Change Your Image
meisenst
Reviews
Three Came Home (1950)
Surprisingly good film
I came upon this film by accident Sunday afternoon as I channel surfed by a PBS station. I expected to laugh at it for a few minutes and then shut off its caricature of noble Brits and Yanks resisting their evil Asian captors. For the black and white glow from the screen prejudiced me to anticipate yet another farcical exemplar of Edward Said's "Orientalism" transposed for the land of the rising sun.
So, unlike the first commentator on this film, I was actually pleased by the balance in its presentation. For although these days of Ozzie and Harriet rarely projected overt brutality realistically onto the screen, this film does provide a palpable sense of the suffering endured by European prisoners of war. At the same time, it did not end on this note: one of the more powerful Japanese camp directors suffers a loss in his family due to the Hiroshima bombing. And it is this counterbalance later in the film which I think causes me to disagree with the first commentator's view that this is something of a propaganda film.
Several things about this film stand out to me as justly bold for that era of film-making:
*an attempted rape is portrayed as well as a realistic presentation of its consequences. Accordingly, a complex moral lesson is imparted to the audience: far more complex, I might add, than the lessons Hollywood chooses to impart in many contemporary films with respect to such events. Perhaps this is simply an accident of the narrative being based on true events.
*the main character is a woman who is educated, brave and yet sympathizes with Asian culture (she is a scholar who has published an anthropological study which had been translated into Japanese) even if she vehemently opposes Japan's aggression.
*Hiroshima and the firebombings of Tokyo are presented from the Japanese viewpoint as horrific events and their effect in this movie is to engender sympathy for the ambiguous figure of the camp commander.
Of course this is still a Hollywood movie of the 50s and some of the behavior seems stilted and implausible to contemporary audiences. But compared to some other films made then - or even today - it is a breath of fresh air. I never expected to watch this whole film but was quite happy I did. I highly recommend it to others (which is why I bothered to write this!) as a date movie (in spite of the subject matter the strong female character and love story recommend it here) or a film to show children over ten (get a map so the child can locate Borneo) to introduce them to the many moral and political questions arising out of the war in the Pacific. Enjoy!
The Music of Chance (1993)
unbelievably boring and boorish film
Well, I don't share the enthusiasm others have expressed for the philosophical heavy breathing which underlies this film. I just found it boring, dull-witted and ultimately pointless. If I want existentialism, I'll re-read huis clos. This movie positively annoyed me perhaps because it was praised so highly by so many, including the infamous two thumbs up from you-know-who. I think this movie should be used at local correctional facilities as an alternative punishment in lieu of "the hole." Avoiding this film might have remarkable rehabilitative properties for captive audiences all over this great land.
Murder! (1930)
A few observations about the plot
This was a movie worth seeing when you're in the mood to look at the film as a representation of the genre and social milieu of the period.
One thing that strikes when watching films of this era which is illustrated well by this film is the time the filmmaker takes to pan around a room and slowly move the camera through a space. Today's audiences are of course somewhat bored by this technique and perceive it as detracting from the flow of the action. But in the 1930s seeing a film was still a novelty well worth meditating upon. After all "talkies" were new but the visual imagery was still a major part of the filmgoing experience, an event which involved travel to a theatre perhaps once a week at best. So maybe such scenes were of great fascination - perhaps equivalent today to a slowly enveloping image which lingers on a fantastic new world in a sci-fi flick. It's somewhat banal to mention the obvious here, but I think it's worth keeping in mind while watching older films.
The next part gives away the ending so stop reading if you haven't seen it.
The murderer's motivation is somewhat contradictory: The murderer is willing to kill a woman to prevent her from revealing to the woman he loves (who is from the upper class) that he is a "half-caste" (half black in our argot) but then seems willing to allow the woman he loves to go to prison and perhaps be executed for this murder. Perhaps he would eventually have changed his mind but all the audience knows is that it is Sir John's detective work intervention that prevents this crime of omission on his part and leads to his guilt-ridden suicide.
Other things which seem to be wry commentary by Hitchcock, or are perhaps unintentional (?). 1. Sir John seems to be perpetually hungry. Is Hitchcock commenting on the greater appetites of the well-to-do?
2. The "half-caste" murderer performs on the side as a trapeze artist and is shown swinging from a rope. Is Hitchcock implying or wryly noting - or whatever the motivation - that someone who has African blood would *of course* be talented in the circus arts? Perhaps I'm reading too much into it but I sensed that this was an unspoken prejudice used as a plot subtext.
To reiterate, while the murderer's motivations never seemed fully consistent - at least not to my taste, it is an interesting film which says quite a bit about that era of filmmaking and American society.