Tags : Cinelogue

Days of Youth doesn’t feel stiflingly Japanese nor does it feel at all formal or austere. It is a light, breezy comedy that affectionately looks at two college students as they fall for the same girl. The truth is, as we now can realise, that Ozu’s severe ‘Japanese-ness’ was simply his highly developed formal sense manifesting itself. After all, I’ve yet to hear of anyone rejecting the similarly rigorous Robert Bresson based on his films being ‘too French,’ even as Godard proclaimed the elder gent represented the quintessence of his native land on the screen.

This is one film where Chaplin doesn’t miss a gag. Every prop, every sequence, every person seems perfectly placed and shaped to extract the maximum amount of comedy out of the story. Of course within the film the Tramp can only be funny when he is unaware that people are laughing and so as he learns of his real role within the circus, as the main attraction, his star fades. The final shot is filled with poignancy as the circus rides away and the Tramp decides, much like his erstwhile canine TV pal The Littlest Hobo, that he should just move on elsewhere.

It’s likely what led Murnau in later years to disown and dismiss the film, and it seems that many of those around him did so as well. So the big question remains, “How are we to approach this film now that it’s been found and restored?” It’s a film that doesn’t fit in easily with Murnau’s filmography or style, or what we know (or think we know) about German silent cinema. The answer is that if we can approach it on its own terms, Finances of the Grand Duke is a delightful film with a lot to admire but even more to enjoy.

The porter is a man who has put his soul into objects, foremost among them the pristine uniform with gleaming buttons that he worships, divesting himself of any sort of pride or exuberance that isn’t invested in the article. As a result, the loss of his position is not so much an insult to his abilities as a man or one of pecuniary concern, but it means the relinquishment of his most prized possession… into which he has transmitigated his soul.