Drunken Angel (1948)

Dir: AKIRA KUROSAWA
Country: JAPAN

AKA
Yoidore tenshi

This beautifully constructed and expertly composed noir gangster film was Akira Kurosawa’s eighth production as director. Prior to Drunken Angel is it fair to say that Kurosawa’s career had been one of interesting, but ultimately forgettable films. Kurosawa himself believed that Drunken Angel represented a major creative breakthrough, and although there is evidence of brilliance in his debut picture Sanshiro Sugata (1943), and moments of sublime quality in No Regrets for Our Youth (1946) and Those Who Make Tomorrow (1946) I am inclined to agree that Drunken Angel is light years ahead of those earlier efforts. Here Kurosawa utilises the generic tropes of imported genres such as noir and the American gangster film and fuses it with a political symbolism that makes clear statements about post-war Japan. The inbuilt pessimism and gloom of noir is a suitable form within which too address questions of national identity and social fragmentation, and the archetypes of the gangster film are used as stand ins for the country at large and become walking metaphors. The film sits uneasily in a discussion of genre. The screenplay which Kurosawa wrote in collaboration with Keinosuke Uekusa is patient in its replication of westernised conventions, but its symbolic and allegorical ambitions and mode of address takes it far closer to art cinema.

My Darling Clementine (1946)

Dir: JOHN FORD
Country: USA

The gunfight at the OK Corral and the events surrounding it have become one of the most enduring of Hollywood myths. The traditional Hollywood western is particularly suited to the propagation of myths and legends, the efficiency of the genre lies in its attitude too its own mythology and symbolism, so recognisably iconographic, it is no surprise that film theorists most often turn to the western when discussing genre. It now seems an entirely logical step for the filmmaker most associated with the western to tackle the story of Wyatt Earp. Although John Ford went on to make a number of revisionist westerns in his later career - most notably Sergeant Rutledge (1960) and Cheyenne Autumn (1964), his treatment of the Earp legend is very different to what we might expect. The screenplay by Samuel G. Engel, Winston Miller and Sam Hellman was based on the book Wyatt Earp: Frontier Marshal by Stuart N. Lake. A book which was allegedly written with the collaboration of Earp himself. So we might expect some historical verisimilitude, but the screenplay takes a number of liberties with the real events as Ford indulges in the themes for which he has become well known. In dramatic terms this is a peculiar film. The film does not build to the predictable showdown. It meanders along and concerns itself with very small and intimate details. The gunfight itself is farcically downplayed, and totally lacks any sense of tension or catharsis.

The Universal Horror Poster Gallery

The Hunchback of Notre Dame (Wallace Worsley, 1923)

The Phantom of the Opera (Rupert Julian, 1925)

Coming Attractions - The Exorcist II: The Heretic (1977) / She Wolf of London (1946)

The Queen of Spades (1949)

Dir: THOROLD DICKINSON
Country: UK

The Queen of Spades is a remarkable film made all the more astonishing by the fact that its director Thorold Dickinson began work on it with just five days notice. At this point Dickinson was best known for Gaslight (1940) and he would only make nine films in a career plagued by interference and bad luck. He is perhaps more prominent now for his contributions to the academic study of film. Especially important in a British culture which has been dismissive of film as an art form and dedicated itself to the type of social realism that Dickinson gleefully ignores in this particular film. Instead The Queen of Spades belongs to a sensual and highly melodramatic tradition in British cinema of which the films of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger belong. The supernatural element of the narrative gives it a weak claim to horror status, but Dickinson astutely avoids the visual iconography of the genre, preferring instead to concentrate on the atmosphere and visual panorama of the piece. When once places the film into its post World War Two British cinema context it emerges as a very distinctive, poetic, and highly artistic effort whose critical and commercial marginalisation was no doubt due to its lack of social impetus.