NAKADAI TRIBUTE AT FILM FORUM

Japanese actor Tatsuya Nakadai, currently the subject of a curated seven-week retrospective at the Film Forum, has more than 125 acting credits to his name. But his career isn't simply about quantity. There's also the matter of quality. As I looked up movies in the series, I was impressed by how many of them received top ratings at IMDB.

I'd already seen some of the movies in the series, including the Kurosawa films Kagemusha (July 6/7), Ran (July 11/12), and Sanjuro (July 17) as well as Yojimbo and High and Low, which have already played. Thanks to a previous Film Forum series, I'd also seen the samurai movies Harakiri, Sword of Doom, and Kill! (July 15/16)—great titles, huh?

In advance of Film Forum's three-week presentation of Masaki Kobayashi's massive The Human Condition (1959-1961), so far I've seen two films in the series that were new to me. Each was fascinating—stylish and bizarre and reflective of international influences on movies during the 1960s.

Hiroshi Teshigahara's The Face of Another, adapted by Kobo Abe from one of his novels, concerns a man with a severely damaged face who obtains an experimental mask-face that makes him appear normal, under the condition that he tell his doctor all of his experiences with the mask-face. In one respect, the Twilight Zone-y story is, like Teshigahara and Abe's preceding Woman in the Dunes, one of those extended metaphor deals, pursuing questions of identity. And, if the premise wasn't completely buyable when it was made in 1966 (when fingerprinting was well-established), it's even less so in this age of face transplants and body modification. But there are also brilliant moments and surprising surrealistic touches that make the movie very worthwhile anyway. And Toru Takemitsu himself wrote the atmospheric, eerie music for this film companion to Eyes Without a Face. Here's a Japanese trailer for the film, which is available on NetFlix.



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The other Nakudai film I recently enjoyed is apparently more of a rarity: Kihachi Okamoto's Age of Assassins (1967), an edgy-humorous takeoff on intrigue movies that isn't so very different from The President's Analyst. Here you've got the story of a mild-mannered criminology professor targeted by sinister survivors of the Axis. If you're interested in the writing of Haruki Murakami, try to check out this movie, which has a close affinity to The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle and other tales of Murakami. The movie also anticipates Enter the Dragon and features cool credits as well as a Masaru Sato score that reminds me of Ennio Morricone's (and possibly someone else's) film music.

Here's a trailer for Age of Assassins—but beware of spoilers!



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THE PRESIDENT'S ANALYST AT THE FILM FORUM

Movie comedy in the Sixties ran the gamut from corny crap to sharp-edged satire. I suppose the same could be said of any movie comedy decade, but it might be that the chasm was wider and deeper during the Sixties...and that it corresponded to the Generation Gap that, for much of the period, must have had Hollywood honchos hustling to create laff-fests that would somehow appeal to their increasingly edgy audiences while still remaining family-friendly.

One of the more successful efforts (in terms of quality if not box office) was The President's Analyst, in which James Coburn plays a swinging psychoanalyst who agrees to make himself available to the man in the Oval Office and understandably goes crazy from the pressure. Written and directed by improv pioneer Theodore J. Flicker on the cusp of the movie industry's transition from the Production Code to the more permissive ratings sytem, the 1967 movie remains remarkably (and appallingly) fresh with its takes on surveillance, big business, the Feds, and the culture wars while poignantly preserving the sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll grooviness of its times. Propelled by plot devices common to the period, the movie is predictable in places, but it's also surprising in others, with strong performances from the gong-banging Coburn, as well as Severn Darden (from Second City), Godfrey Cambridge, Walter Burke, Eduard Franz, William Daniels, Joan Darling, Will Geer, Barry "Eve of Destruction" McGuire, Arte Johnson (almost unrecognizable) and Pat Harrington Jr., who would eventually turn up on One Day at a Time. In their roles, Joan Delaney and Jill Banner are better than you might initially think. The soundtrack is by Argentina's own Lalo Schifrin.

The movie's Film Forum revival is supposed to end Thursday, but it is available on DVD.

RELATED Taking Off will be at MOMA in a week.



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