Tokyo Twilight (Tôkyô Boshoku)

 

Director Yasujirō Ozu

 

 

 

 

 

 

TOKYO TWILIGHT (Tôkyô Boshoku)                    B                                                             Japan  (141 mi)  1957 d: Yasujirō Ozu

A piercing portrait of family life, easily the most downbeat, melancholic, and melodramatic of Ozu’s films, a noir-influenced family drama that is also Ozu’s bleakest film, given a German Expressionist look, as if shot through a fog, like early Hitchcock films from the 20’s, such as The Lodger (1927), where the cheerfully ironic opening and closing music resembles what you might hear in a Fellini film, also used in a similar capacity during a funeral sequence of EARLY SPRING (1956).  The lurid, somewhat sensational aspect of the material may have grown out of the criticism the director received that his films were out of touch with the youth of today, so a rebellious youth is fully integrated into this movie.  Yet it was not a success, the only Ozu film not to make the top ten of the Kinema Jumbo poll since THE ONLY SON (1936), catching Ozu off-guard, where he and longtime co-screenwriter Kōgo Noda feuded, with Noda apparently unhappy with Ozu’s final screenplay, both viewing this film as a failure.  Slow to accept new technical advances, this is Ozu’s last black and white film, shot by longtime collaborator Yūharu Atsuta under barely lit circumstances, most of it shot after dark, provocatively dealing with issues such as marital discord, rebellious adolescence, premarital sex, abortion, and suicide.  In an era of Covid and the wearing of masks, this film is eerily striking with some prominent characters wearing face masks as protection from the contamination of pollution in the city, with much of this film taking place in seedy Tokyo neighborhoods.  By any measure, this is a different kind of Ozu film, unlike any of his others, his only postwar film taking place in the dead of winter, where the lighting, in particular, accentuates shadowy figures walking late at night down darkly lit spaces, narrow alleyways, and the cramped quarters of small bars, mahjong and pachinko parlors, or noodle houses that dot the landscape, with nearly all the action taking place at night, or in shadowy interiors, offering a grim tone where the protagonists deal with the dissatisfactions in life, shockingly offering a psychologically downbeat subject matter haunted by an implacable shadow of death, where there are shady characters outside the family featuring plenty of drinking and gambling.  There’s even a Robert Mitchum movie poster from the film FOREIGN INTRIGUE (1956) hanging on the wall in one of these dimly lit bars.  It opens, however, in a wintry scene with the always sympathetic Shukichi (Chishū Ryū) taking a seat at a Ginza neighborhood sushi bar ordering a meal with some warm saki, as we see commercial buildings, power lines, and one lonesome street light illuminating the early dusk, with Tokyo viewed as a collection of neighborhoods with interconnected lives and stories, a city still in progress, a place and a people in flux, dislocated and often alone, though Shukichi lives in the more quietly traditional Zoshigaya district of Tokyo with two daughters, one obedient and one disobedient.  His wife left some time ago for a younger man during the build-up to war, abandoning her children, with Shukichi concealing his grief, never burdening the children, sparing them the circumstances, though this film explores the ramifications of that concealment.  The normally angelic Setsuko Hara appears in this film (her fourth Ozu film, the only one where her character is neither single nor widowed) as Takako, the elder daughter of Shukichi, in her most taboo-shattering role as an emotionally dispirited though proud young woman who leaves her abusive and alcoholic husband, bringing her 2-year old daughter with her, moving back into the home of her father, where she is obediently attendant to him, wearing traditional Japanese clothing.  While there was also a brother who died in a mountain climbing accident several years earlier, Takako is unsettled and overly distraught right from the outset.  When her father asks what’s wrong, she can barely say, overwrought with endless turmoil, carrying the weight of the world on her shoulders, never really having a moment’s reprise.  When younger daughter Akiko (Ineko Arima), a college student, arrives home even later, she is sullen and noncommittal, completely rebuffing her father’s attempts to find out where she’s been, verging closer to open defiance and blatant disrespect.  Shukichi is clearly exhausted with Akiko’s disobedient refusal to communicate, apparently unable to get through to her, where her impudence is an issue.  Akiko’s not really in school any more, learning English shorthand instead, hanging out in bars and mahjong parlors late into the night, appearing surly and bad-tempered, never smiling, smoking cigarettes while acting nonchalant, a modern reflection of Western fashions and values, always dressed in a shabby, wrinkled coat, usually seen in search of her boyfriend Kenji (Masami Taura), who has been avoiding her, with people calling her derogatory names behind her back.  By the time she catches up to him, she reveals that she’s pregnant, but he’s completely indifferent, expressing no interest whatsoever, even questioning whether the baby is his, the standard modus operandi for male denial that leaves her in a quandary.  Offering a pitiless view of a Japanese family beset by repressed secrets and lies, there seems to be no end to the damage done, resulting not just in the fracturing of the Japanese family, but even more importantly, how individuals inexplicably blame themselves for the pain it causes.  In no other film does Setsuka Hara look so world-weary and beaten-down as she does here. 

A film that reveals the complex and often corrosive impact of American occupation, which serves as an unseen backdrop for all Ozu’s postwar films, where traditional Japanese ways of life struggled in contrast with the western imposition of modernist, capitalist, and thoroughly American consumer practices.  Postwar Japan was a time when the Japanese identity was reconstructed under the influential gaze of American eyes to serve American interests.  Young people of Japan in the middle of the twentieth century came of age during the rise of television and mass commercialized media, which was complicated and amplified by the leering presence of American military bases nearby, which helped change the face of Japanese society.  This is the larger context underlying this lurid family drama.  Of note, Shukichi tells Takako that he read her husband’s article entitled “Resistance to Freedom,” a rare protest against his country’s failure to question the magnitude of American commercial and political influence.  Shukichi has a comfortable position working as a bank executive, meeting up for lunch with his sister Shigeko (Haruko Sugimura), who gets to work right away in finding marrying options for Akiko, believing this is her best option.  It’s an interesting intersection of the old world meeting the new world, using an old world solution for a modern era problem, with Akiko resembling that 50’s juvenile delinquent so prevalent in American movies, like Nicholas Ray’s Rebel Without a Cause (1955), where teenagers are often viewed as socially maladjusted.  Ozu applies the same principal here, as Akiko struggles with being raised without a mother, who has been presumed dead, but she runs into a woman purely by chance, Kikuko, (Isuzu Yamada, Lady Macbeth in Kurosawa’s THRONE OF BLOOD released earlier that same year), the proprietor of a mahjong parlor in the Gotando neighborhood, known for its unpaved roads and seedy bars, who was asking a lot of questions about her, knowing her entire family history, making her think  this could be her mother.  When they meet, it raises existential questions in her mind about where she came from.  When Takako learns her sister actually rediscovered their mother, she quickly moves to protect her, paying the woman a visit while angrily informing her to never reveal she is actually Akiko’s mother.  Yet when Akiko learns her sister paid a visit to the mahjong parlor, she immediately confronts her, suspecting something is wrong.  Takako is forced to acknowledge their mother abandoned them at an early age to run off with another man, believing they would never see her again, while exhibiting shock that she actually turned up again in Tokyo.  When Shukichi learns his brash younger daughter has been asking for money from relatives, he tries to speak with her, but Akiko is evasive, continually hiding the truth, as the money was for an abortion, something she could never speak about openly (though abortion was legal in Japan since 1948), sharing the truth with her sister, but the shame this would bring her father is a primary reason she could never be honest with him, so she invents excuses and little lies.  That experience, however, leaves her emotionally drained, never fully recovering afterwards.   When Shigeko pays a visit with her marital suggestions, her joyful mood quickly turns sour, as Akiko’s not the least bit interested, literally showing contempt for the idea.  Because of her standoffishness, it is perceived as Western belligerence, seemingly wanting things her own way, where she’s such a disappointment to her father, who wonders how she turned out this way.  Takako is the intermediary, always supporting her sister, identifying with her inability to find acceptance either within her family or in broader society, feeling like an outcast.  Akiko begins doubting herself, questioning where she really came from, actually believing she is an outcast, that Shukichi is not her father, running back to Kikuko, expressing her own hatred for having been abandoned while demanding the truth, but she swears Shukichi is her father, once again leaving Akiko in a quandary, not knowing what to think, but never really feeling close with her father, instead feeling isolated and alone, which is never more apparent than when she is waiting in a bar for Kenji to show up, still waiting well past midnight, revealing a configuration of thick shadows in dark spaces, when a detective in civilian clothes (wearing a mask) picks her up and hauls her down to the police station, with Takako (also wearing a mask) coming in the wee hours to the station to pick her up.  While not breaking any laws other than curfew (the same crime police use to haul James Dean into the police station in Nicholas Ray’s film), she is simply a young girl seen as being in the wrong place at the wrong time.  Nonetheless, her father denounces her, claiming “You’re no child of mine,” while Akiko claims she’s not wanted, responding with “I should never have been born.”      

A film described by critic Robin Wood as “the one nobody wants to talk about,” this is one of the very rare Ozu films in which laundry hung up to dry does not appear, recurring in every Ozu film from A Story of Floating Weeds (Ukigusa Monogatari) (1934), while trains, on the other hand, are still a staple, normally representing the possibility of movement and change, but here with overtones of melancholy or tragedy.  With melodrama as the dominant element, Ozu stages an anxiety-ridden internalized struggle with the darkest realms, accentuated by bleak and somber settings, including a view from Tokyo harbor revealing smokestacks, industry, and the high cost of modernity, similar to Antonioni’s vision in RED DESERT (1964), described by Andrew Sarris as “the architecture of anxiety,” with a psychologically disoriented Monica Vitti suffering extreme alienation.  In these depictions, the high cost of modernization equates to the loss of the human soul, which becomes fractured and less resolute.  Featuring plenty of tearful scenes, this tragedy is juxtaposed against the calm demeanor of Chishū Ryū, a sympathetic figure who is the picture of fair-mindedness, with Setsuka Hara straddling the generational differences.  Ineko Arima may get swept up not only by the unfortunate circumstances, but the massive influence of the major players she’s working with, coming across as abrasively shrill in stark contrast with their more measured restraint, yet Ozu along with Kōgo Noda have written a scenario where she dominates the screen time, accentuating the plight of the youth.  More shaken than ever, Akiko wanders into a noodle house and orders sake, drinking it all down at once, sitting alone and beleaguered, then ordering another one.  Purely by chance, Kenji walks in the door, once again pleading his case, justifying his own behavior, leaving Akiko little choice but to slap him hard in the face several times before walking out the door without uttering a word.  Shortly afterwards a train whistle marks a significant event, with pedestrians running to the scene of a horrific accident, apparently throwing herself in front of an ongoing train.  With her father and sister at her side in the hospital, she can be heard wanting to start over again, with Ozu curiously cutting to a clock and a yawning nurse, disaffected images that comment on the passing of time.  Takako makes the journey to the mahjong parlor in her mourning clothes, informing Kikuko that she’s to blame for the death of Akiko, before leaving in a scene of repressed yet righteous anger.  A cloud of sadness pervades in the aftermath of a needless death, with Takako suggesting her younger sibling missed not having a mother’s love, leaving her feeling abandoned and alone, while Shukichi, in re-evaluating the situation, feels compelled to acknowledge he always paid her more attention, to the point where he felt Takako might feel slighted, and apologized to his daughter for insisting upon the marriage that has caused such grief, depriving her from marrying the one she loved.  After paying a visit to Takako’s husband, Shukichi realizes he’s not the same person, having become more irritable and disconsolate, thinking only of himself, incapable of recognizing the sorrows of others.  Kikuko then pays a visit to Takako, offering flowers as a tribute, announcing she and her husband would be departing by train later that evening to seek a new job in the far regions of Hokkaido.  Takako is stunned, to say the least, wordlessly viewing her with open disdain.  The scene at the train station is one of the better sequences in the film, as Kikuko holds out hope that Takako will see her off, eagerly looking out the train window, yet what stands out is the serenade of a youthful school choir, establishing a localized sentiment, one with roots in the community, sending off the train with high hopes, accentuating the ideals of youth, likely singing about themes of honor, courage, and integrity, perhaps even valor, all traits associated with exemplary behavior and high ideals, none of which can be attributed to her life, as she watches in vain for any sign that her life matters.  Meanwhile, Takako is rooted to her place within her own family, clearly overwhelmed by her sister’s suicide, speaking with her father about giving her marriage another chance, as her daughter deserves having the love of two devoted parents.  Fully aware that she’d be leaving her father all alone, openly concerned for his welfare, he puts all that aside, reassuring her that he’d be just fine before kneeling to pray at the altar of his deceased daughter.  As he does in so many Ozu films, there is a long, final scene of this stoic, solitary father figure alone on the floor of his finally empty home, calmly staring out in the distance, fully aware of his own solitude, accepting it with a quiet resignation.   

Fury

Director Fritz Lang

California lynching following the kidnapping and murder of Brooke Hart

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

FURY             A-                                                                                                                              USA  (92 mi)  1936  d: Fritz Lang

In this country people don’t land in jail unless they’re guilty.                                                    —a voice in the crowd

Fritz Lang is one of the founders of cinema, with a lengthy career extended from the early Silent era of 1919 until 1960, where his life epitomizes the birth and growth of cinema, deeply entrenched in its rich history.  But this film represented one of his greatest challenges, coming at such a difficult period in his life.  In 1933 he made the German crime thriller THE TESTAMENT OF DR. MABUSE, which contained anti-fascist elements, urging public resistance to the emerging fascist party.  He was subsequently called into the offices of Joseph Goebbels, the Reich Minister of Propaganda charged with enforcing Nazi ideology, informed that his film would be banned, yet he was also offered the job as head of the Nazi-controlled UFA studios.  Asked for time to consider, being part Jewish on his mother’s side, he fled the country that night, leaving his wife behind, who subsequently joined the Nazi party, coming first to Europe and then the United States in 1934, where this is his first film made in America, released just a year after becoming an American citizen, still, perhaps, having language difficulties.  Yet this is a very different kind of movie, a morality play moving from innocence to innocence lost, one of the strongest indictments of America’s small-town lynch mob mentality, coming years before Stuart Heisler’s Among the Living (1941) or William Wellman’s The Ox-Bow Incident (1943), both dealing with the murderous effects of lawlessness from a lynch mob mentality, where vigilante justice replaces democracy, turning America’s ideals on its head.  Heisler’s film was made while Nazi’s were marching unchallenged throughout Europe while America sat on its hands in a position of neutrality, while Wellman’s film was made while America was at war, fighting on two battlefronts, in Europe and the Pacific, becoming a warning shot across the bow reminding viewers just what was at stake in the outcome.  But Lang’s film is the subject of great controversy, altered and tampered with by the studio, becoming a condensed version of what Lang had in mind, made earlier during Hitler’s rise to power transforming Germany into a fascist dictatorship with the Nazi regime eliminating all voices of opposition, fueled by mob violence, a subject Lang was intimately familiar with, having fled from Jewish persecution in Nazi-occupied Germany.  Lang originally envisioned a film about a black lynching, as there was a rise in lynching and mob violence in the 30’s, with NAACP lawyers drafting a federal anti-lynching bill that was killed in the Senate.  To perhaps no one’s amazement, to this day, it is still not a federal crime to lynch someone in America.  The subject, however, was taboo according to MGM head Louis B. Mayer, as his studio turned out family entertainment, not socially conscious filmmaking, with Mayer taking an active dislike to Lang, trying to bury the film upon its release, but Lang was able to sneak in a few scenes, appearing out of place and out of context, such as a black laundress (Edna Mae Harris) singing a slavery freedom song as she hangs out the wash, Oh Boys Carry Me 'Long STEPHEN FOSTER LYRICS ... YouTube (3:25), a scene cut out of the original print. 

Lang was never fully embraced by Hollywood, always viewing him with suspicion as a “foreigner,” as did critical reviews that accused him of anti-Americanism.  An additional thousand employees, both men and women from the German film industry also fled Nazi Germany, most finding employment in the newfound freedom of Hollywood, which welcomed the flood of immigrants, refugees, and exiles.  In the 1930’s Hollywood’s power rested with the movie moguls and producers, not with directors.  Lang was used to having total control over his pictures, never adjusting well to the American studio system, where he remained something of an outlier.  Unaware of labor laws and union rules, Lang was detested on the set for attempting to work through mandatory breaks, with Spencer Tracy vowing never to work with Lang again, with the director described as manipulative, abusive, and painfully insensitive.  Despite these problems, along with a studio-altered ending that infuriated the director, this is a powerful piece of filmmaking, where Lang’s vision of chaos and uncontrolled anarchy on the streets remained unequalled in American cinema until perhaps John Schlesinger’s THE DAY OF THE LOCUST (1975), using German Expressionist film techniques to convey a macabre horror, with close-ups on faces expressing a kind of unbridled glee while inflicting insurmountable damage, setting fire to a police station, targeting a lone prisoner who was suspected of kidnapping a young girl for ransom, who happened to be innocent, but mob hysteria drove the crowd into a feeding frenzy of violence, wanting blood on their hands, and they wouldn’t stop until they got it.  While the film is a stark metaphor for the fascist Storm Trooper tactics of Nazi Germany occurring on American soil, and who better than a prominent German director to film it, becoming a cautionary tale of warning in a time of dark turmoil, when democracy as the fabric holding our nation together is under siege.  Lang also exposes the hypocrisy of the court, revealing how it can be manipulated by outside forces behind the scenes to advance personal agendas, a rare exposé receiving little to no press and rarely identified or examined on any level.  The patriotism on display here, with repeated references to living up to the ideals of the Constitution, were typical of the building sentiment surrounding a world leading up to war, with the film accentuating what happens when all that is instantly thrown out the window, suddenly finding yourself without due process, at the mercy and victim of vigilante justice, where a simple spark fuels the flames of mob rule, where tyranny reigns.  Despite the film’s confusing oddities, the message remains appropriate today as well, where blacks continue to protest against racial injustice and police brutality after the gruesome murder of George Floyd, finding themselves exiles in their own country, targeted and victimized by racial stereotypes and profiling, including centuries of unremedied racial bias, claiming they are subject to different standards of justice and an unequal application of the law, pleading for their Constitutional rights, wanting the same rights and benefits as everybody else in the hopes of forming a “more perfect” union.

The 1930’s was the decade of the Scottsboro Boys, Scottsboro Boys - Trial, Case & Names - HISTORY, 9 black kids (ages 13 to 19) arrested in Alabama for rape while riding the rails (a common practice during Depression times), wrongfully accused by a group of white kids who initially attacked the blacks, claiming it was a “white” train, but when their own assault proved unsuccessful, they contacted the police, with two white women claiming they were raped.  When word got out a lynch mob formed demanding their release, with the National Guard called in to prevent that from happening.  All except the youngest were convicted of rape and sentenced to death, resulting in multiple appeals and retrials while they languished in prison even after the Supreme Court overturned their convictions, now widely considered a miscarriage of justice, highlighted by the use of all-white juries.  Blacks were routinely disenfranchised in the Jim Crow South and unable to vote, which prevented them from serving on jury pools as well.  In addition, Father Charles E. Coughlin, a Roman Catholic priest, leader of the right-wing National Union for Social Justice, broadcast his hour-long radio show spewing hatred towards Jews and Communists, while supporting some of the fascist measures of Adolf Hitler in Germany.  In June 1934, Harper’s magazine published their lead article entitled, Must America Go Fascist?  This potential for fascism in America is at the heart of the film, which is filled with eloquent speeches about American democracy, but it’s less interested in politics than an angered mob’s disposition for violence.  Exiles and immigrants fleeing fascist Europe felt a particular responsibility not only to warn America against mob violence and the breakdown of law and order, but to fight for an idealized America that lived up to its values and principles.  The film is based on a real-life incident pulled directly from newspaper headlines occurring in San Jose, California in 1933 when two men were accused of kidnapping and murdering Brooke Hart, a likeable young department store heir, demanding $40,000 in ransom (Vigilantes in California lynch two suspected murderers ...).  When Hart’s decomposed body was discovered dumped in San Francisco Bay, a mob estimated to be as large as 15,000 people gathered in a park across from the jail demanding vigilante justice, eventually storming the police station, dragging the kidnappers to the park where they were stripped of their clothing, beaten, and hung from two different trees.  Child actor Jackie Coogan, a college friend of Brooke’s, reportedly held one of the ropes used in the lynching.  California Governor James Rolph refused to send in the National Guard, actually applauding the actions of the mob, vowing to pardon anyone who was convicted of the lynching.  In 1933 there were 28 reported lynchings, where all but four of the victims were black, yet it was the public spectacle of this notorious lynching that captured the nation’s imagination.  No one was ever indicted for the crime, one of the last lynchings to occur in the state of California, with hawkers selling post cards commemorating the event, even selling pieces of the tree limbs as souvenirs. 

In adapting the story to the screen, the original idea was presented by MGM writer Norman Krasna to noted screenwriter Joseph L. Mankiewicz who was a producer on the film, largely because he spoke fluent German, at one time the Berlin correspondent for The Chicago Tribune.  Working with screenwriters Leonard Praskins and Bartlett Cormack (also a playwright), Mankiewicz largely provided the shape of the film, concluding that Tracy needed to be an ordinary man, a typical John Doe character, or an “average Joe.”  Adding a romance angle, Tracy as Joe Wilson is linked to Sylvia Sidney as Katherine Grant, a schoolteacher, with Wilson arrested by the police on the day of his intended marriage and held in jail on little more than flimsy evidence.  Aptly entitled, not to be confused with the Brian De Palma movie The Fury (1978), the film was released just 2 weeks after the execution of Bruno Hauptmann, an illegal immigrant from Germany charged in 1932 and convicted in 1935 for the kidnapping and murder of Charles Lindberg’s baby.  The round-the-clock publicity made this the trial of the century, but Hauptmann was convicted on circumstantial evidence, found with some of the ransom money, raising plenty of doubts and suspicions, which would have resonated with viewers at the time.  Made during the Depression when money is tight, forcing Katherine to take a job out of town in small-town America in order to accrue savings for their impending marriage.  After a year of living apart, the announced wedding day finally arrives, but Joe never shows up, having been stopped and detained by an overzealous deputy (Walter Brennan) on the lookout for the missing kidnappers.  When they discover a counterfeit $5 dollar bill in his pocket that was part of the ransom money, word spreads throughout town that they’re holding the kidnapper, who happens to be traveling with a small dog, appearing later as Toto in THE WIZARD OF OZ (1939).  While the public rage seems fueled by implications of rape, which is never mentioned due to Pre-Code Hollywood standards, word spreads like wildfire, with exaggerations and animosity building, forming a mob with a predilection for attacking the sheriff and his deputies, breaking down the outside door to the police station with a battering ram, but they’re unable to reach the prisoner as the keys are actually thrown inside an empty jail cell that is locked, causing them to burn the building down, where the hellaceous mood grows into a frenzied explosion of fire and seething social discontent.  Much to Kate’s horror, she arrives on the scene as the jail is a blazing inferno of fire, witnessing the burning with Joe inside, utterly helpless and aghast at what she sees, with someone eventually throwing dynamite into the fire, Fury [1936] - Lynch Mob YouTube (1:48).  With so much destruction, the prisoner is presumed dead afterwards.  It’s just hours afterwards when the real kidnappers are caught that the town realizes their horrific mistake, with Kate left distraught and dazed, lost in grief afterwards.  Lang had dealt with this subject before, basically inventing the police procedural in M (1931), where an outcast pedophile child murderer is tracked down by the Berlin underworld and placed on trial before a mob of hardened criminals, claiming his actions are responsible for increased police presence, cutting into their criminal profits, basically giving crooks a bad name. 

The spontaneous destruction plays out like a delirious nightmare, happening relatively early in the film, shockingly killing off a lead character, while the case is later dissected and analyzed in lengthy courtroom proceedings, charging 22 instigators with the crime of murder.  While the townspeople remain tightlipped and refuse to acknowledge the names of anyone involved, where every single witness called to the stand blatantly lies, including the sheriff, blaming it on people from out of town, this is the first film to use newsreel coverage in a courtroom, becoming a film within a film, where the newsreel is stopped to identify each one in freeze frame, capturing them in the act of insurgency, countering their claims of innocence, creating extraordinary drama in the courtroom, basically putting a small community on trial.  At the time of the film’s release, film footage was inadmissible in California courts, but that was soon remedied less than a year later.  But in something of a twist, Joe actually survives (the dynamite blasts open his jail cell), climbing out of his sealed doom undetected, but is consumed by an overpowering drive for revenge, becoming a changed man, a vindictive avenger, turning it into a personal vendetta, a darkened figure focused completely on the trial afterwards, listening on the radio, showing little patience for those pretending to have alibi’s, covering up their crimes with fabricated lies, which only make Joe more driven to see them pay for their lawlessness.  The viciousness of Joe’s transformation is startling, no longer recognizing himself anymore, becoming strangely un-American, a stranger in his own country, consumed by his own anger and rage, mirroring the scene he witnessed outside his jail cell, lost in his own hysteria.  The prosecution, in all likelihood, is fully aware that Joe survived, working the case behind the scenes, nonetheless he presses his agenda forward, claiming murder knowing full well no murder occurred.  Katherine, meanwhile, seems lost in a catatonic state, too shocked to recognize the changing world around her, stuck or paralyzed by that moment, spending each day in a daze.  But she snaps out of it and starts putting together recognizable clues, realizing Joe is still alive, influencing the trial from behind the scenes.  The film continually lapses into a Hollywood melodrama, with longwinded, patriotic speeches in the courtroom serving as the nation’s conscience, followed by hysterical reactions from ordinary citizens seemingly driven by pangs of remorse, perhaps finally realizing the extent of their own cover up and crime, as they acted prematurely, thinking the worst, turned into a blood-thirsty mob taking murder into their own hands.  This kind of thing happened at the end of interrogation sequences on the long-running Perry Mason (1957 – 1966) television show, where out of nowhere the accused would spontaneously confess to their crimes, driven by internal forces of guilt.  That doesn’t exactly happen here, but through the newsreel footage, people perhaps see themselves in ways they never envisioned or realized, behaving like hoodlums or criminals, yet these are supposed to be upstanding citizens.  How quickly was Joe’s life destroyed?  How does a nation tolerate a public lynching?  What makes people lose possession of themselves like that and in an instant become a public menace, destroying community property, committing arson and perhaps even murder?  What flicks that switch?  The central trauma of the 30’s was the destabilizing effects of the Depression, as there was no threat yet to national security, which defined the 40’s.  As this film suggests, our entire system of values and democracy came under threat, with imminent signs of insurrection building from within, creating a societal rupture that has yet to heal, as the same dream of freedom and democracy is still not obtainable for all Americans, with a President, Senators, prominent billionaires, and police unions refusing to acknowledge that Black Lives Matter, causing some to lag far behind, unable to enjoy “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”