Science is Fiction: 23 Films by Jean Painleve
I often say Jacques Cousteau when I mean to say Jean Cocteau. Making matters more confusing is the missing link between them — French marine biologist Jean Painleve — whose underwater cinema predates Cousteau's by decades and, whose body of work, like Cocteau's, is dedicated to exploring life on "the other side." Except that Cocteau entered mysterious realms in his films through mirrors, telephones and radios; Painleve, through the sea and micro-photography.

Painleve pioneered, not only wildlife films, but popular wildlife films. A good example is his entertaining movie about crustaceans, photographed in studio-bright black-and-white, one of 23 included in the recently released, three-disc Criterion set "Science is Fiction." We watch the intrigues of sea creatures who disguise themselves in algae and sponges, as the narrator enthusiastically mixes fact with poetic observation — comparing the crustaceans to ballerinas, "Japanese warriors" and "praying buddhas."

Anthropomorphism dominates, but Painleve also focuses on traits that set his subjects apart. Among sea horses, for example, it is the female who produces the eggs and the male who gives birth. Painleve spent sleepless nights behind the camera, even installing an electrical shock mechanism on his hat should he nod off while waiting for one pregnant papa to pop. The footage of baby sea horses bursting out of the convulsing male's pouch was worth the wait: "The Sea Horse" (1933) was Painleve's most popular movie; he even spun off a jewelry line.

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“The sea horse was for me a splendid way of promoting the kindness and virtue of the father while at the same time underlining the necessity of the mother. In other words, I wanted to re-establish the balance between male and female.”— Jean Painleve

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The care Painleve took in choosing music for his films also was ahead of its time. He had Darius Milhaud score "The Sea Horse"; Painleve wrote his own music for "Sea Urchins" (1954), a symphony of banging pots and pans in tribute, he said, to Edgar Varese but with a mambo bar thrown in "so as not to be taken too seriously"; and "The Vampire" (1945) is set to a couple of Duke Ellington songs.





"The Vampire" is classic Painleve in the way it fixes on an odd attribute of an exotic animal — the vampire bat's affinity for the blood of other animals — and draws out a comparison to humans. “When I was finishing the film," Painleve said, "I noticed how the vampire bat extends its wing before going to sleep. I thought it looked like the Nazi heil-Hitler salute.” Painleve also taps fictional cinema here, coupling footage of the vampire bat with scenes from "Nosferatu."

It was that penchant for playful presentation, and fetishism of the bizarre, that sent some of Painleve's fellow scientists storming out of his screenings, denying the validity of his work. But Painleve, like his subjects, was a strange breed. He was a scientist crossed with an artist.
— Becky

A Colt Is My Passport (1967)

DIRECTOR: Takashi Nomura
WRITERS: Shuichi Nagahara, Nobuo Yamada, Shinji Fujiwara
CAST: Jo Shishido, Jerry Fujio, Chitose Kobayashi
MUSIC: Harumi Ibe
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Shigeyoshi Mine
COUNTRY: Japan
GENRE: Noir, Action, Crime
MISCELLANY: 84m; with subtitles; on DVD

When Quentin Tarantino fused the samurai movie and the spaghetti western in "Kill Bill" in 2003, he was carrying on a great cinematic tradition that reached its apex with Akira Kurosawa's "Yojimbo" in 1961, a samurai movie patterned after the western, film noir and a Dashiell Hammett detective novel and, in turn, the blueprint for the breakout spaghetti western "Fistful of Dollars." Similar cross-pollination shaped "A Colt Is My Passport," a Japanese gangster film indebted to noir, with a spaghetti-western-style soundtrack as vital to the story as Ennio Morricone's scores were to Sergio Leone's films, infusing scenes with the emotion absent from hardboiled faces.

One of those hardboiled faces belongs to Jo Shishido, whose chipmunk-cheeked mug might be as emblematic of gangster cinema as the jowls of Edward G. Robinson. Here, the actor famous for his outsider Yakuza roles plays a double-crossed killer named Kamimura, hired by a gang to assassinate a rival. It is thrilling to watch the ever-cool Shishido take on the Yakuza system, and easy to forget that Kamimura is a cold-blooded killer himself as we become invested in his struggle to reach air or sea, beyond the gang's reach. This free agent is at least preferable to the detestable, entrenched Yakuza leaders, who are relentless in their pursuit of power.

The film's east-west dichotomy runs frequently into a philosophical clash between Fate and Free Will, and the schizophrenia is particularly sharp in the scene in which two characters taken hostage at an airport watch their plane lift off in one direction as their captors drive them off in another, but soon recoup the car using the second brake they had the foresight to install.



Perhaps the most traditionally noirish setting is a seaside hotel, where Mina, a sad-eyed maid, wards off the groping hands of the trucker and sailor lodgers. She feels stuck in Yokohama because her gangster ex-boyfriend will not permit her to leave. Mina introduces Kamimura to the barge crews, whose docks are the only place where the Yakuza cannot gain solid footing. As Kamimura and a gangster stand on a barge and make a deal in which it is unclear who has the advantage, the men rock with the waves.

This all leads to a stunning showdown in a dusty landfill evocative of westerns, where Kamimura seeks to foil Fate by manipulating time itself. He uses a few guns, too.



Kamimura tells Mina that as a child he would have starved had he not learned to fight. He's still fighting to survive, but the cynicism that keeps him alive coexists with a childlike wonder, in the way the flight of a bird or an insect holds his attention and coaxes the shadow of a smile just before he is about to kill, or be killed.
— Becky


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Intentions of Murder (1964)

DIRECTOR: Shohei Imamura
WRITERS: Shohei Imamura, Shinji Fujiwara, Keiji Hasbebe
CAST: Masumi Hurukawa, Ko Nishimura, Shigeru Tsuyuguchi
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Sinsaku Himeda
COUNTRY: Japan
GENRE: Drama
MISCELLANY: 150m; with subtitles; on DVD

Sadako is told to beware the family curse, and it's true she finds herself paying for the transgressions of one of her ancestors.

Yet if Sadako is cursed, it's by the living, not the dead. By her husband, who betrays her, beats her, belittles her, and bosses her around. By her mother-in-law and her son Masaru, who also lord over her, calling her fat and lazy. By her husband's myopic mistress, who hypocritically stalks her with a camera in the hopes of capturing an indiscretion. By the thief who breaks into her home and rapes her, then decides he loves her and shows it by forcing himself on her again and again.

After the first assault, Sadako considers her options. Reporting the crime is ruled out; the shame would be unbearable. Suicide appears the honorable thing to do, but first she cleans the house. Soon, she's devouring a plate of cold food, deferring her death until she sees her child again. Sadako's feeble suicide attempts are portrayed with a gentle, life-affirming humor. Eventually, self-destruction turns to self-preservation.

After the assault, Sadako recalls a scene from her youth, when a suitor called up to her bedroom window. That she opened the window strikes her as important in retrospect. Though never spoken, there is a sense Sadako blames herself for the rape, and her passivity dares the viewer to blame her, too. Many characters mistake Sadako's humility for lack of intelligence, but the director discerns this meek woman's wisdom, and her will to live. It is hard to believe that a man made "Intentions of Murder," so sensitive and nuanced is the portrait of the heroine.

There is ever a thin line between fantasy and reality; does Sadako cease at a certain point to be a victim by making the rapist her lover? Imamura is not explicit, but takes pains to reveal Sadako's thoughts, through reflective voiceovers and striking images. When she meditates on the dead, a shirt hanging on a clothesline dances in the breeze. One of the most memorable images, evocative of Maya Deren's "Meshes" — Sadako's frightened face reflected in the surface of an iron wielded by the thief — is repeated when her husband forces himself on her. Another haunting image, the corpse of Masaru's pet mouse, eaten hollow by its cage companion, re-emerges in the child's murals. We get a glimpse of how this domestic drama is being processed by the boy through the lurid scenes he draws all over the home's sliding screens. Throughout the film, violent subterranean episodes show up in this way, as ripples on the surface of the family's life.

I left "Intentions of Murder" caring deeply for Sadako. Imamura's long-suffering heroine, like Fellini's Cabiria, is one of cinema's great survivors.
— Becky

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Ganja & Hess (1973)

DIRECTOR: Bill Gunn
WRITER: Bill Gunn
PHOTOGRAPHY: James Hinton
MUSIC: Sam Waymon
COUNTRY: USA
CAST: Duane Jones, Marlene Clark, Bill Gunn, Sam Waymon
GENRE: Horror, blaxploitation
MISCELLANY: 110m; on DVD

When the studio commissioned "Ganja & Hess," the expectation was a blaxploitation horror flick that would cash in on the commercial success of 1972's "Blacula." Playwright Bill Gunn, uninterested in such an assignment but hungry for the opportunity to direct, resolved to make a vampire movie the vehicle of his artistic vision.

The result is a challenging film that failed commercially and critically.

Here is a vampire movie that uses the word victim instead of vampire. A "blaxploitation" hero who is intellectual, wealthy and suburban.

Intensely visual and aural with dialogue and turns of plot that often feel spontaneous and non-linear, "Ganja & Hess" is not so action-packed as its horror brethren but is far creepier. It is arthouse psychotronica in the vein of "Suspiria" with the rhythm of free jazz and an underlying bluesy moan. The tapestry of disturbing images and sounds seeps into the psyche: Plastic-wrapped corpses dotting fields of golden grass; porcelain, linoleum and glass cups stained sanguine; a buzzing noise to signal blood cravings; childish tribal chanting that is sped up and slowed down; twisted religious imagery.








Sadness tinges the horror. Gunn paints the vampire as an addict, and takes pains to show his struggle. We watch Hess Green, doctor of anthropology and geology, whose emotions at first seem pressed behind museum glass, sink into desperation and self-hate, then reach for redemption.

When a troubled assistant, played by Gunn, stabs him with an artifact from the ancient blood-drinking civilization of Myrthia, Hess awakens from death, immortal and thirsty. He finds nonviolent ways to sate his need until bloodlust explodes in a moment of self-defense. Then the assistant's beautiful and opportunistic wife, Ganja, comes looking for her husband, and falls quickly into bed with Hess.

Pioneering black photographer James Hinton shot "Ganja & Hess" in soft, saturated 16mm. The soundtrack, which ranges from gospel fervor and bluesy soul to chants and trance-inducing noise, was scored and performed by Nina Simone's brother Sam Waymon, who also plays a reverend.

The Complete Edition DVD restores Gunn's vision, which was hacked up by the studio and packaged under various lurid pseudonyms over the years, including "Blood Couple," "Double Possession" and the puzzling "Vampires of Harlem."
— Becky

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