A beautiful exotic melodrama, a suave, elegiac and melodious fairy tale, distinguished by an appealing exoticism meant to satisfy and charm, Lang's HARAKIRI gives us the Japanese dream, the one we are all searching for—either in modern Japanese novels (name your favorite Japanese novelists
), or in lowbrow of the SHOGUN class, book and movie about which a kind word can always be said. The dream of a renewed life that would prove so exciting—that we would forget or ignore its difficulties—life on a spaceship, on distant planets or in Japan—the excitement of it all would surely make us ignore the harsher sides. Where existence would be as if lifted up by the hieratic style and the dignity.
Teahouses, geisha's, sailors, Buddhist monks, crowded Asian cityscapes, Lang's story is reduced to an exotic panorama, a kaleidoscope, with an astounding mastery of style and taste, the sentimental subject is very lightly touched upon, barely sketched, like understated, with a very nice gentleness, and not really the genuine content of the movie (which content are, in fact, the Japanese world, and glimpses of the Japanese virtue and customs)—though, of course, when needed, dramatic accents are found, and the woman's drama is ably told, Lang does justice to the very dramatic phases of the storyline—Loti's subject appealed to Lang, as it had appealed to Puccini. I also believe that this directorial lightness, this sketchy approach serves well the movie. See for yourself.
The poetry in HARAKIRI is brought by Lang himself, by his visual storytelling, that gentleness of his style, the casualness also, not by the melodrama underneath. A storytelling so strictly disciplined, that it may afford to look casual. It also seemed to me like a story told by a kind man.
The cinema is a school of dreams; a school of dreams and poetry.
All good cinema is born in poetry and dream.
Acknowledged master of the cinema, Lang is an intriguing character nonetheless—he tried his hand at a varied palette of movies—he was unafraid to delve, both in the silent and in the sound period, in the labyrinths of the genre movies. Remember his '40s and '50s outings.
So do you like silent cinema? Do you like Lang? Do you like silent movies' directors? I was born 50 yrs after the silent cinema was abolished; it's my favorite cinema, nonetheless.
The expatriated director is one of my two favorite Langs (the other being the Scottish literary critic and folklorist).
Teahouses, geisha's, sailors, Buddhist monks, crowded Asian cityscapes, Lang's story is reduced to an exotic panorama, a kaleidoscope, with an astounding mastery of style and taste, the sentimental subject is very lightly touched upon, barely sketched, like understated, with a very nice gentleness, and not really the genuine content of the movie (which content are, in fact, the Japanese world, and glimpses of the Japanese virtue and customs)—though, of course, when needed, dramatic accents are found, and the woman's drama is ably told, Lang does justice to the very dramatic phases of the storyline—Loti's subject appealed to Lang, as it had appealed to Puccini. I also believe that this directorial lightness, this sketchy approach serves well the movie. See for yourself.
The poetry in HARAKIRI is brought by Lang himself, by his visual storytelling, that gentleness of his style, the casualness also, not by the melodrama underneath. A storytelling so strictly disciplined, that it may afford to look casual. It also seemed to me like a story told by a kind man.
The cinema is a school of dreams; a school of dreams and poetry.
All good cinema is born in poetry and dream.
Acknowledged master of the cinema, Lang is an intriguing character nonetheless—he tried his hand at a varied palette of movies—he was unafraid to delve, both in the silent and in the sound period, in the labyrinths of the genre movies. Remember his '40s and '50s outings.
So do you like silent cinema? Do you like Lang? Do you like silent movies' directors? I was born 50 yrs after the silent cinema was abolished; it's my favorite cinema, nonetheless.
The expatriated director is one of my two favorite Langs (the other being the Scottish literary critic and folklorist).