Take a Giant Step

 

Director Philip Leacock

TAKE A GIANT STEP         B+                                                                                                USA  (100 mi)  1959  d: Philip Leacock

While this song wasn’t written yet when the film was made, it is nonetheless very à propos.    —Take a Giant Step Outside Your Mind, Taj Mahal, Taj Mahal - Take a Giant Step (1969 Version) YouTube (4:16)

An often forgotten film in the annals of American cinema, which is unfortunate, as it was one of the few Hollywood films to address systemic racism head on, written off at the time, having so much trouble getting distributed in the United States due to its racial subject matter, yet it follows in the footsteps of Martin Ritt’s Edge of the City (1957), even borrowing some of the same cast, or before that Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s No Way Out (1950) and Richard Brooks’ Blackboard Jungle (1955), all starring Sidney Poitier.  This one does not, choosing instead American singer and songwriter Johnny Nash, who made just three films, whose claim to fame is the hit song I Can See Clearly Now - Johnny Nash | The Midnight Special YouTube (3:02), yet he is the star of this family melodrama about a black teenager’s struggle with racism while living in an all-white middle class neighborhood in the 1950’s.  A predecessor to Canadian film director Daniel Petrie’s highly influential A RAISIN IN THE SUN (1961), which was based on Lorraine Hansberry’s critically acclaimed 1959 play, which was enormously successful, running for 19 months, introducing details of black life to the overwhelmingly white Broadway audiences, winning the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for Best Play, the youngest and first black to do so.  As the only black plays to make it to Broadway during this period, this is a screen version of Louis S. Peterson’s semiautobiographical play by the same name, the first black playwright to have a dramatic play produced on Broadway in 1953 (Hansberry was the first black woman), featuring many of the original cast members (Estelle Hemsley, Frederick O’Neal and Pauline Meyers reprised their roles for the film), which not only explores the racial divide, but also the generational gap, pitting the old ways against the new, where outside of Elia Kazan’s PINKY (1949), this may be the first coming-of-age American film that explores black family dynamics, but it also shows just how out-of-touch the parents are when they ignore their child’s pleas for help with the real-life situations he’s facing.  Revived off-Broadway in 1956 where it received critical acclaim, both plays dramatized the growing black consciousness among the younger generation of educated, northern-born, black teenagers, with Peterson, in collaboration with screenwriter Julius J. Epstein, helping to adapt his own play for the screen at a time when black screenwriters were a rarity in Hollywood.  Released the same year as Douglas Sirk’s Imitation of Life (1959), which deals with similar themes, but more from an adult perspective, the film is directed by British director Philip Leacock, who learned filmmaking while serving in the British Army during World War II, spending most of his career working in television, but this received two Golden Globe nominations, despite its failure at the box office.   

Like A RAISIN IN THE SUN, this has a stagy, theatrical quality to it, where dialogue drives the picture, and while it’s thoughtfully provocative, dancing around real-life issues, this is surprisingly mainstream, where it’s hard to believe people actually took offense to the film’s content, but it does feature a nearly all-black cast, with a few whites sprinkled in for good measure.  According to an interview with the director (Philip Leacock), they had a hard time finding a Hollywood hotel at the time that would accept the young black actor, so he found himself staying in some tawdry hotel.  Nash plays Spence, a 17-year old high school student who has lived his entire life in the comforts of a middle class home, taught self-respect by his mother (Beah Richards) and strict father (Frederick O’Neal), while also afforded the services of a housekeeper Christine (Ruby Dee) to look after an ailing grandmother (Estelle Hemsley), but he has only just started to realize some of the hazards that come with being black.  In the opening scene, there is an inference of trouble brewing, as Spence storms out of a classroom and is caught afterwards smoking in the bathroom, which causes him to be expelled from school.  We only hear what caused the commotion afterwards when he confides to his grandmother, who understands him better than his parents, learning that he rejected his white teacher's depiction of American slaves as “too lazy” to fight for their emancipation during the Civil War, referring to them as “backwards,” and lacking intellect, that without the assistance of Northern whites they would never have gained their freedom.  Barging out of the classroom, he felt, was the right thing to do, fuming that his white teacher intentionally dehumanized blacks, ignoring their long history of self-rule in Africa, but his grandmother disagrees with his inappropriate behavior that instead shines the light on him.  Making matters worse, when a group of white friends drop by his home afterwards, he chides them for not sticking up for him, only to learn that he’s also being excluded from social events, as his friends want to start dating girls, but none of their parents want their daughters socializing with a black kid.  Feeling ostracized, he angrily kicks them out, impulsively claiming he never wants to see them again.  Afraid of having to explain any of this to his parents, who are likely to berate him, feeling the mixed-up confusion of being a teenager, finding adult values bewildering to comprehend, so he decides to run away, taking a bus to the black part of town looking for solace and comfort, where he lingers for a while, not really knowing what to expect, before wandering into a bar, where he’s lured into a world he’s never been exposed to.  By learning how to deal with whiteness, he discovers that he somehow short-changed his own blackness.  In his search for identity and meaning, his innocence and obvious naïveté make him appear foolish, where he’s clearly frustrated and disillusioned by things he doesn’t understand, yet his earnestness is one of the best kept secrets of the picture.   

This fits into a format of 50’s conformity in the American suburbs, prior to any social justice or civil rights movements, where just speaking up on issues often makes you a target, as no one questioned authority in those days.  Accordingly, this is a much safer and more conventional film than the more angrily authentic and undeniably unsentimental depiction of black life in A RAISIN IN THE SUN, yet this also means fewer have actually seen or even heard of it.  In 1961 UCLA ran a successful film series program entitled The Undiscovered Film, selecting rare films by Franco Rossi, Juan Bardem, Luis Buñuel, Yasujirō Ozu, and this film, the only one with a prior screening in Los Angeles at the time, where the interest may have reflected the increasing popularity and mainstream critical acceptance of black literary works.  The film was produced by Burt Lancaster through his Hecht-Hill-Lancaster production company, made for roughly $300,000 dollars.  While Spence hears about it from his parents when he finally ambles back home, he gets a taste of how adults have had to sidestep these issues for generations, always having to “stay in your place,” which he finds infuriating, yet there’s simply a different standard for blacks and whites, as blacks are routinely stigmatized as threats to society, often sensationalizing those claims for public consumption, while white threats typically fly under the radar.  While his acid-tongued grandmother, who freely speaks her mind, adds her two cents, “The truth is the truth and should be spoken at all times,” the real surprise here is the scintillating performance of Ruby Dee, who makes the most out of a small role, offering personality and guile, along with sage advice.  Because of her close working relationship with Spence, he freely opens up and confesses his feelings to her, trusting her as part of the family, yet she very prominently humanizes the film, providing a flood of traumatic memories about growing up in the South, helping to console the young man when he feels down and out.  His sense of loneliness and social isolation leaves him nowhere else to turn, so he turns to her, with the film exploring his awakening sexual desires, even thinking they might get intimate.  As hard as that is to fathom, she takes it to heart, realizing how much it means to him, offering warmth and compassion instead of an instant rejection, helping expose him to a more adult viewpoint, but any hint of black sexuality, particularly coming from a man, was considered taboo in the Hollywood film industry, so sexual overtones that were inherent in the play are toned down considerably.  Ruby Dee is an iconic actress and tireless advocate for social justice, appearing in both film versions of these essential black plays, and they wouldn’t be the same without her, as she helps elevate and actually transcend the material.  But tragedy strikes at the most inopportune time, leaving Spence aghast and in complete despair, but it makes him intensely aware that there are greater problems than his own, showing magnanimous poise under the circumstances, offering the finale a tender grace note of hope going forward.

"TAKE A GIANT STEP" Johnny Nash, Ellen Holly, Ruby Dee ... entire film on YouTube (1:40:11)

Blue Spring (Aoi haru)

 

Director Toshiaki Toyoda

BLUE SPRING (Aoi haru)      B                                                                                                    Japan  (83 mi)  2001  d: Toshiaki Toyoda

No regrets for my youth.                                                                                                                 —Kimura (Yûsuke Ohshiba)

An often overlooked, heavily stylized movie about the disillusioned youth-gone-wild high school experience from those already on the edge, who don’t know where they’re going or have any idea where they’ll end up, as they don’t really want to be there, who are so distanced and alienated that they may as well not exist, so they invent violent games to play to force their lives to matter, turning into a nihilistic punk movie with a homoerotic and even gay subtext that is only inferred, never explicitly shown, more metaphoric than real, as it reveals the essence of the horrors of the high school experience through a grotesque and often brutally exaggerated portrayal.  Toyoda was a child chess prodigy as an adolescent before changing his interest to cinema, working as a scriptwriter and assistant director on Sakamoto Junji’s CHECKMATE (1991) and BIRIKEN (1996) before launching his own career, where this is his third film.  An unorthodox director who likes to do things his own way, featuring a strong grunge/punk rock aesthetic and a willingness to be different, Toyoda has established himself as one of the more interesting contemporary Japanese directors, but not really known outside of Japan.  Never mentioned in the same breath as Hirokazu Kore-eda, Kiyoshi Kurosawa, or Takashi Miike, more familiar Japanese directors whose films have reached an international audience, Toyoda’s reputation suffered setbacks from two well publicized scandals, as he was arrested for drug possession in 2005, while in 2019 he was arrested again when a police raid uncovered an illegal antique firearm from WWII that he inherited from his grandmother, falsely as it turns out, as the firearm was no longer working, but he was shunned by the Japanese film industry afterwards, with both events becoming the subject of sensational tabloid coverage in Japan.  Often viewed as a cult director, he has an unorthodox, stylized aesthetic that includes youth crime movies, meditative dramas, documentaries, and low-budget art films, whose work is consistently introspective, vibrant, and brutal, but this early film, born in anger, touching a raw nerve, is his most scathing reflection of real-world anxieties in the economic downturn of Japan in the mid-90’s, when an economy that was the envy of the world went into a tailspin, moving from one of the fastest-growing countries in the world to one of the slowest, dismantling the job-for-life system that its corporations had previously offered, literally ripping the futures away from these disaffected kids.  Japan experienced an increase in school violence during the 80’s and 90’s, where some disturbing attacks from teenagers made big headlines and shocked the nation, like the Murder of Junko Furuta.  First and foremost is the rebellious music, [Engsub] DROP - THEE MICHELLE GUN ELEPHANT 「Blue ... YouTube (6:44), an assaultive force of teen angst that lingers in the imagination, evoking the raw and unpolished spirit of youth, often combined with a free-flowing, slow motion aesthetic from cinematographer Norimichi Kasamatsu, who also shot Junji’s BIRIKEN (1996), less plot-driven, more interested in atmosphere, abstractions, ambiguity, and the chaotic nature of the character interaction, with very limited locations, providing an honest look at the hidden anger and rage of teenage emotions, reaching the depths of the darkest realms.

Coming at a time when the adolescent high school genre already appeared passé, having been graced with a slew of films that touched upon familiar themes of alienated youth, like George Lucas’ American Graffiti (1973), Francis Ford Coppola’s RUMBLE FISH (1983) and THE OUTSIDERS (1983), John Hughes’ The Breakfast Club (1985), Hou Hsiao-hsien’s A Time to Live and a Time to Die (Tong nien wang shi) (1985) and Dust in the Wind (Lian lian feng chen) (1986), John Waters’ HAIRSPRAY (1988), Michael Lehman’s Heathers (1988), Allan Moyle’s PUMP UP THE VOLUME (1990), Edward Yang’s A Brighter Summer Day (Gu ling jie shao nian sha ren shi jian) (1991), Richard Linklater’s Dazed and Confused (1993), André Téchiné’s Wild Reeds (Les Roseaux Sauvages) (1994), Wes Anderson’s Rushmore (1998), Lukas Moodysson’s Show Me Love (Fucking Åmål) (1998), Alexander Payne’s Election (1999), Shunji Iwai’s ALL ABOUT LILY CHOU-CHOU (2001), and Terry Zwigoff’s Ghost World (2001).  Based on Taiyô Matsumoto’s manga of the same title in 1993, a collection of seven different stories, this was the break-through film for both Toyoda and actor Ryuhei Matsuda, who is the undisputed star of this film, appearing earlier as the passive, overly effeminate samurai in Nagisa Ôshima’s GOHATTO (1999).  He is the enigmatic figure at the center of this teen drama that looks like it’s taking place in a post-apocalyptic war zone, as this cement bunker of a building is a run-down high school for boys that looks more like a prison, as the dark and grungy hallways are nearly always deserted, accentuated by heavy doses of graffiti on the walls that proclaim gang turf, where there’s an astonishing absence of school authority, while the outside world barely intrudes upon its secluded existence, making this a very unique portrayal, uncomfortable at times yet oddly compelling.  An aimlessness seems to define the psychological mindset of these wayward teens, which includes Kujo (Matsuda Ryuhei) his loyal childhood friend Aoki (Hirofumi Arai) who idolizes him, surrounded by a host of others, Yukio (Sousuke Takaoka), Yoshimura (Shûgo Oshinari), Kimura (Yûsuke Ohshiba), a disenchanted figure who dreams of playing on the Nationals baseball team, and Ota (Yûta Yamazaki), who seem to follow their every lead.  All dressed in the same dark school uniform, mostly they wander the hallways and bathrooms as a free-ranging gang terrorizing fellow students with impunity, going on rampages inflicting sadistic cruelty at every turn, where their lives hold little meaning, lost to a neverending world of inflicted misery, having been written off by the school long ago as lost causes.  Anyone coming from a shitty high school can relate to this, where the mantra may as well be, “Hatred hurts, but an abundance of hatred hurts the most,” leading to a regretful world of apathy and indifference.  Never once do we see any parents, while the teachers or school counselors are completely ignored, with students wandering in and out of class at will, instead this is about the social fabric of this underground group that seems to exist on its own terms, unfettered by the rules of society or the school, yet their own hierarchy is completely ineffectual, consumed by a deep-seeded sense of powerlessness in a crumbling social system, exposing a painfully rich subtext of raw, desperate emotion struggling to break through the surface.

Rebellion is the key ingredient to this film, THEE MICHELLE GUN ELEPHANT - Akage No Kelly (赤毛の ... YouTube (5:45), but rebellion against what is the question in this dilapidated school in the suburban outskirts of Tokyo that seems to have no established authority, so they seem to exist in a vacuum, with no future and no past, portraying the loneliness and isolation inside the minds of a hopeless yet excessively violent youth.  As if to amuse themselves from the boredom, they invent a rooftop game that is a test of courage, yet also plays into suicidal tendencies, as they stand on the outer railing of the roof with nothing beneath them but ground below, holding on by their hands as numbers are called out in succession.  They clap their hands to the same number being called out before latching back onto the rails, each one growing successively more dangerous, as they could easily plunge to their deaths.  It’s a modern day version of the game of chicken depicted in Nicholas Ray’s Rebel Without a Cause (1955), where they drive cars off the edge of a cliff, and the last to jump out is the winner.  Whoever wins the game is declared the leader of the group, which rules all the gangs in the high school.  When Kujo wins the leadership role, Aoki is excited, but he wants his friend to exact violence and revenge to wipe out their enemies.  Kujo, however, has no interest in doing this, finding his position meaningless, as he never wanted the leadership position, where his air of aloofness is stunning, bored by the violence and hatred that surrounds him, apparently ruling by disinterest, explaining to a strangely sympathetic teacher, “People who know what they want scare me.”  Aoki soon tires of his secondary role, as Kujo hardly pays any attention to him anymore, spiraling into a void, losing interest in everything, so he starts pummeling kids on his own to assert his dominance.  In their last year of high school, most kids are preparing for their future, but in this film they have no future, where the only thing that awaits their dead-end path is a place in the hierarchy of the yakuza, a criminal underworld enterprise who recruit directly from the high school ranks, which are little more than a training ground for organized crime, Blue Spring (2001) - best scene YouTube (3:03).  Aoki transforms himself into an entirely new look, embarking on a campaign of terror hoping to impress Kujo, but he’s devastated when he instead ignores him and couldn’t care less.  As Aoki becomes disillusioned, alienated, and even hostile toward Kujo, who has no interest in the violence of the yakuza lifestyle, friends around them slowly disappear, as whatever friendships or allegiances that once existed seem to have faded away, like a dried up flower.  The nonchalance of Kujo and the bleakness of school life are contrasted with the bright, colorful appearance of cherry blossoms in bloom, which are seen everywhere around the school, offering a luxurious glimpse of beauty, with suggestions that more lies beyond what we see onscreen, which includes Kujo, who grows increasingly philosophical, even taking an interest in the flower gardens run by a diminutive teacher (Mame Yamada) who urges him to tend to flowers in bloom, a clear metaphor for adolescence.  An impressively stylish time-lapse sequence leads to a stunning finale exhibiting a kind of reckless impulsiveness, Blue Spring (青い春, Aoi haru) 2002 YouTube (6:37), where you literally stare into the eye of fatalistic gloom, and all that’s left is a harrowing sense of unending despair.