David Thomson’s Biographical Dictionary of Film – the best but most frustrating film tome of them all

by Allan Fish

Here’s a question.  What do these massive lists of people (one for people in front of the camera, one for directors) have in common?

Walter Abel; Amy Adams; Eddie Albert; Mathieu Amalric; Pedro Armendariz; Alun Armstrong; Rosanna Arquette; Peggy Ashcroft; Rowan Atkinson; Lionel Atwill; Mischa Auer; Martin Balsam; George Bancroft; Leslie Banks; Ronnie Barker; Jean-Louis Barrault; Ethel Barrymore; Albert Bassermann; Monica Bellucci; Robert Benchley; William Bendix; Elisabeth Bergner; Gael Garcia Bernal; Eric Blore; Ann Blyth; Mary Boland; Peter Boyle; Alice Brady; Wilfrid Brambell; Klaus-Maria Brandauer; Al Bridge; Joe E.Brown; Nigel Bruce; Billie Burke; Louis Calhern; Joseph Calleia; Peter Capaldi; Julien Carette; Robert Carlyle; John Carradine; Leo G.Carroll; Maria Casarès; Lon Chaney Jnr; Nikolai Cherkassov; Leslie Cheung; Maggie Cheung; Colin Clive; Paddy Considine; Gladys Cooper; Harry H.Corbett; Raymond Cordy; Rosalie Crutchley; Roland Culver; Constance Cummings; Liam Cunningham; Finlay Currie; Peter Cushing; Claire Danes; Henry Daniell; William Demarest; Mylène Demongeot; Émilie Dequenne; James Donald; Brad Dourif; Lindsay Duncan; Christopher Eccleston; Leon Errol; Edith Evans; Renée Falconetti; Michael Fassbender; Fernandel; Edwige Feuillère; Gracie Fields; James Finlayson; Bridget Fonda; Pierre Fresnay; Dwight Frye; James Gandolfini; Romola Garai; Ricky Gervais; Jackie Gleason; James Gleason; Philip Glenister; Thomas Gomez; Ryan Gosling; Nigel Green; Alan Hale; Porter Hall; Margaret Hamilton; Tony Hancock; Kathleen Harrison; Nigel Hawthorne; Charles Hawtrey; Will Hay; Louis Hayward; Brigitte Helm; Bernard Hill; Ciaran Hinds; Stanley Holloway; Michael Hordern; Edward Everett Horton; Martita Hunt; Kim Hunter; Raymond Huntley; Rex Ingram; José Isbert; Shima Iwashita; Derek Jacobi; Sid James; Allen Jenkins; Isabel Jewell; Rosamund John; Glynis Johns; Mervyn Johns; Shirley Jones; Erland Josephson; Kyoko Kagawa; Daisuke Kato; Cecil Kellaway; Edgar Kennedy; Guy Kibbee; Rudolf Klein-Rogge; Charles Lane; John Laurie; Wilfrid Lawson; Heath Ledger; Tony Leung; Beatrice Lillie; Ruan Lingyu; Roger Livesey; Arthur Lowe; Ralph Lynn; Aline MacMahon; George Macready; Marjorie Main; Miles Malleson; Lesley Manville; Moore Marriott; Eddie Marsan; Giulietta Masina; Jessie Matthews; Jodhi May; James McAvoy; Niall McGinnis; Ian McShane; Una Merkel; Hayley Mills; Miou-Miou; Millard Mitchell; André Morell; David Morrissey; Ivan Mosjoukine; Zero Mostel; Alan Mowbray; Carey Mulligan; Nargis; Tatsuya Nakadai; Donald O’Connor; Una O’Connor; Bulle Ogier; Mariko Okada; Edna May Oliver; Timothy Olyphant; Michael Palin; Franklin Pangborn; Vanessa Paradis; Cecil Parker; Nigel Patrick; Guy Pearce; François Périer; Pete Postlethwaite; Micheline Presle; Robert Preston; John Qualen; Anthony Quayle; Basil Radford & Naunton Wayne; Madeleine Renaud; Ian Richardson; Edward Rigby; Flora Robson; May Robson; Jean Rochefort; Sam Rockwell; Noel Roquevert; Françoise Rosay; Charles Ruggles; Margaret Rutherford; Chishu Ryu; Ludivine Sagnier; Takeshi Sakamoto; Dominique Sanda; Max Schreck; Chloe Sevigny; Phil Silvers; Alastair Sim; John Simm; Gale Sondergaard; Timothy Spall; Ned Sparks; Lionel Stander; Haruko Sugimura; Francis L.Sullivan; David Tennant; Terry-Thomas; Ernest Thesiger; Thelma Todd; Marisa Tomei; Charles Vanel; Peter Vaughan; Ayako Wakao; Julie Walters; H.B.Warner; Jack Warner; Wheeler & Woolsey; Warren William; Emlyn Williams; Kenneth Williams; Michelle Williams; Elijah Wood; Roland Young; Ziyi Zhang; George Zucco

Chantal Akerman; Andrea Arnold; Tex Avery; Evgenii Bauer; Luis Garcia Berlanga; Raymond Bernard; Catherine Breillat; The Dardenne Brothers; Manoel de Oliveira; Roy del Ruth; Maya Deren; Lav Diaz; Jean Epstein; Dave Fleischer; George Franju; Paul Greengrass; Michael Haneke; Hiroshi Inagaki; Jaromil Jires; Chuck Jones; Zhang Ke-Jia; Satoshi Kon; Hirokazu Kore-Eda; Rowland V.Lee; Yasuzo Masumura; Humberto Mauro; Winsor McKay; Shane Meadows; Russ Meyer; Tsai Ming-Liang; Hayao Miyazaki; Nick Park; Stephen Poliakoff; Edgar Reitz; Alain Robbe-Grillet; Glauber Rocha; Jean Rollin; Kaneto Shindo; Vilgot Sjöman; Hiroshi Shimizu; Wladyslaw Starewicz; Whit Stillman; Seijun Suzuki; Jan Svankmajer; Béla Tarr; Hiroshi Teshigahara; Jiri Trnka; Teuvo Tulio; Tomu Uchida; Otakar Vavra; Frantisek Vlacil; Koji Wakamatsu; Peter Watkins; Apichatpong Weerasethakul; Jiang Wen; Sadao Yamanaka; Yoshishige Yoshida; Kozaburo Yoshimura; Sun Yu

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Underworld Beauty – 1958, Seijun Suzuki

 

by Allan Fish

(Japan 1958 88m) DVD1

Aka. Ankokugai no bijo

Stones in the stomach

d  Seijun Suzuki  w  Susumu Haji  ph  Wataro Nakao  ed  Akira Suzuki  m  Naozumi Yamamoto  art  Takeharu Sakeguchi

Michitaro Mizushima (Yiyamoto), Mari Shiraki (Akiko), Shinsuke Ashida (Arita), Toru Abe (Oyane, the Boss), Hideaki Nitani (Mihara),

There’s something about the yakuza genre that’s a little too much for me.  Not in terms of the extremities of its depiction, but in its rampantly overly-stylised trappings, those in-your-face pieces of repetitive music in the likes of Fukasaku’s Battles Without Honour and Humanity so loved by the Tarantinos of this world, but enough to turn the volume down on the plasma to many others.  Needless to say, old Quentin loved that sort of stuff, movies with no qualms about being art, just entertainments in the old-fashioned sense; the sort that inspired his own Kill Bill with its ridiculous, nay preposterous, showdowns and o.t.t. proto-feminist attitude.  The one stylist to come out of this genre, the one auteur to be worth his salts, was Seijun Suzuki.  There would be many later outings in the genre, including his best film, the already discussed Branded to Kill, but if I was asked to name his strictly most enjoyable effort in the genre, as well as his first major contribution to Japanese post-war cinema, it would be Underworld Beauty.

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35. Crac

(Canada 1981 15 min)

Director, Writer Frederic Back

By Stephen Russell-Gebbett
How can the style of animation used for a film not have a bearing on how the idea behind it is created, how the script is written and then how it is communicated? The medium influences the message. If an animator uses a signature medium then he or she knows, by and large, the way it will look beforehand.

Pencils, pastels and crayon smudged at the edges could easily encourage pastel and wishy-washy sentiment. Along with Sara Petty, German-Canadian Frederic Back has used these tools to the utmost. Crac is about tradition (heard in the folk music soundtrack, which has a little of the aboriginal about it), homeliness, things that last. These are conveyed in the soft, innocent, childlike style (like the illustrations in a children’s book).

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