co_oldman

It should surprise no one who has seen Sweet Movie that the film divides opinion. Precisely when the viewer's delight at the film's irreverent humour and carnivalesque whimsy threatens to overcome his sense of revulsion he is besieged with scenes of disgusting debauchery or stock footage of mass graves. The entire film is a deliberate affront to or subversion of cinematic conventions and societal norms. Familiar images, symbols, and scenes are smeared with excrement or defiled with incongruous sexual and violent overtones. An advertisement for chocolate becomes pornography, lovemaking an opportunity for murder, and the sacred blasphemous.

The brilliance of Sweet Movie lies in its unrestrained creativity and its ability to induce paroxysms of laughter. It is the perfect antidote to the solemnity, melodrama, and mawkishness of popular cinema. Few directors possess the genius to conjure up a sugar boat or chocolate bath and even fewer the effrontery to incorporate these images into a film, particularly in the peculiar and outrageous manner that Makavajev does. Sweet Movie was destined to be censored or banned from the moment its conceit gave birth to a film. Indeed, Polish authorities found Anna Prucnal's (Anna Planeta) participation in the film so objectionable that they prohibited her from entering her country of birth for several years! The film centers around a few set pieces whose utter originality and depravity make them unforgettable. To avoid revealing too much about the film, I shall discuss one. The scene of the feasting orgy, at which the actress Carole Laure was so appalled she quit the production, is one of the most disgusting in the history of cinema. I consider this an achievement. The food and drink consumed at a feast is summarily expelled, vomited, or excreted at, on, or nearby the feasting table. A second childishness inexplicably possesses the revelers leading to incontinence, babbling, and egregious misbehaviour. Each excess is mimicked or met with an even greater one. The scene culminates in a few miscreants depositing their own faeces on platters and parading them around the warehouse to the merriment of all present. Sweet Movie is thus a film one can taste, smell, and feel. The film is besides so well-seen that the viewer, for better or for worse, cannot un-see it.

Sweet Movie is not merely the expression of a chaotic explosion of creativity devoid of any meaning. Makavajev has messages for the viewer notwithstanding his extremely oblique way of communicating them. Capitalism, supposedly a superior economic system to communism, is represented as equally decadent and depraved, no less violent or deadly. The film is also an ironic indictment of the excesses of the free love movement, the feasting orgy a manifestation of the most hyperbolic and grotesque caricatures of its members. Our visceral shock at their licentious and intemperate behaviour exposes our moral hypocrisy for our shock is scarcely greater when presented with evidence of mass murder. Deplorable conduct and outright criminality, moreover, when presented in a pleasant manner, by way of a beauty pageant, for instance, or perpetrated by a person whom society has arbitrarily judged as reputable, such as an extremely wealthy man, is met with disbelief or entirely excused.

Sweet Movie dredges up parts of our psyche that we wish we didn't have or pretend we don't and unflinchingly, even joyously, captures them on film. If the resulting concoction is sweet, it is cloying and disgusting. I consider it a masterpiece, a must-see for fans of art cinema and the bizarre.

No one is innocent in the post-war Japan depicted in Masaki Kobayashi's Black River. The film focuses on a love triangle: the straight-laced bookseller Nishida and Yakuza gangbanger Joe compete for the affections of the bourgeois local girl Shizuko. The American military base looms large in the film but the action takes place outside of it, mostly in a nearby shantytown. Although he regards the American presence as pernicious, Kobayashi is clear as to where responsibility rests for immoral behaviour and deficiencies in character, namely, the individual and society as a whole.

Kobayashi challenges preconceived notions as to whether people of a certain class are virtuous or vicious. Appearances may reinforce the moral decay of a character, such as the rotten teeth of the unscrupulous landlord, or conceal it in the case of the beautiful and virginal Shizuko. In a disturbing scene, not one tenant is willing to donate blood to a man who is critically ill--not even his own wife. Nishida at least deigns to admit that, in spite of having the correct blood type, he does not want to donate his blood. He may feel that the man, apparently less educated and of a lower class than him, is unworthy of his blood. However, his refusal is as callous and cowardly as that of the other tenants, exposing his apparent nobility as a mere façade.

Black River exhibits the characteristic influence of film noir whose origin is American popular culture. Just as the presence of the American military corrupts Japanese society in the film, American culture has, as it were, corrupted Black River. Kobayashi paints in black and white a quasi-dystopian picture of a society that, having abandoned its principles, has descended into paranoia and mutual sabotage. The stylized and disinterested depictions of characters betray a moral ambivalence to their actions. Sultry jazz music, a distinctly American genre, provides the score of the film. Like the cinematography, its expression suggests that sordid deeds, places, and people are at hand.

In general, Kobayashi juggles the large cast of characters skillfully. However, their number can distract from the film's main plot about the love triangle, leading to a loss of focus and making it difficult to identify with any one character. Humour often shines through the dark subject matter, notably in a quarrel about emptying outhouses and the use of communal space. Like most film noir, Black River occasionally wavers into campiness and mannerism.

Kobayashi crafts a powerful ending to commit the metaphorical assassination of Shizuko's character. Once again, the Americans act as an accomplice but crucially not as the malefactor, the person ultimately responsible. Perhaps for the first time in the film, a character reflects on her own behaviour and is profoundly disgusted. Contemporary viewers will likely, as I did, have more sympathy for some characters and forgive them in light of the ordeals they have experienced or the circumstances in which they live. Nonetheless, Kobayashi makes a powerful argument, not to mention an excellent film that will appeal to fans of post-war cinema, film noir, and Japanese culture.