Cinema (1963)

HAPPINESS OF US ALONE Two deaf mutes marry and begin their life of tragedy together. Their first child is lost because of their deafness, the husband’s brother becomes a hoodlum, the mother-in-law moves in. After a series of tragedies the wife almost commits suicide but is saved by her husband’s love. Finally the wife is run down and dies because of her deafness. Shortly her husband is dead too. But, their second child grows to be a strong, healthy boy with a future. Moments of tender love. Beautiful cinematography. A little melodramatic. A fine performance by beautiful and talented Hideko Takamine. PRODUCED BY TOKYO ELGA CO., LTD. • RELEASED BY TOHO PICTURES • DIRECTION AND SCREENPLAY BY ZENZO MATSUYAMA • CINEMATOGRAPHY BY MASAO TAMAI • WITH HIDEKO TAKA MINE, KEIJU KOBAYASHI • IZUMI HARA •MITSUKO KUSABUE AND YOICHI NUMATA. LAST YEAR IN MARIENBAD A film whose director, Alain Resnais (“Hiroshima, Mon Amour") and writer, Robbe-Grillet, can not agree on interpretation. Filled with fragments . . . idlers . . . ifs . . . present . . . past . . . reality . . . fantasy, “Marienbad” creates a confusion that the audience must piece together. At first rejected by French distributors who felt it “too difficult” for the audience, and then grabbed up after it won the Great Golden Lion of the Venice Film Festival, the film at last received the adulation from the audience of which it demands so much. An intellectual film that finds its rapport with the audience in its idyllic romantic attitudes, “Marienbad’' completes the first cycle of film making — from romance to realism to romance. The difference is one of method and the man who conceived it, Alain Resnais. Rather than making romance real with idealized types, he makes reality a romance with natural types ... it is as if you were watching yourself with the attachment the audience of the Twenties had for Valentino. Removed from convention and acting with a creative rather than a logical instinct, Resnais is breathing new life onto the screen by drawing on unconventional sources . . . just as the comic page drew new life from the montage sequences of D. W. Griffith and John Ford, Resnais in turn is quite consciously drawing from the cartoonist who began it all, Milton Caniff. WEST SIDE STORY Pictures, music, dancing, color. A great film. All the turbulence of a street fight. The timeless love of “Romeo and Juliet.’’ A picture for the mass audience and the particular. PRODUCED BY ROBERT WISE FOR THE MIRISCH CO. IN ASSOCIATION WITH SEVEN ARTS PRODUCTIONS • RELEASED BY UNITED ARTISTS • DIRECTED BY ROBERT WISE AND JEROME ROBBINS • SCREENPLAY BY ERNEST LEHMAN • MUSIC BY LEONARD BERNSTEIN • LYRICS BY STEPHEN SONDHEIM • CINEMATOGRAPHER DANIEL FAPP • COSTUMES IRENE SCHARAFF • WITH NATALIE WOOD, RICHARD BEYMER, RUSS TAMBLYN, RITA MORENO, GEORGE CHAKIRIS, AND AROUND 100 GREAT DANCERS. THRONE OF BLOOD This is Kurosawa at his best! A must fot the audience that defines the motion picture as a visual art. With a graphic stylization as defined as Eisenstein or Welles and an understanding of editing on a par with the best, he has made a spectacle film as it should be made. Directing hordes of thousands or the face of Mifune, Kurosawa handles both with the eye of the artist, unimpressed and unhampered by anything that is not essential to the story. The story is that of Shakespeare’s “Macbeth,” its scenes artfully transposed to the setting of medieval Japan. The heroic role is played by Toshiro Mifune (who also played the bandit in "Rashomon” and the wild samurai in “Seven Samurai”), co-starred with Isuzu Yamada (Japan’s leading actress) and Takashi Shimura (star of “Doomed” and the leader in “Seven Samurai”). NOW SHOWING • PRODUCED BY TOHO COMPANY, LTD. • CINEMATOGRAPHER ASAICHI NAKAI.