Speed (スピード, 1980)

It is amazing to think that Taku Furukawa’s award-winning animated short Speed (1980) is just over 30 years old because the style and the message seem just as fresh and relevant today as they did then. Our “high speed society,” as the opening title card calls it, has only gotten faster and more frenetic in the intervening years. 

Using his trademark sketchy, casually rendered illustration style, Furukawa depicts the various methods humankind has used over the centuries to do things more quickly and conveniently. Furukawa’s minimalist drawing style has much in common with the New Yorker illustrations of Saul Steinberg (1914-1999) or Ed Arno (1916-2008).

In the first section of the film, a man and a monkey sit at the foot of a tall, fruit bearing tree. The man shakes the tree in order to get the fruit. In order to obtain more, he climbs the tree. The monkey seems shocked by the man’s aggressiveness. The man does not share with the monkey. In fact, in his greed to have the last fruit on the tree he disregards his own safety and causes the branch to break. He falls with it to the ground. This scene is followed by a number of comical short vignettes which depict man trying to master skills such as starting a fire, fishing, making wine, and so on.

In the climactic point of this sequence, the man blasts off into outer space with the rocket ship landing in the eye of the moon in a visual reference to Georges Méliès’s pioneering film A Trip to the Moon (Le voyage dans la lune, 1902). Coloured shapes burst like confetti from the mouth of the moon and the sequence of events appears backwards at an accelerated speed with a black background replacing the white and neon-bright coloured lines replacing the black lines (see comparison above).

Once the images are back at the beginning of the story, Furukawa reverts to the original black on white style and a new story of mankind’s advancing progess takes place this time with an emphasis on art and design. The third section of the film takes advances in transportation over the centuries as its theme. If Furukawa were making the film today, I could imagine him doing a fourth section with the theme of communication.

In the wake of the disaster at Fukushima, it would seem that we need to heed Furukawa’s warning more than ever: faster does not necessarily mean better, and perhaps we need to slow down and appreciate the world in its natural state and be respectful of the other living things that we share this planet with. Although it may have a serious message at its heart, the message is related with Furukawa’s characteristic sense of humour.

This review is part of Nishikata Review’s 2011 Noburo Ofuji Award Challenge.

Speed appears on the Anido DVD Takun Films. Please support this artist by purchasing his work.

© Catherine Munroe Hotes 2011

Tokyo Joe (東京ジョー, 1949)

Made at the peak of Humphrey Bogart’s career, Tokyo Joe (Stuart Heisler, 1949) provides some rare glimpses into life in Tokyo under the American Occupation. Bogart plays Joe Barrett, a retired lieutenant colonel who ran a nightclub in Tokyo before the war and was married to the beautiful European singer Trina (Florence Marly). For reasons known only to himself, Joe left his wife and Japan shortly before the attack on Pearl Harbor and the intervening war made it impossible for him to return.

Did they really label the streets with letters of the alphabet during the Occupation?

Several years afer the war, Joe decides to pick up the pieces of his life in Tokyo. Haunted by the song Trina used to sing, “These Foolish Things Remind Me of You”, he wonders what happened to his wife whom he believes must have died. He discovers that Trina has indeed survived the war but has remarried and has a child, and that he will need to deal with a lot of red tape, hassle, and prejudice in order to go back into business with his old friend Ito (Teru Shimada). He gets blackmailed by Baron Kimura (Sessue Hayakawa) into participating in an illegal smuggling operation and has to find a way to reconcile his personal life and ambitions with the precarious situation he finds himself in.

Bogart in a rickshaw with Tokyo streets rear projected behind him.

 It was impossible to shoot Tokyo Joe on location in 1948 – the first Hollywood shoot there wouldn’t happen until House of Bamboo (read my review of it) in 1955 – but Columbia Pictures was able to send a camera crew to Tokyo to shoot exterior footage. They were the first Hollywood camera crew to be granted permission to shoot there by the American Occupation. The opening aerial footage of Tokyo is quite impressive and Columbia pictures tries to give the film an air of authenticity with the street scene footage in the opening scenes when Joe first arrives in Tokyo. Sadly, these are rather awkwardly handled through the use of a Bogart body double and Bogart shot with rear projection of the Tokyo footage. 

A Bogart body double on the streets of Tokyo.

In spite of this, Tokyo Joe is an oddly likeable film. To be certain, it is not one of Bogart’s best performances and the plot and dialogue are a bit creaky at times, but there are enough interesting elements to keep fans of classic Hollywood films content. The story is a lot more believable than House of Bamboo when it comes to the portrayal of interactions between Japanese and foreign characters. As the actors were shot entirely in the Columbia Pictures Hollywood studios, there are the usual faux pas of characters wearing their shoes indoors but the interiors are more authentically staged than in House of Bamboo. In some ways they are the polar opposites of each other - the exterior shots in House of Bamboo were far superior to their interiors, and vice versa for Tokyo Joe.  In the name of realism, Bogart even takes a stab at speaking Japanese, which one would expect as the character that he plays lived so long in Japan – though he of course keeps the famous Bogart intonation. 

Great camaraderie between Bogart and Shimada.

 The American pilots that Joe hires demonstrate the kind of prejudices and suspicion towards the Japanese that one would expect considering the brutality of the Pacific War. Any negative comments about the Japanese are counterbalanced by Joe’s broader experience of the Japanese – particularly his close friendship with Ito. Ito’s friendly, open nature is contrasted sharply by the slyness and manipulativeness of Baron Kimura. This role was perfect for Sessue Hayakawa, who had mastered the role of the villain during the silent period. This film marked the beginning of Hayakawa’s post war comeback in Hollywood. 

Sessue Hayakawa plays bad well.

 The use of Japanese and Japanese-American actors aids the authentic feel of the film. The dialogue might not be as snappy as Casablanca (Michael Curtiz, 1942) and the plot might not be as tight as The Maltese Falcon (John Huston, 1941), but the film putters along at a decent pace.  Furthermore, it’s nice to see a more well balanced portrayal of the Japanese in a Hollywood picture than the faceless, nameless, soulless soldiers in the war movies of the day. 

I would recommend Tokyo Joe to people who are interested in the time period. It is certainly interesting to see how they depict the American Occupation. I’m not sure how realistic the plot points are concerning war criminals hiding out in Korea trying to sneak back into the country to plot a coup, but the rising fear of communism was certainly a key concern of the times.

© Catherine Munroe Hotes 2011

Tokyo Joe [Priced-down Reissue]

Keiichi Tanaami’s Favourite Animation

Since I was a child, I’ve always loved Disney movies and cartoons in general. Each time I draw a picture regardless of what it’s for I always think about how it would look if animated. That’s why animating my drawings comes quite naturally to me. – Keiichi Tanaami (Tokyo, 3 August 2009)

The words that most often are used to describe Keiichi Tanaami's artistic style include “pop art,” “surreal,” “psychedelic,” and “experimental.” Watching his animated films, it is easy to make comparisons with Tanaami’s mentor Andy Warhol, other experimental filmmakers of the 60s like Stan Brakhage, and masters of abstract animation like Len Lye, Oskar Fischinger, and Norman McLaren.

In fact, Tanaami has been influenced in equal measures by both mainstream animation and experimental fare. During his interview for the DVD/book Set A Portrait of Keiichi Tanaami, the artist speaks of his childhood passion for Disney movies and shorts. On the 2003 Laputa survey, Tanaami listed a wide range of animation styles as his top animations of all time. Not only do American animated classics like Steamboat Willie, Superman, and Mr. Bug Goes to Town make his list, but also some of the best of world animation including works by McLaren, Suzan Pitt, Raoul Servais, and Paul Grimault. Tanaami also lists early experimental animation by  Fischinger,  Hans Richter, Alexandre Alexeieff and Claire Porter.

In his commentary about his selections, Tanaami writes that the films of Oskar Fischinger have made a significant impact on him as an artist, influencing many aspects of his own animation. Of Raoul Servais’s Nocturnal Butterflies, he says that the film has a certain “je ne sais quoi” – a special quality or depth that one cannot achieve in digital formats. Tanaami does use computer technology in the editing process of his films today, but he and his frequent collaborator Nobuhiro Aihara still prefer to draw their films by hand.

Here are Tanaami's best of animation picks:

Superman

(スーパーマン, Dave Fleischer, 1941) 

Asparagus

(アスパラガス, Suzan Pitt, 1979)

Night on Bald Mountain / Une nuit sur le mont chauve

(禿山の一夜, Alexandre Alexeieff / Claire Parker, France, 1933)

Mr. Bug Goes to Town

(aka Hoppity Goes to Town / バッタ君町に行く, Dave Fleischer, USA, 1941)

Blinkity Blank

(線と色の即興詩, Norman McLaren, Canada, 1955)

Le petit soldat 

(小さな兵士, Paul Grimault, France, 1947)

Le roi et l’oiseau 

(王と鳥 やぶにらみの暴君, Paul Grimault, France, 1948)

Studie Nr. 1-13

(スタディ , Oskar Fischinger, experimental series, 1929-33)

Nocturnal Butterflies/Papillons de nuit

(夜の蝶, Raoul Servais, 1998)

Rhythm 21

(リズム２１, Hans Richter, Germany, 1921)

Steamboat Willie

(蒸気船ウィリー, Ub Iwerks/Walt Disney, USA, 1928)

Source: Laputa Top 150 World and Japanese Animation (2003)

A Retrospective of Keiichi Tanaami's animated films will be screened in Toronto on April 23rd with the proceeds going to earthquake/tsunami charity.  The retrospective will then travel to Winnipeg and Montreal.  Click here to learn more.

© Catherine Munroe Hotes 2011