Category Archives: Retro Cinema

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Dodes’ka-den (1970)

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The 1970 film “Dodes’ka-den” has always been a puzzling piece of the Akira Kurosawa canon. Despite its cred – an Academy Award nomination as Best Foreign-Language Film and the distinction of being the director’s first color film – audiences did not embrace it during the film’s theatrical release. The film’s commercial failure in Japan compounded a myriad of professional and personal problems that pushed Kurosawa to a suicide attempt. Outside of Japan, it was barely seen on the big screen – a U.S. release didn’t take place until 1974.
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Ben-Hur (1959)

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William Wyler’s 1959 “Ben-Hur” is a film that generates respect, if not adulation. And there is no reason to feel guilty about not loving this mammoth three-and-a-half-hour epic. Gary Giddins, writing in the New York Sun, probably summed it up best: “Watching ‘Ben-Hur’ all at once is like sitting down to a 10-course meal and finding that every course consists of potato dumplings, except for the seventh, which is strawberry shortcake (that would be the chariot race).”

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2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)

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Back in the early 1990s, I was on a line at an IMAX theater in San Antonio, Texas, for a one-night-only screening of “2001: A Space Odyssey” in its original 70mm format. A local couple was standing behind me and asked if I was familiar with the film. I said that I had already seen it and asked if they were also familiar with the production. They said they never saw it, but I noticed there was a strange apprehensive expression on their faces, as if they were having second thoughts about seeing the film.

“Here’s my advice,” I said to them. “Don’t expect ‘Star Wars’ – and the film’s ending makes no sense.”

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Brother Martin: Servant of Jesus (1942)

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Most film historians have exiled Spencer Williams to the fringes of cinema history, a situation based on both his race and the circumstances in which he worked. During the 1940s, he was the only prolific African American director – albeit in a series of cheaply-made, independently-produced features for a company out of Dallas that were distributed for exhibition in racially segregated cinemas serving the nation’s black population.
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