1950s – PopCult Reviews

Movie Review – Throne of Blood

Throne of Blood (1957)
Written by William Shakespeare, Shinobu Hashimoto, Ryūzō Kikushima, Akira Kurosawa, and Hideo Oguni
Directed by Akira Kurosawa

I could have gone with more traditional adaptations of MacBeth, but I wanted to see how Kurosawa interpreted the work. I was also interested in learning how far back Japan’s history with Shakespeare’s work went to understand how well-known the play was. Shakeapeare’s plays arrived in Japan during the Meiji Restoration when power was reconsolidated under the Emperor. If you watch Shogun, it is the beginning of the Tokugawa Shogunate, which ended with the Meiji Restoration. It was marked by the opening of Japan’s borders to foreign influence in a way that had never been seen before.

Movie Review – Julius Caesar (1953)

Julius Caesar (1953)
Written by William Shakespeare, adapted by Joseph L. Mankiewicz
Directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz

Once upon a time, I was a student at university who didn’t know exactly what to major in. I had chosen mass communications, but after taking some of the English prerequisite classes for all students at my liberal arts college I found I really loved those teachers and the subject matter. Upon becoming an English major, I had some new required classes. Two of those were Shakespeare: Comedies and Shakespeare: Tragedies. I wasn’t a stranger to the work of the Bard. I was homeschooled but still assigned Romeo and Juliet to read. An afterschool Literature Club that our local homeschool group formed had us read Julius Caesar and even performed excerpts from it at the homeschool group talent show. I got to deliver Mark Antony’s “Friends, romans, countrymen” speech which I am sure if I reviewed the crumbling VHS tape I’d pick on several areas of improvement.

Movie Review – Ikiru

Ikiru (1952)
Written by Akira Kurosawa, Shinobu Hashimoto, and Hideo Oguni
Directed by Akira Kurosawa

After watching a little over half a dozen Kurosawa films in my life, I have concluded that I prefer his modern films more than his historical ones. That isn’t to say films like Seven Samurai or HIdden Fortress are bad. It’s more that I have difficulty emotionally connecting with that era of Japan. It’s certainly entertaining, but I don’t get invested. Perhaps that’s why I’ve gravitated towards Yasujirō Ozu’s films; they are contemporary to the period they are made in and focus on people living their lives with little melodrama. Ikiru is like if Kurosawa tried his hand at an Ozu picture. It has some thematic similarities, but tonally, this is pure Kurosawa. You can see him shaping the minds of audience members who would go on to become prolific filmmakers in their own right, mimicking the techniques of a master they first observed here.

Movie Review – Johnny Guitar

Johnny Guitar (1954)
Written by Philip Yordan and Ben Maddow
Directed by Nicholas Ray

By 1954, Joan Crawford was in the latter part of her career. She debuted in 1924 after receiving a contract from MGM that paid $75 a week. This was during the silent era, which Crawford was able to transition from into sound. By 1938, she was one of several actors labeled “box office poison” for declining revenues. That didn’t stop Crawford; she got bought out of her contract to move to Warner Brothers. It was here she starred in Mildred Pierce, one of her most well-regarded pictures of this era. She would branch out to other studios, and it was with Republic Pictures that she collaborated with Nicholas Ray to make the cult classic Johnny Guitar.

Movie Review – The Earrings of Madame De…

The Earrings of Madame De… (1953)
Written by Max Ophüls, Annette Wademant, and Marcel Achard
Directed by Max Ophüls

As with so many artists in Europe during the 1930s, Max Ophüls could see the rise of the Nazis and fled to France following the Reichstag Fire. He would continue his odyssey across the continent, attempting to stay ahead of the Nazis, making films along the way before reaching Portugal and heading to the United States. Ophüls would settle down in Hollywood for a few years, where he continued making movies, and once the war was over, he returned to Europe in 1950. It’s this period he’s become most known for, when he made his most acclaimed feature film, The Earrings of Madame De…

Movie Review – Godzilla, King of Monsters

Godzilla, King of the Monsters (1956)
Written by Shigeru Kayama, Takeo Murata, and Ishirō Honda
Directed by Ishirō Honda

6 August 1945. Hiroshima, Japan. Three American B-29 heavy bombers passed over the city. One of them, the Enola Gay, dropped a 15-kiloton atomic bomb. That is the equivalent of about 15 thousand tons of TNT. Over 100,000 Japanese civilians were killed. Those who didn’t die immediately were blinded by the flash of the bomb, were crushed under the weight of collapsing buildings, suffered radiation poisoning the following days and months, and more. The U.S. would drop another even larger bomb on Nagasaki. There were plans to drop yet a third bomb on Japanese civilians. Japan had been in talks with the Soviet Union to surrender and end the war. For the United States, a post-war era in which the USSR was seen as a hero was a danger. The atomic bombings of Japan are up there with the Holocaust as some of the most horrific acts of violence humanity has committed on itself. It’s no surprise that many films have been made about this event and the atomic bomb itself. In this series, I want to look at how the bombing is analyzed and made a part of the culture, both through the eyes of the Japanese and the perpetrating nation, the United States.

PopCult Podcast – Seven Samurai/The Hidden Fortress

Akira Kurosawa is one of the greatest filmmakers to ever live and his movies have had a profound influence on the form. Today we talk about a group of ronin defending a village & the story of a princess in peril that should feel familiar.

PopCult Podcast – Perfect Days/Tokyo Story

Two quiet slice of life dramas get the spotlight this week. Wim Wenders finds poignancy in the life of a public toilet cleaner as he makes connections. Ozu delivers his humanist masterpiece with a quiet family epic.

Movie Review – All About Eve

All About Eve (1950)
Written and directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz

My supporters at Patreon voted, and February’s month-long film series is “Movies About Movies.” This means we will be watching and reviewing films all about various aspects of the industry, mostly narrative, but one documentary thrown in that was the seed of this series. We begin with one of the great American films, a piece of cinema that has rippled through popular culture since its debut. All About Eve emerged from a real-life incident where a stage actress allowed a young fan to become a part of her household staff. Things eventually went south, and the young fan became a toxic element, actively trying to undermine the woman she admired. This was related to the author Mary Orr, who turned it into a short story, which became the basis for this screenplay.

Movie Review – The 400 Blows

The 400 Blows (1959)
Written by François Truffaut and Marcel Moussy
Directed by François Truffaut

You’ll hear this annoying thing from hack directors who get justifiably reamed in the reviews for lousy work. They’ll say that people who are critics are just incapable of making their own art. It’s silly to say that because it tries to say that a thoughtful critique of a piece of art is invalid unless it praises that piece of art. François Truffaut loved movies since he was a child; as a young adult, he secured a job at Cahiers du Cinéma, becoming known as one of their most brutal writers. He earned the nickname “The Gravedigger of Cinema” and was the only Cahiers writer not invited to the 1958 Cannes Film Festival. After seeing Orson Welles’ Touch of Evil, Truffaut doubled down on his dreams of making his own feature film. This led to The 400 Blows (alongside Goddard’s Breathless) and the birth of the French New Wave. It seems like critics can make great art, too.