The Bicycle Thief, Goyokin, and Jiro Dreams of Sushi

The Bicycle Thief, by Vittorio de Sica, 1948


Vittorio de Sica's The Bicycle Thief (or Bicycle Thieves, depending on who you ask) is one of the best, most important, and most moving films ever made. That's not up for debate, it's earned that. Having seen the film, I can now acknowledge all those things, but I don't know, it was just so sad.

The Bicycle Thief is the relentlessly soul-crushing story of Antonio, an impoverished man who gets a job opportunity that requires he has a bike. He and his wife trade all their sheets to be able to get one, and even then, just barely. Antonio and his family treat the bike as their most precious possession. His son polishes it and has memorized every detail, down to a small dent. When Antonio goes to work for his first day, he carries his bike into the office, refusing to put it down. Then, on the job, which is riding around the city and gluing posters to walls, a man takes off with his bike.

Antonio goes to the police, who just trivialize the theft, as though it's not important. To Antonio, of course, it's the most important thing in the world. He, his son, and some friends go on a desperate search, combing the city for the bicycle. There are thousands of bicycles, and so on. The movie is just really damn sad. There are uplifting moments, and there's actually a lovely message of empathy and understanding to the whole thing. Though Antonio's desperation is blinding him to it, we can see that everybody is struggling, not just him. This is what drives people to steal bicycles.

I'm not NOT recommending the movie, it really is great, but just warning you, grab your hankies. No wait, don't use hankies, those are so gross, use a tissue. And watch something happy or fun afterwards, like cat videos or a cool-as-hell samurai movie or something.

Goyokin, by Hideo Gosha, 1969


I feel like Hideo Gosha was the last great director of the Japanese New Wave of the 50's and 60's. I don't know if this is a fact, because my knowledge is incomplete, but this is how it seems to me. While most of the other important directors of the time began making films in the 30's and 40's and were already well into their careers when they produced their seminal works, Gosha made his first film in 1964. Japanese cinema becomes a whole different beast in the 1970's, and I feel like Gosha kind of bridges the gap between the two styles.

In Goyokin, the great Tatsuya Nakadai (The Sword of Doom, High and Low, Kagemusha, among many others) stars as Magobei Wakizaka, an honorable samurai who looks on in shame as his clansmen slaughter an entire village to steal a shipment of gold. He can't go on as a samurai anymore and quits, but also promises his master and best friend, Rokugo (Tetsuro Tanba of You Only Live Twice and The Twilight Samurai, also among many others), that he won't report this transgression as long as it doesn't happen again.

Three years later, Magobei, living a peaceful life, is about to give up his sword for good when assassins sent to kill him tip him off that Rokugo is planning on butchering another village. Magobei decides to stop it from happening. Along the way, he stumbles across the girl who was the sole survivor of the massacre three years ago, and wins over a mercenary sent to kill him.

This movie is awesome. It's fun, with lots of action and adventure. Tatsuya Nakadai is totally badass as Magobei Wakizaka. There's a great scene where he is tied up and dropped into a deep pit of snow and left to die. The exact details of his escape are left to the imagination, but we're given enough of a starting point to marvel at how cool this guy is. Rokugo's plan to run a shipment of gold into the sea is pretty diabolical, and Wakizaka's plan to thwart this plan is equally clever. And of course, we get a deadly showdown between the two at the climax.

I've seen five or six of Hideo Gosha's films now, and dug them all. Though the film that follows this, Hitokiri, is a lot darker, the rest of the ones I've seen, such as Secret of the Urn have all had this kind of spirit of adventure. Goyokin is tons of fun.

Jiro Dreams of Sushi, by David Gelb, 2011


We're going to stay in Japan for our next review, though this is a very different kind of movie than Goyokin. Jiro Dreams of Sushi is a documentary about Jiro Ono, an 85 year old man who owns a tiny sushi shop that purportedly makes the best sushi in the world. Jiro has spent close to his entire life making sushi, obsessing over every detail, honing his techniques, and looking for ways to improve it. He's like Van Gogh painting the same scene over and over again, trying to find the perfect colors to represent it. Or Stanley Kubrick obsessively looking through thousands of pictures of door frames, trying to find the exact perfect one to include in his film.

We also meet Jiro's two sons; the eldest is in his 50's and is still being primed to take over Jiro's restaurant someday. He has to live with the anxiety that even if his sushi is every bit as good as his fathers, people will somehow perceive it as lesser and thus put his business under. The youngest son has been encouraged to open his own sushi restaurant that is an identical mirror image of Jiro's place. Jiro was not the best father to his sons. He was too busy thinking of sushi, but I guess he's there for them now, in his way.

The documentary is fascinating, though it can be as repetitive and single-minded as its subject. Could you imagine living your life with your brain centered on all aspects of sushi and nothing else? Of course, he's not making the sushi alone. Along with his sons, he has several apprentices. They are given years and years of rigorous training. In fact, they said it takes something like ten years before they're even allowed to handle the eggs.

What's weird is, I'm not an adventurous eater in the least bit. I've never even had sushi, but I still could totally appreciate this movie and Jiro's work. I assume this sushi is the most delicious raw fish one could ever eat, if one were into such things as raw fish. It would be like if somebody in America would dedicate their entire life to cultivating the most perfect french fry in the world... Oh man, now I'm drooling. I've gotta go.

The 10th Victim

There's a certain European sci-fi aesthetic from the 60's that drives me crazy (in the good way). It's that sexy, mod-era, Andy Warhol-ish design style you see in movies like Barbarella, Danger: Diabolik, Planet of the Vampires, even the early James Bond films. Barbarella is probably the absolute pinnacle of that style, in that it created an entire well-realized, bizarre universe out of it. It's one of my favorite movies. So, when I recently found out about Elio Petri's 1965 film, The 10th Victim, I scooted it right up to the top of my queue.

The 10th Victim is a science fiction film loaded with action and social satire. Set in the not-too-distant future, in a world where all war has been eliminated. Mankind's lust for violence has been diverted into a legal system of murder-as-entertainment: The Big Hunt. If you register for The Big Hunt, you must go through ten rounds, five as the Hunter, five as the Victim. The Hunter hunts, the Victim runs. Whoever lives wins. If you manage to survive ten rounds in the hunt, you gain fame, respect, and a million dollars. A not entirely unfamiliar, but very cool premise so far, right?

The movie opens with a woman running through the streets, and a man with a gun chasing after her. He frequently misses, and she stops and taunts him whenever she gets a chance. Eventually, she lures him into a S&M club, where she comes out as the entertainment, wearing a silver bikini and a mask over her eyes. She comes to him and seductively tells him to remove her mask, and then she turns around, and shoots him. Wait, there's more: With boob guns! She shoots him out of her bikini top.

We find out that this woman is Caroline Meredith (I suppose the Italians' idea of an American name), played by the most legendary of Bond Girls, Ursula Andress. She just finished playing the Victim in her 9th match. In the next and final match, she gets to be the Hunter.

Next, we see a jockey about to start a horse race. That is, until his boots explode. These boot bombs were placed by Marcello Poletti, played by Marcello Mastroianni. This was his 6th time in the hunt. In his next match, he'll be the Victim.

Marcello is in for a challenge. Caroline has corporate sponsorship from a Ming Tea company, who has given her pretty much unlimited resources to get her 10th kill in front of their cameras. There's a scene where Caroline and her corporate overlords are flying over Rome in a helicopter, scouting out locations for her to perform her deed. They settle on The Temple of Venus.

Marcello, on the other hand, is broke, and having all of his possessions repoed. A neat little detail, I thought, was his comic book collection. They were actually treated as something of value in a 60's movie! Unheard of.

Caroline then starts formulating a plan to get Marcello to the Temple of Venus. She "runs" into him, telling him that she's an American journalist writing a piece on the "sexual habits" of the Italian male. She says that she's representing "millions of unsatisfied American women" and she offers to pay him for the "interview". Although unaware that she is his Hunter, Marcello is suspicious of her, as he should be of everyone.

They get to know each other, and of course, they fall in love. She is moved by a sermon he conducts for a cult of "Sunset Worshipers". He takes her to his ex-wife's house, where she discovers he is hiding his parents, not wanting to turn them in to the state to be eliminated for being old. He explains most Italians hide their parents, usually surgically altering them to look like teenagers. As they fall for each other, they also keep at arms length. Marcello is reasonably sure she's his hunter, but can't do anything unless he's 100% sure, since he would get 30 years in prison for killing anybody else.

Anyway, I'm not going to explain any further, because the movie is a whole lot of fun. It gets crazier and crazier towards the end, with one double-cross and fake-out after another, until flying completely off the rails into absurdity. That's not meant to be a criticism, the movie is a comedy, and it knows what it's doing. The final scene is ridiculous and funny.

There are a lot of very funny little asides thrown into the movie as futuristic social commentary. While scouting locations, one of the Ming Tea reps mentions that he went to the Vatican on his honeymoon with his 18th wife. A news reports in the background that the "National Association of Homosexuals in France have outlawed The Big Hunt". Marcello nonchalantly walks by a fist fight in progress. When Caroline, watching via surveillance cam, asks who those people are, she is informed "just some students discussing art". The hilariously ironic slogan of the Ming Tea company.

The production values are pretty cool. You know, because of that sixties thing. Marcello has this pet robot thing with baby doll arms. There's this awesome outdoor lounge with inflatable chairs all around. A practice arena where hunters and victims run around shooting guns and dodging cars. And, I was surprised to discover, the movie is subtitled, instead of the usual crappy dubbing I usually find with Italian B-movies.

The two leads are both fun to watch, apart and together. Marcello Mastroianni is a badass in it, and Ursula Andress is strong, capable, clever, and (of course) sexy. The movie is surprisingly progressive for its time. They never question Caroline's abilities as a hunter. She and Marcello are adversaries on an even playing ground.

In conclusion, go find yourself a copy of The 10th Victim and watch it! Especially if you're a fan of the retro sci-fi stuff.

Planet of the Vampires (Terrore nello Spazio)

Ooooh, look, everyone! Planets! Vampires! Terrore! Spazio! This is actually a pretty important science fiction film from 1965, directed by the legendary horror director, Mario Bava.
It is cited as a major influence on the visual style of Ridley Scott's Alien, among other things.

Planet of the Vampires is a pretty misleading title. It's a bit of a reach to call the creatures in this movie "vampires". I assume the company that released it in America wanted a catchy, eye-grabbing title that would put American butts in seats.

Terrore nello Spazio follows a crew on a spaceship who are drawn to a mysterious planet. After a crash landing is averted, everybody on the ship suddenly loses their senses and tries to kill each other. The captain, Mark keeps himself together and helps everyone else come to. They follow a distress call from another ship, and when they get there, they find the ship full of bloody corpses. And then the mystery goes deeper when they return to the ship later and the corpses are nowhere to be found. Somebody or something on this planet is messing with them.

I don't want to ruin the plot, since it kind of relies on the mystery, so I'll stop there.

Much like Spaghetti Westerns, Vampires was made in Italy on a teeny, tiny, shoestring budget, and starred slightly bankable actors from all around the world, in order to maximize international sales. It has pretty crappy dubbing, which was also just the way things were done at the time. In these old Italian movies, they didn't even record sound on set, they just worked it all out in post.

Unlike most space adventures of the period, the pacing for Planet of the Vampires is slow and suspenseful. Mario Bava adds atmosphere by filling the sets with fog and unsettling red lighting. He made do with his extremely limited resources by having minimalistic sets that can easily be reused for other locations (I'm pretty sure they only build the one ship).

The production design, cheap though it is, still has that awesome 60's aesthetic. I especially liked the crew's uniforms, which looked extremely similar to the costumes in the original X-Men movie, but with collars that go all the way up to their ears, pretty much completely immobilizing the actors' necks. There's also a cool sequence where they find an ancient alien ship with these giant, 15-foot alien skeletons in it that look pretty great.

Though interesting, the movie isn't perfect. There's a lot of the characters just going back and forth from one ship set to another on a tiny fake planet set. The repetition of this, combined with the slow pacing, started to wear on me by the end. The budget constraints prevent the movie from being great, but Mario Bava's skill in atmosphere and suspense make Planet of the Vampires an interesting watch.