Mid-Career Kurosawa, both High and Low

"Red Beard"  

 Spike Lee, always shrewd about finding material, turned to a farflung source for his most recent release, Highest 2 Lowest. His inspiration for this contemporary crime story was a 1963 drama by Japanese master cineaste Akira Kurosawa, known as High and Low. (Its original Japanese title, Heaven and Hell, is certainly more vivid.) Kurosawa, who knew something about borrowing from the best, derived his plot from a 1959 thriller by Ed McBain (a pseudonym of Evan Hunter). Both films drew from McBain’s novel the notion of a wealthy, ambitious man secretly scheming to take over his industry, but being derailed along the way by the kidnapping of a child.

 I haven’t seen Lee’s film, which disappeared rather quickly from local theatres, but as a longtime Kurosawa fan I recently watched High and Low, which most critics strongly admire. This is not the visceral Kurosawa of jidaigeki (period costume dramas) like Rashomon, Seven Samurai, and Yojimbo. Nor is it an elegant take on Shakespearean tragedy (see one of my very favorites, Throne of Blood, which is Kurosawa’s remarkable adaptation of Macbeth). High and Low is set in present-day Yokohama, where its central character (Toshiro Mifune, of course) is a successful manufacturer of women’s shoes. (The Spike Lee version makes him a record exec, which is certainly a cooler profession.) A Japanese bullet train plays an important role in Kurosawa’s plot, and the kidnapper also has drug-dealing on his résumé, preying on immigrant communities. 

 High and Low (which spends most of its first half in the main character’s hilltop mansion) seems static and talky at times, but the tension nicely ramps up, and the ending (which apparently Lee doesn’t copy) is thematically as well as dramatically powerful. Kurosawa didn’t plan this ending—in which Mifune and the kidnapper meet face to face under dramatic circumstances—until he saw the intensity of Tsutomu Yamazaki’s portrayal of an angry young criminal.

  For me, one of the intriguing aspects of High and Low is that it is followed in the Kurosawa canon by a film that couldn’t be more different. Red Beard (Akahige, 1965) returns Kurosawa to the Tokugawa period (early 19^th century), when clothing and manners were quite distinct from what they are now. It’s a medical drama (based on a book of Japanese stories) that easily calls to mind such all-American projects as a popular TV series of the era, Dr. Kildare. This long-running series, based on a 1938 Hollywood film, pits an idealistic young doctor (Richard Chamberlain) against a shrewd veteran of the profession (Raymond Massey). During its five-year run, Kildare evolves from intern into experienced physician, tempering his idealism with lessons learned on the job.

 Red Beard is not so very different, though it’s set in an era when medical knowledge is limited and traditional social values are hard to navigate. One distinction is that the film is named after the seasoned doctor, not the young one. The nickname Red Beard refers to the character played by Mifune (in his very last Kurosawa role). He’s a dynamo whose iconoclasm is not always appreciated, though he has a deep commitment to his patients and his profession. Into his clinic comes young Dr. Yasumoto (Yuzo Kayama, whom I well remember as a Japanese pop singer). Yasumoto is cocky about his intended future: he has studied modern medicine at a Dutch clinic in Nagasaki, and he now fully intends to take a cushy post in the court of a local lord. But gradually, under the tutelage of the irascible but brilliant Red Beard, he develop a higher regard for those in genuine need.

 The opinions expressed above are all mine, but for a fascinating in-depth assessment of the  filmmaker at mid-career I strongly recommend Donald Ritchie’s 1965 work, The Films of Akira Kurosawa.

 

 

A Singular Film by John Singleton: Boyz N the Hood

About a month ago, the airwaves were filled with tributes to Richard Roundtree, dead at 81.  Back in 1971, at age 29, Roundtree soared to international celebrity in Shaft. The story of a tough, sexy Black detective combing the mean streets of Manhattan helped launch the blaxploitation craze, in which crime dramas, martial arts dramas, and the occasional urban comedy featured African American casts, raw languages, and funky musical scores. As an underling at Roger Corman’s down-and-dirty New World Pictures, I worked on my share of blaxploitation flicks, but ours tended to emphasize female nudity.  We were the first to corral the talents of the bodacious Pam Grier, but my most vivid memory of that era is working on 1975’s TNT Jackson, in which a Playboy centerfold named Jeanne Bell played a kung fu expert fighting off bad guys in Hong Kong.

 The blaxploitation era as a whole had the virtue of helping talented Black performers become stars. But it didn’t make for the world’s best movies. Cut to 1991, the year when a 24-year-old writer-director set Hollywood a-buzzing with a coming-of-age drama set in South Central L.A. Boyz n the Hood started out as part of Singleton’s application for the famous USC Film School. Feeling deeply connected to the gang-ridden urban environment in which he himself had grown up, he knew from the start that this was material he had to direct himself. Which didn’t mean he made the film in a vacuum. Some of the early material involving four young boys checking out a dead body was influenced by the 1986 film, Stand by Me. And when he sold his script to Columbia Pictures in 1990, the greenlight came quickly because of the box office success of Spike Lee’s 1989 streets-of-Brooklyn masterpiece, Do the Right Thing.

 Singleton’s story, which leaps seven years at mid-point, explores what it’s like to grow up in an area dominated by gang violence. At ten, the little boys of the Crenshaw neighborhood of South Central, are already aware that they can easily become targets. There are roughnecks around to taunt them, and the local police (including an arrogant Black cop) are less than helpful in keeping trouble at bay. Young Trey has the advantage of a tough-love dad determined to keep him on the straight and narrow; young Ricky is a budding football talent. But as this section ends, Ricky’s half-brother, the chubby Doughboy, is already being arrested for shoplifting. The stage is set for the drama that is to follow.

 As a very young filmmaker, Singleton was helped by a cast that contained old pros as well as some bright new talents. The script’s essential father figure, “Furious” Styles, was portrayed  by the gifted Laurence Fishburne, who’d played major stage roles and been featured in films like Apocalypse Now and The Color Purple. Fortunately, Singleton had met him on the set of Pee-Wee’s Playhouse¸ where he was working as a production assistant and security guard. Day jobs have their uses: Singleton met Ice Cube while serving as an intern on the Arsenio Hall Show, then gave him a central role (as the teen-aged Doughboy) that has propelled the rapper into a major acting career. The elegant Angela Bassett played her first significant film character as Trey’s upwardly mobile mother Reva in Singleton’s film; both Cuba Gooding Jr. and Morris Chestnut—as 17-year-old Trey and Ricky—essentially began their careers with Singleton. (Bassett has since become a two-time Oscar nominee, and Gooding won the supporting actor statuette in 1996 for Jerry Maguire.) Nia Long and Regina King can be spotted too.

 

 

A Jamaica Farewell to Harry Belafonte

My mother considered herself the #1 fan of singer/actor/activist Harry Belafonte, who has just died at the age of 96. All of her adult life she adored Belafonte’s singing, his acting, his political stances, and his dusky good looks. And, of course, she passed on this passion to her children.

 There was a time when Belafonte regularly brought his electrifying stage show, complete with backup singers and dancers,  to L.A.’s outdoor Greek Theatre. When the dates were announced, my mother would quickly order two sets of tickets. On one night she’d attend with my father. On another, she’d bring my young sister and me to see the great man in person. I mean this literally—one year she figured out where the entertainers parked their cars, and stationed the three of us where we’d be sure to meet her hero. It worked. Belafonte emerged, and graciously greeted the dressed-up little girls. (He had some of his own at home, so he knew how to talk to kids.) When he complimented me on my pretty dress, I proudly explained that my mother had bought it on sale. It became a family story that was told many times over. Years later, he was equally ingratiating when I (then a young journalist) met him at a record industry luncheon. Someone snapped a photo, which you can see below. It became a prominent feature of my mother’s kitchen bulletin board.

 Belafonte studied acting before he became known as a singer of calypso tunes. One of his earliest films, Carmen Jones (1954), was a musical in which he didn’t get to sing a note. This  all-Black version of Bizet’s Carmen,  adapted from a hit Broadway show, required operatic warbling, and both he and star Dorothy Dandridge were dubbed. Later in the decade, he starred in screen dramas that always had a racial element at their core. A Caribbean-set political and romantic drama, Island in the Sun,  allowed him to bare his torso on-screen and to romance—with serious consequences—the very blonde Joan Fontaine.

 The Belafonte film from the 1950s that I remember best is an imaginative apocalyptic story called The World, the Flesh, and the Devil (1959). It’s set in Manhattan, in the aftermath of some sort of nuclear disaster that has rid the city of virtually all its inhabitants. The only survivors in this New York ghost town seem to be Belafonte (a mine inspector who was deep underground at the time of the blast), a pretty young Caucasian woman played by Inger Stevens, and a crusty older sailor (Mel Ferrer). What we’ve got here, as the survival of the human race seems in question, is a potential love triangle with strong racial overtones. The film was the first offering of Belafonte’s own production company, dedicated to portraying the African-American experience on-screen.

 In later years, as he began to emphasize social activism over acting, Belafonte took on fewer film roles, though he did appear in movies directed by his close friend, Sidney Poitier. These included 1972’s Buck and the Preacher and the 1974 comedy Uptown Saturday Night, in which his crime-boss character, Geechy Dan, is a wicked send-up of Marlon Brando’s Vito Corleone. As he aged, he continued to take on occasional roles in films that had personal meaning to him, like Bobby, about events surrounding the assassination of Robert Kennedy.  His last film appearance was a powerful one, in Spike Lee’s BlacKKKlansmen (2018) He was over ninety when he played for Lee a civil rights activist describing in horrific detail a Klan lynching.  May he rest in peace.

Spike Lee Does the Right Thing

For the past week, I’ve been following the fortunes of my current favorite baseball player, the extraordinary Mookie Betts. It’s all part of rooting for the sometimes infuriating L.A. Dodgers, now locked into a playoff series with the Atlanta Braves. As I write this, the Dodgers have kicked away more than one opportunity to come out on top. But I count on my man Mookie to always DO THE RIGHT THING.

 The irony, as I discovered when re-watching Spike Lee’s 1989 breakout film, Do the Right Thing, is that Lee himself plays an important character named Mookie. Like many of the roles played by Lee in his early films, his Mookie is sometimes funny, sometimes lovable, sometimes confused, and sometimes dead wrong. He starts out the film as the gofer and all-around sidekick of Sal (the late Danny Aiello), who owns an Italian pizzeria in a mostly Black Brooklyn neighborhood. The good-hearted Sal, ignoring the rantings of his bigoted son (John Turturro), does his part to be an active member of the Bedford-Stuyvesant community, giving handouts to those who need them and generally making nice. He won’t budge, though, when local toughs demand he add Black faces to the Italian-American Hall of Fame that decorates his restaurant wall. His heroes are Frank Sinatra and Tony Bennett, not Dr. King and Malcolm X, and he refuses to make any changes. 

 On the hottest day of the year, all the locals are steamed up. The young punks are agitating against the pizzeria, where Sal’s angry son is already driving him crazy. The old codgers are bickering among themselves, and the sweet local drunk (Ossie Davis) is being spurned by the tough neighborhood matriarch played by Ruby Dee. Meanwhile Mookie pays a quick visit to his on-and-off girlfriend (Rosie Perez in her screen debut), who’s furious with him for ignoring her and their infant son. The only one staying cool is the local radio DJ, Mister Señor Love Daddy (Samuel L. Jackson, who was then still calling himself Sam). As the sun goes down, the tension rises. Radio Rahim invades the pizzeria with his blasting boom box, and Sal finally snaps. After the police get involved, with tragic consequences, Mookie takes the lead in hurling a trashcan through the pizzeria window. 

 What’s disturbing about Do the Right Thing is that after more than three decades it still seems so timely, as current as the disturbances surrounding the death of George Floyd. Since 1989 we haven’t gotten any better at answering Rodney King’s plaintive question: “Can’t we all get along?”  I give Spike Lee credit for not being a total ideologue. The film shows he can see all sides of an issue, even that of the immigrant  Korean grocers so desperately trying to fit into the ‘hood that at one point they try to claim kinship with their Black neighbors. Appropriately the film ends with two on-screen quotations, a hopeful one from Martin Luther King, followed by far more militant words from Malcolm X. But the final dedication to the families of Black victims of police brutality makes clear that when it comes to issues of law enforcement, Lee knows where he stands.

 He also knows how to look to far different movies for inspiration. The Lee exhibit at the new Academy Museum reveals where he came up with the film’s opening moments, featuring Rosie Perez in closeup, doing a wildly militant dance to “Fight the Power.” Where’d he get the idea? From Ann-Margret, looming large on the screen, in the first few minutes of a mindless musical from 1963, Bye Bye Birdie. Who would have guessed?

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