TRAVELLING ACTORS (JAPAN/1940/MIKIO NARUSE)

Hyoroku and Senpei are two actors whose ‘big break’ comes in the form of a role as the front and back halves of a horse in a baffling pantomime production. Despite the relative unimportance of their role, the two men are desperate to prove their mettle, discussing their trade as if they were revered professionals and showing off to geishas. When their theatre manager books in a live horse in their place for a performance in a rural area, the show becomes a bigger hit than expected, and the actors are informed that they will soon be replaced. Beaten at their own game by an animal, the men are left to fight a battle for their self-esteem.

Sharing the same playful but sincere comedy as Mikio Naruse’s earlier Wife, Be Like A Rose! , Travelling Actors is a gentle meditation on serious issues. Though ostensibly a comedy, it is clear that Naruse has a motive in championing these hack actors over the locally conscripted soldiers. The men’s role as the horse appears to consist simply of resisting the instruction of the owner, an act tirelessly portrayed performance after performance. This by extension is Naruse’s own conscientious objection, and an attempt to underline the importance on the arts in reflecting a nation’s status. Naruse occasionally throws in a shot of the men’s legs, as if to remind us that this is all the audience sees of them, whereas of course we as a film audience witness much more. A minor treat.

PRISON (SWEDEN/1949/INGMAR BERGMAN)

It is perhaps very fitting that the first film that Ingmar Bergman made from his own script was a meta-referencial, existential study of good and evil. Shot on a minute budget for the time, Prison follows Martin, a director whose life is changed by a suggestion made by his old maths teacher during a meal – life on Earth is Hell. Martin delights in amusing his friends with the idea, but decides to use it as the basis of a film project. The film then essentially begins again, and it soon becomes clear that we are now viewing the director’s project, both on and off screen. As Martin and his friends experience existential crises, their own lives begin to mirror the filmic hell that Martin is striving so hard to recreate.

Laden with verbal and visual puns alike, Prison is an unusual early exercise in recursive filmmaking, bolstered by a decent cast and cinematography. At moments, one might even be led to believe this is some modern film experiment riffing sarcastically on forties cinema. But as interesting a concept as the film presents, it isn’t in and of itself a significant film, besides manifesting the emergence of Bergman’s style. It’s almost as if Bergman created the meta-film element as an excuse to explore the histrionic potential of photography, and the title itself may have been a reference to his experience of working for studios. Watch out for the Méliès-style short film (later seen in Persona), which confusingly sits inside the film-within-a-film.

BROTHERS AND SISTERS OF THE TODA FAMILY (JAPAN/1941/YASUJIRO OZU)

When Shintaro, the elderly patriarch of the titular Toda family dies on his 69^th birthday, eldest son Shinichiro is left to discover a mountain of debt. After some deliberation, the family decides to pay off the debts by selling off Shintaro’s entire collection of antiques and properties, save for a seaside house. The process forces the family to move out, and each member finds a different arrangement to suit them, except for the mother and youngest daughter Setsuko. Feeling uncomfortable at the house of Shintaro’s wife Kazuko, Mrs. Toda and Setsuko move in with eldest daughter Chizuko, only to encounter similar disagreements. Finding no luck living at any of her children’s houses, Mrs. Toda unhappily moves into the ramshackle house by the sea with Setsuko, and it isn’t until the return of second son Shojiro (who had upped sticks to China after Shintaro’s death) that the family’s strained ties are made clear.

As with every Yasujiro Ozu film, the drama is gentle but abundant, and is sweetly complemented by a sparing score. While she isn’t exactly a lovable character, Mrs. Toda is endearing in her own way, and the tense relationships she has with her children unravel at a realistic pace – we are never forced to believe the issues are irreconcilable, but are able to understand Mrs. Toda’s motives for moving. With all the characters involved, it is sometimes hard to tell who’s who, but Brothers And Sisters Of The Toda Family is otherwise a pleasant minor work from Ozu.

RIDE THE PINK HORSE (USA/1947/ROBERT MONTGOMERY)

Stepping off a bus in New Mexico with just a briefcase, a sarcastic and short-tempered soldier named Gagin begins a search through the town of San Pablo for Frank Hugo, the mobster who killed his best friend Shorty. After tracking down the hotel Hugo is staying at, Gagin bumps into Retz, an FBI agent determined to dissuade him from his vigilante strategy. All the while, Gagin is being stalked by an enamoured peasant girl named Pila who had shown him the direction to the hotel. Disconcerted by the feeling of being followed everywhere he goes, Gagin takes refuge at an aging carousel where he is once again joined by Pila. With time running out, Gagin bites the bullet and decides to take action, no matter what the consequences.

A simple story it may appear, but Ride The Pink Horse builds complexities from the diverse set of characters brought into the loop. Gagin, played by director Robert Montgomery, makes for an unusual protagonist, giving nothing away of his identity or his emotional state (the villagers of San Pablo give him the nickname “the man with no place”). The rural New Mexico backdrop seems curious for a noir film, but the large, open spaces are equally as suffocating as the dark city shadows in most other films of the genre. The photography is masterly, with some brilliantly captured sequences towards the climax. Dark, brooding and effortlessly classy, Ride The Pink Horse is a recommended watch for those tired of the ‘urban thriller’.

CRISIS (SWEDEN/1946/INGMAR BERGMAN)

Ingmar Bergman’s first film as director, Crisis follows 18-year-old gamine Nelly, fostered into a family living in small-town Sweden. One day, completely out of the blue, her decidedly-fashionable birth mother Jenny comes to the house, keen to shepherd the daughter she abandoned back into her life. A ball Nelly attends becomes the perfect opportunity for the two mother figures to outdo each other, and soon it is made clear that “Aunt” Jenny is the hip, lively figure Nelly has needed for all these years. Soon, Nelly is ushered into the inner ring of Stockholm’s high society and, after encountering some unsavoury characters, comes to understand just how easily she had been lured into a world of empty beauty.

Photographically, there are occasional flourishes of Bergmanesque splendour (the lighting in particular is brilliant), but the film itself is nothing to write home about. The characters are maddeningly dull, some straight from lesser Hitchcock films, and their interactions are devoid of passion or credibility. The story, taken from Leck Fischer’s radio play Moderhjertet, is awkwardly paced, and by the end little seems to have changed, save for haircuts. It might be unfair to be so flippant about the early work of a man who went on to be hailed as one of the greatest directors of all time, but given the calibre of some of his greater films, it comes as a surprise to learn that he was ever at the helm of such an unremarkable project, or indeed one so derivative.