Dassin's under-seen, under-valued THE LAW gets a week's run at BAMcinématek

Juicy is one word for THE LAW.  Rich, thick and ripe are a few more, should you need them.  Jules Dassin's melodrama-cum-comedy-of-manners takes place in a small Italian village located amongst some drop-dead gorgeous scenery that includes hills, architecture, art and ocean. (The grand, black-and-white cinematography is by Otello Martelli, whose work for Fellini is legendary.)  From the cooing pigeon that opens the film, waking up an Italian villager and then walking into the hands of the writer/director's son Joe -- who would later become a pop sensation in France, and whose voice and song you can hear on the wonderful soundtrack of Wes Anderson's The Darjeeling Limited -- the camera then climbs up and into the windows of a building that houses many of the characters we'll soon know.  Dassin, shown below (in a scene from Brute Force), doesn't miss a beat.  Though his movie is two hours long, there's not a moment that doesn't delight and fascinate.

It is difficult to imagine what this film must have looked like to staid, middle-class America when it was first released back in 1959 (and dubbed, under the title Where the Hot Wind Blows): I would  guess it seemed pretty much the epitome of shocking, sexual, sensuous, passionate European cinema.  Among its cast, which now looks like a veritable who's who -- Gina Lollobrigida (on poster, top, and two photos down), Marcello Mastroianni (at bottom), Yves Montand (below, left), Melina Mercouri (below, right), Pierre Brasseur and Paolo Stoppa --  only Lollobrigida was well known in the states at that time.  Montand had done The Wages of Fear six years previous, but his best-known work would begin the following year (starting with Let's Make Love, opposite Monroe) -- as would Mercouri's (Never on Sunday) and Mastroianni's (La Dolce Vita).  In retrospect, Dassin appears utterly prescient in this casting coup.

Really, though, it's the content that counts. Within the movie's first 20 minutes everything from power to religion, the police to the male prerogative -- and especially propriety -- takes a licking.  Most of this is done via Ms Lollobrigida, who has never been sexier or smarter on film.  Under-appreicated (except for her cleavage) in her own time, the actress seems pretty remarkable, a fine example of women's lib before the term even existed.

The film's title refers to a nasty game of derision and shaming played by the men of the village, although law and power, as seen via love and sex, is everywhere in the village and the movie. Probably the most wonderful thing about the film is how simultaneously funny and sexy it is, particularly in the scenes between Lollobrigida and Mastroianni.  What a pair!  And I'm not talking about that cleavage.

The Law, restored and re-released via Oscilloscope Laborator-
ies opened this past Wednesday for a week's run at the BAM
cinématek. You can find upcoming playdates for other cities here.

Ozu's I WAS BORN, BUT... gets restoration (new subtitles & score) and theatrical play

As someone who only knows some of Yasujiro Ozu's post-WWII work, sitting down to watch I WAS BORN, BUT..., a film of his from 1932, came as something of a surprise. America had already been making "talkies" for five years when this Ozu film appeared, and not bothering to read the press release (I usually save these for after the screening so that more of the element of  surprise enters the viewing experience), I simply sat down and watched. How charming, I thought, early on: He's beginning with a nod to the old silent films!  Uh... yeah.  This is a silent film.  According to the IMDB, it turns out that the Japanese master (shown below) made around 30 silents (which outnumber his "talking pictures" by a long shot), both short and full-length, over his 35-year film-making career.  (The writer/director was born in 1903 and died in 1963 on the same date, December 12.)

Once I got over my surprise, no matter. To begin with I Was Born, But... is remarkably well acted for a silent film, featuring much less "indication" on the part of its actors.  Usually, in silent movies, the players appear to have felt that they must make up for the lack of soundtrack by hitting us over the head with their intentions.  Not here. These performances are subtle and rich. As usual with the Ozu that I have seen, the conception is also rich.  While the film appears to be about the adjustment of the two young boys, below, in a family that moves, due to the father's employment, to a new town where the boys must attend a new school and make new friends (including a couple of bullies), Ozu is actually dealing with the inevitable event that often -- quietly or not -- rocks a family somewhere along the way: the point at which children come to terms with the fact that their parents are not saints or heroes but simply flawed people, and further, what happens to the parents when they realize that this has occurred.

When you think about it, many American films never show us anything like this event.  Father (and Mother) knows best, and when they finally go to their reward, well, gee, weren't they just wonderful, sublime folk?  Ozu helps us all grow up.  If  this description makes the movie sounds heavy, it's not.  There's plenty of delightful comedy along the way; laughs occur even in the heat of the big event.  And the film's look at prewar Japanese society proves fascinating -- something quite different from what I might have expected.

The restored print is lovely, and the subtitles, new with this restoration, are fine.  Only the recorded score -- that usual, silent-movie piano music -- finally begins to grate.  Maybe this won't bother you, but it's a problem I have always encountered while watching a full-length silent film: There's too little variation along the way in that tinkling Joplin-esque score.  (Why can't they, during the quieter moments, play Debussy or Satie?)  A minor grumble: This Ozu restoration is worth a hurrah.

I Was Born, But... opens in New York for a two-week run at the IFC Center on Friday, June 25, and will kick off IFC's Ozu retrospective, presented in the theater's ongoing Weekend Classics programs, staring this summer. (More information, the Center promises, will be forthcoming....)