Rashomon (1951; 1952)

Rashomon is a film that features black-and-white cinematography, just eight actors, and only three settings for the entire narrative, yet it still manages to captivate viewers and make then reconsider their notions of what a film can achieve with such simple materials. At the film’s start, a woodcutter and a priest are sitting out a rainstorm in the crumbling ruins of the Rashomon Gate when a commoner seeks shelter with them. The woodcutter and priest are still puzzling over the conflicting testimony that they’ve just seen involving the death of a samurai and the rape of his wife. The commoner, sensing that the rain might last a while, is intrigued enough to ask what happened. What follows is a bewildering, entrancing series of four different versions of the same event told from multiple perspectives: the woodcutter’s version, that of a bandit who captures the couple and rapes the wife, the wife herself, and, most astonishing, the dead samurai, who testifies through a medium. We see just how altered the same story can be through different sets of eyes, and we are left at the end of the film with no clear sense of what “really” happened. I don’t think we’re meant to know anyway. Instead, we’re supposed to start questioning the integrity of any story that we hear or see, even this film itself. When the woodcutter has to admit later that he has lied in his testimony, we are dumbfounded to discover that even the person telling us the story of what he has seen and said might be lying. The optimistic ending perhaps is necessary for us to retain some faith in our fellow human beings, but it doesn’t automatically satisfy a viewer who has begun questioning the very role of narrative itself. The breakout star of Rashomon was Toshiro Mifune as the bandit Tajormaru; he’s wild, almost deranged, in his behavior, and you sometimes wonder if he thinks he’s in a different movie from the rest of the cast. The real star for me, though, is Machiko Kyo, the actress who plays the woman who is raped by the bandit. She gets the most wide-ranging series of characterizations because each witness tailors the story to suit their individual needs, and she is depicted in wildly different ways by the men who tell her story. Her own version of events is quite the tour-de-force performance itself. Rashomon was the first major Japanese film to garner international attention, and even though more than seven decades have passed since its initial release, it still has the power to startle us and make us wonder how people can have “seen” such wildly different events. That’s what a true cinematic masterpiece can do – even after all these years. The woodcutter’s refrain of “I just don’t understand” lingers with us long after the film itself has ended. A note about foreign films and their years of eligibility: Rashomon was first released in Japan in 1950, but it didn’t make it to the United States until December 1951. That, however, didn’t mean it was eligible for anything other than a special honor, which it won, for foreign language film. It was still in release in 1952 and received Oscar attention the next year for its set decoration. You’ll see throughout Academy Award history this particular oddity. A film will be nominated for or even win the Foreign Language Film Oscar and then be nominated for other awards the following year. Such are the vagaries of the Academy Awards.

Oscar Win (1951): Honorary Award for being the “most outstanding foreign language film released in the United States during 1951.”

Other Oscar Nomination (1952): Best Black-and-White Art Direction-Set Decoration

The Tales of Hoffmann (1951)

 

The Tales of Hoffmann is a colorful spectacle of ballet and opera directed by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, who are best known for the ballet film The Red Shoes. The tales of the title are stories related by the poet Hoffman (Robert Rounseville) about three of the women in his life. The story is framed by the performance by his current lover Stella (Moira Shearer, also of The Red Shoes) of a highly stylized ballet entitled The Enchanted Dragonfly Ballet and their plans to meet at a tavern afterward. It’s during an intermission that Hoffman tells his fellow tavern-goers about his previous exploits. It’s quite an odd assortment of stories that he relates, and several of the cast members play multiple roles, the most notable being Sir Robert Helpmann as the villain in each of the three tales and in the frame story. Olympia (Shearer again) is an automaton who is made to appear alive through the use of magic glasses that would make the 1970s-era Elton John jealous. The second tale concerns Giulietta (Ludmilla Tcherina), a courtesan who is used to distract Hoffman so that an evil magician can steal the poet’s reflection. The final tale is about Antonia (Ann Ayars), an opera singer who will die if she sings. As these summaries suggest, none of the tales ends happily for Hoffman, nor does the one involving Stella. Even though the film’s libretto is sung in English, I will admit to not being able to follow all of the words. However, it’s not the stories that will capture your attention. It’s the settings and costumes and the cinematography with its superimpositions and split-screens of multiple shots of dancers that you remember. Each of the sequences has its own dominant color, from the saffron yellow of Olympia’s story to the blues and grays of Antonia’s story. The costumes are quite spectacular and elaborate, and they are complimented by exceptional make-up work. (The eyebrows that Helpmann wears in the role of Coppelius, the eyeglasses maker, are worthy of a movie of their own.) The sets are meant to depict Paris, Venice, and Greece, but there’s no attempt at making them truly realistic. Instead, what we see are settings that are simultaneously minimalist and extravagant. You’re always aware that what you are witnessing is “staged,” but that only contributes to the overall visual impact.

Oscar Nominations: Best Color Art Direction-Set Decoration and Best Color Costume Design 

An American in Paris (1951)

An American in Paris won the Oscar for Best Picture of 1951, beating such other classic films as A Place in the Sun and A Streetcar Named Desire. Despite its somewhat surprising victory, this musical about an American veteran of World War II who has decided to stay in Paris and become a painter is one of the best of the MGM song-and-dance fests. If it had been nominated in almost any other year, it would be seen as a very worthy choice as Best Picture. Too many people probably think it was chosen when the other “more serious” films split the vote, but to me, it represents a remarkable achievement in filmmaking on its own. It remains as charming and beautiful today as it was in the early 1950s when some were rejecting the gritty realism of post-war films for the lighter touch of romantic comedy and musicals. Thankfully, An American in Paris is one such masterpiece.

Gene Kelly plays the painter, Jerry Mulligan, and he's usually strapped for cash because he's not really very successful at his chosen profession. Like many aspiring artists, he copies more famous works or paints scenes that are the subject of countless paintings by amateurs. However, he does, apparently, demonstrate a level of skill at his art. He's “discovered” by a wealthy American woman who likes him perhaps a bit more than she likes his art, but she nevertheless begins work on helping him to establish a professional reputation. His patron (or would that more properly be “matron”?) is Milo Roberts, played by the elegant Nina Foch, who was almost always cast as this kind of patrician woman. She expects that if she pays attention to Jerry's career, he will pay attention to her.

Unfortunately for Milo, Mulligan meets by chance a beautiful young French girl, Lise, played by Leslie Caron in her first starring role. She, however, is engaged to Henri Baurel (Georges Guetary), a cabaret performer. To add even more complications to the mix, Henri and Jerry are friends, but neither knows about the other's attraction to Lise, so their conversations about the girls they love take on an added sense of the absurd. Only their mutual friend Adam, played by the deliciously wicked-tongued Oscar Levant, knows their secret. At least, he's the only one who knows for a while. Eventually, all must be revealed, and Lise must make a choice.

The plot is relatively simple. Boy (Jerry) meets girl (Lise). Boy loses girl (to her fiancé). Boy gets girl back. It's the stuff of countless movies. What makes An American in Paris stand out is the music, of course. It's all songs by George and Ira Gershwin, some of the greatest songs ever written, and each one blends seamlessly into the plot. My favorite may be the performance of "I Got Rhythm," in which Kelly and a dozen or so French children sing in English and French while Kelly jokes and dances. It's a charming number, sure to bring a smile. Another highlight is Guertary's performance of "I'll Build a Stairway to Paradise,” which spectacularly uses a lighted staircase to full effect.

Most stunning, though, is the 17-minute ballet near the end of the film. All of the principals are attending a ball thrown by the art students of Paris. After a series of revelations and tentative decisions, Kelly's Mulligan begins to imagine himself in various settings around the city and as a part of various famous works of art as the score swells with the glorious “Rhapsody in Blue.” It's an astonishing set piece, one that momentarily makes you forget that you're watching a “realistic” film about a love quadrangle. Interestingly, as authentically French as the sequence seems to be, it was all filmed on the MGM backlot; they had real talent for production design in those days, conjuring up any place, real or imagined. The dancing by Kelly in this sequence is among the best he ever did, and given just how remarkable a dancer he was, that's saying something. There’s such a sense of masculinity to his movements. He and Caron are both at the top of their game here, making for quite a sultry pair during the moments when some of the more-familiar strains of “Rhapsody in Blue” emerge.

(As a side note, Kelly was not nominated for his acting or his choreography for An American in Paris. Instead, the Academy’s Board of Governors gave him an Honorary Oscar “in appreciation of his versatility as an actor, singer, director and dancer, and specifically for his brilliant achievements in the art of choreography on film.” I suppose you could count this award as part of the total number of Academy Awards that the film received.)

It would be tough to describe all that happens during the magnificent ballet; it's just that inspired and inspiring. You can't quite believe your eyes at times. The film does end, of course, back in the “realistic” setting of the ball, allowing Jerry and Lise to be reunited and leave everyone happy. I keep putting the word “realistic” in quotation marks because none of the great MGM musicals are truly realistic. That's one of the reasons that they are so spectacular. You're able to lose yourself for a couple of hours in one of these movies. Arthur Freed, who produced most of the best of them, and Vincente Minnelli, who directed this one, were always committed to quality, and An American in Paris certainly has all of the hallmarks of what they were capable of doing.

Years ago, I showed this film in a class I was teaching, and it was the ballet that most confounded students. As much as they (reluctantly) admitted that it was visually spectacular and that the dancing was intriguing, they couldn't fathom why it took up so much time near the end of the film when you know or, at least, expect that the two leads will come together. Once I pointed out that it lasts about the appropriate amount of time for a brief but important cab ride (you understand if you've seen the film yourself), they started to appreciate it a bit more. I'm not sure I converted anyone to become a lover of MGM musicals, but I like to think that I might have moved them ever-so-slightly in that direction.

Two other points I'd like to make: Levant, who plays a pianist and composer here, was never really a movie star. However, no one could toss off a line better than he could. In the voice-over that introduces him, he says that he's a concert pianist: “That's a pretentious way of saying I'm unemployed at the moment.” He's like that throughout the movie. There's an undercurrent of bitterness and acidity to Levant's Adam that is well suited to this bright, sunny film. His comments keep it pretty well grounded. Levant is just one of those performers you always enjoy seeing in a film even if the part is relatively small.

The other point: An American in Paris came out a year before Singin' in the Rain, universally considered the greatest movie musical of all time. I wouldn't challenge that designation at all, but if you're looking for the second greatest, you might consider An American in Paris. Great music by arguably America's greatest composers, strong performances from some of the best actors at MGM, remarkable dancing by two of the best in the business, a lively sense of romance throughout—in the words of one of the Gershwin songs here, “who could ask for anything more?”

Oscar Wins: Best Picture, Best Story and Screenplay, Best Color Cinematography, Best Color Art Direction-Set Decoration, Best Color Costume Design, and Best Scoring of a Musical Picture

Other Oscar Nominations: Best Director and Best Film Editing

Quo Vadis (1951)

A nominee for Best Picture of 1951, Quo Vadis is the story of a Roman general (played by Robert Taylor) who falls in love with a Christian girl (played by Deborah Kerr). The general, Marcus Vinicius, gets the Emperor Nero (played by Peter Ustinov) to "give" him Lygia, who is not technically a slave but is held "captive" under Roman rule. Much of the movie is less about the romance between Marcus Vinicius and Lygia than about Nero's increasingly bizarre ideas for Rome and his own glorification, one of which includes burning much of the city to the ground so that he can rebuild it to his even higher standards. When his plans go awry, Nero blames the Christians for the fire and begins a reign of terror over them.

Quo Vadis was filmed at Cinecitta Studios of Rome, and the film makes good use of the stages and costumes of the fabled studio. Production design is one of the hallmarks of this film, and it is gorgeous to look at. The special effects are also worthy of attention. The burning of Rome, in particular, involves hundreds of extras and conveys a real sense of the panic that the Romans must have felt while their homes turned to ashes and flames around them. The sequences at the Colosseum where Nero and the assembled Romans watch as lions attack and feed upon the Christians are also well done, adding to the tension that a viewer feels.

I wish the rest of the story lived up to those moments. Many of the cast members are somewhat wooden in their roles, perhaps an indication of their lack of enthusiasm for the project. Taylor, one of the most handsome of leading men, is especially stiff for much of the film. Kerr, one of my favorite actresses, was better in her later film roles, but she acquits herself nicely here. Ustinov, in one of his earliest featured roles, is way too over-the-top for my tastes, a far cry from the subtle nature of his later performances. Only Leo Genn as Petronius, the one person in Rome who seems capable of setting Nero on the right path, truly fits the part he plays. He has a sly sense of humor that he puts to good use here.

I was never a huge fan of Biblical epics, and Quo Vadis is a good example of why. The spectacle you might expect is certainly there, but the humanity seems lost. In an attempt, perhaps, to ensure a balanced representation of the conflict between the Romans and the Christians, the film is often too dull as characters make pronouncements about their faith. Finlay Currie's sermons as Peter, in particular, last far too long. If you want religion, you should probably go to a church. If you ask me, the movie theater is a poor place to get in touch with your faith. It's a palace of entertainment, not a temple.