Show Notes
It's week 2 of the Zatoichi boxset and we get our first taste of what will become a favorite aspect of the films moving forward: Zatoichi versus a corrupt government. That doesn't show up until movie six though, and we've got two others to talk about, too. First up is Zatoichi the Fugitive (Tokuzo Tanaka, 1963) which kicks off with some comedy sumo and sees the return of Otane from the first two films. Then we have Zatoichi on the Road (Kimiyoshi Yasuda, 1963) where Zatoichi decides that nearly everyone involved in the plot is bad and deserves to die. And we finish up with Zatoichi and the Chest of Gold (Kazuo Ikehiro, 1964) which not only brings us that aforementioned bad magistrate but is the most artistically interesting of the series so far, no doubt in part due to the cinematography of Kazuo Miyagawa who also shot Rashomon, Ugetsu, Yojimbo, and Floating Weeds across a vast career that also spans five more Zatoichi films that we won't touch for a few more weeks.
More from Lost in Criterion
This week we have our first film from Agnes Varda's husband Jacques Demy and our second film called Lola. Kicking off The Essential Jacques Demy boxset we have his feature length debut Lola (1961) a "musical without the music" except for one very musical number written by Varda. This week the Collection also gives us 4 short films and while we are immediately in love with the work of Demy, at least one of the shorts puts that love to the test. Fortunately, for every profile of a modern saint there's also one about a rural shoemaker.
Sometimes years of doing the podcast align in fun ways and we get to talk about David Cronenberg's Scanners (1981) in October without moving anything around. Scanners is a smorgasbord of body horror effects that starts with a bang and keeps going. But it's also a Parallax View-esque political thriller with murderous psychics. That is to say, it's great.
Pat is a huge fan of the Beatles, which he inherits from his dad, and which he this week fails to pass on to his own children. Richard Lester's A Hard Day's Night (1964) is a movie those kids should like; it's fun and funny, it's The Beatles just on the cusp of being THE BEATLES. Popular as anything already, but not quite bigger than Jesus yet. The film is an interesting look at how that popularity is a prison for four guys in their early 20s.
Georges Franju's homage to/remake of Louis Feuillade's 1916 serial, Judex (1963) is a dreamy tale of revenge full of contrivance and illogic and every single frame is a masterpiece. Encountering films like this is biggest reward of doing the podcast.
Howard Hawks directs this grand western in which Montgomery Cliff maybe introduces Hollywood to The Method and John Wayne learns to act. It's a story about greed and America but it's not an open critique because it would be bad if we said America is bad. If nothing else John Wayne would quit the production.