Christopher St. John wrote, produced, directed, and stars in underrated blaxploitation flick Top of the Heap
TOP OF THE HEAP (Christopher St. John, 1972)
BAM Rose Cinemas
30 Lafayette Ave. between Ashland Pl. & St. Felix St.
February 18-24
718-636-4100 www.bam.org
George Lattimer is not just a cop; he’s a Black cop on the edge in Top of the Heap, screening at BAM February 18-24. The 1972 blaxploitation flick was written, produced, and directed by Christopher St. John, who stars as Lattimer, a Metropolitan Police sergeant in DC who is sick and tired of being treated like a Black man first and not an officer of the law. Surrounded by white men and Black women who take him for granted, he fantasizes about becoming an astronaut preparing to rocket to the moon. In the NASA scenes, he is slick and debonair, sporting ultracool facial hair and an infectious determination to succeed, but as the cop he is unsure of himself and his place in the world.
His mother (Beatrice Webster) has died but he doesn’t want to go to the funeral in his hometown in Alabama. His wife (Florence St. Peter) says he doesn’t communicate with her anymore. His white partner (Leonard Kuras) is corrupt. His daughter (Almeria Quinn) is downing pills. He gets no respect from his captain (John Alderson). His groovy nightclub-singing girlfriend (Paula Kelly, listed in the credits as playing “Black Chick”) makes fun of him. On an incident on a bus, he is mistaken for a criminal by a white rookie cop (Brian Cutler). Driving in his woody station wagon, he is almost hit by a cab driver (character actor extraordinaire Allen Garfield, who died from Covid in April 2020 at the age of eighty) who threatens to bust him up until he finds out he is a cop.
White people see Lattimer only as a Black man and all the racist stereotypes that come with that. Black men see him only as a cop, a traitor working for the man. His life and career are unraveling right before his eyes, and he is threatening to explode at any minute. “I can do any goddamn thing I want!” he cries out, but of course he can’t. When he visits his former colleague, retired police officer Tim Cassidy (Patrick McVey), the old man talks about being overwhelmed with fear and loneliness, feeling useless, all of the things that Lattimer is experiencing; just as America turns its back on the elderly, so it does on Black men like Lattimer just trying to get by day to day. When asked by a reporter what it’s like to be in space, Lattimer explains, “Isolation . . . Sort of like waiting at the mailbox for your welfare check.”
Nominated for the Golden Bear at the Berlin International Film Festival, the film features small touches that lift it above the realm of standard Blaxploitation. A poster in Lattimer’s daughter’s bedroom declares, “War is not healthy for children and other things.” In a fantasy sequence, his blond, sexy white Scandinavian nurse (Ingeborg Sørensen) is reading a copy of Ebony magazine before offering him her services. Soon-to-be heavyweight boxing champion Ken Norton shows up in a bar scene, ready to go at it with Lattimer. Meanwhile, the space fantasies evoke Gil Scott-Heron’s “Whitey on the Moon,” the 1970 song in which Scott-Heron declares, “The man jus’ upped my rent las’ night (’cause Whitey’s on the moon) / No hot water, no toilets, no lights (but Whitey’s on the moon).”
Imaginatively photographed by Richard A. Kelley and featuring a soundtrack by J. J. Johnson with percussive African rhythms and jazz fusion, the Afro-Futurist Top of the Heap is a potent exploration of the Black experience in the United States, as relevant today as it was fifty years ago. “Top of the Heap is a powerful, dynamic story as only a Black man can tell it,” the above original trailer proclaims.
It’s a shame that St. John and this film faded into obscurity; a member of the Actors Studio, St. John played Lumumbas leader Ben Buford in Shaft and had only a handful of film and television roles before quitting the business in 1988. In 2014, he and his son, Emmy-winning soap opera star Kristoff St. John, codirected the documentary A Man Called God, about their family’s involvement with an Indian cult. Kristoff passed away in 2019 at the age of fifty-two; St. John is now eighty.
Be sure to stay through the end of the credits, where a final bonus will make you wonder whether Jordan Peele is a Top of the Heap fan. Writer Josiah Howard, author of Blaxploitation Cinema: The Essential Reference Guide, will introduce the 7:00 screening at BAM on February 18.
Audrey Hepburn grabs a bite at the Automat in New York City (photo by Lawrence Fried, 1951)
THE AUTOMAT (Lisa Hurwitz, 2021)
Film Forum
209 West Houston St.
Opens Friday, February 18
212-727-8110 filmforum.org automatmovie.com
New Yorkers are used to saying goodbye to iconic institutions, from the old Penn Station and Ebbets Field to the Carnegie Deli and the Stork Club. One of the hardest to bid farewell to was a most unusual eatery that catered to anyone who had a couple of nickels and time for a quick lunch or dinner: the Automat, a type of self-service restaurant that flourished in New York City and Philadelphia, predominantly during the first six decades of the twentieth century.
At the beginning of Lisa Hurwitz’s thoroughly satisfying yet elegiac debut documentary, The Automat, comedian Mel Brooks tells her, “I’m going to give you what I can in terms of time and effort, and I’ll try to write the song.” He continues, “I suggest you do some narration at the beginning to frame what you’re going to talk about. You know, with pictures — do you have enough pictures of Automats?”
Hurwitz has plenty of pictures of Automats and just the right narrator to open the film, Brooks himself, who explains, “Of course, when you say ‘Automat,’ or ‘Horn & Hardart,’ very few people know what you’re talking about. But one of the greatest inventions in insane centers of paradise were these places that had little glass windows framed in brass with knobs, and if you put two nickels into the slot next to the windows, the windows would open up, and you could take out a piece of lemon meringue pie for ten cents and you could eat it.”
Brooks is one of many people who more than just enjoyed going to the Automat; for them, it was an integral part of their lives, a place to gather with friends, colleagues, and family, schmooze a bit, and have a cheap but good meal. From 1902 to 1991, the Automat served young and old, rich and poor; race, religion, politics — none of that mattered in the egalitarian spaces.
The late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg recalls, “Yes, this is the great USA, with people of all different colors, and religions, and manner of dress, and yet we are all together.” The late Secretary of State Colin Powell notes, “All the Automats had that beautiful diversity that didn’t exist in most of the rest of the country, of economic standing, of color, of ethnicity, of language. You never knew what you’d run into in an Automat.” Among the others waxing poetic about the Automat are Carl Reiner, Elliott Gould, former Philly mayor Wilson Goode, and former Starbucks chairman and CEO Howard Schultz, who says, “The Automat for me was a seminal moment in my childhood, and I became a merchant the day that I was in that Automat.” Brooks declares, “The Automat had panache.”
Made over the course of seven years, the film also features interviews with Lorraine Diehl and Marianne Hardart, authors of The Automat: The History, Recipes, and Allure of Horn & Hardart’s Masterpiece; former Automat VP of engineering John Romas; Edwin K. Daly Jr., whose father was president of Horn & Hardart from 1937 to 1960; New York City historian Lisa Keller; H&H architect Roy Rosenbaum; architectural dealer and restorer Steve Stollman, who bought a lot of the old mechanisms when the restaurants closed; and historian Alec Shuldiner, whose PhD dissertation inspired Hurwitz to make the film.
Mel Brooks sings the praises of the Automat in loving documentary (photo by Carl Reiner)
There are tons of great photos and film clips in the documentary, including shots of Audrey Hepburn, Debbie Reynolds and Eddie Fisher, Jackie Gleason, Donna Reed, Abbott & Costello, and James Dean at the Automat and scenes from That Touch of Mink,The Bob Hope Show,The Flintstones, Warner Bros. cartoons A Hare Grows in Manhattan and Tree Cornered Tweety,Candid Camera, and such old movies as The Early Bird,No Limit, and Thirty Day Princess. Jack Benny hosts an opening there, giving out nickels to his guests. The Irving Berlin and Moss Hart musical Face the Music begins with the song “Lunching at the Automat.”
Hurwitz also deals with socioeconomic change that helped make the Automat so popular after the Great Depression and through both wars and, later, led to its downfall. The sentimental attachment everyone has for the Automat in the film is contagious, even if you never had the baked beans, ham and cheese sandwich, or creamed spinach; it was a special place to so many through several generations, and Hurwitz captures those sentimental feelings with panache while leaving you with an ache in your heart and stomach — and a song from Mel Brooks. The Automat opens February 18 at Film Forum, with Hurwitz participating in Q&As on Friday at 7:00, Saturday at 7:30, and Sunday at 5:40.
Birthe Neumann is radiant as socialite and author Karen Blixen in The Pact
THE PACT (PAGTEN) (Bille August, 2021)
Quad Cinema
34 West 13th St. between Fifth & Sixth Aves.
February 11-17 quadcinema.com pactmovie.com
Birthe Neumann is mesmerizing as Karen Blixen in Bille August’s The Pact, now playing at the Quad. Blixen is better known by her pen name, Isak Dinesen, author of such books as Out of Africa and such stories as Babette’s Feast and The Immortal Story, all of which became films. The Pact opens in 1948, and Blixen, referred to as Tanne or the baroness, holds court over the fanciful and the glitterati at her family estate, Rungstedlund. Now sixty-three, she is seriously ill but still able to revel in manipulating those around her. She forms an instant liking for young poet Thorkild Bjørnvig (Simon Bennebjerg), taking him under her wing and making a pact of spiritual faithfulness with him, built on mutual trust and protection; she compares it to a deal she claims to have made with the devil, trading her soul for the ability to tell stories.
The thirty-year-old Thorkild is reserved and inexperienced, but the baroness is determined to instill in him the courage to be fearless to make him a better writer. “All white people have a fear in them that I can’t stand. And that is the fear of displeasing. Instead of doing what they want, they try to flatter, hoping to be liked,” she advises him. “Do you know why so many people are unhappy nowadays? It’s because they are no longer raised to be brave. But in order to be happy, you need to risk being unhappy.”
As he spends more time at Rungstedlund, the baroness attempts to drive a wedge between him and his wife, Grete (Nanna Skaarup Voss), a shy librarian, and their young son, Bo (Mikkel Kjærsgaard Stubkjær); she also tries to make him grow closer to Benedicte Jensen (Asta Kamma August), the wife of socialite and arts philanthropist Knud W. Jensen (who would go on to found the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Humlebæk, Denmark, in 1958). Thorkild finds himself trapped in the middle: He wants to be a successful writer, husband, and father, but the baroness, who is divorced and asexual, living in a mansion with only her housekeeper and assistant, Mrs. Carlsen (Marie Mondrup), pining away for her lost love, Denys Finch Hatton, insists that he cannot be all three and must choose between them.
The baroness (Birthe Neumann) has very specific plans for poet Thorkild Bjørnvig (Simon Bennebjerg) in Bille August’s The Pact
The Pact is a compelling, beautifully photographed tale of unrequited love, heartbreaking loss, and the creative process. Adapted by Christian Torpe from Thorkild Bjørnvig’s 1974 memoir, the film, gorgeously directed by Bille August (Pelle the Conqueror,The Best Intentions) with a subtle simplicity, opens with a pair of fascinating shots: Cinematographer Manuel Alberto Claro first shoots Blixen from the side, her face hidden in shadow as she applies makeup in front of a mirror, followed by Thorkild shaving in bright light, his wife holding their baby beside him. One is facing the end, while the other is just starting, a visualization of the film’s epigraph, a quote from Blixen: “Not by your face but by your mask shall I know you.”
But as good as Neumann is, the film’s heart and soul is Bennebjerg (Borgen,A Report on the Party and the Guests), who has primarily appeared in shorts and television series before assuming this lead role. He walks a fine line as Thorkild navigates his different, deep attractions for the characters played by Neumann (The Celebration,The Kingdom), Voss (Klaphat), and Kamma August (Burn All My Letters,Sex), the daughter of Bille August and Danish superstar Pernilla August. Bennebjerg portrays Thorkild’s coming-of-age as he moves from innocence to experience under the strict tutelage of the baroness with a trepidatious unease that holds everything together; his performance grows more nuanced as the character learns more about what he has signed up for and is often not sure quite how to proceed. It’s a stage of growth we’ve all found ourselves in, even if it didn’t involve a world-famous Danish writer, but Bennebjerg makes it feel like it could happen to any of us, at any moment.
Students occupy offices in documentary The Unmaking of a College
THE UNMAKING OF A COLLEGE: THE STORY OF A MOVEMENT (Amy Goldstein, 2021)
IFC Center
323 Sixth Ave. at West Third St.
Opens Friday, February 11 www.ifccenter.com
“One can worry that if Hampshire is failing, what does that mean for liberal arts education in general?” Sloan Foundation president Adam Falk asks in Amy Goldstein’s passionate documentary, The Unmaking of a College: The Story of a Movement. A graduate of the innovative, experimental independent Hampshire College, which opened its doors in 1970, Goldstein follows a months-long sit-in orchestrated by students upon learning that the institution was in danger of closing.
On January 15, 2019, new college president Miriam “Mim” Nelson sent out a letter advising of an important meeting being held in forty-nine minutes. At that meeting, which many people could not attend because of the late notice, she announced that the school was looking for a “strategic partner” and that there was likely going to be no incoming class in the fall. Students, teachers, and even members of the board of directors took action, demanding answers. When none came, the students occupied several offices, including Nelson’s, as they crusaded for their rights, attempting to save the liberal arts college, which had a relatively low endowment and relied primarily on tuition, which was high.
Columbia University professor Andrew Delbanco explains, “We are about to see a great shrinkage in the number of colleges and universities in this country because only the wealthiest will be able to survive. And it’s inevitable, I think, that fragile colleges are going to face the possibility of going out of business.”
Among the students Goldstein talks to are Marlon Becerra; Cheyenne Palacio-McCarthy; Andrew Gordon; Moon West; Annie Wood; Joshua Berman, who took extensive footage of various events and gatherings; and Rhys MacArthur, who works in the admissions office. They are often photographed in front of a large screen with campus footage projected over them, evoking how all-encompassing the situation is; they are not just battling for their education but for their future careers and life.
“Students have always been a huge part of how this college runs. I remember occupying the president’s office, but I don’t remember why. I mean, that’s just in our blood,” Hampshire alum and master documentarian Ken Burns notes. “At one point it seemed like the story is that Hampshire College is dead. I am happy to say that rumors of our death are greatly exaggerated.”
Nelson doesn’t back down even as the press gets hold of the story and some questionable behind-the-scenes negotiations are revealed. Sitting on the floor of her office, surrounded by students, Nelson tells them, “I just have to say, I feel like I’m in an alternative universe here. I am working so f’ing hard. I am fighting like you can’t even imagine to maintain our independence. It’s critical. So I’m looking at all of these things.”
Student Nya Johnson immediately responds, “You get paid to work f’ing hard. So work. Do your work. We pay you to do this. I don’t know; I’m just confused. What alternative universe are you living in?”
Hampshire has a history of activism and providing students with a nontraditional education. Fear of a merger with one of its sister schools, Amherst, Smith, Mount Holyoke, or UMass, worries students and faculty; professors are concerned with what would happen to them, particularly as potential layoffs loom. However, as Hampshire professor Salman Hameed declares about Nelson, “She picked the wrong college to mess with.”
Hampshire College president Miriam “Mim” Nelson finds herself under fire in Amy Goldstein doc
Goldstein (Kate Nash: Underestimate the Girl,Self-Made Men) also speaks with Hampshire Gazette reporter Dusty Christensen, Science magazine editor in chief Holden Thorp, former college president Adele Simmons, lead fundraiser Cheri Butler, and Hampshire board of trustees member Mingda Zhao, who each offers a unique perspective on the conflict.
Hampshire professor Margaret Cerullo writes an article for The Nation detailing what is happening; she titles it “The Unmaking of a College: Notes from Inside the Hampshire Runaway Train,” a riff on the school’s original manifesto, The Making of a College. Yale School of Management associate dean Jeffrey Sonnenfeld announces, “This was very badly handled.” The only person who speaks up for Nelson is Hampshire alum and conservative Subject Matter PR firm CEO John Buckley, who was hired by Nelson to help handle the crisis. “I saw a woman who was trying to do the right thing who got caught and made some mistakes, and then everything unraveled really, really badly,” he says.
Hampshire’s motto is “Non satis scire” — “To know is not enough.” The students’ nonviolent campaign for transparency, involvement, and agency, to know the truth and be part of the solution, is inspiring; many of them are learning lessons that will help them on their life’s journey while also finding out there can be lies and betrayal on that road. In many ways, the film serves as a primer for the future as the next generation prepares to eventually take over a torn and tattered America — and it all begins with education.
The Unmaking of a College: The Story of a Movement opens February 11 at IFC Center; Goldstein will be on hand for a Q&A with some of the film’s subjects following the 7:50 show.
Rashomon helps kick off delayed monthlong centennial celebration of Toshirō Mifune at Film Forum
MIFUNE
Film Forum
209 West Houston St.
February 11 – March 10
212-727-8110 filmforum.org
No other international actor stands out for his country as Japanese star Toshirō Mifune does for his. Quick: Name another big-time Japanese thespian. Born in Seitō on April Fools Day in 1920, Mifune made nearly two hundred appearances in films and on television, including a particularly fertile period between 1948 and 1966, when he made movies with Akira Kurosawa, Hiroshi Inagaki, Kihachi Okamoto, Masaki Kobayashi, and Mikio Naruse that would become classics. He worked in multiple genres, from Western Westerns and Eastern Westerns to noir detective thrillers, police procedurals, samurai epics — and, yes, romance.
Film Forum is celebrating Mifune’s fifty-year career and the hundredth anniversary of his birth — the series was scheduled for 2020 but was postponed because of the pandemic lockdown — with an exciting retrospective running February 11 to March 10, consisting of thirty-three films over four weeks, from his onscreen debut in 1947’s Snow Trail to all sixteen films he made with Kurosawa, from the little-seen A Wife’s Heart and All About Marriage to grandiose Shakespearean adaptations, from the Musashi Miyamoto trilogy to his fling with Hollywood. Mifune, who died on Christmas Eve, 1997, could out-Eastwood Eastwood, out-Bronson Bronson, and out-McQueen McQueen. “I’m not always great in pictures, but I’m always true to the Japanese spirit,” he once said. You can decide for yourself how great he was by heading over to Film Forum and catching a bunch of these flicks, several of which are not available for streaming; below are some recommendations.
RASHOMON (Akira Kurosawa, 1950)
Friday, February 11 at 2:55, 7:10
Wednesday, February 16, 5:35
Friday, March 4, 3:50
Saturday, March 5, 12:40
Wednesday, March 9, 6:00
Thursday, March 10, 12:40, 5:10 filmforum.org
One of the most influential films of all time, Akira Kurosawa’s 1950 masterpiece, adapted from Ryunosuke Akutagawa’s short story “In a Grove,” stars Toshirō Mifune as a bandit accused of the brutal rape of a samurai’s wife (Machiko Kyo) and the murder of her husband (Masayuki Mori). However, four eyewitnesses tell a tribunal four different stories, each told in flashback as if the truth, forcing the characters — and the audience — to question the reality of what they see and experience. Kurosawa veteran Takashi Shimura — the Japanese Ward Bond — plays a local woodcutter, with Minoru Chiaka as the priest. The mesmerizing work, which won an Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film, is beautifully shot by Kazuo Miyagawa; Rashomon is nothing short of unforgettable. (What is forgettable is the English-language remake, The Outrage, directed by Martin Ritt and starring Edward G. Robinson, Paul Newman, Laurence Harvey, Claire Bloom, and William Shatner.)
Nakajima (Toshirō Mifune) lives in fear in Akira Kurosawa’s I Live in Fear
I LIVE IN FEAR (Akira Kurosawa, 1955)
Friday, February 11, 12:40, 4:55, 9:10
Friday, February 18, 12:30
Saturday, February 19, 2:50 filmforum.org
Akira Kurosawa’s powerful psychological drama I Live in Fear, also known as Record of a Living Being, begins with a jazzy score over shots of a bustling Japanese city, people anxiously hurrying through as a Theremin joins the fray. But this is no Hollywood film noir or low-budget frightfest; Kurosawa’s daring film is about the end of old Japanese society as the threat of nuclear destruction hovers over everyone. A completely unrecognizable Toshirō Mifune stars as Nakajima, an iron foundry owner who wants to move his large family — including his two mistresses — to Brazil, which he believes to be the only safe place on the planet where he can survive the H bomb. His immediate family, concerned more about the old man’s money than anything else, takes him to court to have him declared incompetent; there he meets a dentist (the always excellent Takashi Shimura) who also mediates such problems — and fears that Nakajima might be the sanest one of all.
Toshirō Mifune and Shirley Yamaguchi face unwarranted gossip in Akira Kurosawa’s Scandal
SCANDAL (Akira Kurosawa, 1950)
Sunday, February 13, 12:40
Monday, February 14, 3:00 filmforum.org
When two famous people are caught together at a hotel in the mountains, a scandal breaks out as a lurid gossip magazine prints their picture and makes up a sordid romance that is not true. With their reputations tainted, they consider suing the publication, but they run into problems with their ragtag lawyer, who has a bit of a gambling problem. Akira Kurosawa regular Toshirō Mifune stars as Ichiro Aoye, a well-known painter who likes smoking pipes and riding his flashy motorcycle. Yoshiko Yamaguchi is Miyaka Saijo, a timid pop singer who is terrified of the unwanted publicity. And Takashi Shimura is Hiruta, the struggling lawyer devoted to his young daughter, who is dying of TB. The first half of the movie is involving right from the roaring opening-titles sequence, with good characterization and an alluring story line. Unfortunately, the film bogs down in the second half, especially during the hard-to-believe courtroom scenes, the only ones of Kurosawa’s career. And the Christmas bit is tired and cliché-ridden, even if might have been unique at the time for a film made in postwar Japan. But Kurosawa’s attack on the media is still valid today, even if he did fill it with sappy melodrama.
Takashi Shimura and Toshirō Mifune team up as detectives tracking a stolen gun in Akira Kurosawa’s Stray Dog
STRAY DOG (Akira Kurosawa, 1949)
Monday, February 14, 8:10
Friday, February 18, 2:40
Sunday, February 20, 12:40
Thursday, February 24, 5:50
Wednesday, March 9, 8:10 filmforum.org
Akira Kurosawa’s thrilling police procedural Stray Dog is one of the all-time-great film noirs. When newbie detective Murakami (Toshirō Mifune) gets his Colt lifted on a trolley, he fears he’ll be fired if he does not get it back. But as he searches for the weapon, he discovers that it is being used in a series of robberies and murders — for which he feels responsible. Teamed with seasoned veteran Sato (Takashi Shimura), Murakami risks his career — and his life — as he tries desperately to track down his gun before it is used again. Kurosawa makes audiences sweat, showing postwar Japan in the midst of a brutal heat wave, with Murakami, Sato, dancer Harumi Namiki (Keiko Awaji), and others constantly mopping their brows — the heat is so palpable, you can practically see it dripping off the screen. (You’ll find yourself feeling relieved when Sato hits a button on a desk fan, causing it to turn toward his face.) In his third of sixteen films made with Kurosawa, Mifune plays Murakami with a stalwart vulnerability, working beautifully with Shimura’s cool, calm cop who has seen it all and knows how to handle just about every situation. (Shimura was another Kurosawa favorite, appearing in twenty-one of his films.)
Rookie detective Murakami (Toshirō Mifune) often finds himself in the shadows in Stray Dog
Mifune is often seen through horizontal or vertical gates, bars, curtains, shadows, window frames, and wire, as if he’s psychologically and physically caged in by his dilemma — and as time goes on, the similarities between him and the murderer grow until they’re almost one and the same person, dealing ever-so-slightly differently with the wake of the destruction wrought on Japan in WWII. Inspired by the novels of Georges Simenon and Jules Dassin’s The Naked City,Stray Dog is a dark, intense drama shot in creepy black and white by Asakazu Nakai and featuring a jazzy soundtrack by Fumio Hayasaka that unfortunately grows melodramatic in a few key moments — and oh, if only that final scene had been left on the cutting-room floor. It also includes an early look at Japanese professional baseball. Kurosawa would soon become the most famous Japanese auteur in the world, going on to make Rashomon, Ikiru, Seven Samurai, Throne of Blood, The Hidden Fortress, The Bad Sleep Well, The Lower Depths, and I Live in Fear in the next decade alone.
The Lower Depths is another masterful collaboration between Akira Kurosawa and Toshirō Mifune
THE LOWER DEPTHS (Akira Kurosawa, 1957)
Tuesday, February 15, 2:45, 8:00
Wednesday, February 16, 12:40
Tuesday, March 1, 5:40 filmforum.org
Loosely adapted from Maxim Gorky’s social realist play, The Lower Depths is yet another masterpiece from Japanese auteur Akira Kurosawa. Set in an immensely dark and dingy ramshackle skid-row tenement during the Edo period, the claustrophobic film examines the rich and the poor, gambling and prostitution, life and death, and everything in between through the eyes of impoverished characters who have nothing. The motley crew includes the suspicious landlord, Rokubei (Ganjiro Nakamura), and his much younger wife, Osugi (Isuzu Yamada); Osugi’s sister, Okayo (Kyôko Kagawa); the thief Sutekichi (Toshirō Mifune), who gets involved in a love triangle with a noir murder angle; and Kahei (Bokuzen Hidari), an elderly newcomer who might be more than just a grandfatherly observer. Despite the brutal conditions they live in, the inhabitants soldier on, some dreaming of their better past, others still hoping for a promising future. Kurosawa infuses the gripping film with a wry sense of humor, not allowing anyone to wallow away in self-pity. The play had previously been turned into a film in 1936 by Jean Renoir, starring Jean Gabin as the thief.
Toshirō Mifune and Akira Kurosawa take on Shakespeare in Throne of Blood
THRONE OF BLOOD (Akira Kurosawa, 1957)
Wednesday February 16, 3:15
Thursday, February 17, 12:40, 8:20
Sunday, February 27, 12:40, 8:10
Sunday, March 6, 9:05 filmforum.org/film/throne-of-blood-mifune
Akira Kurosawa’s marvelous reimagining of Macbeth is an intense psychological thriller that follows one man’s descent into madness. Following a stunning military victory led by Washizu (Toshirô Mifune) and Miki (Minoru Chiaki), the two men are rewarded with lofty new positions. As Washizu’s wife, Asaji (Isuzu Yamada, with spectacular eyebrows), fills her husband’s head with crazy paranoia, Washizu is haunted by predictions made by a ghostly evil spirit in the Cobweb Forest, leading to one of the all-time classic finales. Featuring exterior scenes bathed in mysterious fog, cinematographer Asakazu Nakai’s interior long shots of Washizu and Asaji in a large, sparse room carefully considering their next bold move, and composer Masaru Sato’s shrieking Japanese flutes, Throne of Blood is a chilling drama of corruptive power and blind ambition, one of the greatest adaptations of Shakespeare ever put on film.
A group of men try to help Kingo Gondo (Toshirō Mifune) find kidnappers in Akira Kurosawa’s tense noir / police procedural
HIGH AND LOW (Akira Kurosawa, 1963)
Saturday, February 19, 8:00
Wednesday, March 2, 2:30
Tuesday, March 8, 12:40, 7:50 filmforum.org
On the verge of being forced out of the company he has dedicated his life to, National Shoes executive Kingo Gondo’s (Toshirō Mifune) life is thrown into further disarray when kidnappers claim to have taken his son, Jun (Toshio Egi), and are demanding a huge ransom for his safe return. But when Gondo discovers that they have mistakenly grabbed Shinichi (Masahiko Shimazu), the son of his chauffeur, Aoki (Yutaka Sada), he at first refuses to pay. But at the insistence of his wife (Kyogo Kagawa), the begging of Aoki, and the advice of police inspector Taguchi (Kenjiro Ishiyama), he reconsiders his decision, setting in motion a riveting police procedural that is filled with tense emotion. Loosely based on Ed McBain’s 87th Precinct novel King’s Ransom, Akira Kurosawa’s High and Low, photographed by longtime Kurosawa cinematographer Asakazu Nakai, is divided into two primary sections: The first half takes place in Gondo’s luxury home, orchestrated like a stage play as the characters are developed and the plan takes hold. The second part of the film follows the police, under the leadership of Chief Detective Tokura (Tatsuya Nakadai), as they hit the streets of the seedier side of Yokohama in search of the kidnappers. Known in Japan as Tengoku to Jigoku, which translates as Heaven and Hell, High and Low is an expert noir, a subtle masterpiece that tackles numerous socioeconomic and cultural issues as Gondo weighs the fate of his business against the fate of a small child; it all manages to feel as fresh and relevant today as it probably did back in the ’60s.
Toshirō Mifune and Takashi Shimura made fifty-three movies together
DRUNKEN ANGEL (Akira Kurosawa, 1948)
Saturday, February 19, 12:40
Sunday, February 27, 6:00
Monday, February 28, 12:40
Tuesday, March 1, 8:20
Wednesday, March 2, 5:50
Thursday, March 10, 2:45 filmforum.org
The first film that Kurosawa had total control over, Drunken Angel tells the story of a young Yakuza member, Matsunaga (Toshiro Mifune), who shows up late one night at the office of the neighborhood doctor, Sanada (Takashi Shimura), to have a bullet removed from his hand. Sanada, an expert on tuberculosis, immediately diagnoses Matsunaga with the disease, but the gangster is too proud to admit there is anything wrong with him. Sanada sees a lot of himself in the young man, remembering a time when his life was full of choices — he could have been a gangster or a successful big-city doctor. When Okada (Reisaburo Yamamoto) returns from prison, searching for Sanada’s nurse, Miyo (Chieko Nakakita), the film turns into a classic noir, with marvelous touches of German expressionism thrown in. We deducted a quarter star for the terrible incidental music that lapses into melodramatic mush.
Nishi (Toshirô Mifune) is desperate for revenge in Akira Kurosawa’s dark Shakespearean noir, The Bad Sleep Well
THE BAD SLEEP WELL (Akira Kurosawa, 1960)
Thursday, February 24, 2:50
Sunday, February 27, 3:00
Friday, March 4, 8:20 filmforum.org
The twelfth of sixteen films director Akira Kurosawa and actor Toshirô Mifune made together between 1948 and 1965, the Shakespearean noir The Bad Sleep Well is a tense, gripping thriller in which Kurosawa takes on post-WWII Japanese corporate culture, incorporating elements of Hamlet into the complex narrative. The 1960 film begins with a long wedding scene in which everything is set in motion, from identifying characters (and their flaws) to developing the central storylines. Kōichi Nishi (Mifune) is marrying Yoshiko (Kyōko Kagawa), a young woman with a physical disability whose father is Iwabuchi (Masayuki Mori), the vice president of Public Corporation, a construction company immersed in financial scandal as related by one of the many cynical reporters (Kōji Mitsui) covering the party and anticipating possible arrests. Also at the affair are Iwabuchi’s cohorts in crime, Miura (Gen Shimizu), Moriyama (Takashi Shimura), Shirai (Kō Nishimura), and Wada (Kamatari Fujiwara), as well as Iwabuchi’s rogue son, Tatsuo (Tatsuya Mihashi), who threatens to kill Nishi if he does anything to hurt his sister. It soon becomes clear that Nishi in fact does have more on his mind than just marrying into the company. “Even now they sleep soundly, grins on their faces,” Nishi declares. “I won’t stand for it! I can never hate them enough!”
Photographed in an enveloping, almost 3-D black-and-white by Yuzuru Aizawa and with a propulsive, jazzy score by Masaru Sato, The Bad Sleep Well is a deeply psychological, eerie tale that finds inspiration in the story of Hamlet, Polonius, Ophelia, Claudius, Gertrude, Laertes, and Horatio. But whereas Kurosawa’s Throne of Blood and Ran were more direct interpretations of Macbeth and King Lear, respectively, Kurosawa, who edited the film and cowrote it with Hideo Oguni, Eijirô Hisaita, Ryûzô Kikushima, and Shinobu Hashimoto, uses the Shakespeare tragedy more subtly as he investigates greed, envy, revenge, betrayal, suicide, torture, ghosts, and murder; in fact, many critical plot points, including those involving violence, occur offscreen. The locations are spectacular, especially a volcano and an abandoned, decimated munitions factory that clearly references the destruction wrought by WWII. The actors wear their hearts on their sleeves, often emoting with silent-film tropes, especially Shimura, Fujiwara, and Nishimura as Iwabuchi’s nervous, perpetually worried underlings and Mihashi as the wild, unpredictable prodigal son. Mifune is stalwart throughout, wearing pristine suits and eyeglasses that mask what is bubbling inside him, threatening to explode, while Mori is a magnificently evil villain. At 150 minutes, it’s a long film, but it’s worth every minute; it could have actually been longer, but Kurosawa, in his first film made through his own independent production company, instead chose an abrupt yet fascinating ending with all kinds of future implications. Made between the period piece The Hidden Fortress and the samurai Western Yojimbo,The Bad Sleep Well was advertised as “a film that will violently jolt the paralyzed soul of modern man back to its senses,” and it still does just that, as corporate corruption seems to never end. Oh, and it also features one of the best wedding cakes ever put on celluloid.
Toshirō Mifune stars as a corrupt cop in The Last Gunfight
THE LAST GUNFIGHT (Kihachi Okamoto, 1960)
Friday, February 25, 3:50, 8:40 filmforum.org
In the little-known Kihachi Okamoto yakuza noir The Last Gunfight, Toshirō Mifune stars as corrupt detective Saburo Fujioka, who has been reassigned from Tokyo to Kojin City and instantly becomes caught in the middle of a mob war between rival gangs looking to pay him off so he will work for them. He befriends Tetsuo Maruyama (Kôji Tsuruta), whose wife might have been murdered, while alternately meeting with some bad people and angering his fellow cops, who are not happy to have a bad apple on their team. Director Kihachi Okamoto has fun with clichés — guns firing at the camera, as if aimed at the viewer; newspaper headlines forwarding the plot; barroom brawls; femmes fatales; nightclub scenes with live music, but in this case performed by three hitmen, singing, “Rub ’em Out”; evil baddies who think they’re untouchable; a loud, jazzy score by Masaru Satô with strange hints of other genres; and a bland color scheme that makes you wish it was made in black-and-white. And through it all, Fujioka never loses the tie and only takes off his trench coat twice. There’s also a poignant surprise twist at the end. Based on a story by Haruhiko Oyabu, it might not be a top-of-the-line thriller, but it’s worth it just to watch Mifune strut his stuff.
Toshiro Mifune can’t believe what he sees in Yojimbo
YOJIMBO (Akira Kurosawa, 1961)
Wednesday, February 23, 8:30
Saturday, February 26, 12:40, 5:10
Monday, February 28, 2:45
Thursday, March 3, 12:40
Tuesday, March 8, 3:30 filmforum.org
Kuwabatake Sanjuro (Toshirō Mifune) is a lone samurai on the road following the end of the Tokugawa dynasty in yet another of Akira Kurosawa’s unforgettable masterpieces. Sanjuro comes to a town with two warring factions and plays each one off the other as a hired hand. Neo’s battles with myriad Agent Smiths are nothing compared to Yojimbo’s magnificent swordfights against growing bands of warriors that include the evil Unosuke (Tatsuya Nakadai), who is in possession of a new weapon that shoots bullets. Try watching this film and not think of several Clint Eastwood Westerns (particularly Sergio Leone’s A Fistful of Dollars, since this is a direct remake of that 1964 Italian flick) as well as High Noon.
Toshirō Mifune can’t believe what he sees in Sanjuro
SANJURO (Akira Kurosawa, 1962)
Saturday, February 26, 3:00
Thursday, March 3, 3:00
Tuesday, March 8, 5:45 filmforum.org
In this Yojimbo-like tale, Toshirō Mifune shows up in a small town looking for food and fast money and takes up with a rag-tag group of wimps who don’t trust him when he says he will help them against the powerful ruling gang. Funnier than most Kurosawa samurai epics, Sanjuro is unfortunately brought down a notch by a bizarre soundtrack that ranges from melodramatic claptrap to a jazzy big-city score.
Toranosuke Shimada (Toshirō Mifune) shows rogue samurai Ryunosuke Tsukue (Tatsuya Nakadai) how its done in The Sword of Doom
THE SWORD OF DOOM (THE GREAT BODHISATTVA PATH) (Kihachi Okamoto, 1966)
Monday, February 21, 7:55
Wednesday, March 9, 3:10 filmforum.org
The Sword of Doom tells the story of one of the screen’s most brutal antiheroes, a samurai you can’t help but root for despite his coldhearted brutality, a heartless killer called “a man from hell.” Based on Kaizan Nakazato’s forty-one-volume serial novel Dai-bosatsu Tōge, Kihachi Okamoto’s The Sword of Doom, aka The Great Bodhisattva Pass, begins in 1860 with Ryunosuke Tsukue (Tatsuya Nakadai) slaying an elderly Buddhist pilgrim (Ko Nishimura) apparently for no reason as the man visits a far-off mountain grave. Shortly before Ryunosuke is to battle Bunnojo Utsuki (Ichiro Nakaya) in a competition using unsharpened wooden swords, the man’s wife, Ohama (Michiyo Aratama), comes to him, begging for Ryunosuke to lose the match on purpose to save her family’s future. A master swordsman with an unorthodox style, Ryunosuke takes advantage of the situation in more ways than one. As emotionless as he is fearless, Ryunosuke is soon ambushed on a forest road, but killing, to him, comes natural, whether facing one man or dozens — or even hundreds. The only person he shows even the slightest respect for is Toranosuke Shimada (Toshirō Mifune), the instructor at a sword-fighting school. “We have rules concerning strangers,” Toranosuke tells him, but Ryunosuke plays by no rules. “The sword is the soul. Study the soul to know the sword. Evil mind, evil sword,” Toranosuke adds, words that torment Ryunosuke, who tries to start a family in spite of his hard, detached demeanor. But regardless of circumstance, Ryunosuke continues on his bloody path, culminating in an unforgettable battle that is one of the finest of the jidaigeki genre.
The Sword of Doom boasts a memorable performance by Nakadai, the star of such other classics as Masaki Kobayashi’s Harakiri, Hiroshi Teshigara’s The Face of Another and Samurai Rebellion, and Okamoto’s Battle of Okinawa and Kill!, as well as many Akira Kurosawa films, including Yojimbo, Sanjuro, High and Low, and Ran. In The Sword of Doom he is reunited with Aratama, who played his wife in Okamoto’s masterpiece trilogy, The Human Condition. Nakadai is brilliant as Ryunosuke, able to win over the audience, riveting your attention even though he is portraying a horrible man who rejects all sympathy. Also contributing to the film’s relentless intensity are Hiroshi Murai’s gorgeous black-and-white cinematography, which features a beautiful sword fight in the snow and an exquisitely photographed scene in a claustrophobic mill, and Masaru Sato’s sparse but effective score. The Sword of Doom is a masterful tale of evil, of one man’s struggle with inner demons as he wanders through a changing world.
John Wilson talks with David Byrne about his latest Pace show and new book on February 7
Who:David Byrne,John Wilson What: Live virtual discussion Where:Pace Gallery, 540 West Twenty-Fifth St., Pace Gallery YouTube When: Monday, February 7, free (online), 7:00 Why: In his endlessly creative and fun HBO docuseries How To with John Wilson, Astoria native John Wilson uses footage shot all around New York City to delve into such issues as small talk, scaffolding, memory improvement, finding a parking spot, and making the perfect risotto. In his endlessly creative and fun career, British-born musician, singer, playwright, and visual artist David Byrne has made albums (solo and with Talking Heads), given concerts, directed films, and had gallery shows; currently, his brilliant American Utopia continues on Broadway at the St. James Theatre through April 3, and his latest exhibition, “How I Learned About Non-Rational Logic,” is running at Pace’s Twenty-Fifth St. space through March 19. The show consists of several series of drawings Byrne has done over the last twenty years, including his unusual depictions of dingbats sketched during the pandemic. (He describes his fascination with dingbats here.)
Byrne and Wilson have previously collaborated on the 2015 true crime concert documentary Temporary Color; they now will sit down together for a discussion at Pace in conjunction with the publication of Byrne’s new book, A History of the World (in Dingbats) (Phaidon, March 9, $39.95). “How We Learned About Non-Rational Logic: A Conversation on Humor and Bookmaking” takes place in person at Pace, where attendees will receive a signed copy of the book; the event will also be streamed for free over YouTube. “This idea of non-rational logic was not something I made up, but I realized that it kind of resonated with both the fact that I make music and the fact that these drawings follow a kind of logic that isn’t kind of based on logical or rational thinking,” Byrne notes in the above behind-the-scenes video. There should be plenty of such non-rational logic in what promises to be a very funny and illuminating talk.
Cicely Tyson won an Emmy for her masterful performance in The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman
CICELY TYSON
BAMfilm, BAM Rose Cinemas
30 Lafayette Ave. between Ashland Pl. & St. Felix St.
February 4-10
718-636-4100 www.bam.org
In her bestselling 2021 memoir, Just as I Am (Harper, $28.99), actress and activist Cicely Tyson writes, “The era I grew up in both deepened my racial wound and soothed it with the healing balm of the arts. My childhood spanned the 1920s and 1930s, two of the most economically memorable and culturally rich decades in American history — a period when Negro literature, music and culture flourished. The Roaring ’20s rollicked joyously with jazz, decadence and illegal whiskey, while the thunderous market crash of 1929 rattled nerves throughout the ’30s. What these shifts meant to daily life, or whether they had any noticeable consequence at all, depended upon where you lived and how much you were able to earn, both of which were inextricably tied to the color of your skin.” She continues, “The United States has never been ‘one nation under God’ but several nations gazing up at him, dissimilar faces huddled beneath a single flag. In white America, the ’20s may have roared, but in my Black world — in what has been called the Other America — the decade also moaned. The fact that the Great Depression was given a name just meant that enough whites were now suffering alongside us to warrant an official title.”
Born in the Bronx in 1924 and raised in Harlem, Tyson set a new standard for class and quality. As a young boy, I was transfixed by her performances in the 1974 television movie The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, for which she won an Emmy; Roots, in which she portrays Binta, the mother of Kunta Kinte, earning her an Emmy nomination; and Sounder, the first film I saw based on a book I had read. (Her role as the matriarch of a southern sharecropper family nabbed her an Oscar nod; she was given an honorary Academy Award in 2018 for her body of work.) In addition, I was fortunate to see her onstage several times, in The Trip to Bountiful in 2013, for which she won the Tony for Best Actress, and The Gin Game with James Earl Jones in 2015. She has also been celebrated with the Presidential Medal of Freedom and a Kennedy Center Honor.
Cicely Tyson earned an Oscar nomination for Sounder
Tyson passed away in January 2021 at the age of ninety-six, and BAM is paying tribute to her February 4-10 with a short retrospective that includes The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, in which she plays a 110-year-old former slave involved in the civil rights movement; Sounder, one of the all-time-great dog movies; Bustin’ Loose, the 1981 Richard Pryor comedy in which she plays a schoolteacher; the 1956 Key West-set drama Carib Gold, in which she and Geoffrey Holder made their screen debuts; Hoodlum, Bill Duke’s 1997 Harlem crime flick with Laurence Fishburne and Vanessa Williams (Tyson would later appear with Williams in Bountiful); and Bryan Barber’s 2006 musical Idlewild, costarring Terrence Howard, Ben Vereen, Patti LaBelle, Ving Rhames, Macy Gray, André 3000, and Big Boi.
In 2016, Tyson received the inaugural Sir Sidney Poitier Tribute Award at the Bahamas International Film Festival. (Tyson had appeared on Broadway in 1968 with Louis Gossett Jr. and Diane Ladd in Robert Alan Aurthur’s Carry Me Back to Morningside Heights, the only play Poitier ever directed; it lasted only seven performances.) “This award, in recognition of my dear friend and colleague, delights my heart,” she said at the time of the announcement. “Both Sydney and I have always tried to use our career to not only entertain, and enlighten, but to educate as well.” Poitier, who was also class personified, passed away last month at the age of ninety-four, but both their legacies will live on.
