Four of The Doomed Farmer’s favorite people are Patrick McGoohan, Orson Welles, and the inextricably linked Akira Kurosawa and Toshiro Mifune.  Here are reviews of three of their lesser known films.


ALL NIGHT LONG (1962)
Written by Nel King & “Peter Achilles” (Paul Jarrico)  Directed by Basil Deardon

Jazz version of “Othello”, with a sweaty Patrick McGoohan as Johnny Cousin/Iago, attempting to undermine the love between a jazz band leader fashioned after Duke Ellington and his white vocalist wife so he can steal her away for his own band, during an all night jam session.  It works, and the Aristotelian unity of time and place (love using that phrase) adds greatly to the intensity.  For once, actors playing musicians mix convincingly with real musicians; McGoohan’s drum solo and Keith Michell’s sax work are as convincing on screen as Mingus and Brubeck playing themselves, and Marti Stevens as vocalist Delia Lane is totally believable, as is her love for her pianist husband Aurelius Rex (Paul Harris).  Also of interest are the fact that the film features two biracial couples and doesn’t make a big deal of either, as well as Michell and McGoohan smoking pot, looking like they know what they are doing.  Ted Scaife’s cinematography is impressive, particularly the few times the film ventures outside to the rainswept London docks.  Damn good.  (Viewed on TCM; also available on the Collectors’ Market.)


FILMING OTHELLO (1978)
Written and Directed by Orson Welles (though no credit as such appears on the film)

This is the first time I’ve watched an entire 84 minute feature on YouTube, and given that this is mostly O.W. as talking head with little going on visually, this was a good film to start with.  With a couple of exceptions, this is Orson talking directly to the camera while seated at his Movieola, telling us how his OTHELLO was made.  Because he is such an entertaining speaker and the creation of his second Shakespearean film is an involved tale, this is a delightful film, though as a film it could as easily have been a “Books on Tape” lecture.  The two major exceptions to this are a long section in which Orson dines with his old Dublin Gate Theatre mentors Hilton Edwards and Michael MacLeammoir (who played Brabantio and Iago, respectively, in Welles’ film), making for a lively roundtable discussion, and a ten minute segment toward the end in which O.W. discusses the film with the audience at the Orson Welles Cinema in Cambridge (the day after I saw him in his final onstage public appearance at Boston’s Symphony Hall - had I but known, I would have been in that Cambridge audience as well, and thus in an Orson Welles film).   This is a rare, German-produced film, and someone calling himself “spotofbother” has done a major service to film lovers everywhere by posting this on-line in eminently watchable form.  Not a great film, but a very entertaining one.  (Unavailable on any home video format, but easily watchable on YouTube.)


SCANDAL (1950)
Written by Ryuzo Kikushima & Akira Kurosawa  Directed by Akira Kurosawa

There are only a few Kurosawa films left that I have never seen, and five of them are contained in the recent Criterion set called “Post-War Kurosawa”.  SCANDAL is what the director himself has called a “protest film”, in this case protesting the reckless freedom of Japan ‘s post-occupation press.  A well known artist played by Toshiro Mifune is caught on film in what appears to be a compromising situation with a famous singer, but which is, in fact, perfectly innocent.  He sues the magazine, and is represented by a down-on-his-luck lawyer played by Takashi Shimura.  Shimura’s character is written and played in such a memorable way that he totally steals the movie away from Mifune’s straight-arrow artist.  Like Welles’ FILMING OTHELLO, this film is not major Kurosawa, but it is nonetheless fascinating, as we see the director attempting to balance Frank Capra-esque sentimentality with Billy Wilder-like satire, and sometimes succeeding.  The long scene between Mifune and his model which leads  into the introduction of Shimura is beautifully done by all concerned, delineating the decent nature of Mifune’s character, the practical nature of his model, and the eccentric, endearing and very funny Shimura.  One wishes that Kurosawa had made a film that was set completely in a trial courtroom, as the trial here is precisely executed.  Unfortunately, the scandal rag’s publisher is such a one-dimensional villain and Mifune and the singer so saintly that the dramatic deck is stacked, allowing Shimura’s more complex and interesting lawyer character even more opportunities to purloin the viewer’s sympathy.  The final image of the wall covered in torn posters of the scandal magazine’s cover succinctly expresses the ephemeral nature of such scandals.  (Viewed on Criterion’s “Postwar Kurosawa” DVD set.)
—Robert Deveau
The Farmer of Lacking Caution