"The Red Shoes" (1948) by Powell & Pressburger (Film review)

The Red Shoes (1948), by the team of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger ("the Archers"), has been called "the best ballet film ever made," and also "quintessential backstage drama" a la Chorus Line. Artistry nor expenses were spared to bring some color to the drab post-war years in Great-Britain: glorious Technicolor, beautiful cinematography, Oscar-winning sets and music, and an experly choreographed central dance sequence. The star of the film, Moira Shearer, was a real-life ballerina with the Sadler-Wells company.

The story is about the age-old choice between dedication to art and the demands of life. Rising star ballerina Victoria Page (Moira Shearer) has to choose between her love for a young composer, Julian Craster (Marius Goring), a rising star like herself, and Boris Lermontov (Anton Walbrook), the ruthless impresario of the Ballet Lermontov - based on Diaghilev -, living only for art and  intent on perfection.

Page becomes star dancer in a ballet written by Craster and choreographed by Lermontov, based on the story "The Red Shoes" by Hans Christian Andersen. It is the fable of a young girl who puts on a pair of red slippers that help her to dance as she never danced before, but then will not allow her to stop dancing until she drops dead. The arrogant, curt, and imperious Lermontov is a sort of Mephistopheles (although he has nothing sinister). He promises to make Page the greatest dancer ever, but demands obedience above all else and forbids her to have a private life. After she falls in love with composer Craster, both are fired. When Lermontov later relents and allows Page to come back to dance in the Red Shoes, Craster leaves the opening night of his first opera to reclaim her. He argues over her with Lermontov. Torn between two opposites, as soon as Victoria Page puts on the red shoes, they take control of her and lead her outside where she jumps to her death.

I love classical music and ballet, so I should be fascinated by a film with a 15-minute dance sequence at its core. Well, not really. The Red Shoes is Gothic, blubbery, melodramatic and as full of holes as a Swiss cheese. To name a few points: no young composer would walk out of Covent Garden when he is about to conduct his first opera there, no ballerina would run out of the theater just as the curtain is about to rise. Backstage, adjustments of private life with art are continuously being made. There can be real conflicts here, especially in the mid-twentieth century when women were more restricted in their choice, but it is ridiculous to have such problems lead to suicide. Of course, in the film it was "the force" of the red shoes that led Victoria Page to her death, but the problem is that she could not have been wearing those red shoes before the start of the performance... it was part of the ballet that she changed into them on-stage (the directors knew this, but kept this incongruent last scene for melodramatic impact).

There are other things. This 1948 film has a strong 19th century look with ballrooms, expensive hotels in southern France, beautiful fluffy dresses, private carriages in trains pulled by steam locomotives, and Lermontov being attended to like a feudal lord. I would have liked to see ballet and classical music as part of modern life, rather than a bygone age. The music of the ballet (composed by Brian Easdale), too, is more of the 19th century - in line with Hollywood film music, so it brought in an Oscar -, but only listen to Stravinsky, Prokofiev or Copland to hear what real 20th century ballet music sounds like.

The Red Shoes as a whole is like an expensive stage set, beautiful but fake. The characters (except, partly, Lermontov) remain pieces of cardboard and the atmosphere is stilted and old-fashioned. This heap of kitsch is the opposite of how I would like to see a film about ballet.

Being a ballet dancer is as heavy as top sport. This film lacks the essential quality: the reek of sweat.

Moira Shearer herself opted in the end for private life over a lasting career in ballet and film. In a 1994 interview she said about The Red Shoes: "The whole story of Victoria Page is such nonsense from the point of view of any real person [...]. You have to take that film with a huge tin of salt, because there was never a ballet company anywhere which was like that. I'm sure no dancer of any generation ever had this supposedly appalling problem ending in suicide, if you please - between real life and the ballet."

The Red Shoes has been brought our by Criterion.

Kamo River Park (Kyoto Guide)

The Kamo River is the spirit of Kyoto. It is at its most beautiful at the Y-shape where the Kamo (written with another Chinese character) and Takano rivers flow together - on the wedge between both rivers stands the Shimogamo Shrine with the Tadasu forest. The tip of the wedge has been turned into a small park called Kamogawa (Kamo River) Park.

[Kamogawa Park. Here the Kamo River (left) and Takano River (right) merge into the Kamo River (written with a different character from the first Kamo River!)]

The park can also be reached via the stepping stones that have been laid out in the rivers, provided the water level is low enough which is usually the case. The in the past often unruly waters have after all been rigorously tamed.

Already in the Edo period the Tadasu forest was a spot favorite for taking in some cool air on summer evenings. Now you see children playing with fireworks in the park and people sit picknicking here in the daytime. If I could live here in the neighborhood, I would on summer evenings sit with a beer on one of the benches along the river - a nice dream.

[The stepping stones in the river - note the turtles]

The Kamo River originates in Kumogahata, in the mountains northwest of Kyoto. In spring, the river is shaded by pink cherry blossoms, in summer it is alive with sweetfish. In this season, wagtails and herons also make their appearance. In late autumn and winter, blackheaded gulls from Siberia fly in via Lake Biwa - sometimes dancing around in large groups as if it were snowing gulls.

The Kamo River also used to be famous for its plovers - they even form the symbol of the Pontocho geisha quarters and the Kamogawa Dances performed annually by these artists. In the park stands a haiku stone with a poem by (if I am correct) the chairman of the Kamo River preservation society:

in the past
this spot was famous
for plovers

sono mukashi | kokora chidori no | meisho kana

[Stepping stones in the form of plovers are now all that reminds one of these birds]

My Man Godfrey (1936) with William Powell

My Man Godfrey was made in the depths of the Depression, a period that seems strangely familiar, with just such a wide gulf between have-nots and the very rich as today in the U.S. But this is a Hollywood film, so it stops short of social commentary and winds up with the usual feel-good fairy tale.

The idle rich spend their leisure playing games and one such a party game brings scatterbrained socialite Irene Bullock (Carole Lombard) to the city dump where she meets Godfrey (William Powell), a vagrant. He has just rebuffed the haughty advances of Irene's proud sister Angelica (Alice Brady), and plays the game along with Irene. Out of gratitude she hires him as the family butler... but we will see that there is more to Godfrey than meets the eye.

The film satirizes the life of the nutty Bullocks: two empty-headed sisters, one bitchy and the other petulant, and a loony mother (Alice Brady) who has a live-in protégé, a composer mainly known for leaping around the room like a gorilla. Father-businessman Alexander (character actor Eugene Pallette ) is the only sane one: "What this family needs is discipline. I've been a patient man, but when people start riding horses up the front steps and parking them in the library, that's going a little too far. This family's got to settle down!"

The professionally buttling Godfrey, with typical attentive posture and measured voice, survives this menagerie, even when Irene starts imagining she is in love with him ( "I'd like to sew his buttons on sometime, when they come off" - as Ebert reminds us, elegant trousers didn't have zippers but buttons in the 30s). But at a party he is almost unmasked by a college friend - far from a vagrant, he is a rich person himself, down on his luck because of a broken heart. So when the finances of the Bulloks are in peril, he saves them and also buys up the city dump to turn the location into a posh restaurant (the other vagrants are employed as waiters)... and of course, Hollywood-style, the girl does get him in the end.

This film by Gregory La Cava is beautifully photographed, from the opening credits resembling lighted billboards to the interiors and elegant dresses. Moreover, it boasts sophisticated humor and a great set of actors. Happily, contrary to most other screwball comedies, it doesn't loose itself in slapstick or shouting matches. I was so caught up in the spell of this wonderful film that I didn't mind the romantic, implausible  ending - it was just great fun.

My Man Godfrey is one of the great comedies of the 20th century.

My Man Godfrey is in the public domain. Watch it at Internet Archive.

Kyoto Walks: Shomendori Street

Shomendori Street took its name because it ran "in front of" ("facing") Hokoji, a once famous temple housing the Great Buddha of Kyoto. Shomendori started out with a very wide section right at this landmark temple (still existing in front of the torii gate of the Toyokuni Shrine) and then continued as a normal lane east over the Kamo River to connect with the two Honganji temples. In other words, Shomendori runs on an east-west axis from Yamato-oji Street to JR Tambaguchi Station and is 4.3 km long.

1. Temple Bell of Hokoji
Hokoji once was one of the greatest temples of Japan and its lands covered much of what are now the Toyokuni Shrine and the Kyoto National Museum. Today, Hokoji is not much more than a dusty parking lot with a huge temple bell. The original temple set up in 1586 housed a Great Buddha statue that was even larger than the Great Buddha of Nara. It was the same type of Buddha: Rushana, or the Cosmic Buddha. The hall was on the same scale as Todaiji. But as Hideyoshi was in a hurry to finish the temple, a lacquered wooden statue was installed rather than a bronze one. One thousand priests of (almost) all sects Japan knew took part in the dedication ceremonies. Hokoji was the apex of Hideyoshi's hubris.

Unhappily, not long after completion, in 1596, Hokoji (and most of Kyoto) was destroyed by a gigantic earthquake. Hideyoshi died two years later. In 1602, rebuilding began under Hideyoshi's son, Hideyori, but the project was ill-fated and it took until 1612 before the new Hokoji could be re-dedicated, on a somewhat smaller scale, and again with a large wooden Rushana. To this second incarnation a huge temple bell was added, 4.4 meters high and 2.8 meters in diameter. According to tradition, the inscription on the bell contained an insulting reference to the Tokugawa family, which Ieyasu used in 1615 as a pretext to start the siege of Osaka Castle, where the Toyotomi's lived, and destroy his foes once and for all. The bell survives, but the inscription has been erased.

Hokoji didn't fare much better than its sponsors. Another earthquake wrecked the temple in 1662; what was rebuilt of it, was lost to a fire in 1798. A crude wooden statue was inaugurated in 1843, and again lost in a fire in 1973. The small hall next to parking lot shows some pieces of the hand of this wooden statue, still surprising in size, for a small fee.

Besides the temple bell, another relic of the earlier temple are the huge stones along Yamato-oji Street, donated by various daimyo, reminding us of Osaka Castle. These formed the foundation of Hokoji. The temple gate stood more or less in the spot of the present torii of the Toyokuni Shrine, opening up towards Shomendori.

[Temple bell of Hokoji]

2. Toyokuni Shrine
When Tokugawa Ieyasu decided he wanted to be honored as a god after his death, he was following the example of his predecessor, Toyotomi Hideyoshi. When Hideyoshi felt death was approaching in 1598, he had a lavish mausoleum / shrine built where he was posthumously worshiped as a kami. There are still genre screens left showing a late 16th c. Bon dance with a large multitude of people in front of the mausoleum. But Hideyoshi was too popular among the people of Kyoto to Ieyasu's taste so after he came to power, and had destroyed the Toyotomi family, he had the Toyokuni Shrine razed to the ground. It stood farther east from the present shrine, at the foot of the Eastern Hills (at the present location stood the Hokoji Temple). The Toyokuni Jinja as it is now, was only rebuilt in 1880 by the Meiji government. The great Karamon Gate (shown below) was brought from Konchi-in, a subtemple of Nanzenji sponsored by the Tokugawa - a sort of belated revenge by the Toyotomi. The shrine's treasure house contains memorabilia of Hideyoshi and his times and is worth a look.

[Toyokuni Jinja]

3. Mimizuka, "Grave of Ears"
Toyotomi Hideyoshi undertook two military campaigns in the Korean Peninsula, in 1592 and 1597, with the ultimate view of conquering China, an effort which was unsuccessful due to stiff resistance from the combined forces of Korea and China. As war trophies ears and noses were brought back in barrels of brine instead of the usual heads (which were considered too cumbersome) and these were interred in a small grass knoll crowned by a stone stupa in front of Hideyoshi's "own" temple, Hokoji. Did Hideyoshi really think the Buddha would be happy with this gruesome donation? The number of collected body parts reputedly ran into the tens of thousands. Today, Mimizuka stands immediately next to a children's playground. When Korean embassies visited Kyoto during the Edo-period, they always made a point of worshiping at this mound.

[Mimizuka]

4. Kanshundo
Kanshundo is a shop selling traditional Japanese sweets on Shomedori, in front of Hokoji and Toyokuni Jinja. It was originally set up to cater to pilgrims visiting Hokoji temple. The shop itself has now moved to the southern corner of Shomendori and Kawabatadori. A restaurant set up with the same purpose is Doraku, now 370 years old.

[Kanshundo Higashimise]

5. Shomenbashi
Hokoji was so popular in the Edo-period, that a bridge was built over the Kamo River here, called Shomen Bridge.

[Kamo River seen from Shomenbashi]

6. Nintendo
Just across the bridge stands the former headquarters of the Nintendo company, when Nintendo was solely a hanafuda (Japanese-style playing cards) company. Nintendo was established here at Shomendori Ohashi in 1889.

[Nintendo former headquarters]

7. Kikokutei Garden (Shosei-en)
Shomendori next abuts on the Kikokutei Garden and you have to go around the garden with its stately walls to find the street again. The gate to the garden is in the eastern wall. Kikotei Garden was donated to the Higashi Honganji temple by the Tokugawa shogunate in 1631. It is a large pond garden, said to be designed with the help of Ishikawa Jozan, a samurai scholar who is well-known for Shisendo (and its garden).

Kikokutei is named after the hedge that once surrounded it and is supposed to go all the way back to a garden laid out here by a 9th c. Minister, Minamoto no Toru. The buildings in the garden - the villas of the Higashi Honganji abbots - are all modern replica's as the originals were lost in a large fire in 1864. At that time, the garden was also severely damaged. The picture below shows the central pond, Ingetsuchi, with Tonoshima, a nine-storied stone pagoda an a tiny island believed to be the tomb of Minamoto no Toru. Kikokutei used to be free, but unfortunately now a 500 yen "donation" has been instituted (a bit severe, as it is not one of Kyoto's really famous gardens).

[Wall of Kikokutei]

8. Buddhist shops on Shomendori
The area between Kikokutei and Higashi Honganji as well as the area between Higashi and Nishi Honganji were temple towns administered by the Hongaji authorities. Today, both on Shomendori Kami Juzuyamachi-dori north of it, one still finds many shops selling Buddhist implements, such as home altars, statues, prayer beads, bells and cushions for bells, glittering ornaments, priestly vestments, etc. Near Higashi Honganji also is a specialist Buddhist bookshop.

[Buddhist shop on Shomendori]

9. Higashi Honganji
See my separate post about Higashi Honganji.

10. Buddhist shops between the two Honganji temples
More home altars and other paraphernalia... Note that these differ depending on the Buddhist denomination. In this area you will find only shops catering to Jodo Shin Buddhism.

11. Dendoin
Dendoin was designed in 1912 by famous architect Ito Chuta. It belongs to Nishi Honganji and originally housed an insurance company related to the sect. Now it is a free exhibition space of the temple. Note the mosque-like roof and the mythical animals, as well as the unusual masonry, a true mixture of Western and various Eastern elements.

[Dendoin]

12. Gate to Buddhist shops opposite Nishi Honganji 
This imposing gate leading into Shomendori faces Horikawa Avenue. On Horikawa Avenue, you will find several traditional shops, such as a large tsukemono (pickles) shop - a favorite item to take home from Kyoto or give as a present - and Kungyokudo, a traditional incense shop (now in a modern building). Besides various types of incense, it sells scented sachets, candles and kunko, fragrant incense pellets.

[Gate to Shomendori with Buddhist shops seen from Nishi Honganji]

13. Nishi Honganji
See my separate post about Nishi Honganji.

How to find the starting point of this walk: take a bus to the Kyoto National Museum or Sanjusangendo and walk north up Yamato-Oji Street (running along the western perimeter of the museum grounds). You can also take a Keihan train to Shichijo Station.
When you finish the walk at Nishi Honganji, it is only a 10 min walk back to Kyoto Station.

"The Picture of Dorian Gray" by Oscar Wilde

The studio was filled with the rich odour of roses, and when the light summer wind stirred amidst the trees of the garden, there came through the open door the heavy scent of the lilac, or the more delicate perfume of the pink-flowering thorn.

Oscar Wilde published his only novella, The Picture of Dorian Gray, in 1891. It is the story of "beautiful boy' Dorian Gray, who is taken under the wing of the cynical Lord Henry, who teaches him how to be a cruel hedonist - the only things worth pursuing in life are beauty and fulfillment of the senses, he teaches.

Dorian has had his picture painted by artist Basil Hallward, who is infatuated with him, and succeeds in creating a masterwork. Seeing his youthful self on canvas, Dorian wishes that he may always remain young, instead the picture should grow old. Dorian's wish is magically fulfilled...

Under the evil influence of Lord Henry, he plunges himself into debauched acts. He first leads a young actress to her doom, then destroys the lives of several young men. He also becomes a visitor to the opium dens of London. Each time when he views his portrait (carefully hidden from the gaze of others), he sees the effect such acts have had on his soul - the face in the portrait grows dark, cruel and mean. But he himself feels no remorse, or even responsibility.

Finally, Dorian will become a murderer, killing Basil who irritates him with his moralizing, and himself hunted by the brother of the actress who seeks revenge. And then the only solution is the destruction of the portrait...

This is a typical fin-de-siecle melodrama, as intricate as a chalice by Lalique and ultimately as superficial. Dorian Gray leads a double life, like a second Dr Jekyll/Mr Hyde. But he is totally uninteresting, a type and not a character. I also couldn't care less for his concern of keeping his young looks - it is by growing and developing themselves that human beings become interesting, not by preserving a baby face.

What pulled me through the book were the witty conversations of Lord Henry, who speaks in epigrams and whose every word would fit in a collection of quotations. He glitters in the conversations with Dorian Gray, but even more so at social occasions as dinner parties, and is like a character in one of Wilde's plays as Lady Windermere's Fan. Here are a few (I only endorse the second one about laughter; the third one serves to show how misogynistic the novel is):

"The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it. Resist it, and your soul grows sick with longing for the things it has forbidden to itself, with desire for what its monstrous laws have made monstrous and unlawful." 

"Humanity takes itself too seriously. It is the world's original sin. If the cave-man had known how to laugh, History would have been different."

"My dear boy, no woman is a genius. Women are a decorative sex. They never have anything to say, but they say it charmingly. Women represent the triumph of matter over mind, just as men represent the triumph of mind over morals." 

There are many editions of The Picture of Dorian Gray available, but it can also be found on Gutenberg or in a free audio-version. It has been countless times adapted for the screen.

Higashi Honganji

Visitors to Kyoto, arriving at the station, cannot miss Higashi Honganji. An impressive pile of wood, it sits squarely at Karasuma Avenue that leads into the city from the station. Walking past its magnificent gates and wall, viewing it from bus or taxi, you realize: I am in Kyoto, the Buddhist capital of Japan...

[Higashi Honganji]

In the sheer force of its size, Higashi Honganji is indeed what you imagine a Kyoto temple to be. And it is more. Always open in the daytime, its spacious halls beckon a warm welcome to passersby who long for a moment of silence, a break from rain or heat, an interval with oneself alone. In the size of its buildings, Higashi Honganji is one of the largest temples of Japan, and this is also true for the number of followers, that runs to ten million.

Higashi Honganji split off from the Honganji in 1602, when land for the present site was donated by Tokugawa Ieyasu, the first Edo shogun, who may have wanted to diminish the power of the sect. The wily shogun availed himself of a succession conflict in the temple to bring a brother of the Honganji abbot, who earlier had been passed over in the succession, to rival power. So Higashi Honganji and Nishi Honganji were born.

In the modern city, Higashi Honganji stands right in front of the station. You almost stumble over it when coming into Kyoto. It is separated from its western counterpart by a maze of streets teeming with shops selling items to supply the needs of pilgrims (Honganji Jinaicho).

[Higashi Honganji]

Hall of Compassion
Higashi Honganji is always bustling with people, as out-of-town parishioners make it a point to stop over to pay their respects when they are in Kyoto. Not counting the temple offices, abbot's quarters etc., there are only two halls: in central position, opposite the main gate (also very impressive, as it is one of the largest gates in Kyoto) stands the Founder's Hall (Goeido or Founder's Hall) dedicated to Shinran and containing an image of the master, and on the left side stands a hall dedicated to the Buddha Amida (Amidado).

It is characteristic of the Jodo Shin faith that Shinran's hall is larger and more centrally positioned than the one of the Buddha himself. This is a reflection of the fact that the temple originated in Shinran's funerary chapel. The Goeido occupies an area of 3,900 square meters and features double roofs in the Irimoya style. At 76 meters in length, 58 meters deep and 38 meters high, it is one of the largest wooden buildings in the world. It floor consists of more than 900 tatami mats and the roof is covered with almost 176,000 tiles. Besides Shinran's image, it also contains portraits of previous abbots and scrolls extolling the virtues of taking refuge in Amida Buddha.

Although smaller, the Amida Hall has been built in a more elaborate style. Next to the Amida image in central position is a scroll depicting Prince Shotoku, the legendary founder of Japanese Buddhism. There are also portraits of the seven patriarchs of Pure land Buddhism. The sliding doors have been decorated with paintings by Meiji-period artists.

The Main Gate (called Goeidomon as it stands opposite the Goeido Hall) is 28 meters high. The top floor (which is inaccessible to visitors) houses a trinity of Sakyamuni with Ananda and Manjusri. A plaque with the words Shinshu Honbyo "Main temple of the New Faith" hangs on the gate. In the middle of the road in front of the gate sits a fountain designed as lotus flower - which represents rebirth and is said to have flowered in profusion when Sakyamuni was born.

Other buildings in the grounds are the Belfry (Shoro) and the Reception Office (Sanpai Settaisho, built in 1934, but with an underground addition from 1998 in the form of an audiovisual hall designed by architect Takamatsu Shin).

Higashi Honganji's buildings are relatively new, as the temple burned in 1864 and was rebuilt in 1895. At that time, fifty ropes woven from the tresses of female believers were used to haul the massive timbers. One of these coiled ropes, now of a somewhat ghostly aspect, can still be seen in a glass case on the temple porch.

Higashi Honganji is Kyoto's gateway. A temple to end all temples, it has on the contrary become the quintessential temple. Everyone is welcome to enter and sit down on its tatami mats, that have worn down to a velvety sheen. The huge keyaki-wood pillars impart a sense of security.

The pigeons, they come too. In droves they fill the wide courtyard. As it is against Buddhist law to take life, there are no active means to banish pigeons. On the contrary, vendors standing under the gate sell bags of beans to feed the birds.

This, too, is a sign of the all-embracing nature of Higashi Honganji.

Access: 5 min. on foot north of JR Kyoto Station, facing Karasumadori. Grounds free.

In the neighborhood: Also see the Shosei (Kikokutei) Garden belonging to the temple (5 min. east of Higashi Honganji) and explore the Buddhist shops in Honganji Jinaicho.

Otani Mausoleum. While Nishi Honganji has its grave temple and graveyard at Gojo, in 1670 Higashi Honganji established its funerary temple near Gion, just south of Maruyama Park.