Kafuku (zenpen) / Learn from Experience I

Mikio Naruse: 禍福 前篇 / Kafuku (kohen) / Learn from Experience II. The reconciliation of the two wronged women over the baby. Takako Irie (as the traditional Toyomi Funada) and Chieko Takehisa (as the modern Yurie Mayama). 

禍福 前篇 / [Imparare dall’esperienza, parte I] / Les Vicissitudes de la vie I.

    JP (Empire of Japan) 1937. Prod.: P.C.L.

    Director: Mikio Naruse. Sog.: by the Kan Kikuchi’s novel. Scen.: Iwasaki Fumitaka. F.: Mitsuo Miura – b&w. Scgf.: Takeo Kita. Mus.: Takio Niki (part 1). Int.: Takako Irie (Toyomi Funada), Minoru Takada (Shintaro Minagawa), Sadao Maruyama (Shintaro’s father), Yuriko Hanabusa (Shintaro’s mother), Setsuko Horikoshi (Setsuko), Chieko Takehisa (Yurie Mayama), Yumeko Aizome (Michiko Takizawa), Heihachiro Ogawa (Tatsuo Hayakawa).

    Chopin: Nocturne Op. 9 No. 2 in E-Flat major (1830). n.c.

    "The Isle of Capri" comp.+lyr. Wilhelm Grosz (1934). n.c.

    78 min

    Not released in Finland.

    35 mm print from NFAJ National Film Archive of Japan.

    Courtesy of Toho.

    Il Cinema Ritrovato, Bologna 2025: Sorrow and Passion: Pre-War Mikio Naruse.

    Viewed with e-subtitles in English and Italian at Cinema Jolly, 23 June 2025.

Alexander Jacoby e Johan Nordström (Bologna 2025): "Originally screened in two separate episodes, this was the last film to be released by P.C.L. before it merged with J.O. Studio to form Toho. It was based on a novel by Kan Kikuchi (1888–1948), a popular author and playwright whose work spawned numerous film adaptations and who was to serve as wartime president of another film studio, Daiei."

"A big box-office success in its day, this is another underrated work, superbly acted by all. In the wake of Nyonin aishu, the film reunited Naruse with cinematographer Mitsuo Miura and star Takako Irie, who gives a blistering performance in a role that again anticipates the feminism of Naruse’s postwar work. Irie plays Toyomi, who yields to the advances of aspiring diplomat Shintaro (Minoru Takada) when he promises to marry her, and becomes pregnant with his child, only to see him marry another woman. The narrative has parallels with Naruse’s silent Nasanu naka (No Blood Relations, 1932) as a kind of haha-mono (a popular genre focused on maternal love and suffering). The troubling resolution of the story suggests the political tensions of the era, at a time of growing conservatism in a Japan increasingly influenced by militarist ideology."

"At the time, “Kinema Junpo” critic Junichiro Tomoda praised the psychological perception in the depiction of a man fallen in love, but complained that Naruse was “unsuitable as a director of this kind of material and failed to bring power and emotion to every scene.” More recently, however, Tetsuya Hirano has praised the film as “well-paced and directed with a fluid touch”. Like Otome gokoro sannin shimai, the film contains some alluring location footage of pre-war Tokyo, including the Ueno and Ginza districts."

"In the wake of Kafuku, Naruse hoped to adapt Yasunari Kawabata’s Snow Country (Yukiguni), which had been published in volume form earlier in 1937. Regrettably this project never came to fruition, though the novel was filmed two decades later by Shiro Toyoda." Alexander Jacoby e Johan Nordström (Bologna 2025)

AA: Mikio Naruse's Kafuku (zenpen) is the first part of a story about a young diplomat with a bright future, Shintaro (Minoru Takada), who has promised to marry a traditional young lady, Toyomi (Takako Irie) who after a night of love is pregnant with their baby. But Shintaro's father is in catastrophic financial straits, and Shintaro is expected to marry an even richer woman, Yurie (Chieko Takehisa) to save the family fortune. The father even plans harakiri if Shintaro does not obey. The spineless Shintaro starts to resign to a gloomy future of an arranged marriage when he accidentally meets a fantastic young woman on horseback. It is Yurie. It does not look like the end of the world anymore. But Shintano, consequent in his spineless manner, fails to tell Toyomi. This is melodrama, about wronged women, men without character, babies out of wedlock, tears falling like rain. Melodrama also in the literal sense that music plays a big role: Romantic standards, the topical Capri tango hit by Will Grosz, easy listening jazz, Chopin's "Nocturne in E-flat major Op. 9 no. 2". Women's dreams bring forth tears. "You played with my body and soul. I feel like dying". This is a story between two ages, tradition (Toyomi) and modernity (Yurie), the country and the city.

I saw the first part of the movie in the morning screening and failed to catch the second part scheduled for the evening. According to sources it tells about the friendship of the two wronged women, Toyomi and Yurie, and their commitment to the baby (see photo above).

The print looks like a blow-up from 16 mm, clean and sober at that.

The Red Pony (1949) (Academy Film Archive)

Lewis Milestone: The Red Pony (US 1949).

Lewis Milestone: The Red Pony (US 1949). L to R: Shepperd Strudwick (Tom Tiflin), Myrna Loy (Alice Tiflin), in front the boy Gerald Perreau credited as Peter Miles (Tom Tiflin), behind him Robert Mitchum (Billy Buck), and Louis Calhern (Grandfather).

Minuzzolo / Tomin punainen poni / Den röda ponnyn.

    US © 1949 Chas. K. Feldman Group Productions and Lewis Milestone Productions, Inc.  Prod.: Lewis Milestone per Republic Pictures.

    Director: Lewis Milestone. Sog.: from the short novel of the same name (1933) by John Steinbeck. Scen.: John Steinbeck. F.: Tony Gaudio – colour. M.: Harry Keller. Scgf.: Victor Greene. Mus.: Aaron Copland. Int.: Myrna Loy (Alice Tiflin), Robert Mitchum (Billy Buck), Louis Calhern (the grandfather), Shepperd Strudwick (Fred Tiflin), Peter Miles (Tom), Margaret Hamilton (the teacher), Melinda Byron (Jinx Ingals), Jackie Jackson (Jackie), Beau Bridges (Beau).

    89 min

    "Marche militaire" (1818) by Franz Schubert, played on the piano by Myrna Loy. n.c.

    "Shall We Gather at the River?" (1864) by Robert Lowry, played on the piano by Myrna Loy. n.c.

    I believe I also heard "Für Elise" (1810) by Ludwig van Beethoven. n.c.

    Finnish premiere: 21 Oct 1949.

    DCP from Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences

    By courtesy of Paramount Pictures and Park Circus.

    Il Cinema Ritrovato, Bologna 2025: Lewis Milestone: of Wars and Men.

    Viewed with e-subtitles in Italian by SubTi Londra at Cinema Jolly, 25 June 2025.    

Ehsan Khoshbakht (Bologna 2025): "This Technicolor gem, based on John Steinbeck’s novella, marks the author’s first adaptation of his own work for the screen—an idea he and director Lewis Milestone had pursued since the success of Of Mice and Men. Ironically, Milestone’s first colour film was produced by Republic Pictures, one of Hollywood’s less affluent studios, that sought to enhance its reputation by elevating the quality of its productions. (During the same six-month period, the studio also released Frank Borzage’s Moonrise and Orson Welles’s Macbeth)."

"In this pre-Shane tale of a laconic farmhand (Robert Mitchum) idolised by young Tom (Peter Miles), the son of the family he works for, the first half of the film bathes the screen in an idyllic image of pastoral utopia – only to shatter it in the second half with a subtle, yet poignant exploration of life’s harsher realities. While the film’s Americana has shades of Henry King, it is unmistakably Milestone’s work, characterised by its distinctive visual style and the recurring theme of unattainable dreams."

"The lyrical qualities are familiar, but the tenderness of familial relationships and the unique child’s point of view represented new territory for Milestone. Even the most mundane scenes, like a breakfast ending in understated family tensions, are handled with remarkable dramatic precision. The narrative delves into themes of regret (the father’s longing to return to the city), obsolescence (the grandfather’s repetitive tall tales), and loss (Tom’s pony falling ill), driving the story into darker terrain where green pastures turn muddy and bitter."

"Cinematographer Tony Gaudio’s work enriches this tonal shift, with oil-lamp red-browns in soothing hues and some underlit, dark backgrounds to spotlight the actors like figures in Vermeer paintings. Aaron Copland’s music underscores the film’s lyricism."

"Though Milestone went on to make other fine films (Halls of Montezuma, 1951, and the underrated Kangaroo, 1952), The Red Pony remains his last great and fully convincing work." Ehsan Khoshbakht (Bologna 2025)

AA: Lewis Milestone had directed the first John Steinbeck film adaptation, Of Mice and Men, and now he directed the first movie with John Steinbeck himself as the screenwriter.

A boy in charge of an animal is always a rewarding subject for a growing-up story, and this is also the case in The Red Pony. There are challenges and obstacles, moments of success and fulfillment but also failure and disappointment. The ultimate experience is death, and transcending even that, birth. A resume of the cycle of life.

One of the greatest studies of such a theme is William A. Wellman's Good-bye, My Lady, about an orphan boy and his dog.

Tom Tiflin (Peter Miles) is not an orphan. He lives in safe family circumstances, but his father Fred (Shepperd Strudwick), a former schoolteacher, feels like a stranger on his own ranch. He has not made life easy for others to accept him, nor have the others for him to feel welcome.

With father often away and getting estranged from his own son, the ranch hand Billy Buck (Robert Mitchum) is about to turn into the most important grown-up man in Tom's life. And of course Billy is the expert about ranch life and animal behaviour.

Robert Mitchum is at ease with farm life and horses in the same way as in The Lusty Men. Something in his strut makes me think that Tom of Finland might have liked him.

In a film festival, movies enter into dialogue across retrospectives, and here I am reminded of Luigi Comencini's masterpiece The Window to Luna Park. Billy gets to know Tom better than his own father Fred, but this insight makes Fred decide to change his life in the finale.

I like Of Mice and Men, but in the beginning of The Red Pony I felt like in The North Star a false note. When war breaks out, The North Star turns serious and compelling, but unfortunately in The Red Pony I felt an embarrassment throughout.

The Technicolor on this DCP is miraculous and immaculate. I would love to learn how the dreamlike hyper-perfection was achieved. The typical Technicolor experience is (consciously) soft and blurry like an oil painting or watercolour. The three strips never completely match. But this copy is hyper-correct.

Incompreso / Misunderstood (introduced by Cristina Comencini and Emilio Morreale, video message by Isabelle Huppert)

Luigi Comencini: Incompreso / Misunderstood (IT 1966). Stefano Colagrande as the elder brother Andrew Duncombe, the misunderstood one.

Incompreso – vita col figlio / L'Incompris (1978 re-release title) / Mon fils cet incompris (1966 first run title) / Der Unverstandene.

    IT 1966. Prod.: Angelo Rizzoli per Rizzoli Film, Istituto Luce.  

    Director: Luigi Comencini. Sog.: from the novel of the same name (1869) by Florence Montgomery. Scen.: Leo Benvenuti, Piero De Bernardi, with the collaboration of Lucia Drudy Dembi, Giuseppe Mangione, direction Bruno Nicolai. F.: Armando Nannuzzi – Technicolor – mono – 1,85:1 – 3730 m. M.: Nino Baragli. Scgf.: Ranieri Cochetti. Mus.: Fiorenzo Carpi. Int.: Anthony Quayle, dubbed by Romolo Valli (console Duncombe, Sir Edward Duncombe), Stefano Colagrande (Andrea / Andrew Duncombe), Simone Giannozzi (Milo / Matthew Duncombe), John Sharp (uncle Will), Adriana Facchetti (Luisa), Silla Bettini (judo teacher), Rino Benini (Casimiro), Georgia Moll (miss Judy).

    Loc: Florence (Arretri, via della Torre del Gallo, lungarno Torregiani, Ponte Vecchio, via Sogliano).

    W. A. Mozart: 23. Klavierkonzert in A-Dur, KV 488, 2. Satz: Adagio (Wien 1786).

    Giuseppe Verdi: Rigoletto (1851).

    100 min

    Not released in Finland. Florence Montgomery's novel was translated into Finnish as Väärin ymmärretty (WSOY 1923).

    DCP with English subtitles (n.c.) from Mediaset.

    Il Cinema Ritrovato, Bologna 2025: Life First! The Cinema of Luigi Comencini.

    Introduced by Cristina Comencini, hosted by Emilio Morreale.

    Video-message from Isabelle Huppert

    Viewed with subtitles in English at Cinema Modernissimo, 25 June 2025.

Paolo Mereghetti (2007) (Bologna 2025): "Comencini transforms a job-for-hire (an adaptation of a classic weepie of late nineteenth century English literature) into a subtle and highly personal film that, together with the first part of Giacomo Casanova: Childhood and Adolescence, marks the beginning of a major new phase in his career, of films about children."

"The director creates a “sort of world apart, disconnected from everyday matters and protected from external reality, in which the only visible influences are psychological in nature … It is a universe in which the children’s solitude is palpable, almost measurable (the long corridors and rooms are often deserted, the tree-lined paths of the garden hide the children from their nanny’s eyes), and which ends up making the psychological problems of the two young protagonists even more evident and piercing."

"At its core, Comencini entrusts the narrative structure and generation of emotions to the confrontation/conflict between two periods of youth (pre-moral childish innocence and the more socialised and responsible early adolescence) and both the children’s and the viewer’s discovery of the insensibility (or different sensibility) of the adult world … "

"The film develops by juxtaposing apparently disparate scenes, ignoring the links that other directors would have carefully made explicit but which Comencini intentionally eliminates … It is almost as if the director were trying to emulate a child’s gaze: more emotional than didactic, more reactive than properly explanatory (narrative).” (Paolo Mereghetti, in Luigi Comencini. Il cinema e i film, edited by Adriano Aprà, Marsilio, Venice 2007). (Bologna 2025)

AA: Luigi Comencini's Misunderstood was itself misunderstood. The movie had a disastrous reception at the Cannes Film Festival in 1967, though defended by Jacques Siclier and Bertrand Tavernier. But it received a triumphant re-release in France in 1978, where it was also warned to be a "machine à faire pleurer" ("a crying machine").

In his introduction, Emilio Morreale saw Misunderstood as a turning-point on Luigi Comencini's career. From now on he fully became a director of childhood. Cristina Comencini in her opening remarks testified that the film was totally personal for her father. The theme of the little brother taken care of and the big brother being left all alone. The relationship of children to death. The reaction to loss, playing in the ruins. Luigi Comencini was a director of fatherhood. He lost his own father at age 13 and was in search of a father figure all his life. He had four daughters [and sisters?] but always male protagonists [not always...]. He saw girls as women, claimed Cristina Comenicini. The screening ended with Isabelle Huppert's video love letter to Incompreso.

The movie is based on Florence Montgomery's beloved novel, which was celebrated in 1869 for its new insight in child psychology.

Making a movie, Luigi Comencini takes full advantage of the cinematic possibilities of the action movie: wild boy energy, running, overspeeding, pranks, transgressions, make-believe and derring-do. The two brothers, the 8-year old Andrew and the 4-year old Miles, quickly wear out a series of the most hardened governesses.

Mother has died, and dad tells about it to Andrew confidentially, but Miles must be protected from the truth. Miles is the capricious charmer while Andrew suffers in silence. The brothers are inseparable, and whenever there is trouble, Andrew takes the blame.

The father, always away on business, fails to understand. One of Andrew's games is the "Audacimetre". He loves to test his limits by hanging on a dead tree branch over the river. One crack... two cracks... three cracks... finally four cracks. But Miles wants to join the game, too, defying Andrew's warning, and grabs the heavy branch. It breaks, and Andrew falls into the river. His back is lethally fractured against a stone on the riverbed.

On Andrew's deathbed dad realizes how blind he has been. "Now I see that you are truly the son that every father would like to have".

The younger brother was the tougher one in his primitive insensitivity. The older brother was the more vulnerable one. Miles's childish naughtiness was a protective wall against the unfathomable loss of mother. Andrew's self-destructive behaviour was a cry for help.

Luigi Comencini is a master of the mise-en-scène in his staging of the story in the large residence of the consul, the surrounding nature and the city of Florence. Most of all, he is a master of subtle child psychology in his direction of the young actors.

I would not call this film a melodrama. I find that Comencini prizes childhood as a golden age and the most privileged key to the mystery of life and who we are.

An Italian friend of mine confided to me that this film is special for her mother. When she watched it on television, the table turned into a lake of tears.

The quality of the presentation was clean and sober, but at times it felt like watching a blu-ray.

Florence Montgomery's novel Misunderstood (1869) was translated into Finnish as Väärin ymmärretty (WSOY 1923). Photo: Antikvaari.fi

Edge of Darkness (1943)

Lewis Milestone: Edge of Darkness (US 1943). Ann Sheridan (Karen Stensgard) and Errol Flynn (Gunnar Brogge) as Norwegian Resistance fighters.

Lewis Milestone: Edge of Darkness (US 1943). Ann Sheridan (Karen Stensgard) and Richard Fraser (Pastor Aalesen). "A Mighty Fortress Is Our God".

La bandiera sventola ancora / He tarttuivat aseisiin / Frihetskämpar / Patrioter / L'Ange des ténèbres / Край тьмы.

    US 1943. Prod.: Henry Blanke per Warner Bros. Pictures.

    Director: Lewis Milestone. Sog.: from the novel of the same name (1942) by William Woods. Scen.: Robert Rossen. F.: Sid Hickox – b&w. M.: David Weisbart. Scgf.: Robert Haas. Mus.: Franz Waxman. Int.: Errol Flynn (Gunnar Brogge), Ann Sheridan (Karen Stensgard), Walter Huston (doctor Martin Stensgard), Nancy Coleman (Katja), Helmut Dantine (captain Koenig), Judith Anderson (Gerd Bjarnesen), Ruth Gordon (Anna Stensgard), Tonio Selwart (Paul).

    "Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott" / "A Mighty Fortress Is Our God" / "Jumala ompi linnamme" (trad.+ comp. Martin Luther & Johann Walter, lyr. Martin Luther & Salomon Franck 1527). [The cantata by J. S. Bach "Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott" BWV 80 is based on this, but in the movie, the original hymn is heard.] n.c.

    Richard Wagner: Götterdämmerung / Twilight of the Gods (1876). n.c.

    I think I heard an Edvard Grieg favourite but could not put a name on it. n.c.

    119 min

    US premiere 24 April 1943.

    Helsinki premiere 21 Oct 1945 – Metropol – Warner Bros.

    35 mm print from Warner Bros. Pictures.

    By courtesy of Park Circus

    Il Cinema Ritrovato, Bologna 2025: Lewis Milestone: of Wars and Men.

    Viewed with e-subtitles in Italian at Cinema Jolly, 24 June 2025.    

Ehsan Khoshbakht (Bologna 2025): "Nazism is evil, but there are many different ways of portraying evil. The collaboration between two men who shared Russian Jewish heritage – director Lewis Milestone and writer Robert Rossen – approached Nazism in the Norwegian resistance drama Edge of Darkness as systematic bullying and an outright exploitative cult. Together, they created a two-fisted piece of agit-prop in which there is no trace of banality."

"In the 1940s, there was no more committed or angrier anti-fascist in American cinema than Rossen who here penned a film without heroes. In their place, he sketched a large group of fighters (including Warner stars Errol Flynn and Ann Sheridan), collaborators, and those who fell into the shades in between."

"Milestone, for his part, was not concerned with realism but aimed for maximum emotional impact, creating a film carried by an inner syncopation. With a style remarkably close to Soviet cinema, the film’s modernity – its stylised tracking shots and use of the zoom lens – feels closer today to the work of Miklós Jancsó than to typical war films of the 40s."

"Set two and a half years after the occupation of Norway, the film opens with a nightmarish sequence: the arrival of a German troop in a coastal village where they discover that the entire local population and the occupying German army have been massacred. The only survivor, a local capitalist collaborator turned madman, wanders the scene, claiming ownership of the corpses. He is shot within seconds."

"The film then unfolds in flashback, chronicling the formation of the local resistance. Some of the fighters are introduced in an extremely formalist manner – gestural (shown while living their daily life), Brechtian (with the camera taking the helm to introduce them), and rhythmic, with their movements syncopated to music."

"The film, with its affirmation of collective action, ends with President Roosevelt’s Look to Norway speech. For two hours, it maintains an unshakable sense of momentum – no frills in its depiction of the path from passive resistance to suicidal glory." Ehsan Khoshbakht (Bologna 2025)

IMDb capsule: "After two years under German rule, a small Norwegian fishing village rises up and revolts against the occupying Nazis."

AA: A double whammy today of Lewis Milestone's Resistance cinema. In the morning, a Ukrainian agricultural village was destroyed during the first days of Operation Barbarossa in The North Star. This afternoon, after two years of German rule, a Norwegian fishing village perishes in a mutual massacre that abhors even the Nazis.

Music matters. The theme music, sung by Norwegians, is Martin Luther's "A Mighty Fortress Is Our God". Nazis prefer Richard Wagner's Twilight of the Gods. Norwegians draw from German Christian Reformation, Nazis from Norwegian Pagan mythology about Ragnarök, the battle of the end of days.

This is the tragedy of a community. Two great Warner Bros. stars are in the frontline. Ann Sheridan is at her radiant best as a Resistance heroine, at ease with a song from her heart as well as a gun in her hand. Errol Flynn I have loved since boyhood as an undaunted, grinning, rebellious Robin Hood. Here he shaves his moustache and washes the smile from his face. I am impressed to discover this less charismatic but soberly convincing fighter in a war story.

Although this is a propaganda movie made in the heat of the most fatal year of WWII, there is room for complexity in the difficult issues of resistance in circumstances of guaranteed extreme retribution towards civilians when sabotage takes place. The question of collaboration is discussed with some nuance. "We are not all strong", states Dr. Martin Stensgard (Walter Huston). 

A digression here about Walter Huston. He first acted in a Milestone movie in 1932 in Rain, and his performance as the missionary Davidson was the best among the three film adaptations of W. Somerset Maugham's story. In 1943, he played both in Edge of Darkness and The North Star. For Milestone, he also provided voice talent for Our Russian Front (1942). Beyond Milestone, he was the narrator for much of the Why We Fight series and also appeared as the voice of Abraham Lincoln in The Battle for China. Incidentally, he also narrated the documentary Let There Be Light for his son John. As for 1943 and the controversial Soviet Alliance movies of Hollywood, he starred as Ambassador Joseph E. Davies in Michael Curtiz's Mission to Moscow (IMDb capsule: "Ambassador Joseph Davies is sent by FDR to Russia to learn about the Soviet system and returns to America as an advocate of Stalinism"). Walter Huston was a central force in US war propaganda. He even appears as Uncle Sam in December 7th (John Ford & Gregg Toland, US 1943). Somehow I sense a presence of his Abraham Lincoln performance for D. W. Griffith in all this.

The Norwegians have produced great Resistance movies themselves such as The Fight for the Atom Bomb (NO/FR 1948), Nine Lives (NO 1957) and Cold Tracks (NO 1962). I wonder if Edge of Darkness makes sense to them. Or The Heroes of Telemark for that matter.

The 35 mm print from Warner Bros. starts in low contrast (no full black levels). I forgot to write down further print quality observations.

La paga (2025 restoration Joyce Ventura, Maleza Cine and Fundación Patrimonio Filmico Colombiano)

Ciro Durán: La paga (CO/VE 1962).

CO/VE 1962. Prod.: Marcos Hernández, Rafael Uzcátegui, Marina Gil.

    Director: Ciro Durán. Scen.: Ciro Durán. F.: Raúl Delgado – b&w. M.: J. Garrido. Int.: Alberto Alvarez, María Escalona, Luis Márquez Páez, Paco De la Riera, Luisito, Eduardo Mancera, Aníbal Rivero, Herman Lester, Rafael Vallejo. 

    In Spanish.

    61 min

    Not released in Finland.

    Restored in 4K in 2025 by Joyce Ventura, Maleza Cine and Fundación Patrimonio Filmico Colombiano in collaboration with Cinemateca de Bogotá and Fundación Cinemateca de Venezuela, from a 35 mm dupe negative. Funding provided by Fondo para el Desarrollo Cinematográfico de Colombia and Joyce Ventura.

    DCP with English subtitles from Maleza Cine.

    Il Cinema Ritrovato, Bologna 2025: Cinemalibero.

    Introduced by Vladimir Durán, hosted by Cecilia Cenciarelli.

    Viewed at Cinema Jolly with e-subtitles in Italian, 24 June 2025.

"La paga" means "Pay Day".

Vladimir Durán (Bologna 2025): "In the Colombian-Venezuelan Andes, a peasant works the land under exploitative conditions to ensure the survival of his family. His son is ill, his wife is pregnant, and he reproduces the violence that surrounds him. With no money for medical treatment, one night he gets drunk and is arrested. In jail, in a burst of fury, he rebels against the town’s political boss in the only way he can."

"La paga is a pioneering work of Latin American social and political cinema, released in 1962 – the same year as Glauber Rocha’s debut film Barravento – and anticipating movements such as the Third Cinema of Getino and Solanas."

"Influenced by Italian Neorealism and Soviet cinema, it uses the archetypal representation of characters and the social and economic forces they embody, drawn from director Ciro Durán’s own childhood observations."

"Upon its completion, La paga was denounced by the government of Rómulo Betancourt as “subversive”, with “moral, anti-religious, and political objections” and accused of going “against the constitutional order prevailing in Venezuela”. These accusations led to a boycott that prevented the film’s screening at international festivals."

"This restoration is dedicated to the memory of Esther Durán and, of course, to our father Ciro Durán, who with this film began a lifelong commitment to Colombian and Latin American cinema through directing, producing, union organising, promoting public policy, and fostering co-productions across the region." Vladimir Durán (Bologna 2025)

AA: Ciro Durán (1937–2022) was a giant of Colombian culture. His bold debut film La paga [Pay Day] was suppressed so effectively that its true world premiere takes place only now, 63 years after it was made – at Cannes Film Festival in May, at Il Cinema Ritrovato in June.

The director's son Vladimir Durán quotes in his program note Barravento as a contemporary pioneering work of Latin American cinema of social consciousness. They would make a great double bill, Barravento portraying the life of fishermen of the Atlantic, La paga that of potato field workers on the Andes.

Ciró Duran loved to include Soviet classics in his Guaicaipuro art cinema programmes in Caracas, and the influence is evident, as well as affinities with Ford (The Grapes of Wrath), Buñuel (Los olvidados) and Visconti (La terra trema).

The focus is on one man, a potato field worker, and his family. His wife is expecting a new baby. The son is ill with stomach pain. The man's clothes are in shreds, and meals are invariably cooked from dried peas. On payday, the salary is two sacks of potatoes. The wife rails at her man, the man beats her, and wearing his machete, takes his overworked mule to town. He cannot afford either a doctor nor medicine, but he buys food, denim for clothes, and beer for himself. He is fed up, dead tired, apathetic, powerless. He sees memory flashes and runs riot with his machete, heaping abuse on exploiters. He is not afraid of anything. Enter the apparatus of violence. "Arrest him for disturbing the peace". He is beaten by the police. Blood streams on the street. Carried by his hands and feet he is thrown to prison, behind bars. A rebellious crowd marches on the street. The bourgeoisie is horrified. The class struggle plays out as a stylized ballet. A political speech is given. The mother gives birth to the baby. The son plays alone. The movie ends abruptly. This is not the end, it's a beginning.

The resurrection of La paga is a major event. A milestone of Latin American and global cinema has become available again. Decades have passed, but the account of exploitation and oppression is still topical, as can be discovered in Peter Canby's article "Padre Marcelo's Last March" (The New York Review of Books, 24 July 2025).

Safar / The Journey (2024 restoration MK2 Films / Kanoon)

Bahram Beyzaie: / سفر / Safar / The Journey (IR 1972).

/ سفر /

    IR 1972. Prod.: Kanoon – Institute for the Intellectual Development of Children and Young Adults. 

    Director: Bahram Beyzaie. Scen,. M.: Bahram Beyzaie. F.: Mehrdad Fakhimi – b&w. Int.: Sirus Hassanpour (Ta’leh), Abbas Dastranj (Razi), Parvaneh Massoumi (woman/ mother), Khanshahri (man/father), Jamshid Layegh (the man on the stairs), Siamak Atlasi (Jahel).

    35 min

    Not released in Finland.

    DCP from MK2 Films.

    Courtesy of Kanoon. Restored in 4K in 2024 by Mk2 in collaboration with DreamLab Films at Roashana laboratory, from the original 35 mm negatives.

    In Farsi with English subtitles

    Il Cinema Ritrovato, Bologna 2025: Cinemalibero.

    Introduced by Vladimir Durán ed Ehsan Khoshbakht

    Viewed at Cinema Jolly with e-subtitles in Italian, 24 June 2025.

Ehsan Khoshbakht (Bologna 2025): "A 12-year-old orphan with a habit of seeking out his potential parents takes his friend along on a journey through the wastelands on the outskirts of Tehran." 

"Seemingly a children’s folk tale, Safar is so visually singular that it evades easy breakdown."

"It is allegorical, but allegory is the engine; visual density the result."

"When one speaks of Bahram Beyzaie, one speaks of a maze of citations. While along the way, various forms of image-making are evoked – movie posters, peep show, photography – the search for parents becomes a search for the primal image from which the film has emerged: steps for Eisenstein, architecture for Murnau, a crippled man for Buñuel, wheels for John Ford."

"An agonizing dream bordering on a nightmare, the film overflows with excess. Objects and people multiply rapidly, growing like mushrooms in a landscape so devastated by dirt and pollution that it becomes an environmental plea."

"In the smoggy, hazardous zones of abandoned objects – old wooden doors, carriages – a country has discarded its history at a frantic pace without replacing it with anything new." Ehsan Khoshbakht (Bologna 2025)

AA: In the introduction, in which Cecilia Cenciarelli hosted Vladimir Durán and Ehsan Khoshbakht, we were guided to the cryptic and enigmatic world of Safar, a film with a "Kanoon quest narrative", featuring a 12-year old boy in a shantytown around Tehran.

Indeed, the first image is of a boy running up a stairway. A key image familiar from A Simple Event (Sohrab Shahid Saless, IR 1973) and Where Is the Friend's Home? (Abbas Kiarostami, IR 1987).

In 2019 I edited a book whose name translates into English as "Film and Psyche 5: A Child In a Strange World" with a chapter on Iranian cinema. This year in Bologna we can follow the retrospective of Luigi Comencini, arguably the best director on the subject of childhood. Iran might be the best country on that subject.

The enigmatic quality of the movie is a way of conveying a child's perspective to the incomprehensible world of grown-ups.

Taleh is an orphan who hopes to find his parents. His friend Razi hopes to find a better life with them. 

They are poor, they have nothing. But like in classics of neorealism, they are rich, they have everything, since they are full of life. Like in the song from Hair elevated by Nina Simone as "Ain't Got No, I Got Life". Taleh claims that he has the address of his parents on a piece of paper.

The address is far away. The road is full of detours. As pickpockets they distract a victim by pointing to the rooftop. The possessions of a legless man are moved away. There is a construction site and an area covered by stones. The road leads to junkyards of abandoned cars and horse carriages. It seems that the evicted man is being deposited there. It's a shantytown complete with a cinema called Bio Detour. The fantasy glamour of the film posters is a counter-image to the surrounding squalor. It's siesta time. Everybody is sleeping (Kaikki väki nukkuu). The boys are bullied by a roughneck pedophile and Razi's hair is razed. Hungry? Just ignore it. ("The trick is I don't mind that it hurts", said Lawrence of Arabia). A candle is lit. A fire breaks out. There is smoke like a sandstorm. A little girl is crying. A boy runs with a kite. An image of transcendence. Taleh and Razi snatch the kite but give it back. 

A passer-by states that the address is not far away. It is indeed found, and there is a couple whose son is missing. But their ages don't match. The search will go on tomorrow.

The music is unusual and haunting.  I could not find a composer credit. For Ragbar, the composer was Shida Garachedaghi / Sheyda Gharachedaghi, who also composed Mohammad Reza Aslani's Chess of the Wind. The scores of The Stranger and the Fog and Safar are of a similar inspiration.

I look forward to revisiting Safar for an even more rewarding experience. I don't expect to solve the mystery. The journey is the destination.

The North Star (1943) (original version from UCLA)

Lewis Milestone: The North Star (US 1943). Villagers of the North Star collective farm organize for fight. Standing L to R: Paul Guilfoyle (Iakin, the village teacher), Esther Dale (Anna Kurina), Ann Harding (Sophia Pavlova), Walter Huston (Dr. Kurin, the village doctor), Ruth Nelson (Nadya Simonova). This scene is at 46 minutes.

Lewis Milestone: The North Star (US 1943). School's out for summer. School's out for ever. Paul Guilfoyle as Iakin, the village teacher. My screenshot from YouTube.

Armored Attack (the altered cut of 1957) / Fuoco a Oriente / Pohjantähti (Yle TV2) / Överraskande i gryningen / Северная звезда.

    US 1943. Prod.: Samuel Goldwyn, William Cameron Menzies per Samuel Goldwyn Productions.

    Director: Lewis Milestone. Sog., Scen.: Lillian Hellman. F.: James Wong Howe – b&w. M.: Daniel Mandell. Scgf.: Perry Ferguson. Mus.: Aaron Copland. Int.: Anne Baxter (Marina Pavlova), Dana Andrews (Kolya Simonov), Walter Huston (dottor Pavel Kurin), Walter Brennan (Karp), Ann Harding (Sophia Pavlova), Jane Withers (Clavdia Kurina), Farley Granger (Damian Simonov), Erich von Stroheim (doctor von Harden). Grace Cunard (a farmer's wife).

    I believe I heard "Ot kraya i do kraya", comp. Ivan Dzerzhinski, lyr. Leonid Dzerzhinski, from their opera Quiet Flows the Don (1935 / 1938). n.c.

    "L'Internationale" (comp. Pierre Degeyter 1888, lyr. Eugène Pottier 1871). n.c.

    106 min

    US premiere: 4 Nov 1943.

    Telecast in Finland: 8 Feb 1998 and 15 May 2003 (Armored Attack) (Yle TV2).

    35 mm print from UCLA Film & Television Archive Library.

    By courtesy of Paramount Pictures.

    Il Cinema Ritrovato, Bologna 2025: Lewis Milestone: of Wars and Men.

    Viewed with e-subtitles in Italian at Cinema Jolly, 24 June 2025.

Ehsan Khoshbakht (Bologna 2025): "Lewis Milestone’s tale of the titular Ukrainian village’s fight against the Nazis was designed as a morale booster and as first-rate propaganda. It opens with peasants singing and dancing their way to the fields and factories, with tractors parked as though for the Ziegfeld Follies. The first upbeat half-hour is deliberately crafted to make the descent into hell during the last two-thirds of the film more impactful. After the German army’s invasion, the villagers are forced to destroy what they love with their own hands: animals, farms, houses. They stand astride their saddles and swear allegiance to the Soviet Army as if joining a posse. Ninotchkas pick up arms."

"Lillian Hellman’s only original motion picture script is full of aphorisms and the crowded cast, typical of Milestone, share the screen time equally as if the narrative construction itself was “socialist”. Crane shots (James Wong Howe’s work) and music (by Aaron Copland with lyrics by George Gershwin) both choreograph and round up elaborate sequences. Milestone uses music as unifying element, from the harmony of collective life, to the dissonance of invasion to silence – the three movements repeated with variations throughout the film."

"This film was the industry’s contribution to the U.S. government’s effort to foster empathy for its Soviet allies. But it was also Milestone’s personal response to a land and people he knew and cared about. Unsurprisingly, during the McCarthy era it became exhibit number one against the talents involved in making it. Perhaps surprisingly, it was re-released in 1957, despite the controversy, under the title Armored Attack. In this version, the film’s opening depiction of Soviet paradise was excised, to leave only the Nazi hell."

"Though grossly inaccurate in its cultural and political details, the film – once described by Time as “a cinemilestone” – offers a rare glimpse into a Hollywood unwittingly endorsing the achievements of Marxist-Leninist society. It is rousing in a distorted way but features some of Milestone’s finest compositions. Today, it is almost unbelievable that this film was made at all." Ehsan Khoshbakht (Bologna 2025)

AA: Revisited Lewis Milestone's The North Star which I had seen in the Erich von Stroheim retrospective at the 1994 Berlin Film Festival and completely forgotten. Which goes to show. Those were the decades of my film and video marathons. From 1984 till 2011 I didn't usually have the time to even write down the titles of the films I saw. Orion was my second home, or perhaps the first. Only gradually I grew to the realization: what is the point of seeing a film or show if I cannot even track down its title? See less, digest more.

The North Star is a viewing experience that is irrelevant to assess by artistic merit. Seen today, it is an incredible document from the period of the cultural union of the Allies of World War II. The Big Four Allied powers were, in the chronological order of getting drawn to the war by Axis attacks: China, the United Kingdom, Soviet Union and the United States.

The North Star is divided into two parts: Peace and War.

The Peace section is a piece of mind-boggling propaganda distortion. We witness a Soviet paradise of a Ukrainian village in terms of a kolkhoz musical, indistinguishable from the Stalinist efforts by Grigori Aleksandrov and Ivan Pyriev. Or from the American Dream as presented in MGM musicals, for that matter. By the way, Walter Huston, who had portrayed Abraham Lincoln for D. W. Griffith, here plays the village doctor Kurin in a makeup that resembles Joseph Stalin.

The War section is something else again. It is clearly the work of the master of war film who had not lost the touch he displayed in All Quiet on the Western Front.

Everything had been artificial, inauthentic and fake. As soon as the war begins, the film turns serious and truly moving.

Operation Barbarossa (the invasion of the Soviet Union by Nazi Germany and its European allies) was the largest military offensive and the deadliest land war in history. The operation was the most decisive in WWII, and the USSR carried 80% of the burden of defeating the Nazis.

The Nazis are used to easy victories in Continental Europe and the Nordic countries. They have "never seen a burning village in Western Europe" as they exclaim here. They are shocked to witness the Ukrainian scorched-earth strategy. The villagers burn everything to destroy provisions and shelter for the aggressor.

The scenes of warfare are great action cinema. Electrifying aerial point-of-view shots help us live the terror. There is bravado and most of all a sense of loss and tragedy. Farley Granger debuts as the Ukrainian village boy Damian, naive and childish. He grows up all too soon to face the war. He is blinded by a hand grenade and falls on the battleground together with his brave partisan girlfriend Clavdia (Jane Withers). Female war sacrifice and heroism is fully acknowledged. The war had not ended when the film was made, and we feel the sense of urgency.

In a key sequence The North Star moves into horror territory. Erich von Stroheim gives a memorable performance as the Wehrmacht doctor von Harden, who abuses Ukrainian children for blood transfusions for his wounded soldiers, in the processing reducing the children to zombie-like wraiths. He is not a Nazi, and when meeting Dr. Kurin they reminiscence fondly their common teacher, the Jewish Dr. Friedenthal. Von Harden abhors what he is doing but does it anyway to perfection in cold blood. The character is a contribution to reflections on Dr. Mengele and the banality of evil. Stroheim plays the doctor as a gentleman, perhaps the most intelligent and cultured of all. The sequence is relevant to the genesis of film noir.

The film does not begin to do justice to the complexity of the circumstances of the Ukrainian war theatre. What is does is convey the enormity of the battle and the invincible fighting spirit of the people.

Participation in The North Star, as well as in Mission to Moscow, Song of Russia and Days of Glory, brought big trouble to the film-makers with the House Un-American Activies Committee during the Hollywood Blacklist in the Cold War.

An excellent 35 mm print from the UCLA restoration.

Uwasa no musume / The Girl in the Rumour

Mikio Naruse: 噂の娘 / Uwasa no musume / The Girl in the Rumour (JP 1935). Matchmaking. Shintaro (Heihachiro Okawa) and two sisters, the modern Kimiko (Ryuko Umezono) and the traditional Kunie (Sachiko Chiba). 

噂の娘 / The Girl in the Rumor (US) / The Girl on Everyone's Lips / La Fille dont on parle / [La ragazza di cui si parla].

    JP (Empire of Japan) 1935. Prod.: P.C.L.

    Director: Mikio Naruse. Scen.: Mikio Naruse. F.: Hiroshi Suzuki – b&w. M.: Koichi Iwashita. Scgf.: Junnosuke Yamazaki. Mus.: Noboru Ito. Int.: Sachiko Chiba (Kunie), Ko Mihashi (Kenkichi), Ryuko Umezono (Kimiko), Kamitari Fujiwara (the uncle), Toshiko Ito (Oyo), Masao Mishima (the barber), Yo Shiomi (Keisaku), Heihachiro Okawa (Shintaro).

    "St. James Infirmary Blues" (trad.) sheet music first published as "Gambler's Blues" (1925), first recorded by Fess Williams and his Royal Flush Orchestra (1927), definitive recording by Louis Armstrong and his Savoy Ballroom Five (1928). n.c.

    54 min

    Not released in Finland.

    35 mm print from NFAJ (National Film Archive of Japan).

    Courtesy of Toho.

    Il Cinema Ritrovato, Bologna 2025: Sorrow and Passion: Pre-War Mikio Naruse.

    Introduced by Alexander Jacoby and Johan Nordström.

    Viewed with e-subtitles in English and Italian at Cinema Jolly, 23 June 2025.

Alexander Jacoby e Johan Nordström (Bologna 2025): "Terse, economically paced, stylish and fascinating, the fifth and final film that Naruse directed in 1935 (it was released on 21 December of that year) was loosely inspired by Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard, and was actually referred to as The Cherry Orchard (Sakura no sono) during production. It shares the Russian playwright’s theme of a family in decline, but relocates his story from an aristocratic milieu to that of a family-run business, and alters the structure of the family. A mother-daughter story becomes the story of Kenkichi, proprietor of a liquor store, and his two daughters by different women."

"The contrast between siblings Kunie and Kimiko personifies the characteristic 1930s polarity between the kimono-clad traditional woman and the modern girl (moga). Masumi Tanaka aptly writes that “the contrast between the old-fashioned sister, who clings to traditional ethics, and the younger sister, who defiantly tries to escape into the modern world, foreshadows Kenji Mizoguchi’s Sisters of Gion, made the following year.” Older sister Kunie is again played by Sachiko Chiba, the lead actress in Tsuma yo bara no youni and P.C.L.’s top star."

"The film was a critical success, earning Naruse his second mention in that year’s “Kinema Junpo” Best Ten critics’ poll, where it ranked eighth. It also scooped the top prize in a film competition sponsored by the Tokyo “Nichinichi Shimbun” (now the “Mainichi Shimbun”). “Kinema Junpo” critic Seiji Mizumachi wrote that Uwasa no musume made him feel “a particular appreciation of the talkie format”, which “helps to express the psychology of the drama”."

"A few months later, Minoru Murata directed a more faithful adaptation of The Cherry Orchard, which was released under that title. But as Susanne Scherman notes, “Naruse was praised as having a better understanding and grasp of the original work.” According to Audie Bock, the success of the film ensured that Naruse would be able to work with artistic freedom at P.C.L." Alexander Jacoby e Johan Nordström (Bologna 2025)

AA: Mikio Naruse's Uwasa no musume is a multi-character study about a sake business family in three generations. The English title The Girl in the Rumour does not make sense, nor the reference to Anton Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard, but of course anything can be an inspiration to something else.

The Nadaya Sake shop "has fallen on hard times, mostly because Grandfather partied away all the money before retiring to his room to drink sake and play the shamisen" (Japan on Film). Grandfather Keisaku (Yo Shiomi) guided his son Kenkichi (Ko Mihashi) to an arranged marriage, which presumably fortified the finances of the family business, but "money can't buy me love", and Kenkichi has lived a double life with a long-term mistress, Oyo (Toshiko Ito). He has also become an alcoholic, launching his sake diet in the morning.

Now it's marrying time for Kenkichi's two daughters. Shintaro (Heihachiro Okawa), a dapper young man from a wealthy family, is available, and an omiai (a matchmaking encounter) is arranged by the daughters' uncle (Kamatari Fujiwara). 

The traditional, deferential sister Kunie is played by Sachiko Chiba, who electrified Naruse in Wife! Be Like a Rose! as the modern woman. After making Uwasa no musume, they married.

The modern sister Kimiko is played by Ryuko Umezono, who had been Chieko, one of the sisters, in Naruse's Three Sisters with Maiden Hearts.

At the matchmaking meeting, meant as a stage towards a union between Shintaro and Kunie, the young man, however, seems clearly more interested in the modern Kimiko. A preference similar to what had taken place in Nadare.

The father Kenkichi is against arranged marriages anyway, because he does not want his daughters to endure a situation of a double life like his. After his wife's death, Kenkichi has invited Oyo to move with him, a proposal welcomed by Kunie but rejected by Kimiko.

At last, Kimiko is told the truth: her mother is Oyo. Perhaps this has been the subject of the rumour of the film's title all along. In fact, the words "it's time to tell Kimiko the truth" are uttered in the beginning, as Kenkichi is taking his "rejuvenation pills".

Since the beginning, there have been suspicions about the quality of the beverages at the Nadaya Sake shop. At an investigation, it turns out that Kenkichi has been diluting his sake with water.

Because Kimiko is illegitimate, marriage with Shintaro is out of the question. And because the family has fallen into disgrace due to the sake scandal, also Kunie in ineligible.

Everything happens fast in the finale, and there is a blunt, matter-of-fact attitude in Naruse's way of telling it. Perhaps it is an intentional shock ending, or perhaps Naruse was in a hurry to wrap it all up in the year 1935 during which he directed five films.

Nadare / Avalanche

Mikio Nadare: 雪崩 / Nadare / Avalanche (JP 1937). A newly married couple at the crossroads. Hideo Saeki (Goro Kusaka) and Noboru Kiritachi (Fukiko Yokoda).

Akira Kurosawa (gauche) et Mikio Naruse (droite) durant le tournage d'Avalanche (雪崩), 1937. En arrière plan, le Château de Nagoya. Source: P.C.L. Eiga Seisaku-jo. Domaine public. From: Wikipédia: Avalanche (film, 1937).

雪崩 / [Valanga].

    JP (Empire of Japan) 1937. Prod.: P.C.L.

    Director: Mikio Naruse. Sog.: from the Jiro Osaragi’s homonymous novel (1936). Scen.: Tomoyoshi Murayama, Mikio Naruse. Ass. regia: Ishiro Honda, Akira Kurosawa. F.: Mikiya Tachibana – b&w. M.: Koichi Iwashita. Scgf.: Takeo Kita. Mus.: Nobuo Iida. Int.: Hideo Saeki (Goro Kusaka), Ranko Edogawa (Yayoi Ema), Noboru Kiritachi (Fukiko Yokoda), Yo Shiomi (Goro’s father), Yuriko Hanabusa (Goro’s mother), Sadao Maruyama (Fukiko’s father), Masao Mishima (lawyer Koyanagi), Akira Ubukata (Keisuke).

    59 min

    Not released in Finland.

    35 mm print from NFAJ (National Film Archive of Japan).

    Courtesy of Toho.

    Il Cinema Ritrovato, Bologna 2025: Sorrow and Passion: Pre-War Mikio Naruse.

    Introduced by Alexander Jacoby and Johan Nordström.

    Viewed with e-subtitles in English and Italian at Cinema Jolly, 23 June 2025.

Alexander Jacoby e Johan Nordström (Bologna 2025): "One of Naruse’s most underrated films, Nadare describes a love triangle in which Goro (among the most detestable of Naruse’s many flawed male protagonists, played by his regular collaborator Hideo Saeki, 1912–2003) is torn between his wife and a childhood friend. It was based on a serialised novel by the popular author Jiro Osaragi (1897–1973), many of whose books were adapted into films. The screenplay was prepared by Tomoyoshi Murayama, a playwright whose outspoken leftwing convictions are reflected in the film’s critique of the Westernised upper class. Although Murayama retained credit for the original draft, his version of the script differed significantly from the final one, which was completed by Naruse himself."

"One of the assistant directors on the film was a young Akira Kurosawa. He complained that Naruse insisted on “doing everything himself”, leaving his assistants with nothing to do, and wryly related that he fell asleep on set, only for his snoring to enrage the director. Nevertheless, he was impressed by Naruse’s discipline on set and expertise, and testified that he had learned much from his method of “of building one very brief shot on top of another, which, spliced together in the final film, […] give the impression of a single long take”."

"The film excited the ire of various contemporary film critics. Fuyuhiko Kitagawa complained about the literary material’s unsuitability for cinematic adaptation, while “Kinema Junpo”’s Seiji Mizumachi disliked the obtrusive technique in which a kind of gauze or blind falls over the image in order to allow characters to speak their thoughts to the audience, as if in a theatrical aside. Seen today, this gesture seems refreshingly experimental. The film is generally stylish: Tetsuya Hirano rightly praises the dynamism of scenes shot around Nagoya Castle, the imagery of sunlight filtering through the trees, and the panning shots of the protagonist walking in the rain." Alexander Jacoby e Johan Nordström

IMDb capsule: "Avalanche is a study of a one-year marriage that begins to crumble. A married man is torn between the love of his wife, and his attraction to his cousin."

Wikipédia: Synopsis: "Gorō est né dans une riche famille japonaise des années 1930. Il se voit déchiré entre deux femmes, Yayoi qu’il a aimée autrefois, et Fukiko, sa femme actuelle avec laquelle il est marié depuis un an. Il ne peut oublier Yayoi ni l’abandonner, car il se sent toujours pour elle de tendres sentiments et il délaisse son épouse. Il parle beaucoup de la vie idéale, mais son père ne prend pas ce qu’il pense au sérieux et refuse qu’il divorce d'avec Fukiko. Devant l’incompréhension de ses parents, il décide de se suicider avec Fukiko qu’il n’aime pas, mais au dernier moment il se rend compte qu’il n’en est pas capable."

AA: Messrs. Alexander Jacoby and Johan Nordström explained the title of the movie: "avalanche" here means "emotional crisis". Today we live in a precarious world.

Mikio Naruse's Nadare is a marriage tragedy which turns into a marriage melodrama. Quite literally it's a weepie. After one year of married life, Goro Kusaka (Hideo Saeki) realizes that the marriage is over. "You can't always get what you want". But "I can't live in deception".

Goro's parents are fiercely against divorce. "Young people know everything." "Goro knows his goal but does not believe in it." "A man has to look after a frail woman." His father even suggests the possibility of an affair on the side. "I can only think of one woman at a time". Father is desperate and decides to disown Goro.

From the father's viewpoint the young ones only think about themselves, not about the family. "If I die, the family name has to be continued". But Goro needs to be sincere in commitment. He is uncomfortable with the father's gift of a wonderful handbag for Fukiko. "The heart must be in it".

Naruse's movies are usually driven by the female protagonists, but Nadare's viewpoint is male.

Goro's dearest friend has always been his cousin Yayoi (Ranko Edogawa), a free and independent woman. Both have been born into wealth and privilege. Only after marriage does Goro realize how much he has loved her. Their relationship has been close and intimate but not romantic or sexual. It has been a soul union, a meeting of the minds, essential for both.

His wife Fukiko (Noboru Kiritachi) is the sweetest and the kindest person on earth, beloved by everybody. She is a perfect traditional Japanese woman, an ideal homemaker, close to Goro's parents, always happy to sacrifice herself for the common good. "You are like our own daughter", a sunshine in the family.

Now Goro finds Fukiko too passive, weak and naive. He needs a woman who challenges and defies him. Fukiko always submits.

It often rains. It is an avalanche of rain. The sky is crying. Which brings to mind all the great songs such as Carole King's "Crying in the Rain".

"There is no way out." "I can't go on anymore." Goro proposes double suicide to Fukiko. Shockingly but not surprisingly, Fukiko agrees. Her eyes in tears, she says: "I'm all yours. If you ask me to do it I'll do it gladly".

For once, Goro's spinelessness is welcome. In a surprise ending the double suicide is cancelled. Some might think that the spinelessness is also Naruse's. Siegfried Kracauer (in Theory of Film) might applaud. For him, cinema and tragedy were incompatible, an open end the perfect cinematic option.

In cinematic means, Naruse is in full command of his art and craft. In less than an hour he tells a complex and compelling story with subtlety. He introduces a visual effect of ghostly superimpositions to the confession monologues. The descending gauze effect reminded Japanese critics of bamboo blinds so much that they joked that the movie is "a bamboo blind film, not an avalanche film".

The print felt like a blow-up from 16 mm, with blur in the image and buzz on the soundtrack.

The Racket (2016 restoration Academy Film Archive)

Lewis Milestone: The Racket (US 1928). Gentlemen of the press eager to expose the racket: Pratt (Lee Moran), and Miller (Skeets Gallagher) meet Captain McQuigg (Thomas Meighan).

US © 1928 The Caddo Company. Prod.: Howard Hughes per The Caddo Company.

    Director: Lewis Milestone. Sog.: from the pièce of the same name (1927) by Bartlett Cormack. Scen.: Bartlett Cormack, Tom Miranda. F.: Tony Gaudio – b&w. M.: Eddie Adams. Scgf.: Julian Fleming. Int.: Thomas Meighan (captain McQuigg), Louis Wolheim (Nick Scarsi), Marie Prevost (Helen Hayes), G. Pat Collins (agent Johnson), Henry Sedley (Spike Corcoran), George Stone (Joe Scarsi), Sam DeGrasse (district attorney Welch), Skeets Gallagher (reporter Miller), Lee Moran (reporter Pratt).

    84 min

    Not released in Finland.

    Restored in 2016 by Academy Film Archive, from elements provided by The Howard Hughes Corporation and by University of Nevada College of Fine Arts’ Department of Film.

    DCP from Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

    By courtesy of Flicker Alley.

    Silent. Digital piano: Neil Brand 

    Il Cinema Ritrovato, Bologna 2025: Lewis Milestone: of Wars and Men.

    Introduced by Jeffrey Masino (Flicker Alley).

    Viewed with e-subtitles in Italian by SubTi Londra at Cinema Jolly, 23 June 2025.    

Ehsan Khoshbakht (Bologna 2025): "This “most important gangster picture of the silent era” (Kevin Brownlow) and a precursor to the gangster cycle of the 1930s, The Racket, masterfully shot by Italian-American cinematographer Tony Gaudio, establishes one of the most precise visual styles imaginable for crime film."

"The eventful and busy plot involves Captain McQuigg, a tough cop and an early, roaring twenties incarnation of Dirty Harry, trying to bring peace to an unnamed but clearly Chicago-inspired city that has become a stage for violent gang wars. Despite obstacles posed by corrupt city officials, McQuigg makes it his mission to go after the bootlegger baron, Nick Scarsi."

"The film was adapted from a play by Bart Cormack, one of the first underworld stories to emerge from Chicago. The actor Thomas Meighan saw a performance of it in Los Angeles (starring Edward G. Robinson!) and pitched it to Milestone, who liked the idea and, in return, gave Meighan the leading role."

"Kevin Brownlow writes that the film’s significance was not due to it being unusually well-directed, but because “at long last a film dealt head-on with the link between gangsters, police, and politicians – a link, incidentally, which was so thoroughly American it went back to Colonial times.” Modelled on William Hale Thompson, a corrupt Chicago mayor who received a quarter of a million dollars in campaign funds from Al Capone, the character of Nick Scarsi – played by Louis Wolheim – also channels Capone himself. Wolheim, who looks as though he has come straight from the skids, was, in fact, a mathematics teacher whose passion for sports gave him his signature broken nose."

"Foreseeably, the film was banned in Chicago but was extremely well-received elsewhere and consolidated the reputation of its producer, Howard Hughes, who, in 1951, ordered a remake directed by John Cromwell. However, Milestone’s original version, with its gritty, uncompromising vision of corruption and crime, remains untouchable." Ehsan Khoshbakht (Bologna 2025)

IMDb capsule: "An honest police captain vows to bring down a powerful bootlegger who is protected by corrupt politicians and judges."

AA: The restoration of Lewis Milestone's The Racket, a labour of love by Jeffrey Masino / Flicker Alley, is a major event. The movie was long highlighted by Carlos Clarens (Crime Movies) and Kevin Brownlow (Beyond the Mask of Innocence), but neither had seen it. A previous Flicker Alley restoration was screened in Bologna in 2005, but only as a video projection which I preferred to pass. Good things are worth waiting for.

D. W. Griffith in The Musketeers of Pig Alley (1912) had launched the gangster film, and following the success of Underworld (1927) it became a major genre. The play and the movie Chicago (1927), although not telling a gangster story, contributed to the perception of Chicago as the capital of crime.

Milestone had a way in turning popular plays into compelling movies, and of this talent The Racket is an early specimen. The cinematographer was maestro Tony Gaudio whose next assignment was She Goes to War and who went on to shoot Little Caesar. Views of streets glistening in the rain at night grew into key film noir imagery, with metaphysical gravity added.

The Racket is a well-made thriller and action film (gangland war with showdowns, gunfights, roadblocks, etc.) and more. Corruption is ubiquitous and oppressive on an ominously new level. Gangsters have taken over the city.

The theme of corruption had been inherent in the crime film since the beginning. Already in The Musketeers of Pig Alley we can observe a policeman on the take. The prostitution drama Traffic in Souls (US 1913) exposed white slavery behind a respectable facade (resembling The Godfather's wedding party). Pre-Code film-makers like Rowland Brown (Quick Millions, Blood Money) pursued the theme which then returned only in film noir (All the King's Men, Force of Evil). The Racket itself was remade with Robert Mitchum in the role of the untouchable captain, but the closest point of comparison to Milestone's movie is The Big Heat.

It was daring to call the gangster boss "Scarsi" because everyone understood the reference to Al "Scarface" Capone. It was also playing with fire to introduce the character of the Mayor called "the Old Man" (never seen but in charge of all), because he was understood to be Chicago's corrupt mayor Big Bill Thompson. Milestone pursued such authenticity that he employed as advisors a team of eight genuine Chicago racketeers, including bootleggers, a safecracker, a drug peddler and a forger. The result was deemed so realistic by the underworld that people involved in the movie received death threats.

The granite-faced Thomas Meighan had risen to stardom in The Miracle Man, and Milestone guided him to new heights in The Racket. Meigham had debuted in the gangster genre the year before in The City Gone Wild co-starring with Louise Brooks (the last print of the movie was destroyed by Paramount in 1971). The character of Captain McQuigg now appears as a blueprint for Eliot Ness (incarnated on tv and in the cinema by Robert Stack and Kevin Costner).

Louis Wolhelm with his anti-glamorous looks belongs to the screen's beloved monsters in a way similar to Harry Baur, Michel Simon, Charles Laughton – and Edward G. Robinson, who created the role of Nick Scarsi on Broadway with such force that it relaunched his Hollywood career. But Wolheim is equally fascinating. "The better the villain, the better the movie" was a credo of Alfred Hitchcock, and Milestone understood it, too. Wolheim entered Milestone's world already in Two Arabian Knights and achieved immortality in All Quiet on the Western Front. Here he creates a truly scary gangster boss for the first time in the cinema. Probably Robinson had achieved that already in his stage incarnation.

"Women are poison to me", declares Nick Scarsi and insults the singer Helen Hayes (Marie Prevost) so that she, drawing on female intuition and aware of Nick's weakest spot, launches a chain of events that finally leads to the gangster boss's demise. Prevost had been a lovely model for Edwin Bower Hesser and Alfred Cheney Johnston and then a Mack Sennett Bathing Beauty until she burned her bathing suit on Coney Island and upgraded to feature films (such as A Small Town Idol). Her golden moment came with Ernst Lubitsch who adored her and launched a new period for both in three movies.

It's a great cast and an impressive gallery of faces in crowd scenes. Milestone is the kind of director who never projects a faceless crowd. Everyone seems to have a story to tell.

In The Racket a disturbing topic was introduced into the American cinema arguably for the first time: the rogue cop. In a sinister turning-point, McQuigg the lawman, seeing both the Mayor and the District Attorney corrupted by the mob, takes justice into his own hands, deliberately breaking the law (including habeas corpus). Fighting the Devil with a demon.

The rogue cop became a major subject in film noir, in movies like Where the Sidewalk Ends (Otto Preminger, 1950), The Prowler (Joseph Losey, 1951), Detective Story (William Wyler, 1951), On Dangerous Ground (Nicholas Ray, 1952) and Touch of Evil (Orson Welles, 1958). William P. McGivern was a specialist of the trend, covering corruption in big cities in novels that were filmed as The Big Heat (Fritz Lang, 1953), Shield for Murder (Howard W. Koch, Edmond O'Brien, 1953), Rogue Cop (Roy Rowland, 1954) and Hell on Frisco Bay (Frank Tuttle, 1955).

Milestone filmed the last American film of another "fascinating monster" (to speak with Mae West), Emil Jannings: Betrayal (missing believed lost according to the National Film Preservation Board, 2021). After All Quiet on the Western Front, he directed the first film adaptation of The Front Page, returning to Chicago's world of crime and journalists who are wise about corruption.

Based on the novel by Richard Dougherty and a screenplay by Henri Simoun and Abraham Polonsky, Donald Siegel directed a rogue cop masterpiece, Madigan (an American counterpart to Kurosawa's Stray Dog, starring Toshiro Mifune and Takashi Shimura), and then the now best-remembered rogue cop film, Dirty Harry, which spawned not only four sequels but an entire subgenre, complete with a parody (Sledge Hammer! "Shoot first, ask questions never").

All this launched by Milestone.

...

AFI CATALOG ONLINE SYNOPSIS

During Prohibition, the job of metropolitan policeman Capt. James “Mac” McQuigg is to keep the peace, even while rival mobs fight for territory, and politicians make alliances with organized crime in exchange for election support. 

During a street gunfight, Mac encounters one of the major mob bosses, bootlegger Nick Scarsi, with whom he is on superficially cordial terms. Watching bullets fly, Nick suggests that Mac should change his “racket,” but Mac replies that he likes what he is doing. 

Later, Nick has his men deliver liquor to the territory of his rival, Spike Corcoran, prompting another shootout, but the alert Mac has police there and arrests Chick, one of Nick’s henchmen. 

Soon after, Mac is forced to free Chick, because “The Old Man,” the city’s most influential and corrupt politician, arranges for all charges to be dropped. 

The unmarried Nick considers women “poison” but dotes on his younger brother, Joe. For his birthday, Nick gives Joe an expensive ring and a party at a local speakeasy. During the party, Joe becomes enamored of street-smart singer Helen Hayes, and when Nick calls her a “gold digger,” the insult prompts her to encourage the younger man’s interest. 

Although Nick has invited Mac to the party, other uninvited guests, Spike and his associates, also arrive. Foreseeing trouble, Mac summons his men to the site in time to arrest Nick after he kills Spike in a brief exchange of gunshots. The police are unable, however, to find the gun Nick used, as he passed it to a cohort immediately after the killing, and by the time Nick is taken to the station, Nick’s lawyer, Sam Meyer, is waiting with a signed writ of habeas corpus to effect his release. 

Angered by the miscarriage of justice, Mac vows to drive Nick out of the area, but instead Nick uses his influence to get Mac transferred to the 28th precinct, known as “the sticks.” Two reporters, Pratt and Miller, are sent to cover Mac's demotion and wait in the lobby for the story. When Dave Ames, a young cub reporter from a small town press, arrives and naïvely expects to interview Mac, the captain takes pity when he sees the seasoned reporters mock Dave and allows him to interview imprisoned prostitutes. 

Mac then uses Pratt and Miller to relay a challenge to Nick. As prompted by Mac, the reporters track Nick to Spike's funeral and circulate rumors that Nick is afraid of the captain. Denying it, Nick claims that he is waiting to cause trouble until after the upcoming Tuesday election. The newsmen later warn Mac that if he is unable to stop Nick before the election, which the Organization will likely win, the mobster will remain in power. 

Meanwhile, Helen and Joe are driving in the area when a quarrel between them escalates, prompting Helen to leave the car and flag down a passing car. When the occupant, Johnson, who is a police patrolman, begins to harass Joe, he drives off recklessly and inadvertently kills an innocent pedestrian in a hit-and-run accident. Johnson arrests Joe and, unaware of his identity, beats him, hoping for a confession. 

Helen is brought to the station as a witness, but refuses to cooperate and is placed in the women’s prison. She confides to Dave, who is immediately attracted to her, her concern that Nick will avenge Joe’s treatment. Soon after, District Attorney Welch, who is under the control of the mob, visits Mac, warning him to release Joe before Nick brings pressure to have him thrown off the force. 

Mac taunts Helen for protecting Joe until she agrees to testify against him, then releases her. Although Mac tries to protect Johnson, who can testify to Joe’s killing of the pedestrian, Nick enters the station and shoots Johnson at close range. Although Nick flees, Johnson’s murder is witnessed by Dave, and Nick is soon apprehended. 

When Meyer arrives with a writ of habeas corpus to free Nick, Mac rips it up, then locks up the attorney. Meanwhile, Helen’s hardened heart is softening toward Dave, whom she fears will be killed before he can testify, and she tricks Nick into confessing to the killing while the police are listening. 

Mac suggests to Welch that the Organization cannot win the election if it protects Nick, given the solid evidence against him, then allows him use of one of the station rooms to meet with his client. Before Nick is brought to the room, Welch has a phone conversation with The Old Man, then he and his assistant, Sergeant Turck, set up a trap in the room. 

When Nick is brought in, Welch tells him that The Old Man will not jeopardize the election on his behalf, causing Nick to threaten to go to the press with all that he knows about the Organization. In response, Welch says they have arranged an escape for him and refers him to a gun and an open window. 

However, as Nick starts to flee through the window, Mac enters the room. Nick attempts to shoot him with the gun, but discovers the gun unloaded just as Turck shoots and kills him. Although Mac tells the reporters that Nick was shot while attempting to escape, they shrewdly wonder why the police did not simply capture the mobster. 

Surmising the answer, Pratt becomes philosophical and says, “So that government of the professionals, by the professionals and for the professionals shall not perish from the earth.” Content that the news is a “break” for the paper’s Sunday edition, they leave. 

Although Dave invites Helen to stay with him, she realizes the match is unsuitable, and they part after shaking hands. Admiring the exhausted Mac, who barely registers her presence, Helen tells him they have a lot in common, for neither of them can change, and then she, too, departs. 

When a policeman asks Mac what next must be done, the captain admits he would like some sleep, but says he must deal with the coroner and other public servants, then it will be time for Mass.

Rain (1932) (2021 restoration VCI Entertainment)

Lewis Milestone: Rain (US 1932). Walter Huston (Alfred Davidson) and Joan Crawford (Sadie Thompson).

Pioggia / Sade (Yle TV2 1995).

    US © 1932 Feature Productions, Inc. Prod.: Lewis Milestone per Feature Productions.

    Director: Lewis Milestone. Sog.: from the pièce of the same name (1922) by John Colton and Clemence Randolph, itself based on the story Miss Thompson (1921) by William Somerset Maugham. Scen.: Maxwell Anderson. F.: Oliver T. Marsh – b&w. M.: W. Duncan Mansfield. Scgf.: Richard Day. Mus.: Alfred Newman. Int.: Joan Crawford (Sadie Thompson), Walter Huston (Alfred Davidson), Fred Howard (Hodgson), Ben Hendricks Jr. (Griggs), William Gargan (sergeant Tim O’Hara), Mary Shaw (Ameena), Guy Kibbee (Joe Horn), Kendall Lee (Mrs. MacPhail), Beulah Bondi (Mrs. Davidson).

    94 min

    Soundtrack (not credited):

    "The Marines' Hymn" ("From the Halls of Montezuma / To the shores of Tripoli") comp. Jacques Offenbach (1867), lyr. unknown.

    "The Saint Louis Blues" by W. C. Handy (1914).

    "Wabash Blues" comp. Fred Menken, lyr. Dave Ringle (1921).

    "Baby Face" comp. Harry Akst, lyr. Benny Davis (1926).

    Telecast in Finland 16 July 1995, 25 Jan 1998 (Yle TV2)

    Restored in 4K in 2021 by VCI Entertainment, in collaboration with Library of Congress and The Mary Pickford Foundation at VCI Entertainment laboratory, from the picture positive and the positive soundtrack, both created from the nitrate negatives.

    DCP by courtesy of The Mary Pickford Foundation.

    Il Cinema Ritrovato, Bologna 2025: Lewis Milestone: of Wars and Men.

    Introduced by Farran Smith Nehme.

    Viewed with e-subtitles in Italian by SubTi Londra at Cinema Jolly, 21 June 2025.    

Ehsan Khoshbakht (Bologna 2025): "A moody pre-Code tale of a puritanical and obsessive missionary (Walter Huston) in the South Seas trying to save the soul of a tart (Joan Crawford) – only to succumb to her allure. After running on Broadway for three years, Sa­die Thompson, the leading character of Somerset Maugham’s famous story, had become cheaply popularised, the butt of lewd vaudeville jokes. Milestone had to “serious up” the act, so a script by Maxwell Anderson, partly based on a stage version by John Colton and Clemence Randolph, balanced carnality with the director’s favourite theme of men and their environment."

"Rain opens with tactile shots of raindrops falling on soil and vegetation and follows a small group of travellers trapped in a poky hotel. Among them is Sadie, blasting out St. Louis Blues on her gramophone. The trumpet sound – growling with seductive, muted plungers – feels like an invitation to bed. This was far from comfortable for Crawford, who blamed her unease on the alien environment: being away from the usual luxury of MGM sets and haunted by the iconic performances of the same role on stage (by Jeanne Eagels) and screen (by Gloria Swanson, directed by Raoul Walsh)."

"Long gone was the slick but straightforward style of Crawford’s MGM films. Milestone introduces compositions that are idiosyncratic and expressive – even lyrical. He revamps his signature circular mise-en-scène and 360-degree camera movements to frame Crawford as she entices the crowd and dances with a sailor. After decades in the public domain, this restored version now reveals the true extent of Milestone’s vision and his attack on self-righteousness." Ehsan Khoshbakht

AA: Lewis Milestone's adaptation of Rain I had never seen before, but the superb new restoration was worth waiting for.

There are three Hollywood adaptations: one silent, one sound film in black and white, and one in Technicolor and 3-D.

The last time I saw an adaptation in Bologna was in 2002. Curtis Bernhardt's Miss Sadie Thompson (US 1952) was screened in the "Miracle of the 3-D" section in a double 35 mm projection on a silver screen at Cinéma Lumière. In this Columbia production, Rita Hayworth is Sadie, José Ferrer the missionary and Aldo Ray the sergeant. A good Rita Hayworth vehicle – but the most repressed of them all – crushed under the weight of the Production Code Administration unlike the predecessors. Although the "Miracle of the 3-D" implications sound salacious, the movie is rather demure.

The year before I had programmed in Helsinki in our Raoul Walsh retrospective Sadie Thompson (US 1928), produced by Gloria Swanson for United Artists. We screened a 35 mm print from George Eastman House, complete with the Dennis Doros / Kino International reconstruction of the missing finale played back from a LD LaserDisc. It is the definitive adaptation. Everything feels right in one of the greatest films of both Walsh and Swanson. Walsh himself played the sergeant in his last acting role, and the chemistry is irresistible in a film full of sex, tragedy, hypocrisy and a Shakespearean sense of humour.

Farran Smith Neame in her introduction detailed the achievement of the restoration of Rain: what was cut away from the negative in 1937 from this Pre-Code milestone (pun intended), has now been brought back.

As Ehsan Khoshbakht points out in his program note, the sensual impact of the titular motif of the rain is extraordinary. The monsoon is the overwhelming experience. The nature takes over literally. "Always in all ways". At times, rain montages border on the avantgarde, reminiscent of Regen (NL 1939) by Joris Ivens and Mannus Franken.

Rain, set in Pago Pago in American Samoa, belongs to the "paradise lost" cycle of the cinema of the period. It started with Moana (US 1926) and continued in White Shadows in the South Seas (US 1928) and Tabu (US 1931). Whatever we think about their inherent colonial gaze, these films celebrate and mourn the last remnants of an earthly paradise, the happiest on Earth, the Garden of Eden, from which we have been expelled. A banished prostitute, drunken sailors and a religious zealot are what we have on offer instead.

Lewis Milestone was a great director of men in war, work and crime. He had just directed a masterpiece about war (All Quiet on the Western Front, US 1930) and a pioneering screwball / newspaper thriller relevant to the gangster cycle (The Front Page, US 1931), a Pre-Code version in which Hildy is a man, making the newsroom an all-male space.

Farran Smith Neame in her introduction and Molly Haskell, with us in Bologna, praise Joan Crawford in Rain. Obviously there is something that I miss. I admire Joan Crawford, particularly her performances in the 1940s and the 1950s, when she was in full command of her art and craft, and a monument of Hollywood glamour in her distinctive way.

Her career was distinguished by steely resolve and indomitable willpower. From the turmoil of the Roaring Twenties and all the abuse and exploitation involved, she fought her way to the top. Mildred Pierce and Johnny Guitar... need we say more. They are in a way fictional autobiographies. But Molly Haskell in From Reverence to Rape comments on her many identities in Possession: "For reasons that are partly the fault of script and direction, but not entirely, we begin to wonder which, if any, is the real Crawford, so perfectly does she become each successive role. There finally seems to be no connecting link, and the madwoman roaming the streets in the film's first sequence becomes a perfect expression of the end of the line, the total confusion and centerlessness for a woman in whom existence has replaced essence." (Boldface mine).

Sadie Thompson's is a world with which Joan Crawford was familiar in a general way, having started as a showgirl, chorus girl and flapper star. She was not a subtle actor. She excelled in melodrama and exaggeration with an almost expressionistic appetite. She is a great Gothic actor. But her loud and burlesque interpretation puzzles me here. Crawford was aware of Sadie Thompson having turned into a figure of parody, but I wonder why she interprets her this way.

Sadie's transformation is stunning, and Crawford switches to the opposite extreme in a way that could also be characterized as Gothic. In Sadie's religious conversion, she turns pale like a ghost and lifeless like a zombie. She becomes unrecognizable. It is a shocking chapter.

But I cannot relate to her earthy sensuality as Sadie like I do with Gloria Swanson and Rita Hayworth. My searchlight stops on Milestone. He was not a great director of women. He does not seem to have been interested in sex (between man and woman).

All movies have great casts. The best Sadie is Gloria Swanson. The best missionary is Walter Huston (Lionel Barrymore and José Ferrer are good, too). The best sergeant is Aldo Ray (while Raoul Walsh with Gloria Swanson is also irresistible). It is worthwhile to see all three.

Raoul Walsh made further films of notorious woman on the run from San Francisco: Klondike Annie with Mae West and The Revolt of Mamie Stover with Jane Russell.

 

Sadie Thompson (US 1928). Raoul Walsh directs Gloria Swanson.