sibleybridges

I guess this is the grandfather of mumblecore. It's mostly a loosely scripted film of men about to get drunk, actively drunk, or previously drunk aimlessly wandering the streets and living the general life of a homeless person in 1950s NYC. Most of the "conversations" are old guys arguing over nonsensical topics that are hard to even understand because they are all so inebriated. At barely over an hour, this is probably the perfect length for a movie that's not about anything other than a picture of lost people who inhabit a geographic location at a certain period of history.

Watched on Kanopy.

During a wedding reception, several story lines are revealed by the attending paparazzi about corporation executives doing shady deals with the government. After the wedding, several police investigations are helped by a corporate insider who is trying to take down the company form the inside.

Plot, plot, plot. This movie is very thick on lots of woven plots. I enjoyed the story of revenge, but it's obvious that by 1960, Akira Kurosawa was being allowed to do whatever he wanted with no editor. This kind of meanders to an end during the last 40ish minutes after having a great beginning and several great scenes of the setup, but definitely needed about 45-50 minutes cut out that just didn't matter.

This story would actually make a great tv series because you could have each episode focus on one of the 6-8 main characters and then another 5 or so episodes of how the plots all come together. Season 2 of True Detective feels like it has a lot of similarities.

Coppola must have designed the opening wedding scene of The Godfather after what is shown here. Even though it's a totally different story, the wedding that opens the movie lasts 20 minutes and you learn lots of info concerning at least a dozen characters both on and off screen to go along with symbolic gestures that will play out during the rest of the movie. You are learning this info in a variety of ways as well from the paparazzi, to the police, to the participants of the wedding. The Godfather did it better, but I definitely see parallels in pacing and shot selection.

Watched on dvd from Criterion.