Like Anna Karina's Sweater

The Orientalization of Myrna Loy

Before Myrna Loy rose to stardom with Manhattan Melodrama and The Thin Man (both 1934), she was often relegated to playing vamps, mistresses, and other assorted flavors of wicked women. (As this early picture shows, she clearly wasn't cut out to be the girl next door). A redhead by birth, it took only a dark wig to prompt many a director to cast her as an exotic beauty -- be it Mexican peasant girl or Senegalese spy (in blackface, no less). Yet most fascinating are the films in which she portrayed Asian characters, for they say quite a bit about Hollywood's perception of and approach towards the "oriental". In 1928 Loy was given a lead role in The Crimson City, playing a Chinese woman who is to be sold into slavery. It's worth noting that she was chosen for the part over Anna May Wong, who wound up as a supporting actor in the film. (Losing the part to Loy was what finally convinced Wong to leave Hollywood and try her hand at acting overseas.) Wong was no stranger to cinema at this time -- with over twenty-five films on her resume, she would have been the logical choice to play the lead, but as Yiman Wang explains in Camera Obscura, there was a rejection of history and realist representation by audiences of that period. She finds this consistent with art-deco aesthetic, which decontextualizes objects and repackages them for decorative purposes, thus making Loy's faux-Chinese more desirable than the real thing. Studios kept offering Loy Asian roles -- from bit parts in A Girl in Every Port and The Show of Shows to a lead role playing an Indian princess in John Ford's The Black Watch. Yet in 1932 she appeared in two films that found her portraying particularly devilish women, which would turn out to be her final outings in yellowface. Dated and quite racist, The Mask of Fu Manchu has Boris Karloff playing the titular "hideous yellow monster" that dreams of taking over the world. Loy plays his daughter, Fa Lo See, a half-naked nymphomaniacal sadist who reaches orgasmic heights when torturing white males. A product of its time, its sexual kinkiness is unfortunately outweighed by its unflattering portrait of Asians as simpletons who are more than willing to follow a madman in his quest to destroy the white race. Though immensely entertaining, the exaggerated stereotypes and racial slurs make it difficult to enjoy in its entirety.

Loy's other Asian role in 1932 was as the mysterious (and oddly named) Ursula Georgi in George Archainbaud's thriller, Thirteen Women. This pre-code bit of nastiness (which Filmbrain recently caught on TCM) is interesting in that racism is at the heart of the story, even if its approach lacks a certain subtlety. Ursula Georgi, a self-described half-breed (referred to as "half-Hindu, half-Japanese" by a detective) uses the power of suggestion to exact revenge on a group of women who scorned, alienated, and mistreated her when they were at school together. Working in cahoots (at first) with a Swami, she sends the women letters, telling them of the awful fate that will befall them, which naturally comes true once the idea is planted. So strong are her powers, that a mere glance into her eyes is enough to convince a man to throw himself in front of a moving train. One of the thirteen women is Laura Stanhope (an early performance by Irene Dunne), wealthy Beverly Hills wife, and mother of an eight year-old boy who becomes Ursula's target. When poisoned candy and an exploding rubber ball fails, she decides to take matters into her own hands, leading to a wonderfully tense confrontation near the film's end. When Dunne asks her "What have I done, what have any of us done to make you so inhuman?", Loy gets her moment to shine: "Do I hear the very human white race asking that question? Do you know what it means to be a half-breed, a half-caste in a world ruled by whites? If you're a male, you're a coolie. If you're a female you're...well! The white half of me cried for the courtesy and protection that women like you get. I had to put myself through finishing school! Only then did the world accept me as white!" A fairly bold statement for '32, especially considering that this was the same year as The Mask of Fu Manchu. While Thirteen Women isn't the most complex or thought provoking look at racism in America, Loy's character is far less objectified than her other Asian roles, even if she does play a woman who kills for revenge. Though it suffers from early-talkie syndrome (characters shouting their lines, and awkward pauses between them), Thirteen Women is an effective thriller with a great final reel that still holds up today. But has Hollywood changed much over the years? Are Brando's taped-up eyes in The Teahouse of the August Moon or Mickey Rooney's false front teeth and cartoonish dialect in Breakfast at Tiffany's signs of progression? Hardly. Even last year's Memoirs of a Geisha revealed that there is no distinction in Hollywood between Chinese and Japanese actors (let alone tradition and culture.) The casting of Gong Li and Zhang Ziyi as geishas might not be quite the same as Myrna Loy being cast over Anna May Wong -- one could argue that Amblin Entertainment's motivation was economical. While it is a fact that there aren't many Japanese actors who are recognizable to US audiences, it seems that Hollywood still views the Orient as the great exotic other, whose cultures can be mixed at matched at whim..

Filmbrain's Screen Capture Quiz: Round 7, Week 3

Lots of interesting guesses for last week's quiz -- Last Days, Sid & Nancy, The Professional, Toy Soliders, etc. Still, an overwhelming number of you were able to identify Filmbrain's ninth favorite film of 2005 -- Head-On (Gegen die Wand). [Girish - Matt's comment on your site is correct - you simply have to see this one.] This week -- one of the most quotable films of the....well, to give the decade away would be saying too much. Those who know the film well will get this in under a second. The rest of you might need a Helping Hand. As always, submit your answers to this address. Good luck!

The President's Last Haircut

It was difficult for Filmbrain to sit and watch Lim Chan-sang's The President's Barber, a satire set during the reign of President/Dictator Park Chung-hee, without thinking of the vastly superior The President's Last Bang by Im Sang-soo. That two films released within a year of each other should tackle the same difficult period is perhaps telling -- could this indicate the genesis of a new wave of films and filmmakers that are unafraid to address the more turbulent moments in Korea's recent past, and through dark comedy no less? Neither film was a tremendous success, which could indicate that the wounds are still too fresh, and opinions still too divided. Whereas The President's Last Bang went for the astute yet absurdist satire of Kubrick or Mamet, The President's Barber instead looks to films like Forrest Gump (too much) and The Tin Drum (not enough) for inspiration, and the end result lacks the sharpness required for tackling such controversial material. The film, which begins in the final days of the Rhee Syng-man presidency, takes place in the working class community surrounding Blue House, the presidential executive mansion. Seong Han-mo (Song Kang-ho) is the local barber -- a likeable, warm, though terribly dim fellow whose political opinion is whatever his friends tell him it should be. He's more than happy to help them bury ballots to ensure Rhee's reelection, even if he doesn't quite understand why. He winds up marrying his young assistant (a criminally underused Moon So-ri) after getting her pregnant, and it is their son Nak-han (born in the streets during the April 19th revolution) who narrates the entire tale. Shortly after the May '61 coup (unwittingly assisted by Seong Han-mo, who points the tanks in the direction of Blue House) our barber-hero is called upon by members of the KCIA and asked if he would like to become groomer to the President. President Park, staunchly anti-intellectual ("they have spoiled our nation in the past, and present"), takes a genuine shine to Seong Han-mo, and enjoys his purely instinctual, non-politically motivated reactions and opinions. Park goes so far as to bring him to America, which gives the filmmaker an opportunity to create Gump-like doctored footage of the barber awkwardly meeting Nixon. The Gump factor is quite strong for this portion of the film, and there is something vaguely Tom Hanks-ish about Song Kang-ho's performance. And like Forrest Gump, the politics here are somewhat dubious. While the barber's ignorance can be seen as allegorical for those who blindly pledged their allegiance, the film seems to go quite easy on Park, who's often shown as a quiet, calm, and charming individual. The corrupt, thuggish, and brutal behavior of the KCIA (and Park's other cronies) seems self-initiated -- as if to distance Park from it all. This is in sharp contrast to Im's portrayal of Park in The President's Last Bang, where he's shown to be a ruthless and arrogant leader whose personal pleasures matter more than affairs of state. The second half of the film turns decidedly darker, though the attempts at humor, brave as they may be, often backfire. A group of North Korean guerillas set to launch an attack on Blue House is waylaid by a nasty bout of diarrhea that hits the entire squad. (Nothing like toilet humor for a cheap laugh, eh?) Upon their capture, it is decided that anybody in the town who has diarrhea must have been working with the guerillas, and arrests and torture follow. When ten year-old Nak-han falls ill, the barber, fearing for his own safety, hands the boy over to the police. The inevitable and prolonged torture of the boy (which leaves him crippled) is played here for laughs, and it simply doesn't work. (Much in the same way that Nak-han's birth scene, which takes place while students are being shot, failed to produce the desired chuckles.) This personal tragedy opens the barber's eyes (somewhat) to the truth about the regime, and the film ventures into the melodramatic as the family seeks a cure for the boy. The post-assassination sequence (which includes yet more scatological humor) is another bit of heavy-handed allegory that neatly wraps the film up with a happy ending. The decision to have the story narrated by the son is an odd one. It distances us from Seong Han-mo, and prevents the film from being able to get away with its naive approach towards history. All it succeeds in doing is giving the film an unneeded dose of schmaltz that reduces it to a quasi-tragic father-son tale. With its sepia-toned nostalgic look, The President's Barber is certainly an interesting film, if only to witness director Lim's unique look at the Park years. However, its awkward mixture of feel-good dramatics and miscalculated attempts at dark comedy result in a film that is neither biting satire nor emotionally involving drama.

Filmbrain's Screen Capture Quiz: Round 7, Week 2

The synchronized Showgirls blog-orgy that took place last week was an unmitigated success, and there were some truly fascinating reads. Filmbrain's lowly contribution to the fest was last week's quiz, but he was happy to have played some small role in the event. The alt-text clue of "It doesn't suck" is not only Filmbrain's assessment of the film, but Nomi's stock answer when asked about anything. (Damn that Eszterhas is good!) With this week's quiz we go from the ridiculous to the sublime. Whose bachelor pad is adorned with the torn punk-pop diva poster? Name the film. Submit your answers to this address. Good luck!

In Every Dream Home (A Nightmare)

One of the darkest portraits of American suburban life in the post-WWII boom of the 1950s is Martin Ritt's all-but-forgotten No Down Payment (1957). This near-masterpiece is one of the few films that dared to scratch beneath the veneer of the pristine, all-white housing developments that began to spring up all across America in the years following the war -- those private little communities unto themselves that maintained their own police force, businesses, and set of rules both written and unwritten. Rows of identical houses, situated so as to create an almost panopticon effect, thanks to the walls of windows and common back yards complete with doors in the fences separating houses. (Imagine Tati's Mon Oncle, just without the humor.) Privacy is limited, and everybody knows each other's business. On the outside, the families, like the houses themselves, appear identical but behind closed doors, dark secrets lurk. The film also turns a critical eye on the then-new consumer culture - where everything was bought on credit and families found themselves rapidly becoming slaves to their mounting debt. (Early in the film, a gas station owner introduces himself to a new neighbor with, "Stop by the station. I'll give you a credit card.") Yet the no money down offer of the film's title isn't limited to cars, houses and furniture. Love, marriage, and trust are treated as mere commodities to be had on a try-and-buy basis, and many of the negotiations between spouses have a deal-like quality to them. No Down Payment opens innocently enough with newlywed couple David and Jean Martin (Jeffrey Hunter & Patricia Owens) driving down a highway littered with billboards for housing developments, each with a promise of a new and better life. They settle on Sunrise Hills (A Better Place for Better Living!), and it's not long before they are invited to an impromptu barbecue party with their immediate neighbors. (An event that seems to occur nightly.) There we get to meet the trio of dysfunctional families: Herman and Betty Kreitzer (Pat Hingle & Barbara Rush) - The closest thing to normal. He runs a local furniture store, and she's a good Christian...that is until a Japanese family asks for her help in getting them admitted into the whites-only community. Troy & Leola Boone (Cameron Mitchell & an absolutely gorgeous Joanne Woodward) - White trash couple from Tennessee. He's a proud Jap-killing war hero who smacks his wife around and dreams of becoming chief of police in the community. Maintains a shrine to himself and his war heroics, and happy that he can eat steak every night. She's a bored young housewife with a questionable past who wants a baby. Jerry and Isabelle Flag (Tony Randall & Sheree North) - Jerry is the resident sleaze of the bunch. A used-car salesman who cheats his customers, cheats on his wife as often as possible, and has a severe drinking problem. ("I'm just a social drinker", he tells Isabelle as he's downing his second martini of the morning.) Jerry is like a Mamet character right out of Glengarry Glen Ross - a dreamer with countless get-rich schemes, but who is forever destined to sell second-rate crap to suckers. Randall, eternally identified with Felix Unger or the fop in a string of Rock Hudson - Doris Day films, is unbelievably magnificent here as the drunken letch. Ritt plays quite a bit with our expectations. Many scenes begin with establishing shots of the community accompanied by musical cues right out of Leave it to Beaver. Yet usually within moments we are witnessing some uncomfortable or unpleasant confrontation. The whole effect is quite disconcerting, and seems to be indicative of Ritt's desire to subvert the domestic drama, so popular at the time. Blacklisted writer Ben Maddow's screenplay (fronted by Philip Yordan) fluctuates between sharp, stinging, rapid-fire dialog and eerie monologues that find the characters continually reminding and reassuring each other just how great life is in their little pre-fab paradise. At their regular gatherings the men proudly swap war stories, talk about job security and eating steak every night, while the wives remark at how similar they are to each other (sort of a precursor to The Stepford Wives). The world outside of their self-contained community is of little interest - 1957 was the year of forced integration and the beginning of the space race -- but such matters are not discussed in Sunrise Hills.

The arrival of the Martins into the community is the catalyst for many of the troubles that follow. As the only man who didn't see any action in the war, boyish David is viewed by the others with suspicion. (That he worked at Los Alamos on the bomb fails to impress the others.) They are jealous of his college degree, and his work as an engineer in automation doesn't do much to win them over. His wife Jean becomes an object of lust, and she must endure both Jerry's drunken groping and Troy's ever-increasing advances. But then again, she's the only woman in the community who proclaims that her man isn't just her husband, but someone she's actually in love with. Many of the characters suffer from either repressed desire or a lack of fulfillment in their lives. The dream home isn't the solution to their problems, and the cracks in the facade grow larger until the film's final, devastating act that finds traces of civility wiped away. What begins with a drunken party where one character reveals too much ends with a rather nasty rape and a particularly gruesome death. Yet somehow, a happy(ish) ending emerges. (It is a Hollywood picture, after all.) It is quite shocking how the rape trauma is addressed, and how the focus is more on the husband's bruised ego than on the woman herself. Upon learning about the rape, his first reaction is to physically confront her attacker. When this fails (he's no match for the brute) he attempts to rationalize with his wife, who naturally no longer wishes to live next door to a rapist: "Violence comes into a lot of people's lives. You can get hit by a runaway truck. You can get caught in a fire, but that doesn't change you. You don't feel shamed by the fire, you just face it with the people who love you." Therapy, 50s style. Yet even with its less-than-perfect ending, No Down Payment is still a major work of 1950s cinema that deserves greater recognition. Shot in Cinemascope (giving us a wider angle on its cramped spaces), No Down Payment is the antipode to Ozzie and Harriet - a booze and lust fueled excursion into capitalist ideology that gleefully shatters the illusion of the American Dream. No Down Payment is not on DVD, though a beautiful letterbox print shows up occasionally on the Fox Movie Channel.

Filmbrain's Screen Capture Quiz: Round 7, Week 1

Welcome to the official start of the seventh round of Filmbrain's weekly screen capture quiz! A quick overview of the rules for the newcomers: Each Wednesday morning, a new screen quiz will be posted. Screen captures come exclusively from DVDs in Filmbrain's personal collection. Some quizzes will have a bonus question attached, but you needn't submit an answer for both - partial credit will be given. Answers can be submitted until the following week's quiz is posted. At the end of twelve weeks, the three individuals with highest number of correct guesses will win any DVD used in the round. There's a party raging all over the Netherlands today, as its citizens celebrate the tenth year anniversary of a film directed by their greatest cultural export since the tulip and one-eared painters. It's a film that Filmbrain is somewhat ashamed at owning (though as of this writing he's had it for less than twenty-four hours). The film-blogosphere will no doubt be all abuzz with news of this film today, so consider this one a freebie. . . As always, submit your answers to this address. Good luck!

Filmbrain reviews Marathon (and reveals his heart of stone...)

A confession. Films that depict triumph in the face of adversity -- the ones often labeled "uplifting", inspirational", or "a story of human triumph" -- do little for Filmbrain other than leave him bored or frustrated. A character inflicted/born/suffering with disease/condition X overcomes obstacle Y and, against all odds, achieves goal Z. While this model makes for the kind of cookie-cutter screenplay that audiences and Oscar adore, they are more often than not maudlin affairs that rely on cheap, heart-tugging manipulative gimmicks to ensure that there's not a dry eye in the house. Such is the case with Jeong Yoon-chul's debut feature, Marathon. Like many films in this genre (if we can group them as such), Marathon is based on the true story of a young Korean man with autism who has completed several marathons, and is the current record holder for the fastest time in a triathlon. While a documentary on the subject might have been interesting, the feature film we are left with brings nothing new to the table except for a healthy dose of misogyny (more on that in a moment). Lead actor Cho Seung-woo gives a dedicated, impressive performance as the somewhat Rain Man-esque Cho-won, though at times he comes off as more adorable than afflicted. Marathon begins promisingly enough with a montage that shows the difficulty Cho-won's parents experienced when he was a young boy -- frustration, fights, and a feeling of utter uselessness in trying to get through to the boy. After an incident where they lose Cho-won momentarily at a zoo, the mother (Kim Mi-suk) decides to sacrifice everything and everybody in order to raise her son. One quick fifteen-year jump cut later, we find Cho-won already running in a small 10K race. His mother (her character isn't even given a name) is still in full control of his life -- encouraging him, nagging him, and standing up to anybody who says the slightest word against him. After realizing he has the potential to run great distances, she decides to prepare him for an actual marathon. Enter Yun Jung-won, the gruff but loveable former marathon runner who is sentenced to coach at Cho-won's school as punishment for a DUI conviction. Nothing more than a lazy drunk, he eventually gives in to the mother's continual pleading and becomes Cho-won's private coach. Cue second act, which begins with the coach ignoring and taking advantage of our autistic hero. Naturally though, he will turn both himself and Cho-won around in time for the overly manipulative third act, which is excessive by any standards. The film takes an ugly turn about two-thirds in when writer/director Jeong decides to lay all the blame (for just about everything) on the nameless mother, and hammers this point repeatedly. As the only female character in the film, it comes off as little more than bashing, especially when you take into consideration the men in Cho-won's life. His father, who walked out on the family years before, is blameless, as is the younger son who all but ignores his brother. Adding insult to injury, Jeong has the mother come down with a painful perforated ulcer, which leads to a hospital bed epiphany where she admits to her ex-husband that it is indeed all her fault -- that Cho-won runs not out of his own desire, but out of a fear that his mother will desert him (as she did years ago at the zoo). A bitter sequence that chooses to punish rather than empathize with a mother who was forced to raise a child alone in a society that didn't acknowledge autism as a handicap. It's a cheap shot that only serves as a device to give the heavy-handed third act an emotional kick. Once the self-sacrificing mother takes responsibility for destroying everybody's life, the film re-concerns itself with the titular race, and plays out to a conclusion that will come as a surprise to nobody. With its overly manipulative piano and strings score, Marathon is a slick looking, well acted and directed drama that is marred by a sloppy, unoriginal, and at times unpleasant screenplay. Marathon was a box-office smash in Korea last year, which comes as little surprise, as Jeong has skillfully applied a Hollywood formula that leaves audiences both tearing and cheering.

Filmbrain's Screen Capture Quiz: Round 6 - And The Winners Are. . .

Round 6 of the Screen Capture Quiz saw a record number of entries, and a slew of new contestants. Filmbrain would like to thank you all for participating, and an extra special thanks for the kind notes, memories, reflections, and thoughts on the films chosen. It's nice to know that so many of you share Filmbrain's adoration of Tsai Ming-liang's What Time is it There, the source of last week's quiz. Filmbrain recently re-watched the sequel, The Wayward Cloud, and the sting was no less painful than it was back in February. He's curious to hear your thoughts, should you ever manage to see it. Though it could be argued that Tien Miao plays dual roles in the film, it is Jean-Pierre Léaud who appears in the film both as Antoine Doinel in The 400 Blows (on television) and as himself in the cemetery scene. The winners of Round 6 are as follows: 1st Place - Matt Y. (with a total of 16, including bonus points) 2nd Place - Corbett B. (moving up from 3rd place winner of Round 5) 3rd Place - Brian D. Congratulations to the three of you! Any title used in this round (assuming it's still in print) is yours for the asking. Check back next week for the start of Round 7!

The Year in Lists, Part III: Ten Great Discoveries

Ten films seen for the first time in 2005, or for the first time theatrically. In reverse order: 10.Vesna (Spring). 1947, Grigori Aleksandrov, USSR. Kooky but charming film-within-a-film comedy-musical-sci-fi-romance that doubles as a piece of Stalin-era propaganda. Go figure. 9. Journey Into Fear. 1943, Norman Foster (and probably Orson Welles), USA 8. Slaughterhouse-Five. 1972, George Roy Hill, USA 7. Mr. Thank You. 1936, Hiroshi Shimizu, Japan. 6. The Mad Fox (aka Love, Thy Name Be Sorrow). 1962, Tomu Uchida, Japan Slightly experimental take on a classic Japanese tale about a man who marries a fox disguised in human form. Though somewhat theatrical in appearance (incorporating elements of Kabuki and Butoh), Uchida's direction is as impressive today as it was in 1962. 5. Street Angel. 1937, Yuan Mu-jih, China 4. Floating Clouds. 1955, Mikio Naruse, Japan. Better than Brief Encounter, and far more gut wrenching. D-Kaz's description of it as "the bleakest film ever" isn't far off the mark. 3. Barry Lyndon / Masculine Feminine / The Passenger. Kubrick, Godard, Antonioni, USA, France, Italy Three fantastic restorations of films I'd never seen on the big screen. The 11:00PM snowy Sunday screening of Barry Lyndon in Berlin was a near-religious experience. 2. Seopyeonje. 1993, Im Kwon-taek, Korea Im Kwon-taek has directed 99 films. This might very well be the best of them. Full review coming soon. 1. Love Streams. 1984, John Cassavetes, USA