzzle, and base all their knowledge of the situation on the particular part of the proverbial elephant they happen to be staring at, which leads to ever more ridiculous complications. The film begins and ends on a global satellite surveillance camera that zooms in at the start and zooms out at the end, centering on an office in CIA headquarters where veteran analyst Osborne Cox (a perpetually exploding John Malkovich) is downsized because of his apparent drinking problem. He storms out of the meeting after the first of many expletive-laden tirades that he will give in the course of the film, and decides to write an explosive tell-all memoir. Meanwhile, Osborne’s wife Katie (Tilda Swinton) is carrying on an affair with Harry Pfarrer (George Clooney), a federal marshal and paranoid running enthusiast who spends hours of his free time building a particularly inventive piece of sexually useful furniture. Katie plans to divorce Osborne and does some surveillance of her own, gathering his financial records on a CD. A copy of this CD somehow finds its way into the hands of Linda Litzke (Frances McDormand) and Chad Feldheimer (Brad Pitt), employees at local gym HardBodies, who, convinced the disc holds all sorts of sensitive state secrets, demand ransom from Osborne for the CD in order to pay for the numerous plastic surgeries Linda wants. After Osborne refuses to pay, threatening Chad with a “shitstorm of consequences” if they continue with their plan, Linda attempts to sell the disc to the Russians, attempting to negotiate with amused Russian embassy agent Karapotkin (Olek Krupa). In one of the film’s many bold contrivances, Linda hooks up with Harry through an Internet dating site, making this already knotty scenario even more deliriously complicated.

The Coens wrote Burn After Reading while shooting No Country for Old Men, and in a way their latest film is a funhouse-mirror variation on their previous one. Their patented brand of misanthropy comes through in just about every character here, all parts of a live-action cartoon in which everyone makes their frenetic motions in the Coens’ carefully constructed fishbowl. But in the end, it’s hard to see what the purpose of it all is. The film is bracketed by scenes with a CIA man (David Rasche) and his superior (JK Simmons) who periodically meet for debriefing sessions, the boss with a wave of his hands directing all inconveniences to be swept under the rug, including two dead bodies. But if there’s some particular political point to be made beyond the obvious satire of the cluelessness and bumbling of intelligence organizations, I fail to find one. The tone is so scattershot and catch-as-catch-can that it never really finds a footing, and it seems that the Coens are simply amusing themselves, trying to see how far they can push the outrageousness and absurdity of their scenario before everything completely implodes in on itself. All the film’s actors, including several Coen regulars, are extremely spirited and game, doing as much as they can with the one-dimensional personages, consisting of a single character trait repeated incessantly, they have been made to embody. Malkovich especially stands out as the perpetually pissed-off ex-agent railing against the “league of morons” that has ruined his life. The casual cruelty and jokiness becomes wearying as the film goes on, resulting in a purported comedy that isn’t especially funny. And after the twisted plot they have created, the Coen resolve it with by taking a sword to their Gordian knot, concluding the story in a viciously abrupt fashion, taking care of all the surviving characters off-screen in a brief ending scene, after which the camera returns to its impassive, God’s (or devil’s) eye, staring down on the certifiably insane inhabitants below.





Burn After Reading can be purchased from Amazon.

The Pusan International Film Festival (and Busan) In Pictures

This past October, I had the great opportunity to attend this year's Pusan International Film Festival, Korea's huge and sprawling film festival. It was a series of firsts for me: my first trip to Korea, my first international film festival coverage. Beyond my jet lag, general lack of sleep, and a few logistical problems, it was a tremendous, overwhelming, and exciting experience, one which I hope to repeat next year, hopefully for longer than the few days I was able to spend this year. I'm still working on some more pieces I hope to publish soon. In the meantime, over at my regular haunts at Meniscus Magazine, you can find my festival overview/travel guide, and reviews of two festival films: Roh Gyeong-tae's lovely film Land of Scarecrows (my favorite of the fest), and Claire Denis' exquisitely textured 35 Shots of Rum. As a supplement to this material, I thought I'd post here some pictures I took during the festival.

First, here's a view of Busan from my hostel window:

Haeundae Beach, Busan's main tourist attraction:

The entrance to the PIFF Pavilion, where festivalgoers can relax, have some coffee, do a little shopping, and enjoy a leisurely stroll along the beach between screenings:

More photos from the PIFF Pavilion:

Outside the SfunZ (Special Fun Zone) shopping mall in Haeundae, home of the Megabox Haeundae multiplex, one of the main PIFF venues:

Not too far from SfunZ and Haeundae Beach is the Haeundae Market, where besides shopping for clothes and other items, you can find some great fried seafood stalls and some great little restaurants:

The entrance to the Outdoor Theater, PIFF's open-air screening venue located at the Busan Yachting Center, following the screening of Shinobu Yaguchi's latest film Happy Flight:

Introducing Happy Flight were, from left to right, director Shinobu Yaguchi and actors Seiichi Tanabe and Haruka Ayase:

And finally, here's the Happy Flight trailer:

The Bourne Cinema Filmography: Martin Scorsese, "Who's That Knocking at My Door" (1967)

Who's That Knocking at My Door (aka I Call First). 1967. Directed by Martin Scorsese. Written by Martin Scorsese and Betzi Manoogian. Produced by Haig Manoogian, Betzi Manoogian, and Joseph Weill. Cinematography by Richard H. Coll and Michael Wadleigh. Edited by Thelma Schoonmaker. Sound by John Binder and F. James Datri Jr.

Cast: Zina Bethune (Girl), Harvey Keitel (J.R.), Lennard Kuras (Joey), Michael Scala (Sally Gaga), Anne Collette, Tsuai Yu-lan, Saskia Holleman (Girls in dream fantasy), Harry Northrup (Harry), Bill Minkin (Iggy), Catherine Scorsese (Mother).

The opening moments of Scorsese’s first feature encapsulate the iconography/obsessions that would inform the rest of his career. Over sharp booming sounds that reverberate like the hand of God, these images occur: a set of Catholic figures adorning a mantle; a mother (Scorsese’s own mother Catherine, of course) bakes and serves food to her children; and over a burst of 60’s pop music, a gang fight is shot with a restless camera. The associative, free-form editing, derived from the French New Wave that broke just a few years before, binds these images in an iron bond. The mother figure, which doesn’t appear again until a brief shot at the end of the film, exists outside of time – it is unclear whether this is a flashback or present scene – and becomes a vision of ideal, pure womanhood, which in the mind of the film’s protagonist J.R. (a baby-faced Harvey Keitel), is unattainable for any other mortal woman, including to his disappointment his girlfriend (Zina Bethune, standing in for the Hitchcock blonde epitomized most memorably by Kim Novak), known here as simply “The Girl.” That the main female character isn’t even given a name epitomizes the film’s sexual politics in a nutshell, a rather crude Madonna/whore dichotomy that would resurface again and again in Scorsese’s subsequent films. Arguably, he’s never fully transcended this rubric; he’s simply dressed it up in ever more sophisticated cinematic technique.

The film’s original title was I Call First, referencing a scene in which J.R. and his pals argue over who will be the next to bed two women they have lured to an apartment. J.R.’s childish and unsophisticated relationships with women make him a very distasteful character and keep us at a distance from him, most disturbingly in the way he reacts to The Girl’s tale of rape, first blaming her for it, then obsessively replaying it in his mind, and finally, after telling her “I forgive you, and I’ll marry you anyway,” and after she rebuffs him, calling her a whore. All of which is to say that such details will hardly please feminists. But beyond this, the film exhibits an infectious energy that retains its freshness, which its stylistic lapses (including an awkwardly inserted sex scene included at the behest of the film’s distributor) only serve to enhance. The roving camera, as it would do so often in Scorsese’s other films, is a prominent co-star, and the film contains rehearsals of movement that would culminate in such later celebrated set pieces as Ray Liotta’s nightclub trip in Goodfellas and the camera literally following the money in Casino. The movie-madness of Scorsese is also in full force: J.R. and the Girl meet-cute in a lengthy scene of dialogue while waiting for the Staten Island ferry, which includes J.R. excitedly discussing John Wayne and The Searchers; later he takes her to see Rio Bravo. Of course, it is no accident that these are both films revered by the famous gang of Cahiers du Cinema critics-turned-filmmakers. As Roger Ebert famously foresaw, Who’s That Knocking at My Door was not only a significant film in its own right, but a harbinger of greater things to come.

Who’s That Knocking at My Door is part of the Film Society of Lincoln Center series “Scorsese Classics,” which runs until December 31. The film screens again on Dec. 29 at 7:15.

Here is the film's most impressive sequence, a party scene set to Ray Baretto's "El Watusi," the camera circling the room in languorous slow motion with overlapping dissolves as the scene descends into violent chaos. The end of this scene culminates in a brilliant bit of editing (one of many great ones by Scorsese's editor Thelma Schoonmaker) which leads from John Wayne and Dean Martin to Junior Walker and the All-Stars' "Shotgun" (although that last bit is missing from this clip).

J.R.'s dream, set to the Doors' "The End" (also famously used in Coppola's "Apocalypse Now"):

2008 African Diaspora Film Festival: Review Round-up

The 16th annual African Diaspora Film Festival (Nov. 28 through Dec. 14, 2008), screening in New York at various venues including Anthology Film Archives, the Thalia Theatre and the Teachers College at Columbia University, features 88 films from 14 countries. Below are reviews of a few of this year's selections.

Gospel Hill (Giancarlo Esposito)

Actor Giancarlo Esposito makes his directorial debut with the festival’s opening-night film Gospel Hill, which concerns the controversial gentrification of Julia, a southern town still gripped by its violent Jim Crow past. The town remains haunted by the assassination of 60’s civil rights activist Peter Malcolm (Samuel L. Jackson, in black-and-white flashbacks), a crime which was never solved, mostly due to the non-action of the bigoted former sheriff Jack Herrod (Tom Bower), who continues to refer to black people as “niggers” without shame. Malcolm’s brother John (Danny Glover, good as always), has retreated from activism and involvement with his community, dwelling in despairing cynicism. He refuses to join the protest against the construction of a golf course that will displace the residents of Gospel Hill, a black neighborhood in Julia. This protest is spearheaded by John’s wife Sarah (Angela Bassett), who continually exhorts John to pull himself out of his existential funk. Sarah’s nemesis is Dr. Ron Palmer (Giancarlo Esposito), a rapacious real-estate profiteer who is a fervent supporter of the development. Palmer’s bored wife (Nia Long) is having an affair with Jack Herrod’s son Carl (Adam Baldwin), while Carl’s brother Joel (Taylor Kitsch) strives to distance himself as far as possible from his racist father’s legacy. Joel’s relationship with Rosie (Julia Stiles), a very earnest and liberal schoolteacher, is strained when she realizes who his father is. The cast here is very good, including Wu-Tang Clan’s the RZA, who impresses in his brief scenes as one of the townspeople, and Esposito proves to be a perfectly adequate director. The problem is with the flat script by Jeff Stacy, Jeffrey Pratt Gordon and Terrell Tannen, which is oddly lacking in dramatically compelling conflict. Every problem is solved as if by magic: the unrepentant racist ex-sheriff suddenly sees the error of his ways, and even the confrontation between John Malcolm and his father’s killer feels anticlimactic. Ultimately, Gospel Hill doesn’t go anywhere stylistically or thematically we haven’t already been, and the “struggle still continues” conclusion, instead of being inspiringly uplifting, feels truncated and incomplete. (Nov. 28, 30 and Dec. 5)

Prince of Broadway (Sean Baker)

This is by far the most impressive of the festival films available for preview. Baker’s last film Take Out examined the milieu of Chinese take-out deliverymen, and his latest film is set in another environment populated by immigrants, this time the world of street sales of counterfeit and stolen handbags, sneakers, and other merchandise in Manhattan’s garment district. Many of the hustlers and hawkers of these goods are illegal African immigrants and Prince of Broadway focuses on one with the ironic moniker of Lucky (Prince Adu), who lures customers into a storefront owned by Lebanese Armenian Levon (Karren Karaguilian), where they are taken through a secret door in the back of the store, where much cajoling, hustling, haggling, and negotiation occurs. These two immigrants’ lives are a story of stark contrasts: Levon lives in a plush apartment, where he regularly fights with his flighty wife Nadia (Victoria Tate), while Lucky sleeps on the floor in a bare apartment where he must share the bathroom with other tenants. Despite his spartan existence, in which he must look over his shoulder for police and keep a low profile so as not to alert immigration authorities, Lucky prides himself on his skills as a hustler, and he regularly enjoys the company of his extremely patient and beautiful girlfriend Karina (Keyali Mayaga). Lucky’s life is thrown into chaos when ex-girlfriend Linda (Kat Sanchez) presents him with an infant son (Aiden Noesi) that she insists is his and that he must look after for a couple of weeks while she takes care of unspecified life business. As the two weeks stretch to a much longer time, Lucky must juggle this unwanted responsibility while he goes about his hustling workday. Baker, who co-wrote the film with producer Darren Dean and also shot and edited, has clearly studied this world carefully and perceptively, and it shows in every frame. The restless camerawork stalks its characters Dardenne Brothers-style, beautifully rendering the desperation and precariousness of all of these characters’ lives, which can easily be shattered in an instant. Prince of Broadway traffics in the New York neorealist style that is a hallmark of the films of Ramin Bahrani (Man Push Cart, Chop Shop), another independent filmmaker who creates rough-hewed yet aesthetically dynamic films featuring the sort of characters that exist under most people’s noses yet are usually invisible. Also similarly to Bahrani, Baker allows his actors here, which included actual street sellers, to improvise their dialog, which also adds to the freshness and urgency of the piece. (Dec. 4)

The End of Poverty? (Philippe Diaz)

The question mark at the end of the title of Philippe Diaz’s documentary perfectly encapsulates the stance of the film towards its subject, and its depiction of this as an elusive, if not impossible goal. A despairing litany of the origins and current state of the massive inequality between rich and poor in the world, this film systematically lays its facts and statistics before us, buttressed with a gallery of talking heads, including Nobel laureates Amartya Sen and Joseph Stiglitz, and stentorian narration by Martin Sheen. A globe-trotting portrait of despair, from the silver mines of Bolivia and the gold mines of Brazil to the swamps and tea fields of Kenya, the film exhaustively explains the origins of how the labor of the poorest countries subsidizes the richest, and the legal and social structures that have kept these circumstances in an ossified stasis. That’s all well and good as far as it goes, but … any solutions, people? Any insights into how to change things? You will search in vain for any of that in Diaz’s film. While The End of Poverty? is impressively filmed and put together, it ultimately is an unenlightening, earnest “eat your spinach” documentary that you leave in a depressed state about the world’s fate. We go all around the world only to end up exactly where we began. Presumably, any talk of actual remedies will be reserved for post-screening discussions, of which there will be one on Dec. 10 at Cowin Center, Columbia University. (Dec. 3, 10)

The End Of Poverty phillip diaz 2008
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Chaos (Youssef Chahine and Khaled Youssef)

Youssef Chahine’s final film (co-directed with Khaled Youssef, who took over the reins as Chahine was ailing; Chahine died this past July) exhibits all the hallmarks of this celebrated Egyptian filmmaker’s work: devastating social critique, outsized drama, and distinctly Egyptian soap-opera theatricality. The villain of the piece is Hatem (Khaled Saleh), a corrupt police chief who regularly takes bribes, treats his prisoners with naked brutality and throws his weight around everywhere. He is obsessed with Nour (Mena Shalaby), a kindhearted teacher who in turn is enamored of Sherif (Youssef El Sherif), the local DA. Sherif is in an ill-advised engagement to Sylvia (Dorra Zarrouk), a woman with loose ways who is the polar opposite of Nour. Chahine paints a panorama of a society gripped by rampant corruption and pervasive injustice. The filmmaking is unabashedly over the top, with loud musical stings at dramatic moments, and the villainy depicted with very little nuance. Realism has no place in this scenario: the prison includes a harem of voluptuous dancing women who parade in front of a hole in the wall separating them from the male prisoners, and there are frequent fantasy sequences that skirt and sometimes cross the line of parody. Hatem is an especially cartoonish character, drooling after and stalking Nour and sniffing her stolen undergarments. The film has a flat and crudely rendered look, which matches the simple morality play that unfolds. Despite all this, Chahine makes his points about the pervasive problems of Egyptian society in unmistakable terms, and the film ends with the rousing sight of the long-terrorized populace rising up to vanquish their oppressors. (Dec. 9)

Yoji Yamada -- "Tora-san, Our Lovable Tramp": Q&A at Japan Society, 10/17/08

Yoji Yamada has become of late one of my favorite directors. This prolific Japanese filmmaker creates films that are old-fashioned in the very best sense. He is a humanist in every sense of the word: the relationships and struggles of common people are solidly at the center of his works, and all of his stylistic choices are in the service of this focus. Yamada's recent "samurai trilogy," The Twilight Samurai, The Hidden Blade, and Love and Honor, based on the novels of Shuhei Fujisawa, proved that his talent remains undimmed after 72 films (and counting). Yamada, however, will forever be best known as the director of the 48-film series featuring as its main character Tora-san, the itinerant traveling salesman played by Kiyoshi Atsumi. Yamada collaborated with Atsumi on all except the third and fourth films in this series, which ended with Atsumi's death in 1996. All of these films followed the same template: Tora-san returns to his home after a long period away, and stumbles into adventures, always meaning well yet managing to make a mess of things. He invariably falls in love with a woman along the way, but ultimately a lasting relationship is not to be. Yamada assembled an impressive stock company with these films, playing family and friends of Tora-san, most notably the exquisitely lovely Chieko Baisho, as Tora-san's sister Sakura, and brief appearances by Chishu Ryu, Ozu's frequent lead actor, as a priest. These actors also frequently acted in Yamada's non-Tora-san films. All of these films exhibit the qualities that makes Yamada's films so special: a deep love of humanity, a generosity of spirit, and an engaging mixture of humor and sentiment that makes these films always a pleasure to watch.


On October 17, 2008, the Japan Society in New York launched their monthly film series, "Best of Tora-san," running through May 2009, and consisting of eight episodes selected by Yamada himself. The first screening was of the very first film in the series, Tora-san, Our Lovable Tramp (1969). Yamada gave a live Q&A after the screening via digital video feed from Tokyo's Keio University. Below are clips of that conversation.


Yamada's opening remarks:

On the transition from a television series to a film series:

On how the character of Tora-san relates to certain Japanese cultural concepts (Part 1):

(Part 2):

On the influence of rakugo (Japanese storytelling art) on the conception of Tora-san's character, and the origin of his name:

Yamada's answer to my question about the casting of Chishu Ryu:

On the connection of the Tora-san films to the social and political realities of the time (Part 1):

(Part 2):

On the status of Tora-san as a national icon:

And finally, Yamada joins the Japan Society audience for a virtual photo-op:

Review: Shin Han-sol's "Art of Fighting"

Art of Fighting (Ssaum-ui gisul). 2006. Directed by Shin Han-sol. Written by Shin Han-sol and Min Dong-hyun. Produced by Lee Seo-yeol. Cinematography by Yim Jae-soo. Edited by Moon In-dae. Music by Yoon Min-hwa.

Cast: Baek Yoon-sik (Oh Pan-su), Jae Hee (Sung Byeong-tae), Kim Eung-soo (Byeong-ho), Choi Yeo-jin (Young-ae), Park Won-sang (Ahn Gye-jang), Hong Seung-jin (Paco), Park Gi-woong (Jae-hoon), Jeon Jae-hyung (Boong-eo), Kwon Byung-gil (Assi), Son Byeong-uk (Yong-ho).

The title of Shin Han-sol’s debut feature, Art of Fighting, proves to be quite an ironic one, since the fighting on display is anything but artful. Byeong-tae (Jae Hee, from 3-Iron), a supremely underachieving student who has been transferred to a succession of trade schools, is a willowy and delicate young man who finds himself the punching bag of bullies at each school he has been sent to. His father (Kim Eung-soo) is a distant presence, a widowed police officer who is at a loss as to how to communicate with his son. Byeong-tae assiduously studies martial-arts manuals to learn how to fight back, but he is unable to translate the advice found in these books to the real world. While attempting to learn the technique of fighting with coins, he comes across Oh Pan-su (Baek Yoon-sik), a man with a vaguely shady past who reluctantly agrees to become his mentor. Art of Fighting at first glance seems to follow the familiar outlines of The Karate Kid and countless martial arts student-teacher scenarios. However, where this film departs from its models is the often cringe-worthy brutality on display. Absent are the balletic, graceful fighting moves of classic wuxia pian films; instead there are many scenes of brutal street fighting. Bats, knives, and kicks to the head and stomach are the lingua franca of this film. Adult authority is almost completely absent; a rank social Darwinism of kill or be killed abounds here, as Byeong-tae is constantly beaten to a pulp in teacher-less classrooms. The only instance of teacher discipline is merely an act of revenge by one instructor who had a flowerpot thrown at his head during one of the gang fights.

Pan-su’s instructions for Byeong-tae consist of little technique, but an attempt to encourage Byeong-tae to get over the fear resulting from constantly being beaten by several people at once, and to be willing to do whatever is necessary to prevail. As Pan-su constantly reminds his student, there are no rules in fighting: everything is acceptable, from sand in the eyes to using whatever is around – a chair, a broken bottle – as a weapon. What is most important is being the first to strike. Shin makes sure the viewer feels what this sort of dirty fighting is like, a desperate quest to subdue your opponent as viciously and quickly as possible. Despite Pan-su’s instructions, Byeong-tae, to the film’s great credit, does not instantly gain invincibility over his enemies; he still holds back, gripped by his fear. Also raising this film above its standard scenario are the performances of its leads. Baek essays his role as the wizened, world-weary mentor effortlessly, as he has of late become the go-to actor for this sort of role (The Big Swindle, Tazza, Like a Virgin). Jae Hee’s quavering vulnerability and doe-like eyes convey his character’s isolation and quiet desperation quite effectively.

Election Night 2008

The nearly two years-long presidential campaign has been a drama and spectacle against which any film I've seen recently pales in comparison. Populated by a cast of indelible (and sometimes frightening) characters, full of unexpected and unpredictable turns (remember when people thought it would be Hillary Clinton vs. Rudy Giuliani?), and including a third-act plot twist courtesy of the governor from Wasilla, Alaska, this real-life saga has never been less than fascinating to watch. And like the greatest of films, it had a logical, beautiful, and deeply satisfying ending.

For commentary on it all, I humbly defer to the ever eloquent and astute Tavis Smiley, who sums it up far better than I ever could:

And here is that ending (which, of course, is really a beginning):