Object #26 - Lee's gloves - The Magnificent Seven (1960)

Dir. John Sturges

This one is pretty simple. Costume can go a long way to give us information about a character. A lot of the Mad Max films rely on outlandish outfits to show directly how insane and violent the post-apocalyptic inhabitants of Australia are. It can also distinguish characters who look similar from one another, think Christopher Johnson in District 9. And, of course, superheroes such as Batman and Thor are defined by their costumes. 

In The Magnificent Seven it's a subtle thing. Robert Vaughn's cowboy Lee, from the get-go, seems weaker than the other six members of the 'Magnificent Seven'. Yul Brynner's Chris leads, Steve McQueen is the right-hand man with all the one-liners, James Coburn's Britt comes off as a deadly knife-wielder, etc etc, with Brad Dexter being the boring 'tough-guy' who dies first (Spoiler alert for a 55 year old film!). Vaughn's character is just sort of...there. He doesn't have any defining characteristics until the latter half of the film. In fact, all we really know about him is that in an initial shoot-out he stands ready (pictured above), with hand-raised, deep in thought. He never fires a shot. 

In a Western such as this, characters are mostly defined by their wit, deadliness, and flair. Lee has none of this. He doesn't fight, has no witty one-liners, and seems pretty 'square'. How is this conveyed? Through his actions, or rather, lack of action, of course, but even more simply, by his gloves. 

Look at the picture above, Lee is the only one of the seven wearing gloves. It marks him as different, an outlier. We learn later in the film, in his prime character moment, that he has nightmares about previous battles he's fought in. He awakes, moaning, screaming, and upset. He is consoled by the inhabitants of the village, but it's clear he's been suffering with this trauma for a while. In modern terms, it's PTSD, or Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. Before we learn this, we know there's something off about him, because of his gloves. Simple, but effective.

In his moment of 'victory', Lee prepares to storm a house full of enemy cowboys holding villagers prisoner. He pulls his gun, stands to the side, yet puts it away again. As an audience, we feel that he's 'weak', although in truth, there is nothing weak about a PTSD sufferer. Nonetheless, we feel it, as this is the sort of film where you must fight, or die. Lee stands in front of the door, enters, a pause, the enemy sees him, but he draws quick, dispatching three of them in one sweep. The prisoners free, they all return to the battle. 

He overcomes his trauma to save the prisoners, and dispatch his enemies. He is 'redeemed' in our eyes. Unfortunately, like most of the Seven, they are dispatched quickly, achieving overall victory but not without casualties. Lee, a veteran of the violent way of life in the West, dies as he should, in battle.

I don't condemn this, I actually think it's very mature of a film of the time to put a PTSD suffering character into a bog-standard Western, particularly considering that PTSD wasn't studied in-depth yet. I think the film as whole would be worse without it, as it adds complexity, and moral ambiguity to the way of the cowboy, in a way other westerns of the time ignored.

P.S Of course, most of this comes from the, in my opinion at least, superior Kurosawa film Seven Samurai that the film is an adaption of. I've written about it previously here. Running far shorter, The Magnificent Seven takes a lot of the beats of the original and condenses them considerably, such as Chico's (Horst Buchholz) backstory, his romance with Petra (Rosenda Monteras), and various other aspects, not least of which the ending, which is far superior in Seven Samurai as the cinematography, time spent with the characters, and history/mythos of the Samurai combine to create a far more powerful message than is adapted in The Magnificent Seven. I'll give The Magnificent Seven it's due though, as it has the subtlety of Lee's character, expressed brilliantly in simple visuals, with the use of a pair of gloves.  

Object #25 - Pipe Bombs - The Terminator (1984)

Dir. James Cameron

James Cameron seems to be great at either writing in, or having objects in his films that become iconic. I'll definitely be writing in the future about the motion-tracker and the pulse rifle of Aliens, the Unobtanium of Avatar, maybe even the lever-shotgun of Terminator 2. But today, it's the pipe bombs from the original, and if it wasn't for one of the greatest sequels of all time, the best film of the Terminator franchise. My own favouratism fluctuates between this film, and it's terrific action-sequel. Like Alien, The Terminator is a darker, moodier, and grittier original film than it's sequel Terminator 2, and Aliens like it. It's like comparing a damn good apple to an equally good orange, as each film is a different, excellently-constructed beast. What's even more impressive is that Cameron did this to his own concept. It was he who came up with the idea of the robotic-assassin from the future (well, Harlan Ellison would disagree but that's another matter), and it was he who wrote and directed the film, during a period of extreme poverty. Thankfully, this film was a hit, but most importantly, not just financially. It's an excellent film, one I recommend you visit, or re-visit, if you've only seen T2 or any of the other, less superior films. 

It's details like the pipe bombs that add to a greater whole. The Terminator is taut, lean, and overwhelmingly one long chase, either for Reese (Michael Biehn) to reach Sarah (Linda Hamilton) before the T-800 (Arnold Schwarzenegger) can find and kill her, or afterwards as the Terminator hunts the two down. I was surprised to find that the film is 107 minutes long, it feels far shorter, although certain scenes do come to find, mainly in the police station that probably extend the runtime. Being taut, nearly every detail in the film serves the plot, the characters, and the themes. 

The pipe bombs in their 'introduction' inform us about Kyle Reese as a character. In the latter half of the film, Kyle and Sarah reach a motel. Kyle says that he's going to go shopping. He returns, and naturally, Sarah, who's been on the run from the murderous T-800 for a long few hours, searches fro some food. She finds nothing but mothballs, rags, wiring and the like. Reese, a 'veteran' of the future-war against the machines, a desolate nuclear-wasteland of a war-field filled with the skulls of the innocent, crushed under machine rule. His first thought in a moment of relief isn't sustenance, but an offensive defense, by creating pipe bombs. 

It also tells us a lot about the environment Kyle has grown and fought in. Now I understand we do actually see this environment in the flash-backs (or would those be flash-forwards?) of Kyle, and so I could be talking out of my arse. I don't think so however. In fact, I think the effect would be even better. If we hadn't seen these flash-backs, the pipe bombs would tell us a few things: i) Kyle is resourceful, he knows what to get from the shop to create the bomb; ii) Kyle has experience cobbling together weapons in the future, and a pipe-bomb is a great symbol of this resource-filled environment. Finding pipes in a nuclear wasteland isn't going to be that hard, and the other items not very difficult either.; and iii) Fairly simply, Kyle is experienced at fighting Terminators with bare supplies. It tells us that the future doesn't have many man-made weapons, as otherwise they wouldn't need to rely on pipe-bombs.   

They also act to create a nice bonding moment between Kyle and Sarah, as he instructs her how to construct the bombs. Even little details like him going 'Slowly!' to make sure she doesn't end up blowing them both up tells us that he has experience with making them, admittedly, this was pretty clear already. It's a moment that's fairly cliche in films these-days, likely due to the influence of this scene, and others like it.

They are, of-course, also used practically, as weapons against the Terminator. They are thrown at him during the motorcycle chase, the timing of the fuse leading to some great, literal actions-beats as the timing is just wrong enough as to not directly hit the Terminator. Later, it's a pipe bomb placed in the exhaust pipe of the fuel-truck that causes the massive explosion ridding the Terminator of his skin, leaving the cold, deadly machine underneath to stalk the two. And it deals the penultimate killing blow as Kyle sacrifices himself to directly place a pipe bomb into the abdomen area of the Terminator, exploding it into junk, except of course for the torso, because that's the thing with Terminators, they never stop. 

It's for these last few reasons that the objects are particularity iconic and associated with this film, but as I've discussed, I think they've a deeper purpose in the entire feel of the film. It's not as deep as objects from other films, especially the big open-to-interpretation objects such as the blue box in Mulholland Drive and other films of the like, but nonetheless, I think they deserve a place on the blog!  

Object #24 - Firearms - The Last Samurai (2003)

Dir. Edward Zwick

The Last Samurai is a funny-old-film. It weaves a tale of America, or rather, an American, and Japan co-operating in the art of warfare. If I stay on the films' level here, it's a film about a disillusioned war-veteran of the American Indian and Civil Wars, Cpt. Nathan Algren (Tom Cruise), who acts as an adviser to the modernizing Japanese empire, crushing a rebellion of the old regime. He's a fish-out-water, adapting, reacting, and learning from the noble samurai, and Japanese culture as whole, where respect and honour are valued above all. In sum, a crock of bullshit. Romanticized it may be, but it's so inaccurate to the history of the land and the samurai that it borders on insult, possibly even racism. 

Now I don't think it's racist, but others could very easily. It's a naive view of samurai culture, as it portrays them as honourable warriors, performing seppuku, and waging war with their iconic swords rather than guns. These things happened to a degree, but just that, a degree, nowhere near how it;s portrayed here. Algren, who it's impossible not to see as the most apple-pie American due to the casting of Tom Cruise, is not-so-subtly portrayed as some sort of saviour, with his knowledge of firearm warfare, educating an empire that only now catches up to the American wars waged with guns. Wrong, utterly wrong. The Japanese had been accustomed to the use of firearms for nearly 250 years. The enemy samurai, portrayed as a group of veterans at-war, didn't exist like this at the time, as they would have been out of hard-war for many years, becoming landlords, tax collectors, and farmers. Neither would the Americans forge weapon trade-relations, that had been covered by the British and Germans far earlier. It stands to reason then that Algren would never have been an adviser to teach the young soldiers how to shoot.        

I mean the film has ninjas for god-sake! Ninjas! In the late 18th century! They were forgotten memories come the 17th. Do you see what I mean? It comes across as the American white-man's view of Japanese history, with accuracy be damned. Samurai fight using swords, therefore America must bring guns. There are cherry-blossoms, talk of bushido, sepukku, and ninjas. It feels like Japanese culture constructed out of stereotype, and based on past American films' portrayal of Japan. Lest we forget that John Wayne played Genghis Khan (yes I know Khan was a Mongol, but you get my point). 

But on the other hand, it isn't racist as it clearly has Algren (I find it so hard not so type Cruise) learn from the culture. Over the course of the film he learns that the Japanese are not savage as he was told, in fact they're better than Americans in many respects. But again, I'm sorry, this just reeks of cultural tourism and the superiority of the Americans. I can't pinpoint why exactly. The time-frame makes sense to have the Americans believe themselves superior, but Cruise learns they aren't in truth. But just by having Cruise it has this aura of the Hollywoodisation of Japanese culture and history. And it cannot avoid feeling superior as Hollywood cinema has its own rules and viewpoints. Cough, Independence Day, cough. 

Let's talk about the firearms directly instead of skirting the issue. The films opens with Algren, drunk, presenting a show to popularize the sales of an American rifle. We know that weaponry is important from the offset. He brings this knowledge and the guns themselves to the Japanese, as we know. Now the film is inaccurate in suggesting that the Japanese didn't have guns already. What is isn't inaccurate about is that Japan is in a processes of change. The Meiji restoration was the forging of the Japanese empire, rather than the feudalism that ran the country before. Modernization came with government, industrialization, and yes, firearms. It's a theme I touched on in my discussion of Lady Snowblood, and I've discussed the oncoming passing of the samurai before in my discussion of Seven Samurai. This post then acts as a sort of logical endpoint to this 'trilogy' of themes, despite the inaccuracy of this film. 

What the firearms symbolise in The Last Samurai is the future, and the modernization of Japan. It is counterpointed however by the discoveries of Algen, who finds that the samurai sword, and the ways of the samurai are not antiquated. Some of these ideals should survive the modernization. Guns have no honour in mass warfare, death is impersonal, distant, and fast. There's a scene where a bow is fired against many gun-wielders, and Zwick shows it dispatching many of them. It's a last hoorah for the old, and the antiquated. War has changed, and yet it hasn't. Principles remain the same despite the proficiency of the tools. Yet principles change due to the tools. What we must ask is whether modernization occurs due to the gun, or whether it occurs due to the change in culture, that just so happens to be symbolised in the use of guns?

My discussion of this film has been almost schizophrenic, as I just can't decide whether I enjoy it for what it is, hate it for it's pure Hollywood heart, or simply enjoy the beautiful cinematography, the battle scenes, and it's discussion of the old ways versus the new. I don't love this film, that much is clear. It's too American a viewpoint, one that's ignorant over-all. It just so happens that this is a central theme of the film, as the ignorant American is enlightened by the different culture. The thing is, I feel that this is a film that I would have enjoyed in my childhood, as it encapsulates everything I would have thought of Japanese culture back then. But there comes a point where naivety becomes ignorance. In films such as Seven Samurai we get the viewpoint of the Japanese film-maker. I can be damned sure that they know more about their own culture than any American, or myself, does. It's for this reason that by going to the source, and watching original Japanese films, you get the true viewpoints of the culture. The Last Samurai isn't a bad film, it simply doesn't have a true viewpoint of the culture it portrays, it's ignorant, and misguided.  

Object #23 - Newspaper - Lifeboat (1944)

Dir. Alfred Hitchcock 

A Hitchcock film where I won't be talking about a MacGuffin, hoorah! This object is a pretty simple one. Alfred Hitchcock was famous for having cameos in his own films. If you're not familiar with a cameo (which I doubt, I mean come on!), then what it is is an appearance by a person of significance in a film, but not in an acting role (although this isn't a strict definition). Hitchcock, as director would appear in his films in the backgrounds of shots, in photographs, and in one of my favourites, while catching a bus. You can see a slew of them here. 

So in Lifeboat, the question is, how can Hitchcock cameo in a film that is set entirely on a single lifeboat? Well Hitch cleverly decided to use his recent weight-loss as a way to achieve it. In the film, several of the characters read from a newspaper that survived the torpedoing of their ship. When the newspaper is held up to the camera for a relatively brief moment, we see the above, an advert for 'Reduco', a weight-loss 'obesity-slayer'! Who stars in the Before and After picture? Hitchcock himself of course! I don't have much to say beyond how charming I find this entire idea!

Hitchcock is a genius of film-making, that's well known. He's also famous for being extremely witty, and it's for reasons like this he has that reputation. For a film-maker that clearly takes the process seriously, and inventively, it's so refreshing that he uses this inventiveness not only to further his own film-style, and influence many viewers and future film-makers, but to go to great lengths to include a simple cameo in his film. 

This is a man that clearly revels in the process of making films, and challenged himself many a-time. Lifeboat was the first of his one-set films, with further films such as Rope and Rear Window refining and improving the idea. Rear Window is certainly the best, although it 'cheats' by having literal viewpoints into other sets and character interactions. Rope was a little more inventive by being filmed in a few long shots, whereas Lifeboat has the conventional shot style of the time. That's not to do a disservice to Lifeboat, it's remarkable how it manages to have such interesting and varied shots in a film set entirely on a single lifeboat. 

The 'Reduco' idea was re-used by Hitch in Rope, avoiding him the difficulty of re-inventing another cameo idea in his next single-set film. It's a pleasing motif, and again shows his sense of style in having a recurring cameo. I love both of these films, Rope more-so than Lifeboat but that's only as I find the 'gimmick' of the film that much more enjoyable. Lifeboat's story was conceived by John Steinbeck, and his style is so much a part of Lifeboat, like it is in John Ford's adaption of The Grapes of Wrath. It just happens that I prefer Hitchock's style to Steinbeck's, although, come on, they're both masters of their respective mediums.

Did Steinbeck cameo in his own work...no? Well Hitchcock is clearly better! I'm kidding of course, but Hitch's cameo in Lifeboat remains one of favourite cameos of his, and a tangible image of the man's inventiveness, style, and humour.  

Object #22 - Yuki's Kimono - Lady Snowblood (1973)

Dir. Toshiya Fujita 

One of the most iconic images of Japanese cinema is Yuki Kashima's (Meiko Kaji) blood-splattered white kimono. Most Western audiences recognize it unconsciously due to the influence of Tarantino's Kill Bill Vol.1 (2003) where Lucy Liu's Yakuza-boss O-Ren Ishii is almost a spitting image of Lady Snowblood herself. Although it isn't the red-on-white aspect I want to discuss, but rather the role the kimono has in the final confrontation of the film.

Yuki infiltrates an English-style masquerade ball in order to seek revenge on one of the men who raped and caused the death of her mother. Gishiro Tsukamoto (Eiji Okada), after faking his own death, is now a prominent arms-dealer in Japan, with ties to the Japanese army itself, in the run-up to the first world-war. Yuki, dressed in the traditional Japanese kimono, a samurai-style sword on her back, and an eye mask on her face. She is, in a word, traditionally and iconically Japanese. Her surrounding aren't. There is classical music playing, composed by Europeans, and the ball itself is French/English in origin. She sticks out like a sore thumb, and the ball-goers notice her quite obviously, whispering behind her back and staring. 

Gishiro earlier in the film makes a point that he doesn't have time for "twenty year old vendettas" (paraphrasing), as he feels the oncoming war will dominate his attention. Japan itself has changed at this point in time at the end of the 19th century. The rule of the Shogun have ended, and the country is now predominantly government-led, with an influx of Western practices such as the masquerade ball. This is sub-textual throughout the film, but is encapsulated here as Yuki's kimono, and her vengeful purpose, stand-out from the ever-modernizing age. 

The scene moves on, with Yuki killing a double of Gishiro, staining her dress with blood. She works with the estranged son of Gishiro, Ryurei Ashio (Toshio Kurosawa), her new love to murder Gishiro on the balconies above the ballroom floor. Yuki comes out on a separate balcony, as Gishiro pulls an automatic pistol and aims at both Yuki, and at Ryurei, who is on the same balcony as Gishiro. I think this is a great little touch. The gun being automatic in this time-period really shows the oncoming industrialization of the world at war, with men like Gishiro at the forefront. It also ties into the old vs. new by simply being a gun, a projectile weapon, rather than a sword. 

Gishiro shoots Ryurei multiple times as they grapple, with Yuki finally diving across the balcony, and stabbing both the men to kill her target. She is shot herself in the process as she delivers one last killing swipe. Gishiro falls from the balcony, clutching the Japanese flag, a symbolic choice if ever there was one. As he dies swathed in the flag of Japan, he becomes a symbol of this new, mechanized, Western-influenced Japan, killed by it's own past in the form of Yuki, herself clothed in the traditional kimono. The film ends with her, bloodied, leaving into the snowing outside. She falls to the ground, staining the snow with her blood, grabs a handful, and crushes it in her hand as she screams. 

Lucy Liu as O-Ren Ishii in Kill Bill

It's worth commenting on the obvious here. White has always been associated with goodness, virtue, and innocence. By having her white kimono stained with blood, Yuki's loss of purity is physically shown in contrast. This lack of purity ties back to her raped mother, who slept with many men afterwards for the main reason of having a child to seek revenge on her rapists. Yuki discusses how she and her mother are one in spirit, literally. They are both driven by the same vengeful soul. Having the kimono stained then reminds us of the purity that was taken from Yuki's mother by her rapists.

Before Yuki delivered the final killing slash to Gishiro, she shouts "An eye for an eye". And that just sums it all up really. The whole phrase is, as you likely know, is "An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind". We see it in the blood on the kimono. The violent rape of Yuki's mother is cyclically returned as her rapists' blood stains the daughter's kimono. It's also shown oh-so-brilliantly as Kobue Takemura (Yoshiko Nakada), daughter of Banzo Takemura (Noboru Nakaya), one of the original rapists Yuki killed earlier in the film in revenge, stabs Yuki as she steps into the snow. It's the final blow atop the bullet wound and general injury she'd sustained in the assassination. And it's so true that violence begets violence in the film, as the daughter of a murdered parent seeks revenge on a woman who is motivated by the same purpose.

Lady Snowblood is a superb film, and one that any fans of Kill Bill, samurai films, kung-fu films, and above all, revenge films should see. Frankly, watching this film and then Kill Bill would make the parallels all the more obvious: The Bride's motivation for revenge, the upwards shot of the four rapists/murderers (three men and one woman in Snowblood, three women and one man in Kill Bill), the kimono O-Ren Ishii wears, and the locale of the Crazy-88 fight all hearken back to Lady Snowblood. I seem to have a bit of a recurring motif of looking at the originators of a lot of iconic cinema tropes,images, and characters (see my Mabuse post). I'm doing it again here, and I'm sure it won't be the last!