Claire Bloom will discuss her life and career in a special evening May 24 at Film Forum
Film Forum
209 West Houston St.
Tuesday, May 24, $25, 8:00
212-727-8110
www.filmforum.org
Born Patricia Claire Blume in England in 1931, Claire Bloom has had an exemplary nearly sixty-year-career onstage and in film, beginning in 1952 in Charlie Chaplin’s Limelight and continuing with such cinematic classics as Sir Laurence Olivier’s Richard III (1955), Richard Brooks’s The Brothers Karamazov (1958), Tony Richardson’s Look Back in Anger (1959), Ralph Nelson’s Charly (1968), Stephen Frears’s Sammy and Rosie Get Laid (1987), Woody Allen’s Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989), and Tom Hooper’s The King’s Speech (2010). In her 1996 memoir, Leaving a Doll’s House, the thrice-married Bloom, whose husbands have included actor Rod Steiger and author Philip Roth, wrote, “I have tried to shed light on an unfinished journey. It has been a trip worth taking. And understanding does away with regret.” Bloom, who has played opposite such icons as Richard Burton, Paul Newman, Sean Connery, and the aforementioned Allen, Olivier, and Chaplin, will be looking back at her career, most likely without anger, on May 24 at Film Forum in a special evening moderated by film historian Foster Hirsch. Don’t miss this rare opportunity to see one of film’s most underrated starlets, up close and personal.
In December 1937, Japanese military forces invaded Nanking (now called Nanjing), occupying the Chinese capital for six weeks of unspeakable atrocities, resulting in hundreds of thousands of murders and tens of thousands of rapes. Based on survivor accounts on both sides of what became known as the Rape of Nanking (and the Nanking Massacre) in addition to postcards and journals from a group of international workers who furiously attempted to maintain a refugee Safety Zone, Lu Chuan’s City of Life and Death is a brutal, harrowing depiction of this controversial period, the exact details of which are still debated in Japan and China. Writer-director Lu (The Missing Gun, Kekexili: Mountain Patrol) holds nothing back as he tells the story through the eyes of several main characters: Miss Jiang (Gao Yuanyuan), the leader of the refugees who is desperately trying to protect the women and children; Mr. Tang (Fan Wei), a Chinese collaborator who believes he can negotiate with the Japanese army, headed by commander Ida (Ryu Kohata); Xiaodouzi (Bin Liu), a young child who silently watches the horror surrounding him; and Kadokawa (Hideo Nakaizumi), seemingly the only Japanese soldier with a conscience. Evoking such war films as Steven Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan and Schindler’s List and Stanley Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket, City of Life and Death is an unsparing look at holocaust and genocide that walks the fine line between propaganda and cinema verité docudrama; Lu and cinematographer Cao Yu increase the feeling of reality by using handheld cameras and shooting the film in a stark black and white. Filmed over the course of 253 days and featuring some thirty thousand extras, City of Life and Death is a massive undertaking that unfolds on-screen in a series of unforgettable images and vignettes that will stay with viewers a long time, capturing a truly horrifying wartime tragedy that is not nearly as well known in the West as it should be.
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, 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. Throne of Blood is screening April 17-18 as part of Film Forum’s “5 Japanese Divas” series, featuring four weeks of films starring Yamada, Machiko Kyo, Kimuyo Tanaka, Setsuko Hara, and Hideko Takamine, who play strong, determined women in such classic works as Yasujiro Ozu’s Early Summer (1951) and Tokyo Story (1953), Hiroshi Teshigahara’s The Face of Another (1966), Mikio Naruse’s Okaasan (1952) and Flowing (1956), Kurosawa’s The Idiot (1951) and Throne of Blood (1957), Keisuke Kinoshita’s Carmen Comes Home (1951) and Twenty-Four Eyes (1954), and Kenji Mizoguchi’s Ugetsu (1953), Sansho the Bailiff (1954), and Street of Shame (1956), among others.
Based on the Russian novel Yama (The Pit) by Aleksandr Kuprin, protofeminist director Kenji Mizoguchi’s Sisters of the Gion offers a poignant look at the changing desires of women in twentieth-century Japan. In the Gion District, geisha have become one-man prostitutes, taking up with one wealthy patron at a time. When Furusawa (Benkei Shiganoya) loses his business, the bankrupt man turns away from his wife and instead goes to Umekichi (Yōko Umemura), who takes him in, believing that it is her responsibility. Her younger sister, Omocha (Isuzu Yamada), is furious, arguing that geisha, and women in general, should be more than just the playthings of men. She wants her sister instead to find a rich patron who can take care of her in style. Omocha is a manipulative woman, willing to lie to get what she thinks she and Umekichi deserve, but she is not doing it for evil reasons as much as she wants to change the plight of the geisha and give more power to women. But Umekichi cannot break free of the old-fashioned ways as Omocha plays games with successful businessman Jurakudo (Fumio Okura) and his assistant, Kimura (Taizō Fukami), devising a plot that threatens to tear everything apart. Mizoguchi fills Sisters of the Gion with long shots of narrow passageways as characters try to escape from their situations but are unable to. Made in 1936, just before a war that would change Japan’s views on houses of ill repute, the film is virtually timeless for most of its too-brief sixty-nine minutes, until one man decides to take actions into his own hands and suddenly cars and the nearby city shift the overall perspective. In the end, it’s about more than just money, although it’s definitely about that, but it’s also about respect, about common decency, and about humanity, as seen from all sides. Sisters of the Gion is screening April 4 with Yasujiro Ozu’s 1933 silent crime drama, Dragnet Girl, starring Kinuyo Tanaka, as part of Film Forum’s “5 Japanese Divas” series, featuring four weeks of films starring Yamada, Tanaka, Machiko Kyo, Setsuko Hara, and Hideko Takamine, who play strong, determined women in such classic works as Ozu’s Early Summer (1951) and Tokyo Story (1953), Hiroshi Teshigahara’s The Face of Another (1966), Mikio Naruse’s Okaasan (1952) and Flowing (1956), Akira Kurosawa’s The Idiot (1951) and Throne of Blood (1957), Keisuke Kinoshita’s Carmen Comes Home (1951) and Twenty-Four Eyes (1954), and Mizoguchi’s Ugetsu (1953), Sansho the Bailiff (1954), and Street of Shame (1956), among others.