#138 - Rashomon

 ALL RIGHTY! - Made it to more Kurosawa and please let's leave the recent batch of English Melodrama and thriller for the good stuff.

TBH I was pushing thru Hitchcock for this - it's why I rushed so much this week to get them done.

I didn't realize this was the first real Japanese film to get an international audience.   It wasn't made for them but it did the trick.   As such there's probably not a lot I can or need to say about it but some things I didn't know.

This put Toshiro Mifune on the map but he was a virtual unknown before it.   Obviously even Harrison Ford had a couple films you didn't know about before Star Wars :)

The story is short and sweet - a bandit ambushes a samurai and his wife, captures him, rapes her, and afterwards the samurai is dead.   We know THAT much.   After that what is known and unknown is lost in one of several told versions of events by a woodcutter to a commoner and priest at a crumbling temple where they hide out from the rain.

TBH I have the DVD but haven't watched it since the first time.   It's been restored, and got some nice Blu-Ray extras, some of which are on the CC, but it's not the easiest film to really get a handle on and watch - but that's the whole point - the story is confusing, and incredulous, and you share in the confusion of the storytellers as they hear and relate multiple versions - of which we never truly learn the real one.

Almost everyone in the story will show up in future Kurosawa productions and the special features are great to watch as well

RB

#137 - Notorious

 

I liked this next Hitchcock film a little better - a Spy Noir film with the same two principals as the last one, Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman.   

A woman who's father was a Nazi Collaborator is recruited to go to Brazil and sniff out what other former collaborators are doing.   Some nice tracking shots here and a good story/chemistry between the two actors.

There's some interesting stuff on the disk but this one I had to watch via streaming service with commercials so they're not available but I'd be interested to hear the 1948 radio re-enactment.

side note I think I can see why everyone was in love with Ingrid Bergman :)

# 136 - Spellbound

 

I had some stuff come up - mostly moving - cause you know - stuff moves.

Didn't really like this one - hard to keep my interest - another 40's Melodrama - we'll get out of these soon and into the good stuff

DVD looks like it has a lot of interesting extras on the website but it's out of print in the CC so as usual gotta come up with plan b's sometimes

On a side note, there's a lot to be found very easily searching Roku - Search for something and you probably WILL find it on a streaming app somewhere

Anyways - not much to say - strange young man shows up to run a mental hospital and has mental issues