Notes on An Essay on "Jewish Themes in THE GRADUATE(1967, dir. Mike Nichols)" by Brenton Sanderson

https://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/2020/07/26/jewish-themes-in-the-graduate-1967/

The Jewish Angle in THE GRADUATE has been much discussed. But whatever its implications and meanings, there's no denying the brilliance with which Mike Nichols made the movie, something that eluded him in later works... though CATCH-22 has its moments and CARNAL KNOWLEDGE is pretty compelling as an arty take on the Sexual Revolution. So, the talent has to be discussed in relation to the film's impact. THE GRADUATE would likely have failed with critics and audience in lesser hands, whatever its message. It's like almost no one talks about GUESS WHO'S COMING TO DINNER or just about anything by Stanley Kramer. Though Nichols ultimately didn't turn out to be a great director, he made one great movie, THE GRADUATE, much like Ridley Scott surpassed his limitations one time with BLADE RUNNER. Likewise, other key works by Jewish directors of the period must be considered(even in criticism) with an appreciation of their power as artists, wits, dramatists, expressionists. Even if there is a Jewish angle to THE GRADUATE and other works by Jewish artists, there is much more than mere ethnic propaganda. Stanley Kubrick made 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY. Roman Polanski made ROSEMARY'S BABY. Stuart Rosenberg made COOL HAND LUKE. Arthur Penn made BONNIE & CLYDE. Arthur Schlesinger made MIDNIGHT COWBOY. Richard Brooks made IN COLD BLOOD. Earlier in the decade, Blake Edwards made BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY'S. Though Sidney Lumet would come to greatness in the 70s and 80s, he was emerging as a force as well. (Norman Jewison, who made IN THE HEAT OF THE NIGHT, isn't Jewish despite the name.)
Now, not all the above-listed directors attained greatness. Rosenberg made one great movie, COOL HAND LUKE, but was mostly a journeyman director. But for whatever reason, it was the Jews(and then some Italian-Americans) who were most adept at hitching onto the new sensibility and conceiving new possibilities for Hollywood. Of course, many new or newer talents were not Jewish. Sam Peckinpah, Robert Altman, Hal Ashby, and the like. But Jewish film-makers were among the key figures in the development of New Hollywood. They were bolder, hungrier, more curious, more radical, more hip to trends. They were also among the most admiring of the great European directors(most of whom were not Jewish) and some Japanese ones. Their impact on cinema was somewhat akin to Bob Dylan's on Rock Music, though it's arguable that the only Jewish film-maker to match the cultural significance of Dylan was Stanley Kubrick who struck a chord with both critics and the audience. To be sure, cinephilia of the Film Generation was somewhat different from the attitudes of Youth Culture. Whereas Rock fans had close to zero interest in pre-Rock music and foreign music — though Folk Rockers were more reverent of the past and other cultures — , Film Culture was about remembrance and international curiosity. So, the seminal film critics of the 60s didn't just discuss the latest trends and hottest hits but wrote extensively about foreign cinema and classic Hollywood. College kids who had no interest in music prior to Rock might nevertheless look up to Howard Hawks and Orson Welles as cultural heroes and icons.
Still, despite the respect accorded to the Old Hollywood greats by Andrew Sarris, Peter Bogdanovich, and their acolytes, the fact is the culture was changing fast. So, while even young cinephiles might marvel at a John Ford Western or Frank Capra comedy, they no longer believed movies could or should be made that way. There was a new spirit in the air, and Jewish film-makers were among the first to run with it. And yet, the Europeans and Japanese had been ahead of American Cinema in personal expression and experimentation. In a way, the new batch of Jewish film-makers had a greater affinity for non-Jewish-controlled foreign cinema and were rebelling against the Hollywood System controlled by old-fashioned Jewish executives and careerists. And they had their chance because the Old Studio system was either dead or moribund, just barely hanging on, as the result of Hollywood's loss of theater monopoly and the rise of TV.

One can socially critique movies like COOL HAND LUKE, THE GRADUATE, BONNIE AND CLYDE, and many others as hostile and subversive, and there is certainly a Jewish angle to this. Still, the real power and effectiveness of these works owes to their artistry, brilliance, and deeper implications than their apparent message, be it blatant or esoteric. It's like Shakespeare's HENRY V is more than a 'nationalist' piece of propaganda. Also, they were refreshing because there is a bit of anarchist in each of us that roots for the oddball, eccentric, maverick, outsider, or underdog. (The audience rooted for Sylvester Stallone in ROCKY because whites had become underdogs in boxing.) And the similar strains could be found in European and Japanese movies that were, if anything, even bolder in thumbing their noses at the established order and social norms. Nagisa Oshima, Shohei Imamura, and Hiroshi Teshigahara were not Jewish. Neither were European directors like Alain Resnais, Jean-Luc Godard, Bo Widenberg, Fassbinder, Gillo Pontecorvo, and etc. So, in some ways, the Jewish American directors were following in the leads of European and Japanese cultural pioneers and enfants terribles, though one could argue that modern radicalism anywhere in the world was inspired in part by Jewish Influence.

At any rate, Jewish Power of Propaganda cannot be understood apart from the talent and visions that go far beyond whatever the original 'political' intent may have been. In some ways, David Mamet is an unpleasant Jewish chauvinist, yet he is also artist and thinker enough to raise questions and face truths that challenge his ethnic biases. (In contrast, Aaron Sorkin is a mere propagandist-hack, albeit a talented one.) Sergei Eisenstein's propaganda films are crude as message but works of genius as experimental formalism. ROSEMARY'S BABY would likely have been a third-rate movie in the hands of someone other than Polanski, just like JAWS would have been one more dumb monster movie if not for Steven Spielberg. (Polanski and other Eastern European directors are a special case. Whereas most of the great Western European directors were non-Jewish, many of the Iron Curtain's 'new wave' directors, especially in Czechoslovakia and Hungary, were Jewish. Though the White Right generally sees Jews as radical leftists, many of these Hungarian and Czech 'new wave' Jewish film-makers were problematic to communist authorities for their espousal of individualism, irreverence, satire, and/or something approaching libertarianism. Most were liberal than leftist, highly problematic as communism regarded liberalism as a bourgeois conceit. And even if not pro-capitalist, they leaned more towards social democracy than communism. Polanski detested communism, and Milos Forman, the Czech Jew in exile, found great success in Hollywood with ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST, which would be very un-PC today, and AMADEUS, a work that is, at once, subversive of authority and defensive of genius as natural hierarchy.) Talent goes a long way, and whatever ideological agendas or ethnic biases may have shaped the works of Jewish directors, the top Jewish talents were not only born with natural intelligence but grew up with a genuine appreciation of arts/culture. As such, Mike Nichols' main objective was to make a popular but personal art film inspired by the cinema of Europe. (Nichols was especially impressed with Fellini's 8 1/2. THE GRADUATE also has nods to Michelangelo Antonioni and Francois Truffaut.) But if some American directors miserably failed at making Art Films— THE SWIMMER had all the elements to be a great piece of personal film-making but suffered from strained uneven direction, and Lumet's PAWNBROKER is an embarrassing assemblage of obvious homages to European Art House — , others found their own stride, and THE GRADUATE may be the most significant work in this spirit. At first glance, it seemed a Hollywood movie riffing on European Art film mannerisms, and yet, it was so genuinely American and Hollywood. Moreover, Nichols, unlike Lumet before him, totally made the work his own. Instead of imitation, he drew inspiration and found his own beat and rhythm. As such, while THE GRADUATE may resemble a work like BLOW-UP by Antonioni, it has a uniqueness all its own. Also, the great appeal of movies like THE GRADUATE and MIDNIGHT COWBOY owed to American Jews being less hung up with intellectual conceits. As much as they admired European cinema, they also loved humor, effect, and fun. Increasingly with European Cinema, there developed the purist notion that true art cannot be much fun or rely on time-tested conventions. Also, theory began to dominate practice. For instance, Pier Paolo Pasolini began his film career with lively works with expressive actors, but along the way, he got this idea that actors shouldn't act dramatically. Godard's films got increasingly self-conscious. Ingmar Bergman's films grew colder. Now, an artist who really knows what he's doing can make it work, as in the case of Robert Bresson. But too many aspiring auteurs in Europe became allergic to doing anything that might violate the monastic or radical mission of cinema as art or commitment.
In contrast, Nichols had far fewer such hang-ups. So, even as he drew certain ideas from European cinema, he was mindful to lots of humor along with the songs of Simon and Garfunkel, whatever worked. Such use of songs might have aeen deemed as cheating or relying more on non-cinematic expressions than on the pure possibilities of cinema. But the use of songs did wonders for THE GRADUATE, just like the use of classical music added another dimension to 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY. So, Nichols and others like him had the best of both worlds: The new language of Art Cinema as personal expression but also the eagerness to please and win over the audience with timeless tricks of entertainment. And that is why THE GRADUATE, like HAROLD AND MAUDE, works on so many levels. It is seriously committed to cinema as art but also shameless in presenting a good show. New Hollywood was closer in spirit to Serious Rock — Later Beatles, Bob Dylan, Pink Floyd, CCR — than Modernist Music that took out all the fun from music.

So much of PC mentality is reductionist in evaluating works for their 'toxicity' level, e.g. 'racism', 'misogyny', 'sexism', 'homophobia', 'antisemitism', and etc. It's too bad that this tendency exists on the Right as well. Now, it's fair game to notice socially or politically problematic ideas and messages in any work, but the question still remains, why do certain works, regardless of their moral or political content, have such power and influence on the audience? And here, we have to address the matter of talent, brilliance, originality, and/or genius. While THE GRADUATE isn't the work of a genius, it is a brilliant piece of film-making, one where everything clicked together. (It both supports and subverts the cult of the 'auteur' as its miracle couldn't have been possible without Mike Nichols' guiding hand but also depended so much on the chemistry among the assembled cast and crew.) And also a poetic one, even if it amounts to pop-poeticism, like the songs of Simon and Garfunkel. Likewise, THE GODFATHER movies would likely have been nothing special and soon forgotten but for the understanding, knowledge, and skills brought to it by Francis Ford Coppola. There's no point to condemning or praising an entire work because of its said politics.

Turman bought the rights to the book for $1,000 and sent it unsolicited to Jewish director Mike Nichols (born Mikhail Peschkowsky) who signed on to the project. Turman’s search for financing led him to Jewish film mogul Joseph E. Levine—“the schlockmeister of the world”—who put up $3 million... Nichols assigned Jewish screenwriter Buck Henry (born Henry Zuckerman)... Songs by the Jewish duo Simon and Garfunkel were used for the soundtrack. Given the many Jews involved in the film’s production, it’s hardly surprising that Jewish sensibilities and ideological fixations pervade the final product.

But Jewish finance and Jewish producers had long been a dominant force in Hollywood. Also, Jewish writers had been embedded in Hollywood since its inception. And many music composers were Jewish. So, THE GRADUATE is hardly different from works of Classic Hollywood in the preponderance of Jewish money and talent.

In the hands of director Mike Nichols, however, the story became a scathing critique of bourgeois WASP American culture and the oppressive burden it purportedly imposed on young Americans. Nichols employs two recurrent visual metaphors to symbolize this oppressive culture: black-and-white stripes and water.

Many people saw the movie that way, but I'm not sure Nichols meant it that way. When pressed about Elaine and Benjamin by a young female fan of the movie, he answered that they'd probably end up just like their parents. Also, even though there is gentle mockery of upper middle class life, it's hardly hateful. (If anything, even as the audience is glibly laughing at the 'shallow' people in the movie, they are attracted to displays of affluence and the good life, also true of works like LA DOLCE VITA and LA NOTTE. Would THE GRADUATE have been as successful if it were about a working class guy living in a tenement? MARTY with Ernest Borgnine proved to be more or less a one-off thing.)
Benjamin's woes have less to do with social oppression than loss of youth. He's worried about the future, i.e. it has arrived, he's living in it, so it no longer exists for him. This is a universal problem faced by people all over the world. When you're young, the future is always something in the distant horizon. It's always a day ahead, like the song from ANNIE. Or consider how Scarlett in GONE WITH THE WIND always assures herself that 'tomorrow will be another day'. This procrastination about the future loomed larger among the boomer generation as more of them grew up in affluence, could attend college, and followed their bliss, that was as long as one was young and still at work or play. But school eventually ends, and one must be an adult with responsibilities and burdens. So, even though the movie is based on Charles Webb's novel, its spirit also flows from CATCHER IN THE RYE by J.D. Salinger. Braddock is not a victim of social oppression, that is made clear. His parents provided him with everything. He has a nice big room all to himself. He could attend the college of his choice far from home. His graduation gift is a fancy sports car. And as the movie makes clear, his parents pretty much allow him to do as he pleases. At one time, his father expresses displeasure with Ben's taking it easy, but he doesn't do much about it. Also, Mr. Robinson's advice to Ben is that he should sow some wild oats and have the time of his life(without realizing it would lead to an affair with his wife). Later, when his mother asks him what he does all night long and his answer isn't forthcoming, she just walks away and leaves him alone; she's a very understanding, even permissive, parent.

Ben also has no problem with job prospects. 'Plastics', he can make lots of money working for corporations. Or, he can continue with his education, especially as he got a scholarship. So, what is bothering him? His youth is over and thrill is gone. Whether work or more school, he feels his youth slipped by. It went from looking-forward-to-life to life-itself. He's going through what might be called the Beginning-Age Crisis, the crisis that befalls someone who realizes his youth is definitely over and his first chapter as an adult begins. He doesn't want to be like his parents or their friends, but it's not because he hates them. It's because it means just working, making money, and then growing old and retiring. Such is life, and there is no escape, and it's something everyone must accept at some moment, but Ben simply isn't ready yet to make the transition. (Perhaps, he feels especially cheated because his youth passed him by without him even having gotten laid or fallen in love or done something truly exciting.) And in the 1960s when youth itself became an identity in its own right, the boomers developed this notion of Forever-Young. They said stuff like "Don't trust anyone over thirty" without realizing they themselves would be over 30 sooner than later. So, Ben's problems are essentially personal and psychological(and generational) than social or cultural. The problem is not lack of freedom but too much freedom that he came to associate with youth. Finally, with graduation, he will have less freedom as a full-time worker who just grows older and becomes just another suburban man. Granted, there is a certain irony in his transition from student to full adulthood. On the one hand, he has more freedom after graduation. He doesn't have to attend classes anymore. He's his own man and can do whatever he wants. And yet, it's a freedom of responsibility, a kind of drag and burden. In contrast, while as a student he was more under the control of institutions and his parents who paid his tuition, he wasn't responsible for himself. As a son and student, his sole responsibility was to attend school and get good grades. He was taken care of, and furthermore, he could focus on knowledge and learning than on mundane matters of life. And he could always look to the future as something special. But the day finally arrived, and it just proved to be another day, and all the days following that day will turn him into just another suburban man. His life will be comfortable and affluent but not particularly meaningful, as only a tiny handful of people actually get to pursue their dreams.

The water metaphor is less about societal weight on Ben's shoulders than about Ben's emotional state of melancholy and confusion. In a way, the watery depth is more a solace than a prison. Notice how he keeps running back to his bed room from the graduation party full of admiring friends of his parents. These people are full of affection and praise for Ben. Hardly oppressive, but he finds the situation insufferable because they all remind him of what he will be in two or three decades. So, he would rather be in his room staring into the aquarium. Thus, he feels comfortably numb. The fish, like the ducks in THE CATCHER IN THE RYE, may stand for a more ideal existence. Unlike Holden Caulfield who doesn't know what to make of his life, the ducks naturally know to fly south for winter. The fish in the aquarium need not worry about anything as the tank is cleaned by humans and as they're regularly fed. Having graduated, Ben is out of the fish tank of childhood for good and in the river of adulthood. Later when we see Ben having a good time with his affair with Mrs. Robinson, we see him floating on the water glinting with sunlight. There's the memorable moment with the rain, but I think it was more for effect and mood than symbolism. It also foreshadows his desperate race against time later in the movie. Of course, as he sweats up a storm, he's his own rain-maker.
A special thing about THE GRADUATE is it finds a special beauty in the melancholy. In a way, Ben wants to break out or break on through to the other side, but the meaning is in the struggle, not in the victory. He studied hard all his young life to be a top student and graduated with honors, but it seems hollow once it's behind him. Same with his 'second graduation' with Elaine as trophy wrested from the church wedding. His greatest desire is to win her heart and make her his. It becomes an all-consuming passion and obsession... but once he has Elaine with him in the bus at the end, he begins to feel somewhat empty again. The dream is always sad, even a bit depressing, because its realization seems so elusive, even impossible. The dreamer hopes the dream will become reality, but per chance it does, the result is always bound to be anticlimactic. So, Ben is caught in a psychological trap. A neurotic-romantic, he's given to aching for what's beyond his reach. And yet, upon attaining his dream, he realizes that he was truly happy when he was in yearning. It's like hunger calls for satiation but, once satisfied, soon fades in pleasure.
Once he gets it, he realizes it's just one more trophy and life goes on. It's like the scene in BLOW-UP where a bunch of guys tussle over a broken guitar neck, but it is tossed aside soon after it's taken by one guy. It's the curse of a dream coming true. It just becomes more of mundane reality and loses its luster as future vision.

In a way, Ben's problem isn't all that different from the personal crisis of the young man in BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES. War was hell, and he dreamed of returning home alive in one piece. But as a civilian, he's just another Joe, just another guy working 9 to 5 to make ends meet. As horrific as war was, he was a hero and felt more alive precisely because death was everywhere. But back in the States, where life is everywhere and so humdrum, he feels empty. And when he sees the many bombers rusting in the airfield waiting to be scrapped for metal, he senses another kind of death. End of war means life, but the airfield looks like a graveyard of heroism. Feeling alive isn't the same thing as life. There can be lots of life but no sense of being alive, feeling alive. In contrast, one could feel most alive around death. While Ben hardly had to worry about death, the experience of growing up and graduating from school to school was a kind of adventure of mind and spirit. Every year meant he was rising another level, growing into adulthood. But once an adult, there is growing older but no more growing up. It's like once peak height is reached, there is advancement in years but not in inches(except around the waistline).

Ben's situation in the final part of the movie is like David and Goliath. It’s the same reason we root for Tony Montana who defies the chief kingpin in SCARFACE and takes on all-comers. Ben is the scrappy fellow who pursues his dream come what may and runs off with the girl. But what he does isn’t normal. It’s not normal to expect a relationship with a girl whose mother you had sex with. It’s not normal or very honorable to come between a woman and her prospective groom. The scene where he informs his parents about the marriage says it all. They assume Elaine and Ben came to an agreement, but Ben says he decided on his own and that Elaine doesn’t even like him. And unbeknownst to his parents, there is the problem of Mr. and Mrs. Robinson. (We are not sure when exactly Mr. Robinson found out about the affair.) Ben's father says his plan is half-baked, and Ben says, no, it’s completely baked. And it is. The normal and honorable thing would be for a guy to accept the reality of the girl being betrothed to another. The proper thing is to walk away, but Ben just won’t. To be sure, he decides to call it quits after Mr. McClusky(Norman Fell as landlord) threatens him with eviction, but then, Elaine tells him not to leave until he has a definite plan. And then, Ben is back to his crazy dreamer self.

Things can never be normal with Ben and Elaine even if they do eventually get married. After all, she made her wedding vow and is legally wed to Carl Smith. So, she must go through the whole legal rigamarole of filing for divorce. And if Ben and Elaine were to tie the knot to make it official, they will still be estranged from their parents, especially the Robinsons. Ben’s father can’t be too happy either as his partner in the law firm is none other than Mr. Robinson. In time, Ben and Elaine as married couple will likely end up like their parents, but their lives can never be normal due to strained situations with their parents(and perhaps the scandal of the wedding crash).

That said, THE GRADUATE had an almost universal appeal because it was as sentimental as it was cynical. It was like the Beatles and SGT. PEPPER’S LONELY HEARTS CLUB BAND, an album beloved not only by youths but older people and even highbrow types. It was a Rock album pandering to Summer of Love and Youth Culture, but it was also arty and even a bit old-fashioned, with tunes like “When I’m Sixty Four” and “She’s Leaving Home”, a song that is rebellious in message but traditional in delivery. (A HARD DAY’S NIGHT was also a winner with both young and older audiences.) Young people regarded Ben as a rebel-hero who says hell to ‘plastics’, experiments in free love, seeks authenticity, and takes action to realize his dreams. And yet, even non-radical or non-experimental boomers could relate to him because he initially comes across as something of a square and stuff-shirt, someone who focused more on books than all the groovy things happening around the period. Charles Webb's novel came out before Counterculture happened, whereas the movie was made in its midst. The scenario feels all the more alienating for that reason. It's like an early 60s mindset time-traveled to the latter-60s. Now, one might say that those were just a few years, but SO MUCH happened between 1963 and 1967. That sudden sense of change was the subject of FUTURE SHOCK by Alvin Toffler. If Ben were graduating from high school in the movie, he might be ecstatic. Alas, he graduated from college and officially became an adult just when the culture of youth was taking off to new dimensions. He's too young to identify with his parents generation but just old enough to feel out of sync with the youth culture. Thus, he feels alienated from old and young. And yet, he feels attracted to Mrs. Robinson who, though twice his age, seems defiant of growing older by making up her own rules. And part of the reason he may feel such attraction to Elaine is she's still in school and therefore symbolizes the youth that has passed him by, at least in official capacity. Ben was following the track of being an Organization Man than a Creative Soul. Or, at the very least, he's like an Early Beatle with suit-and-tie who suddenly finds himself transported to the Age of Aquarius. For older or more traditional audiences, it was a story about a guy who initially finds escapism with easy sex with an older woman but then falls in true love and wants commitment and marriage. As for the ending, it can be seen as a rebellion against social norms(as how many people crash weddings?) or confirmation of true love, the classic fairy-tale of a hero saving a damsel from distress.

Now, why would Elaine be attracted to Ben when Carl Smith is taller and more handsome(and has good prospects as a doctor)? Ben has personality. Also, Elaine has a soft side and feels for others. Carl Smith is so sure of himself whereas there is a passive/aggressive boyish side to Ben that needs mothering. So, her maternal instincts kick into gear in the presence of Ben. (She is actually more mother-like than Mrs. Robinson who seems bitter that her youth was cut short by pregnancy and marriage.) Also, Ben is a funny guy, and humor goes a long way. Furthermore, love isn’t only about sexual attraction but the feeling of being appreciated. A person can fall in love with the love shown him/her by the other. For Carl Smith, Elaine may be a good catch but not the only one. If she slips from his grasp, he will likely find another good catch. But for Ben, Elaine is the ONLY ONE, and she senses the depth of his passion for her.
And it’s also what happened between them at the night club. Ben was acting like a total ass but later confesses that he went against his nature due to parental pressure. Of course, that’s not really true as the real reason he tried to sabotage the date was because Mrs. Robinson had forbidden him to date her daughter. Anyway, something clicked in that moment. Elaine is a physically a fully blossomed woman, but there is still something of the little girl inside. You can tell she hasn’t yet lost her innocence, and she lives in something like a paper doll world. Ben realizes how much he hurt her, and he does everything to make amends and this creates a special bond between them. With the kiss, Elaine goes from weeping girl to a real woman, and Ben goes from a confused adult without direction to a man who finally understands what gives his life meaning: Elaine as his true love. (At the same time, there is a quality of puppy love.) With Mrs. Robinson, he was toyed with and used, and he used her in turn. It was just about sex and to stave off boredom. An escapism from life. But with Elaine, there is no guile and gamesmanship. He feels natural in her presence. His plan was for a short date where he’d act the jerk, make Elaine dislike him, take her home, and be done with it. But Elaine’s reaction in the night club is more that of a vulnerable girl than an angry bitch. He sees a side of her he never expected, and in turn, he feels born-again when he tries to console Elaine. It's as if he's finally found his true self and no longer feels so alienated. Thus, the problem was less social alienation than auto-alienation. It suggests that an individual is only half-a-person, therefore a person can only be complete when he meets one's soulmate. It lends a mythic overtone to the movie — Greek mythology says Zeus separated men and women from their embrace, therefore life is about men and women trying to reconnect with their lost mates. Much has been made of the Christian and Jewish angle of the story, but perhaps the main appeal is closer to Greek mythology and Western fairy tales. Earlier in the decade, there was a hit French movie called BLACK ORPHEUS, the telling of the Greek myth with black actors. THE GRADUATE is like the Jewish Perseus. At any rate, it was this ‘subversive’ and multi-faceted blend of cynicism and sentimentality that made THE GRADUATE so special. But the same could be said of THE GODFATHER, which is both a heart-warming family story and a cold & ruthless gangster tale.

The perennial theme of Jewish alienation from a WASP-dominated mainstream American society played an important role in how the character of Benjamin Braddock—and the entire film—were conceived by Nichols—though this only became fully apparent to him after the film had been made.

But it works in the movie because even the character in the novel is alienated. Indeed, many leading characters in novels and movies are outsiders, eccentrics, oddballs, or mavericks. We find such characters more interesting. Even Clint Eastwood as Harry Callahan is alienated from the System he works for. John Wayne's character in THE SEARCHERS is something of a misfit, at odds not only with Indians but with fellow whites. Marlon Brando and James Dean became famous as malcontents. Orson Welles said he cast homosexual Anthony Perkins because his closeted neurosis might add something to the character of Joseph K. in THE TRIAL, and it seems Nichols had something similar in mind in having a Jewish character play Ben. I think it works better than it would have with Robert Redford, though a younger Paul Newman, as half-Jew and half-Aryan, might have been even better. Redford, though a capable actor, was rather colorless and inexpressive. The movie wouldn't have been half-as-funny with Redford as Benjamin. Dustin Hoffman was an actor of limited range but fantastic at his best. His Ratso Rizzo in MIDNIGHT COWBOY is genius-acting.

Also, Hoffman-as-Ben has an ambiguous presence in the movie, making it all the more interesting. He's both Jewish and Wasp. Boy and man. Awkward and aggressive. Timid and bold. Calculating and chaotic. The Jew/Wasp tensions within the character intensifiy the contradictions within Benjamin who is both eager and afraid to be free. Hoffman is short but physically fit. Topless, he does have the physique of a long-distance track star. Also, while not handsome, the young Hoffman is rather attractive from certain angles. There is also something of the 'cute' quality that Ringo had. And then, there's the timing and intelligence in his acting, something truly rare in cinema as most actors aren't known for brains.

Ben’s scream in the church is so reminiscent of Rod Steiger’s wailing at the end of THE PAWNBROKER. As for Wasps trapped in the church, that has nothing on the ending of DIRTY DOZEN where Nazi officers are barricaded in the basement and roasted alive with gasoline and grenades. That is one cynical movie. Nazis are so evil they deserve to be slaughtered like animals. But American heroes are a bunch of crooks, criminals, thugs, and psychos. It’s like an insane hashing of BRIDGE ON RIVER KWAI and THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN. Truly a dirty movie.

Nichols cast Hoffman, “despite the fact that he was virtually unknown and looked nothing like the leading man described in the script, which called for a tall, blond track star, not a short, Jewish guy with a schnoz for the ages.”

But in the end, we must judge by results, and I think the success of THE GRADUATE is inseparable from Hoffman's shell game of drama and humor. While an actor like Redford or Ryan O'Neal might have been closer in looks to the character in the novel, Hoffman had that blend of straight man and clown that made the role so different and unique. Also, the final part of the movie when Ben is speeding back and forth from LA and Berkeley has something of the silent comedies of Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin, the tales of underdogs who overcome all obstacles to end up with the girl. Robert Redford running off with the girl would seem less amazing and outrageous than Dustin Hoffman doing so. Buster Keaton was a short guy but one who out-maneuvered the competition and usually came out ahead. Same goes for Harold Lloyd, and especially as Nichols came from comedy background, he was looking for the most comic as well as dramatic actor, and he hit gold with Hoffman.
Now, take Jack Nicholson in ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST. The character in the novel is much stronger, a tough Irishman who takes on three Negroes in the shower and beats them all up. Nicholson's McMurphy is smaller and weaker and no match for the Negroes, but it's a masterly performance, and he came to own that role. Many, indeed most, movies deviate from the novel or the original screenplay, but at the end of the day, the only question that matters is "Does it work"? Hoffman made it work. But then, Victor Mature played Samson and Charlton Heston played Moses, and they made it work, at least as entertainment.

Hoffman’s anti-heroic character gave the green light for Hollywood to promote “the ethnic Jewish matinee idol and youth icon in the forms of George Segal, Elliot Gould, Richard Benjamin, Charles Grodin, and Gene Wilder.”[9] These Jewish romantic leads were invariably paired onscreen with beautiful non-Jewish actresses like Marsha Mason, Candice Bergen, and (in the case of Dustin Hoffman) blondes like Mia Farrow, Faye Dunaway, Susan George, and Meryl Streep.

It's been said that THE GRADUATE changed the rules of who can be a star in Hollywood, but this is a gross exaggeration. Hollywood always had lots of room for Jewish, ethnic, different, ugly, short, and weird actors, even among Wasps. Alan Ladd was a short guy. Humphrey Bogart, though Wasp, looked ethnic and could have passed for Italian, Greek, Spaniard, or Jew. But he was a big star. Short and funny-looking Mickey Rooney was one of the biggest stars of the 40s. James Cagney was no looker but a tremendous star. The Jewish Paul Muni was in many prestigious roles. Peter Lorre and Edward G. Robinson, both Jewish, became world famous. Short actors were nothing special in Hollywood. Many actors, if not downright short, were hardly tall. James Dean was 5'7. Marlon Brando was 5'9, not exactly short but far from tall. It could be that shorter men gravitate to acting because they have to be more expressive to gain the kind of attention that taller men usually get. How tall is Tom Cruise? Long before Dustin Hoffman became a household name, Frank Sinatra was a big movie star. He was only 5'7, had pocked face, and was Italian. And movie stardom was often less about looks than the hook. Certain actors and actresses, even if not handsome or pretty, had a certain screen presence, an allure. Take Charles Bronson who could even be said to be ugly. But he had a great movie face. Same was true of Telly Savalis and Anthony Quinn. Tony Curtis the Jew played a Norseman in THE VIKINGS and did a pretty good job.

As for George Segal, Elliot Gould, Richard Benjamin, Charles Grodin, and Gene Wilder, they usually starred in lesser or more 'independent' productions. Among the new batch of Jewish actors, the only one whose success matched that of Hoffman in the 70s and 80s was maybe Gene Hackman(though Henry Winkler hit pay dirt as the Fonz on HAPPY DAYS, but that was TV). Richard Dreyfus seemed to be on the up and up but soon faded. Of course, one could count Harrison Ford as Jewish, or half-Jewish. Woody Allen might qualify but he was appreciated more as 'auteur' than actor. (Correction. Gene Hackman doesn't seem to be Jewish.)

Hoffman won the role over Charles Grodin, another Jewish actor who was no model of conventional WASP good looks.

Grodin, though no heartthrob, had a certain goofy charm. And unlike in THE GRADUATE where everything is 'crypto', THE HEARTBREAK KID is very much a public airing of the Jewish Male obsession with the 'shikse'. It is in satirical than romantic mode(as in the case of THE GRADUATE) and, as such, cinematically less interesting but even more revealing of the Jewish sensibility. Hilarious stuff.

Such overt anti-Christian imagery jarred with the film’s first audiences—but was only the start of Hollywood’s disparagement of Christianity, and seems tame by today’s standards.

Maybe Jews are doing white people a favor by bashing Christianity, a religion that originated from renegade Jews. In a way, what is more 'crypto-Jewish' than Christianity? Though Christ is often depicted in Western Art as an Aryan-looking fellow, He was actually Jewish and probably looked more like Norman Finkelstein or Noam Chomsky. And speaking of neurosis, how about the story of a Man who claimed to be the Son of God and got Himself killed over it? Western Civilization is founded on Jewish Neurosis. So, even though Hoffman the Jew plays a Wasp in THE GRADUATE, white people over the eons have been worshiping a Jew with a big nose in the image of European whites. And look at the sculpture of David by Michelangelo. I'm thinking that David, being Jewish, looked more like Jerry Seinfeld or Sean Penn, but the statue resembles something out of Greco-Roman mythology.

At any rate, when will whites find their own covenant with the ultimate power of the universe? As long as whites keep with Christianity, it means they are forever beholden to the imagination and vision of Jews. Also, Christianity, if followed to the letter, is a death cult as we are now seeing in the West. If Christian West was powerful in the past, it was because it heeded only about 1/4 of Jesus' teachings. Go beyond that, and you end up dead. And if you don't, you get blamed for hypocrisy, preaching 'turn the other cheek' while using violence to conquer and control the world. Christianity has been a great religion, but it is now dead. It's very sad in a way, but it means the white race must finally GRADUATE toward a new consciousness with prophets of its own that can meditate on the ultimate power and receive the covenant that has meaning to whites and whites alone.

By the way, thing in the church happens so fast that it hardly registers as an anti-Christian screed. And, whatever the significance of Ben wielding the cross as a weapon, it is funny as hell, and as the characters in THE WILD BUNCH say, “I wouldn’t have it any other way.” The outrage element is part of the fun. A little irreverence never hurt anyone.
Also, just look at the church. Its design is so Californian, so modernist and soulless. It looks like a bleached shell devoid of spiritual meaning. A church as status-symbol of the affluent and modern. So, it’s less a Christian ceremony than a matter of custom. They get married in a church because it’s just what people do. And who are among the attendees? None other than Mrs. Robinson, hardly a virtuous character. And there’s Mr. Robinson who pressured his daughter into marrying Carl Smith out of his seething rage at Ben. We don’t know much about Smith the ‘make-out king’, but he doesn’t seem the spiritual type. So, even without Ben’s presence, the wedding is just an empty show, a ritual devoid of spiritual or even much moral meaning. Elaine is getting married to console her father. Her heart is really with Ben.
Ben’s wielding the cross as a weapon could be seen as a desecration of Christianity, but it could also mean he’s the christ-like figure for true love. He’s willing to sacrifice everything, even sanity and limb, for the girl he loves.

The problem with clinging to Christianity in our age is it no longer provides the answers. As such, people need to seek out new visions and find new directions. It’s like a horse. It is highly useful when strong and hardy. But what use is a dead horse? Christianity is now a dead horse. In Europe, it’s totally dead. They say America is still religious, but no one gets fired or blacklisted for insulting God, Jesus, or Paul. But you may be fired and blacklisted even at a so-called ‘conservative’ Christian institution if you criticize Fentanyl Floyd or Jewish promotion of globo-homo. For many Christians, even those on the ‘right’, the highest holies are Jews, Negroes, and Homos. Indeed, many churches would have us believe that god and jesus serve Jews, homos, and blacks than anything else.

Christianity has become a suicide pact. If Christianity still had martial spirit, it would be in much better shape. In the past, Christianity served the West well in the form of 'hypochristianity'. Christianity had to be hypocritical in order to survive and expand. The teachings of Jesus, such as ‘turn the other cheek’ and ‘meek shall inherit the earth’, don't do much for worldly power. Jesus urged people to give away all their wealth, live in righteous poverty, and meditate on spiritual matters. But people who act that way end up dead or oppressed. If they believe in Heaven, they may expect something better in the afterlife. But most people are attached to the real world, and power is about money, weapons, hierarchy, and violence. So, the Christian West at its peak preached one thing but practiced something other. Now, the West wasn’t purely hypocritical and much of its values & practices derived from Christian morality. Still, the kindly side of the West relied on the hard side that kept and expanded power by ruthless means.

But such kind of hypocrisy is no longer tenable, especially as Jews gained power in the West and never lose sleep pointing out all the hypocrisies of the West. This shame has been internalized by most whites. This has led to whites either rejecting Christianity or trying to practice a Christianity that is closer to the spirit of Jesus’s teachings… which can only serve as a death/suicide cult. Worse, there are so many idiots or opportunists who seek to use the church as a club for other agendas, often satanic in nature, like globo-homo and worship of savage Negro as Magic Negro. And of course, many non-religious and anti-religious people are possessed of a zealotry derived from puritanical strains of Christianity. If the church in our times is an empty shell devoid of spiritual passion, post-Christian passion of radicals is like fanaticism without a meaningful vessel. Shell without flesh and flesh without shell are, of course, both doomed. Form without content and content without form are both ultimately useless. Christianity, both Protestant and Catholic, is dead as a useful and virile creed. When the Vatican has Pope Francis as top leader, what does that say? What is Mainline church in the US but promotion of globo-homo and Magic Negro? What is Evangelicalism but about More Wars for ‘Muh Israel’? There is the Orthodox Church, but it has no meaning to most Greeks who are secular. And in Russia, it is a museum culture than a living one despite all the new cathedrals built.

In the first scene of the film, Benjamin rides to the left on an airport conveyor belt as everyone else accedes to the airport’s public announcement system’s request to “Please stay to the right.”

I think 'stay on the right' in that moment meant stay to the right on the conveyor belt or in walkways, which is conventional rule in all places. It's like people usually walk on the right side no matter which way they're going.

In One Dimensional Man, he argued that advanced industrial societies like the United States repress their populations by creating false needs via mass advertising, industrial management, and modes of thought which resulted in a “one dimensional” universe of thought and behavior which stifled people’s capacity for critical thought and oppositional behavior.

Even if we disagree with Herbert Marcuse's solutions, was he wrong in his critique of consumer-capitalism? Look all around today, and corporate-consumer-capitalism is a big part of the problem. The rise of Pop Culture as Main Culture has led to the one-dimensional idiot. And we need critical thought and oppositional thought more than ever.

In the end, the real problem of whites was not 'authoritarianism' but complacency. Post-war boom made white people lower their guard and care mostly about the good life. They became passionless with crass materialism. The boomer generation rebelled against such complacency with utopian dreams and commitment to authenticity, but they too came under the power of materialism as their main inspirations came from pop music and TV. Like Peter Fonda said in EASY RIDER, 'We blew it'. If the Greatest Generation drowned in alcohol, the boomers failed to find nirvana in pot smoke, which is now just more big business.

Reich claimed the role of traditional “repressive” Western sexual morality was “to produce acquiescent subjects who, despite distress and humiliation, are adjusted to the authoritarian order.” Marcuse agreed with Reich that the “liberation of sexuality and the creation of non-hierarchical democratic structures in the family, workplace and society at large would create personalities resistant to fascism.”

There is obviously some truth to their claims. Any form of repression, sexual or otherwise, is to create a more stable order of unity and consensus. And it is true that 'sexual liberation' will undermine fascism as each boy and girl will be more into hedonism and self-gratification than suppressing one's individual desires for the good of the whole, the volk. If German youths in the 1930s had mostly been into sex, drugs, and rock & roll, would they have paid any heed to Hitler? And same could be said for youths under communism, which is why communist nations did all they could to suppress individualism as expressions of capitalism.
More interesting is why Marcuse and others blamed capitalism for the repression when it was obviously the forces of capitalism that were leading to the triumph of hedonism, 'sexual liberation', individualism, and youth culture of impatience. Maybe, it was difficult to immediately abandon the ideology, Marxism, that had shaped them for so long. Consciously or subconsciously, maybe the Frankfurt School was seeking to serve as the bridge that would allow the left to go from communism to capitalism as the more useful ideology.

The Frankfurters were right that 'sexual liberation' would be bad for fascism. But they overlooked how 'sexual liberation' would lead to the rise of new barbarism. After all, sexual politics is hardly egalitarian as alpha males usually win and as women prefer winners over losers. Some women seek out long-term winners who gain success in professions, but other women seek out short-term winners: the thugs, studs, and athletes. So, instead of resulting in the peaceful eternal summer of love where everyone is happy with good vibes, it has led to the rise of demented heavy metal culture, rap culture, pornification of even kiddie culture, and countless displays of narcissism & vanity, indeed as if everyone is a diva, his or her own 'hitler'. Fascism represses and channels virile barbarian energies in the service of civilization whereas the raw barbarian energies of 'sexual liberation' has led to the degradation of family and society, resulting in lots of violence and stupidity. Black African savages demonstrated that sexual licentiousness is no immunity to ultra-violence. Being sexually far less inhibited, blacks were generally unable to repress their wilder energies for the development of civilization, but they were murderous just the same. And the European barbarians long long ago were less hung up about sexual morality(before the coming of Christianity and its stricter ethos), but did that prevent them from rampaging other communities and raping and pillaging, i.e. acting like Alex and his droogs in A CLOCKWORK ORANGE? Indeed, people like Marcuse seem blind to the fact that National Socialism gained in popularity precisely because Jews pushed the most demented kind of anti-values in the Weimar Period, leading to a new barbarism. Degenerate personality leads to social chaos, which leads to people demanding an authoritarian personality to clean up the mess.

Frankfurt School was right to critique capitalism-consumerism and its mind-numbing and conformist influences, but its proposed solutions were useless because people like Herbert Marcuse were not honest, not least with themselves. Marcuse wailed against fascism, but he meant goy fascism. As he was pro-Zionist, he was for Jewish fascism. This is a key truth about Jews. They are so virulently anti-fascist precisely because they want fascism only for themselves. It is through fascism that both the right wing and left wing of a people can unite into a combined force. Fascism serves as the bridge and bond between left and right. Don’t make them fight one another but work together. This was the basis for National Socialism and Zionism. Where both ultimately failed morally is they went from nationalism to imperialism. Just like Jews hated Christianity and Islam for passing the secrets of the Jewish God to goyim, they hate fascism because it allows goyim to develop the kind of power specialized by Jews. Leo Strauss was a ‘rightist’ while Herbert Marcuse was a ‘leftist’. But what did they have in common? They were proudly Jewish and Zionist. For all their ideological discourse, identity came first. Zionism was created by Jewish socialists and Jewish capitalists working together. So, even as whites should give credit where it’s due — Frankfurters made useful criticism of capitalism and consumerism — , they must forge their own answers and solutions to problems, one that prioritizes the needs of whites. Jews are often interesting in their critique but useless in their proposed solutions, at least for goyim, as the utmost priority of Jews is to maximize Jewish power, not to make goyim more powerful. Frankfurt School is like a doctor that diagnoses the disease but advises the wrong cure.

In a way, much of modern form of Jewish Alienation derived from acceptance by White Society. Jews were both ragging Wasps for not being sufficiently accepting of Jews AND fretting too much assimilation may lead to loss of Jewish identity.

So, even as Jews felt alienated from Wasps, they also felt increasing alienation from their own roots. The more they became modern and Western, the less they felt traditionally bound to Jewishness. It’s one reason why Jews cooked up ersatz-form of being Jewish, such as being fixated on the Holocaust or celebrating Globo-Homo. Barbra Streisand’s YENTL is both celebratory and critical of Jewish Tradition, and it features a woman posing as a man to be accepted into the world of Rabbis. Around the same time, Blake Edwards made VICTOR/VICTORIA and soon after, there was TOOTSIE where Hoffman plays a ‘woman’. And Woody Allen made ZELIG. Paradoxically, Allen’s film seems to imply that the thing that Jews most fear as being harmful to Jewishness, which is assimilation, is also what most defines Jewishness. In other words, Jews have developed remarkably adaptive strategies of assimilation. And yet, even as Jews morph and blend into goy societies, at the end of the day, they revert back to Jewishness; they don’t really transform into the other. It’s like an octopus can take on all sorts of shapes but returns to being an octopus. But if an octopus is so fluid and flexible in its shape and structure, is there a core structure to octopus-ness? Or is the essence of the octopus to have no definite form? It’s no wonder Jews are so into trans-business where there can be infinite number of ‘genders’. It’s like sexual Houdini-ism. ZELIG is almost like a satire of an intellectual Nazi movie about Jews.




More Notes:

Plenty of white goy novelists had written about vices. Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald’s books are about lost souls who indulge in all sorts of dubious behavior. SUN ALSO RISES is more ‘degenerate’ than THE GRADUATE, book or movie. THE GREAT GATSBY is a deeply disturbing novel, about both wasps and Jews. The anti-Semite Celine pioneered a new kind of writing, and his stories were filled with people of questionable character, to say the least.

Also, Jews at the time were making fun of themselves. Don Rickles roasted everyone. Woody Allen loved to crack jokes about Jews(as well as goyim). Mel Brooks made THE PRODUCERS in 1967. It mocks everyone, especially homos.

And if anyone subverted conventions of the movie Western(which owed a lot to Jewish Hollywood), it was the Catholic Italian Sergio Leone.

One notable advantage of Jews in arts & letters for the longest time was they had to grit their teeth and tolerate and even accept things they didn’t like. In other words, they couldn’t keep kosher in dealing with the wider world. There were too many goyim, and they were too goyish and too Christian and too powerful, as well as often anti-Jewish and willing to express such feelings. And yet, this made Jews stronger in a way. It may be that losers can’t be choosers, but those who are forced to choose everything can take ideas from all sides and can grow in empathy. Jews couldn’t cancel Celine, and so, he wrote and came to be a major influence on Jewish authors such as Philip Roth. Jews couldn’t cancel Richard Wagner(except in Israel), and so many Jewish composers drew inspiration from him. Jews couldn’t cancel Christianity, so they wrote some of the best Christmas songs. So, even as Jews felt resentment, they drew ideas and inspirations from the other side. They had no choice, but this made them stronger. If a vegan is forced to eat meat, he may resent it but he will grow stronger with extra protein. If anything, he will grow weaker if he has the power to ban meat and stops eating meat. Because Christians and whites could either ignore or suppress Jews in the past, they could keep only with what they liked. In contrast, because Jews had to deal with goy culture that was all around them, they came to learn a trick or two from what they didn’t like. Kubrick used Richard Strauss in 2001, but suppose Strauss had been canceled and banned because he worked in Nazi Germany.

In a way, it could be Jewish cultural power could now be waning precisely because they’ve gained the power to shut down things they don’t like. So, many interesting talents and thinkers are canceled and blacklisted. Jews may feel safer and more secure as the result, but they’re also creating a culture where everything must be Jew-friendly and suck up to Jews. We now live in a world when Jews can cancel people like Hemingway, Fitzgerald, TS Eliot, Richard Wagner, Celine, Gore Vidal, Knut Hamsun, and many others for their antisemitism, real or imagined(or exaggerated). By suppressing lively goy cuture, Jews have less inspirations to draw from the goy world. Indeed, just look at American Conservatism once it canceled people like Joseph Sobran. As the new rule revolved around ‘Is it good for Jews?’, conservatism turned into all-out cuckservatism.

Maybe Jews realize the dangers of this development on some level. In the past when Jews were surrounded by plenty of goy culture and expressions that weren’t always Jew-friendly, they learned to adapt, learn, draw inspiration, and be vigilant. But in a Jew-power world that has made everything so kosher-friendly and Jew-secure, not only will Jews have less ideas to draw from the goy world(as Jew-friendly hacks are favored over controversial talent) but Jewish kids may grow up nonchalant, apathetic, and lazy. Why should the young ones worry when every goy is always praising Jews and when Jews can easily cancel anyone deemed ‘antisemitic'(or even ‘homophobic’ or whatever)? Jews will become like spoiled princeling brats. That may be why Jewish Power exaggerates the ‘antisemitic’ threat just when goyim are more slavish to Jews than ever. It could be that Jewish Power is nervous that Jewish young may become slack and take things for granted in an overly kosherized world. So, tell them there are nazis lurking everywhere because… uh… anyone Jews don’t like is a ‘nazi’. The more Jews gain nazi-like power for themselves, the more nazis they see everywhere.

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Ethnic actors were a big thing in Beach Party movies.

Frankie Avalon. And brunette Annette Funicello the cutie surrounded by blondes.

Lovely moment:



And a decade after THE GRADUATE, there was the musical GREASE where ‘greaseball’ Travolta hook up with blonde Olivia Newton-John.


Two kinds of youth movies: Ones made in the moment and ones that dwell on nostalgia or autobiography.

REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE, THE GRADUATE, SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER, BREAKING AWAY, and RISKY BUSINESS reflect the times in which they were made.
In contrast, AMERICAN GRAFFITI, FOUR FRIENDS, DAZED AND CONFUSED, and C.R.A.Z.Y revive bygone eras. The latter films have less chance of becoming dated because they were made after the fact with more perspective.
And then, there are movies made in the moment but reflecting an earlier era. Scorsese’s MEAN STREETS is set in the 70s, but he drew inspiration from his youth in the late 50s and 60s. As such, the character of Charlie seems somewhat obsessed with moral hangups of an earlier era. Something similar is afoot in SOCIAL NETWORK. Aaron Sorkin projected his generation’s Jewish neurosis onto Zuckerberg, a creature of the 2000s whose world was very different.

A precursor of THE GRADUATE was A MAN AND A WOMAN. It used the stylistics of the French New Wave in service of pop romantic fantasy, and it was a hit and won awards. But Lelouch’s technical mastery was questionable and he resorted to too many musical montages and visual trickery to compensate for weak plot and characterization. There is a lot for film-makers to learn from THE GRADUATE but not so much from MAN AND WOMAN, which only works in short bursts as proto-music-videos. Still, what a nostalgic journey to a France that is now lost to Diversity.


Another film that might have inspired Nichols may be IL SORPASSO(THE EASY LIFE), especially in its use of music.


While some white guys may not want to see blonde girls with Jews or Italians, it’s much worse now as the blondies are with the Negroes.

But then, white men pioneered this race-mixing business. They impregnated the browns of South America. They got black women pregnant in the South. There was the legend of Pocohontas. And plenty of white soldiers overseas had affairs or sex with women in Asia and South Pacific. There was SAYONARA before THE GRADUATE. Marlon Brando had a strange fetish for brown women.. and Robert DeNiro only seems to go for blacks. And James Bond got it on with women of all races.

Jewish Hoffman played a Wasp in THE GRADUATE, and David Lean chose Egyptian Omar Sharif to play a Russian in DOCTOR ZHIVAGO. Sharif also played Genghis Khan, and so did John Wayne. Brando as Okinawan in TEA HOUSE OF AUGUST MOON was funny as hell, but Rooney as Japanese in BREAKFAST was even funnier. Anthony Quinn as Greek in ZORBA really did work.

Italians often got Anglo or Northern European actors to play Italians. They were into dubbing.


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THE GRADUATE has great film-making. As different as DOCTOR ZHIVAGO and THE GRADUATE are, they clicked with the audience. LOVE STORY also had memorable music(pretty good schlock), but the film-making was only adequate/good, nothing more. In contrast, THE GRADUATE really is a visual and rhythmic marvel with Nichols throwing so many tricks out of the left field and without being too showy about it. (Both DOCTOR ZHIVAGO and THE GRADUATE are about discovery and struggle of True Love amidst familial concerns, personal commitment, ideological struggles, and power manipulation. Zhivago truly loves Lara but is married to a nice girl. Lara truly loves Zhivago but is also married. She married her first boyfriend quickly as escape from the tormented affair with an older man. But if Zhivago ultimately doesn’t get Lara and had everyone weeping in the theater, Ben does get Elaine.)

I agree the Simon and Garfunkel songs are great. Minus the music, the movie would seen more satirical, sardonic, and biting. It’s the music that softens the edges and provides a romantic mood, sentimental shading.

When the image and sound really click together, it makes no sense to discuss them apart. It’s like the alchemy of Sergio Leone and Ennio Morricone, Alfred Hitchcock and Bernard Hermann, Hiroshi Teshigahara and Toru Takemitsu. Nichols and Simon hit it off like Ben and Elaine. Nichols and Simon clicked not so much because they saw eye-to-eye but because the music served as counterpoint as much as padding. “Sounds of Silence”, “Scarborough Fair”, and “April Comes She Will” add something missing in Nichols' comic-cynical style. The song with which the two sensibilities finally converge is “Mrs. Robinson”, a tongue-in-cheek rendition of Middle Class Americana comparable to Rolling Stone’s “Mother’s Little Helper”.

I can understand why many people are put off by Hoffman’s presence or personality, but it is brilliant acting. Also, his voice, being both throaty and nasal, perfectly convey’s Ben state of mind and stage in life. He’s both man surging with testosterone and boy who wants to run back home. And, his deadpan demeanor mixed with shaky nerves is for the ages. With Anne Bancroft, he’s like a shy dog being played by an experienced feline. It’s both cartoony enough for laughs and human enough for tension.

Genuine mood is really hard to do. There are cheap ways to create mood with filters and lighting, but Nichols sustains a consistent mood throughout the film, through light and dark scenes.

And the camerawork is purposeful and edgy, making it both classic and radical. It seems perfectly perched between the rule-book and burn-the-book. The tricks of timing Nichols honed in comedy and sense of staging he got from theater did wonders. Welles also specialized in Audio Entertainment(radio) and theater before entering cinema. Nichols borrowed various styles but matched them seamlessly. The hand-held camera is reminiscent of Cassavates and Godard but pieced subliminally with other styles.
And he went for unconventional perspectives. For instance, when Ben is walking to the right through the guests at the graduation party to head for the stairs, the camera faces away from the stairway leading opposite to Ben's direction. As such, Nichols has to ‘awkwardly’ jerk the camera leftward to show the stairway except it’s done so deftly that this breaking of rules seems natural than false or gratuitous.
Later, when Ben and Elaine are running from the church, can anyone think of a better way to show the bus than by tilting the camera from top to bottom, creating an impression of a bus dropped from the sky, manna from heaven? And the cut from a telephoto shot of Ben and Elaine running from the church that grows blurry to a long shot conveys the sudden shifts in mood and momentum in that charged instant. Nichols was so attuned to every moment, something generally missing in Old Hollywood and even most European cinema, albeit exceptions like JULES AND JIM, a work that is both classic and experimental.



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TIGER MAKES OUT, also released in 1967, was Hoffman’s first film. A small role. He shows up at 5:20 in the video below. The movie seems a more raw expression of Jewish hang-ups.



PRESIDENT’S ANALYST, also a 1967 movie, pushed the satirical tone of THE GRADUATE to the hilt. THE PRESIDENT’S ANALYST was prescient about the future of technology and mankind. Big Tech taking over everything.
It was both written and directed by Theodore Flicker, Jewish. As such, it is a more personal work than THE GRADUATE. The Liberal father is the guy who played Ben’s father. (He also played a Liberal parent in TWO FOR THE ROAD, another 1967 movie that was hip to new trends. Written by Frederic Raphael, a Jew with massive chip on his shoulder.)




Robert Redford did take on a romantic comedy role in another 1967 movie BAREFOOT IN THE PARK. 1967 was quite a year.


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Some other interesting ethno-swapping.

The TV movie GETTING MARRIED has an ending not unlike that of THE GRADUATE. In it, Richard Thomas plays an Italian-American.


In BREAKING AWAY, some guy in Indiana pretends to be an Italian-American, as if that will make him appear more romantic and exotic to an All-American Girl. Oddly enough, its snobby Waspy character was actually played by Jewish Hart Bochner. And Robert Redford was one of the leading contenders for the role of Michael Corleone.


Maybe the most vicious and disturbing scene about Wasp-Ethnic tension is the wedding scene in FOUR FRIENDS, written by the guy who wrote BREAKING AWAY and directed by Arthur Penn of BONNIE & CLYDE fame.


THE GRADUATE seems to draw certain strains from THE GREAT GATSBY via CATCHER IN THE RYE. Later, when movies like BRIGHT LIGHTS BIG CITY came around, they seem to be riffing GATSBY and GRADUATE, both of which have come to shape American cultural consciousness and love and class. (Michael J. Fox, another shorty, like Davey Jones of THE MONKEES, which also had half-Italian Mickey Dolenz who looked racially so ambiguous. I wonder if Charles Webb was influenced by Kingsley Amis’ LUCKY JIM.)

https://theimaginativeconservative.org/2020/07/oaf-magnificat-kingsley-amis-lucky-jim-thomas-banks.html



Despite THE GRADUATE looking very mod, I wonder if young people today can relate to technological limitations of the period. If the story were to take place today, Ben would be looking on the internet to find information about where Elaine is getting married than driving back and forth between L.A. and Berkeley. And the dial-up phone at the gas station, what an ancient artifact. They still had those back then. Now, even poor people have handy cellphones, even ‘smart phones’, something unimaginable even to billionaires in the 80s, even the 90s. Many young people could relate to BOURNE movies because the guy was so ‘wired’ techno-psychologically. Very tech-savvy young man outwitting all the institutions that made him what he is.

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Too many people ignore everything but the plot and characters. They respond as if they’re reading some second-rate novel. It’s like judging a song by its meaning. Most songs are trite or banal in what they have to 'say'. It’s the same old story about love, heartache, and etc. Beatles' “Yesterday” offers no greater meaning about love or sadness than a million other songs. Then, why is it special? The words, even if banal, are just right. And the melody and delivery create a unique mood. (Same goes for John Lennon's “Norwegian Wood” and Brian Wilsons' “God Only Knows”.) So, we don’t listen to a song mainly for meaning but feeling and mood. Take “Drive” by the Cars and “Every Breath You Take” by the Police. In terms of meaning, we’ve heard countless songs about broken hearts and romantic obsession. But the style and expressions of those songs are so original and overwhelming that they make conventional or ‘tired’ themes exciting and edgy again. Take the song “Brandy” by Looking Glass, a one-hit-wonder band. The story it tells is one found in a thousand dime store novels, but the melody is infectious, the rhythm soulful, and the performance inspired. As such, it is a one-of-a-kind song, as is “If You Could Read My Mind” by Gordon Lightfoot.

The fact that some people just see the themes or spot-the-Jew in THE GRADUATE means they are cine-illiterate. It’s like reading poetry as if it is prose and focusing mainly on meaning. Anyone can make pizza. The basic ingredients are well-known. In basic ingredients, great pizzas are 95% like all the other pizzas, even frozen ones, but they have something extra, subtle but crucial that differentiates greatness from mere goodness or acceptableness. TO LIVE AND DIE IN LA has many of the elements of countless other action movies, but why does it tower over the rest? William Friedkin was on fire, got hold of promising material and fine talent, and everything just clicked. Same goes for MIDNIGHT RUN. Everything came together beautifully.

Nichols got just the right ingredients, and the preparation, timing, and delivery were near-flawless in the balance of comedy, drama, romance, and near-tragedy. It made a difference upon release because it was the bridge between Art Film and Hollywood, between Old and Young, and between Sunlight and Rain. There’s a scene in THE WILD BUNCH where the Gorch brothers look across the river at Mexico and says, “It looks like more of Texas as far as I’m concerned”, and Angel says, “Ah, you have no eyes.” Many people have no eyes. For the blind, there is no difference between Orson Welles' tremendous MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS and the lame one directed by Alfonso Arau. After all, they tell the same story with the same characters. But comparing those two movies illustrates what a difference a directorial vision can make.

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Anne Bancroft looks like Maria Callas, lending a classic greco motif to the story. Oedipus had sex with his mother, and there is a sub-oedipal underpinning to THE GRADUATE. THE GRADUATE is like an experiment of what-if Greek comedy was blended with Greek tragedy.

Notes on Trevor Lynch's Review of HIGH AND LOW directed by Akira Kurosawa

For the review, click the following link:
https://www.counter-currents.com/2020/07/high-and-low/

High and Low is a portrait of a virtuous industrialist who is targeted for destruction by a nihilistic criminal who hails from the professional rather than the working class and is motivated not by need but by envy and pure malice.

I wouldn’t go so far as to say he’s virtuous. To a large degree, Kingo Gondo(Toshiro Mifune) was compelled to do the ‘right thing’. If he has something in common with the kidnapper(named Takeuchi and played by Tsutomu Yamazaki), it is neither character truly understands himself — ultimately, both are driven by emotions than moral reasoning though, to be sure, whereas Takeuchi had all the time in the world to plan the crime(like Gondo with his secret plot to take over the company), time is running out for Gondo to either pay the ransom or finalize his takeover, a classic 'gain the world, lose the soul' situation. Gondo does the moral thing, but he’s not really sure what drove him to it. And even though the criminal later tries to justify or explain himself, he doesn’t really know his own heart(or lack of one). After all, the economic argument isn’t very compelling on his part. Though he’s known poverty, he was studying to be a doctor and had something of a future. So, he was driven by more than need. Was it an idea, a kind of twisted philosophy that possesses the character of CRIME AND PUNISHMENT? Or was it just the nature he was born with? In RED BEARD, there’s a psycho-woman who goes around seducing and killing men. We learn she was victimized as a child, but Mifune’s character of the wise doctor says that some people are simply born evil, and there's nothing that can be done about it. If so, are they to blame for their pathology? Can society be blamed for failing to reform such individuals? If being born-evil is a natural condition in some people, what is to be done? Most likely, even had Takeuchi been born into affluence/privilege, he likely would have had evil lurking in his heart and would have committed other crimes of sociopathic nature. There are surely plenty of white collar criminals and scumbags in the Deep State. Alas, they have the Law on their side and can get away with acting like miscreants. Rule of Law is for little people. Jewish Power and Deep State are above that.

Now, Gondo's frustration(bordering on anger) in regards to Aoki's desperate pleading to save his son was, in a way, s desperate repression of his shame that he's decided to choose money over life. It's especially stinging on his conscience because he was willing to pay any sum to save his own kid but doesn't feel the same way for another man's son... which, of course, is natural as most of us don't care about strangers. Still, with Aoki the relationship is somewhat complicated because, even though he's just a hireling who's only owed waged, he's also been a loyal servant and grown close to the family, indeed to the extent that his son plays with Gondo's son as if they're siblings. Whereas the parents are distinguished by rank and status, kids are still kids. They even switch roles and toy guns at the drop of a hat in playing cops and robbers. Ironically, Gondo cheers on his son in the role of robber. He tells him to do ANYTHING to 'kill' the cop and come out on top. Winning is what matters. Because his son feels so close to Aoki's kid, Gondo is especially in a quandary. Also, the ONLY reason the kid was kidnapped was because of mistaken identity. The real target was Gondo's son, and so, Aoki's son would NOT have been kidnapped if he hadn't been playing in the premises of Gondo's house and mistaken for his kid. So, in a way, even though Gondo's son is safe at home, it is as if he was kidnapped in a 'spiritual' sense. Aoki's kid could very well be Gondo's kid. It was only by chance that the kidnapper took the wrong kid. There is also the fact that Aoki is a widower and only has his son as family(like with the widower of IKIRU; one of the sad things about the angry peasant in SEVEN SAMURAI is that his wife has been kidnapped by the bandits, and so, he has no family, which for Kurosawa, is the saddest thing, as with the Dersu Uzala character). (In a way, there are two wrongful kidnappings in HIGH AND LOW. Not only is the wrong kid abducted but the wrong Gondo is targeted by Takeuchi the kidnapper, i.e. Takeuchi's imagination of Gondo as heartless villain is at odds with the real man who, though no saint, isn't a monster either. But Takeuchi's craziness can't hold a candle to current PC craziness in the West where Jewish Power willfully paints the wrong image of Evil Whiteness, so evil that it must be attacked and destroyed and shown no quarters. People like Tim Wise, Sabrina Rubin Erderly, and Mark Zuckerberg's disgusting sister are kidnappers and murderers of White Reputation.)

Now, if Aoki's son had been kidnapped at Aoki's house for reasons unrelated to Gondo, Gondo would have felt no special obligation to sacrifice his wealth for the kid. But, as Aoki's kid was playing with Gondo's kid only because Aoki was working for Gondo, it's not merely an academic matter but a very personal one. It's not just a question of abstract altruism but personal attachment. Unlike his partners who are willing to stab him in the back(and vice versa), Aoki has been a loyal worker. Also, children easily become friends and attached to one another, and Gondo would feel shamefaced in front of his own son IF he let the other kid get murdered.

Also, the 'national' and 'social' elements cannot be overstated. Jewish Power pushed two ideologies on Western Man: Anti-National collectivism(especially via communism and anarchism)
and Anti-National individualism(especially via libertarianism and me-centered hedonism). Though collectivism and individualism are polar opposites, they have one key commonality: Denial of National Identity, Unity, and Purpose. Ideally, communism was supposed to be a borderless ideology of workers-of-the-world(even though its tyranny, failures, and paranoia about the richer and more powerful West led to strict border controls that actually boosted national preservation, if only by accident). And libertarian capitalism denigrates national identities as 'atavistic tribalism' and emphasizes the free individual as rootless globalist wanderer. But even as Jews pushed these two modes on goyim, their main mode was a form of 'national socialism' via Zionism and Jewish Consciousness. Indeed, it was a key reason as to why many Jews were alarmed by the rise of German National Socialism and fascism in general. Sure, they were disturbed by its anti-Jewish vitriol, but the other reason was the Germans had figured out the real source of Jewish Power: Jews used capitalism and employed elements of socialism BUT centered around Jewish Interests; in other words, make collectivism and individualism revolve around nationalism than abandon nationalism to wholly commit oneself to collectivism or individualism. (To be sure, the main passion of white people today is more idolatry than ideology: Worship of the holy three of Jews, homos, and Negroes, what with both white socialists and white capitalists sucking to Fentanyl Floyd as the holy angel.) Without Tribalesse Oblige, the elites of a people split from the masses of the people... as we are now seeing in the West and even the East.

Now, 'national socialism' only works within the nation, which is why both German imperialism and Japanese imperialism became so problematic and ultimately monstrous. Their strong sense of identity made them cohesive at home but alienated & hostile abroad, especially among those they regarded as inferior. And we see the same problem with Jewish Power. Zionism works well for Jews in Israel but unfolds as supremacist Nazi-like imperialism outside the Jewish nation because Jews feel disdain and contempt for goyim, be they Arabs or Iranians.

Kurosawa on the set of RED BEARD with Toshiro Mifune

But it turns out there is a heroic and manly way to make women’s shoes. Gondo… is hosting some of his fellow executives, who wish to enlist him in a corporate coup against the “old man” who… is stuck in a rut of making unfashionable “army boots.” Gondo’s colleagues wish to manufacture flashy shoes that are cheaply made. Gondo wants to make more fashionable products, but he feels that selling shoddy merchandise is dishonorable…

Here Akira Kurosawa was probably making a commentary on culture as a whole, not least film culture. HIGH AND LOW came out when Japanese cinema was coming under serious competition from TV. Also, with rising prosperity, the culture was changing from post-war humanism & moralism to consumerism, hedonism, & even nihilism. Given the wreckage of war and widespread poverty, the humanist themes/message in fiction and movies had resonated with audiences around the world as nations began to rebuild from the rubble. But in Japan as in Europe, the rise of La Dolce Vita sensibility led to consumers hankering for style and fashion than morality and sobriety. And some even regarded YOJIMBO as a nod in this direction; it was a huge hit in Japan and inspired the nihilistic A FISTFUL OF DOLLARS that changed film history, not necessarily for the better(though Sergio Leone was a true giant). But beneath the veneer of nihilistic ‘cool’, YOJIMBO was meant as morality tale and satire. It was meant to be more despairing of than inspired by the new outlook, especially among the young. On the one hand, Kurosawa understood that Japanese cinema could not rehash the same humanist messages that had special meaning for post-war movie audiences. Times change, and arts/entertainment must stay afloat of new conditions and expectations if they're to be relevant. He understood that people in a more prosperous Japan wanted a popular culture with more color, splash, and excitement. And in a way, HIGH AND LOW is the kind of shoes that Gondo wants to make: sturdy and stylish. It is substantive with serious themes but also stylish and suspenseful. And even though it is on the side of law and morality, it daringly ventures into the nether zones of modern Japan, disapprovingly but with a certain cool fascination.

Kurosawa was feeling the pressure. Not only from the rapidly rising popularity of TV but from a younger generation of film-makers with more of a ‘new wave’ approach. His brand of cinema faced the problem of not being low/popular enough and high/arty enough. Two years prior to HIGH AND LOW, Shohei Imamura made PIGS AND BATTLESHIPS set in a similar social milieu, though mostly of ‘hell’ or the ‘low’. There’s a devil-may-care sensibility in Imamura’s film that lends it nuance and fluidity missing in Kurosawa’s work that, despite ‘modernist’ touches, is essentially a rather rigid moral drama(which at times comes close to melodrama). Kurosawa wore the hefty theme on his sleeve, as with Otto Preminger, and it could have been off-putting to subtler sensibilities(which is why many cineastes never tire of telling everyone they prefer Yasujiro Ozu, Kenji Mizoguchi, Mikio Naruse, or etc. over Kurosawa). Imamura’s films have a licentious spirit and free-wheeling curiosity, absent of anything like a 'message' and leaving the meaning to the audience to piece together on their own. The mercurial Imamura runs with the idea and follows it wherever it may lead, whereas Kurosawa projects a moral map in an Apollonian manner.

PIGS AND BATTLESHIPS by Shohei Imamura

Like Ingmar Bergman and Federico Fellini, Kurosawa came into his own in the humanist 1950s and was somewhat at odds with the newly emerging film sensibility of the 60s though YOJIMBO did play a role in setting the tone. While the mass audience was turning to TV, leading critics were shifting their attention to younger talents like Nagisa Oshima, Hiroshi Teshigahara, and Imamura. Another problem was Kurosawa, like David Lean, got accustomed to scale(as a matter of prestige) and thereby less adept at navigating the troubled waters of changing economy and taste. He faced the danger of becoming a dinosaur in a rapidly changing industry that could no longer afford his kind of 'perfectionism'. Overly confident of his vaunted position as a world-famous master film-maker, Kurosawa stuck with established conventions of film-making, albeit with nods to innovation and fashion. He wanted to make fancier boots than high heels, and sadly, HIGH AND LOW was the last of its kind for Kurosawa. The next film RED BEARD was an excellent boot but very much an old boot. Critics and the public saluted it as a grand monument(and last hurrah) to humanism but didn't salivate over it. It was acknowledged as serious and important but failed to garner enthusiasm as the future direction of Japanese cinema.

Incidentally, the scenario of plotting to overthrow the ‘old man’ in HIGH AND LOW later resurfaces in RAN where the two older sons plot against the father while the youngest son, though seemingly ungrateful and petulant, is not without principles and a deeper sense of loyalty. Likewise, even though Gondo seems to stand against the 'old man', it is out of loyalty to the latter's resolute sense of standards. HIGH AND LOW and RAN also have in common the journey from top to bottom, and few places are as visually apt as Japan, a mountainous island-nation, for themes related to hierarchy.

RAN - 1985

I prefer Kurosawa’s morality plays to Imamura’s anthropological forays, but the didacticism could favor instruction over inspiration. Though Kurosawa’s imagination wandered widely from the high world to the low, his lens was usually focused on the good and the bad, honorable and dishonorable, teacher and student, noble and ignoble. As such, his realism was in service of moralism, even an idealism(a blend of traditional culture of respect and modern commitment to individuality), than acceptance of reality as reality. It's no wonder that, despite the realist settings of many of his films, most characters belong to certain social types. (Only SEVEN SAMURAI comes close to breaking out of this mold.) He was unwilling to see people and accept them just as they are. His vision always had a moral vertebrae with overarching shape and structure from head to tail. The stuff of good vs evil, noble & ignoble, and heroes & villains that audiences could readily recognize. Kurosawa, like Masaki Kobayashi, thought in terms of the Human Condition. But perhaps a closer probing of humanity requires malleability in the degrees of observation and inspection. Imamura was like an octopus. Lacking the rigidity of a moralist backbone, he could slither in and out of all kinds of human situations without moral judgement though his works aren't without moral sense. For Imamura, truth itself intimately observed and accurately delineated has moral value in and of itself. It's no wonder his characters, major or minor, are first and foremost individuals than archetypes or stereotypes. VENGEANCE IS MINE, for example, is the kind of film that Kurosawa could not have made. Kurosawa tried to confront the evil of the kidnapper/murderer in HIGH AND LOW but hit a brick wall. The character comes close to being the face of Evil Incarnate and remains beyond comprehension. He is only to be judged and condemned. It's as if Kurosawa felt there's a limit to human understanding, as with the woodcutter and the priest in the opening of RASHOMON who simply cannot penetrate the mysteries of human darkness. In contrast, Imamura slithered into the decrepit souls of the characters in PIGS AND BATTLESHIPS and VENGEANCE IS MINE and observed like a naturalist. A special kind of skill but sure to be discomfiting to most audiences.

Gondo then explains to his assistant that he has been planning his own takeover of National Shoes, mortgaging himself to the hilt buying up chunks of stock. All he needs is to complete one last purchase.

This suggest Gondo isn’t exactly virtuous. Though clearly more admirable than his partners, he’s not above backroom deals and intrigue to gain the upper hand. Perhaps, he’s justified in his maneuvers, but he’s also driven by egotism and pride.

If he does pay, the child may still die, the money may never be recovered, and Gondo will almost surely be ruined. Eventually, though, Gondo is persuaded by his wife, his driver, and the police to pay the ransom. It is the compassionate thing to do.

It is a bit more complicated. There is the matter of public opinion. If Gondo doesn’t pay the ransom and uses the money to take over the company, he could get such bad press that he will be ruined anyway. It’s really a case of damned if you do, damned if you don’t, or being stuck between a rock and a hard place. So, even though he was partly motivated by conscience, did he really have a choice? Either way, he might have faced ruin. A man is not an island but lives in a community. (If Gondo doesn't pay the ransom and if the kid dies, he has to deal with both public pressure and personal issues. Without the love/respect of his wife and son, could he really live with a peace of mind? He isn't a loner but a family man, and there is something like a family-mind in any household. What he might accept on his own is far more difficult to accept as the head of a family. The old villain in BAD SLEEP WELL is willing to even lose his son & daughter to keep his position, but Gondo isn't that kind of man.) If the community rejects the man as immoral or soulless, the man becomes an outcast. There is some of this in the dynamics of ‘woke capital’, the difference being that whereas Gondo was faced with a real moral dilemma and did what was right, most of ‘woke capital’ is either just delusional or craven in sucking up to PC narrative pushed by insane Jewish Supremacists. (I mean, when will ‘woke capital’ push ‘Palestinian Lives Matter’ or ‘Justice for Libyans and Syrians destroyed by Obama and Hillary’ or ‘Sanction Israel that has nukes and stop sanctioning Iran that has NO nukes’?) As in IKIRU, we don’t really know the motivation behind Gondo. He doesn’t really know either. Was he truly motivated by conscience or did he do the right thing because he couldn’t win either way? Or did it have to do with self-justification under the gaze of his family and the police. The policemen remain as calm and professional as the wife is distressed and pleading, but Gondo can sense judgement in their silence. So, there is jumble of motivations. Likewise, was the old man in IKIRU really motivated by compassion or did his ego seek validation before he died? Was it really selfless or was it about the self, the need to be remembered?
https://www.bitchute.com/video/hm6NAwdsTzM/


Thus far, High and Low has been, in effect, a filmed stage play. But Kurosawa is so virtuosic at creating dramatic tension and coaxing out compelling performances that the result is not static at all.

An odd thing about HIGH AND LOW is that the ‘stage play’ opening of the film is more exciting and suspenseful than the latter part, much of which takes place outdoors and is full of movement. The interior scenes are less static than the exterior ones.

The film then switches gears again into a quasi-documentary about the police’s attempts to find the kidnapper and recover Gondo’s money. At this point, some people might feel the movie drags, but I found the meticulous rationality of the detective work fascinating.

For first-time viewers, it won’t drag because of the element of mystery and suspense. But for repeat-viewing, some of the later scenes with detective work do drag because they are presented more like docu-drama procedural than psychological drama. (In contrast, Fritz Lang’s M is compelling from start to finish no matter how many times you watch it.) It would have been more interesting had Kurosawa developed the detectives as fully-realized characters than presented them rather too heroically as social ideals. They strike me as too-good-to-be-true, too upright. Kurosawa mocked such earnestness in the young samurai in SANJURO, but the lawmen of HIGH AND LOW are to be taken as the best of the best. For this reason, the darker implications of the police work don't register as powerfully. After all, the inspector could have had the kidnapper arrested but prolong the pursuit to charge him with a more serious crime, thereby receiving a sentence befitting his wicked nature and the grave harm he's caused. As a result, the kidnapper ends up killing another person, a female junkie who is used as a guinea pig. This raises a ethical question as to whether the police acted professionally or out of vendetta against the criminal, especially as the head detective became personally invested in bringing justice to Gondo, who did the right thing at great cost. His personal feelings about Gondo may have affected his professional decision, leading to the death of a woman. (Also, in a question session with reporters, the police urge the newsmen to give bad press to the shoe company for firing Gondo. It is to punish the executives, but won't the depressed sales hurt the workers as well? Also, is it professional or ethical for the police to make such a request? This darker side of police work — the questionable ethics even when the lawmen act in the name of justice — isn't addressed in the film.)

It is a wonderful portrait of what is possible in a homogeneous, high-IQ, high-solidarity society—everything whites have lost by embracing diversity.

This is questionable. Japan has been called a high-trust society, but it’s more a high-conformist and high-obedience society, though these days perhaps not even that. Japanese justice system has been notorious for being unresponsive to problems until things really go south. Also, the legacy of caste-mentality and social hierarchy can just as easily foster distrust as trust among the populace. After all, the film is called HEAVEN AND HELL or High and Low. Japanese with privilege don’t care about the rest. Their attitude is “I got mine” or at best, "My family got ours", and that is the extent of Gondo's concern when he realizes his chauffeur's son has been kidnapped.
Why is the nation of Japan in a death spiral? Because Japanese look down on 'dirty', 'dangerous', and 'degrading' labor. Japanese would rather die than do ‘dirty’ work. In the past, many Japanese just accepted their lot and did whatever job was available but prolonged affluence led to higher expectations among many Japanese, and they’d rather commit national suicide and import cheap labor(that will lead to the great replacement) than do ‘dirty’ jobs. In BAD SLEEP WELL, Kurosawa exposed the hollowness of the cult of trust in Japan. While underlings sacrifice their lives for their bosses, the latter just hoard everything for themselves. The rich care about family members but lack any sense of larger good or national interest. Kurosawa himself, despite the humanist themes of his works, attempted suicide in the early 1970s when he felt he could no longer make the kinds of films he wanted to. Accustomed to his role as the emperor of Japanese cinema, he was unwilling to shift gears and work on more modest projects as some of his peers did. Perhaps, he found them 'degrading'.

High and Low is clearly an anti-Marxist film.

While it’s not a Marxist film, it isn’t anti-Marxist either. It might be called ‘national socialist’ with little ‘n’ and ‘s’. It is about a rich man who comes to look beyond class & privilege and embraces the child of his servant as if his own. He goes from capitalist mindset and family-centrism to national and humanist consciousness. This was the positive side of National Socialism and New Deal. This theme, of the high and mighty being compelled to recognize the humanity of those below them in status, recurs throughout Kurosawa’s works. In SEVEN SAMURAI, the ronin are masterless knights but still higher in social rank than the lowly peasants. Initially the samurai feel it’s beneath them to risk their lives for dirty peasants, but the two groups join forces against the bandits. In MEN WHO TREAD ON TIGER’S TAIL and HIDDEN FORTRESS, noblemen-in-exile disguise themselves as commoners and come to see the other side of society. Kurosawa as a young man had communist sympathies and even as late as the 1970s, he had glowing things to say about Lenin(to Andrei Konchalovsky’s horror).



In films like BAD SLEEP WELL, RED BEARD, and YOJIMBO, merchants don’t come across as noble characters. And yet, Kurosawa could see things from both sides. As such, HIGH AND LOW makes an interesting contrast with BAD SLEEP WELL. The latter film is about the evil of corruption fueled by greed, whereas the hero of the former is a businessman tormented by an impoverished medical student. Thus, good and evil isn’t a matter of class(though it seems those who gain great wealth or power tend to be sociopathic: take the loathsome Jeff Bezos and the scum in the Deep State; on the other hand, consider all the lumpen scum who loot and burn; 2020 is the year of synergy between elite deep state and lowly street scum, with horrendous consequences; for sure, the convergence of sociopaths on top and psychopaths on the bottom is recipe for disaster). Kurosawa had socialist-humanist leanings but also an elitist streak, not least because of his samurai background. It’s like Oliver Stone is a man of the Left but with a Great Man Complex: Tony Montana, Gordon Gekko, Alexander the Great. Kurosawa found humanism in the lower depths but also nobility in the higher reaches. KAGEMUSHA is kind of a reverse of HIDDEN FORTRESS. A vulgar thief comes to appreciate and ultimately die for the lofty honor of the Takeda clan. It's about the low entering the realm of the high than the vice versa in HIDDEN FORTRESS.

HIDDEN FORTRESS

In fact, the leftist rhetoric he spouts is simply a tool by which these monsters gain the power to murder millions.

There’s an element of leftism but also nihilism. He tries to convince Gondo and himself that he doesn’t care if he dies. He claims to be unafraid of anything and beyond human emotions, but he breaks down with a fury and desperation that is all too human, even animal. The final moment is harrowing because the would-be-nihilist finally realizes his own humanity, its fragility and weakness. It’s been said of Kamikaze pilots that they died beautifully and poetically without fear, for country and emperor. But it’s been recorded that many charged to their deaths scared out of their minds screaming for mother. In the end, they were human after all.

In their meeting, Takeuchi(the kidnapper) realizes that Gondo is not the monster that he made him out to be, imagined him to be, indeed willed him to be. Seeing the big mansion from below, Takeuchi created his own impression of Gondo. Since greed is a common feature among the rich, Takeuchi created an essentialist view of Gondo as a rich parasite; by what is shown in HIGH AND LOW, he isn't exactly wrong as Gondo's business associates do come across as greedy and unscrupulous. In a way, it might have pleased Takeuchi IF Gondo hadn’t paid the ransom and let the child die. Then, Takeuchi would have been vindicated in his view of Gondo. But Gondo paid, even if it meant personal ruin for the sake of a child who isn't his own. Gondo did the ‘leftist’ thing in favoring the life of a servant than personal profits. In contrast, Takeuchi ended up taking money in exchange for the life of a poor man’s son, hardly a leftist thing to do.
Perhaps, Takeuchi would have at least felt vindicated if Gondo had been bitter toward him in their meeting — greedy Gondo angry about the money or the anger as evidence of Takeuchi's significance in the lives of others. Instead, he sees a decent man and has to face the fact that he ruined the life of a man, not a monster. Thus, Takeuchi loses something more dear to him than his life: His radical self-justification based on a delusion. Sadly, such deluded conviction is now the official ideology of the US. Any black person is morally justified in seeing every white person as ‘racist’, ‘fragile’, ‘privileged’, or whatever. The fantasy of righteous hate takes precedence over reality and complexity. Thus, the whole nation has been taken hostage by black and Antifa lunatics egged on by insane Jewish supremacists.

High and Low’s portrayal of a heroic businessman plagued by an envious villain, as well as its celebration of the rationality of the police detectives could almost spring from the pen of Ayn Rand. Gondo and the detectives represent the highest virtues of bourgeois modernity, whereas the kidnapper represents its deepest vice.

Not sure about this. Ayn Rand was not about bourgeois values but radical individualism. She might have sneered at Gondo’s decision to pay the ransom as sappy ‘altruism’. Granted, Randism at its core isn’t really about ‘muh profits’. In THE FOUNTAINHEAD, Peter Keating reaps the profits by whoring out to public taste whereas Howard Roark faces many hardships and bouts of poverty. Still, he has Rand’s respect because of his vision and refusal to compromise, ever. But HIGH AND LOW isn’t a celebration of the superior individual. Its morality is closer to IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE where an individual with visibly superior qualities sacrifices personal dreams for what is good for his hometown community. Would such outlook have sat well with Ayn Rand? Rand surely would have told George Bailey to leave dinky Bedford Falls and follow his dream like Howard Roark.

HIGH AND LOW might make for an interesting comparison with the Oscar-winner Korean film PARASITE by Bong Joon-Ho. Both are about class tensions. The difference is, whereas HIGH AND LOW offered some hope of mutual understanding between the classes on the basis of nationalism and humanism, there is nothing to salvage in PARASITE where society and culture are utterly soulless, bloodless, and gutless.

HIGH AND LOW diagnosed the problems of its day as festering future wounds if left untreated. (How ironic that the villain is a medical student. Medicine as mere profession isn't enough to guarantee the nobleness of its calling, the theme of Kurosawa's next film RED BEARD.) Post-war prosperity was welcome but had a divisive effect on the Japanese who, due to war and deprivation, had shared in the hardships together as a nation. Class divisions are inevitable in any society but threaten the sense of national identity and unity. Today, we see this problem all over the world. Western elites no longer feel any sense of unity or solidarity with their racial brethren among the lower classes. They are too busy snubbing white masses as ‘racist’ or virtue-signaling about homos, Negroes, and Diversity. And much the same is happening in Japan. Its merchant elites have turned Japan into a soulless consumer society. With its adoption of globo-homo, afro-globo, mass immigration, and irreversible decline in birthrates, Japan is doomed like the West.

There’s a harrowing scene of druggies in HIGH AND LOW, and fast-forward to today, and consider the global spread of drug culture(aided and abetted by pop culture that has increasingly grown to resemble drugs, more like chemicals than experiences). In every continent, there's massive addiction to legal and illegal drugs. Mass white deaths from opioids(but white lives don’t matter in Jewish Supremacist America where countless brain-dead whites worship George Floyd the Fentanyl Negro.) Entire cultures centered on drugs and fantasy of escapism. Junkies seek insta-heaven with easy highs but fall deeper into the pits of hell.
HIGH AND LOW also exposes the problems of US imperialism and the vices it spreads. Surely, the most outrageous scene is in the nightclub where some monster-sized Negro with a big ass fattened with countless buckets of fried chicken keep trying to land a five with his big fat hand on everyone. It's a vision of Japan as whore nation to the US. A memorable Ugly American scene. Against drugs, nihilism, and mindless hedonism, Kurosawa offered a vision of life and economy centered on honest work, family, and morality. At one time, such values were easily recognized by most people, but today, they are shocking and scandalous in a world of the New Normal where the highest morality is LGBT marching with BLM to push utterly delusional visions of reality. In the end, Kurosawa’s warnings came to naught, and modern civilization is one big suicide cult.

One problem with the film is that the rival executives are reduced to paper-thin scoundrels to make Gondo seem so much better. They are too obvious as foils. It would have been more interesting if the execs were presented as men with reasonable(if not exactly noble) motives of their own. After all, they are selling women’s shoes, the kind women intend to dispose of sooner than later. Shoddy boots are a bad idea, but shoddy women’s shoes make sense given women’s shoes change with fashion. Also, there is the high-end market and low-end market. A lot of people buy stuff that they don’t intend to keep for long. Indeed, Gondo and others could have compromised. Make high-end quality shoes at higher price and make cheap shoes for low-end market. Why not both? It’s like Hollywood made both A movies and B movies. But Kurosawa and his co-writers opted for a simpler setup verging on melodrama. In contrast, consider the characterizations of Barzini and Hyman Roth in THE GODFATHER movies. Though we are left rooting for the Corleones, we can see where Barzini is coming from. The man is all business, and he knows drugs are the future. And we know Roth holds a personal grudge(about Moe Green) to rival Michael's own regarding Sollozzo the Turk. MICHAEL CLAYTON may not be a great movie but is all the more interesting for having a villainess who isn't evil by design but by circumstances. If Gondo is compelled to do the 'right thing', she is compelled under pressure to do the wrong thing. Not because she's evil at the core but because her vanity and loyalty to the company require she do so. Still, she takes no pleasure in doing it. Perhaps, only few people are evil at the core(and relish acting evil), but many people do end up committing evil acts out of 'necessity'; worse, it can become habitual and mundane, thus no longer appearing on the moral radar — it's like those working in the sewage don't notice the smell so badly. Granted, the rival execs in HIGH AND LOW are not exactly evil — they are too petty and predictable for that — , but they are utterly two-dimensional creatures.

In RAN, while the two older sons are vile characters, we can at least understand where they're coming from. Their motives aren't purely scoundrel-like. The oldest son isn’t very bright and has only the position to stake his authority. The second son is smart and feels HE should inherit the throne. They are bad but understandable. In contrast, the execs in HIGH AND LOW are shallow jerks, and that’s about it. Now, there are real people who are little more than jerks, but in HIGH AND LOW, such characterizations seem too easy a way to burnish Gondo's credentials as an ethical businessman. There’s an element of cheap shot.

The great thing about SEVEN SAMURAI is that even the most craven and despicable peasant, the father of the pretty girl, is utterly understandable on human terms. And he’s not entirely wrong in his arguments and in his feelings. HIGH AND LOW doesn’t reach so high.

The Japanese title of High and Low… literally means “Heaven and Hell.” But High and Low is a good title, because the movie is constructed around the contrasts between a modernist mansion… and the crowded, chaotic city below.

While HIGH AND LOW as title is certainly workable, it misses at the bigger meaning of the film. ‘High’ and ‘Low’ indicate differences in wealth and status, but Kurosawa ponders something darker than mere economic hardship and poverty. One can be in the low world but not in hell. ‘Hell’ is a moral and spiritual condition. Kurosawa’s earlier films showed much poverty, but in ONE WONDERFUL SUNDAY, a real gem, a couple barely has enough money for a cup of coffee but are still in a kind of heaven than hell because they have each other.

The hell in HIGH AND LOW is not the world of the poor. It’s a state of mind, the destruction of souls. The film goes from the rich world to the world of the poor, but we still don’t see hell. We see hell when we finally encounter kidnapper and the world of addiction. We also see hell in the raucous night club scene. Now, hedonism isn’t necessarily hellish, and every city has(and even needs) something like the Red-Light District, but there’s something especially sleazy about the night-club scene and not because of some gorilla-like big-ass Negro fattened on fried chicken. It is a vision of Japan as un-Japan, a zone not only of military occupation but cultural degeneration. The racial mix in the club are united only by noise, rancor, and amnesia. (It’s different from the folk music in HIDDEN FORTRESS that confirms the community.) Now, if such stuff can be restricted to the Red-Light District, it wouldn’t be so bad, but such Americanism came to serve as the blueprint for ALL OF CULTURE and ALL OF SOCIETY and ALL AROUND THE WORLD, a hellish vision of the Kalergi Plan of no borders, no limits, no thoughts of past or future but just the thrill of the jungle moment. What is the main expression of Western Civilization today? ‘Twerking’. At least the Twist(seen in the movie) was a half-decent kind of dance.

So, using ‘low’ than ‘hell’ misses what the film is ultimately about. It’s about something worse than poverty of means. It’s about the poverty of the soul. In this respect, HIGH AND LOW is a lavish variation of STRAY DOG where the gun-thief and his girlfriend have adopted a kind of nihilism. Indeed, the scenes of arrests of the criminals in the two films are similar. They are handcuffed amidst flowers and reminders of innocence lost.

Also, ‘heaven’ lends a special meaning that ‘high’ simply misses. It adds an element of irony for the ‘heavenly’ world of the high is filled with its own demons. And in a way, the problems of ‘heaven’ is connected to ‘hell’. While Takeuchi the kidnapper was likely born evil or had a childhood so bitter & painful that he was scarred for life, he is also the product of New Japan as created by the US empire with the collaboration of the merchant and war-criminal class. Initially, US Occupation worked with the Japanese Left against the defeated and disgraced Militarist Right. But things soon changed as China turned communist and Soviet Union became the main rival of US power. Also, the Japanese Left got too radical and demanding. So, the US rehabilitated many militarist elites who’d earlier been accused of war crimes. So, many of the militarist elites who’d once sworn to fight the US to the last man were working as toadies, which ended up creating, more or less, the one-party system in Japan that is totally servile to the US. As such, there was no national theme in Japan but economic growth and materialism. It was all about the Money, and Takeuchi is someone who grew up under the new system. Of course, his crime is his own. After all, most Japanese, regardless of circumstances, didn’t go around committing crimes or kidnapping kids. Still, his soullessness is part of the larger disease flowing from those on top. Just like the corrupt businessmen in BAD SLEEP WELL are capable of ANYTHING to get what they want, the kidnapper follows the same logic. The differences is that those with privilege and connections can pull strings and get away with it. In contrast, low-level criminals when caught must face justice.

…as the detectives observe Gondo’s character—his decision to pay the ransom, his courage, his intelligence, and his unpretentiousness (mowing his own lawn, breaking out his shoemaker’s tools to help modify the briefcases for the ransom)—they are won over

To be sure, he mows his own lawn because he was fired from the company and has too much time on his hands. Ideally, he should be at work and his servant would do the lawn work.

Gondo is a self-made man, who rose to his position due to hard work. He was not born to wealth and privilege. His wife does come from a privileged background, and her dowry certainly helped matters, but he had to win her through hard work and character as well.

Right. The thing about Gondo is we mustn’t see him only as a businessman. He rose up the ranks and became an executive, but he began as an apprentice and worker on the shop floor. So, he’s the full package. He knows the business from low to high. He paid his dues. He didn’t inherit some high position from a rich father. So, Gondo has the consciousness of prole, craftsman, professional, and businessman.
In a way, it could be Kurosawa’s commentary on how he became a director. Before Film Studies in universities, film-makers rose up the ranks by doing just about anything. They mopped floors, served as extras, learned various skills and tricks on the job. This was true of men like Raoul Walsh and John Ford. While young film-makers today must also work up the ladder, they develop more of a privileged mindset because they enter the profession through college courses. They begin with a cerebral outlook and seek to specialize as writers, producers, or directors. But in Kurosawa’s time, you had to work yourself up from the shop floor. You began like the privates in FULL METAL JACKET, as grunts and maggots. Same with newspapers. Before elite college kids filled the ranks of journalism, many had entered the profession through experience. Now, the Film School system has much to recommend it. It did produce great directors like Francis Ford Coppola and Martin Scorsese, among others. But, psychologically at least, it’s about going from high to high than working from low to high.

So, characterizing Gondo primarily as a ‘businessman’ would be misleading. The workers in the factory seem to respect him despite his hot temper because he knows the industry from shop floor to high office. He was one of them. Still, as a businessman, he’s far from virtuous and is capable of gambling everything and acting like a shark. Though his partners aren’t saints, his underhanded plot to take over the company was ethically dubious. (Also, Gondo didn’t only plot against the partners but against the ‘old man’ who, though behind the times, seems a man of principle in product quality. The bigger question is why would the ‘old man’, who stodgily resists change, cooperate with unscrupulous short-term profiteers? I suppose the latter could be more shameless in flattering the ‘old man’ in his presence, much like the older sons in RAN who gain the approval of their father while planning his demise.) Worse, without consulting his wife, Gondo put up the family house up as collateral to acquire the loans, thereby risking everything in a daring move to take over the company. Because he bet so much, his fall is especially hard when he must pay the ransom. In a way, he’s a victim of his own hubris, despite the fact that his vision of the company was more admirable than that of his partners.

The ending is happy but haunting. In this case, justice has triumphed, but at great cost. Evil and chaos will always threaten order and goodness.

Can the ending be said to be ‘happy’? Sure, the criminal is caught and brought to justice, but the final scene is grim. Also, by ‘evil and chaos’ threatening the order, what if the very order breeds such evil and chaos(especially of the soul)? In a way, the kidnapper is an agent of evil and chaos. In another way, he is the product of the New Order, a Japan of materialism without a soul. A nation whose survival and livelihood depend on playing whore to US imperialism. Japan gained tremendous economic benefits as a vassal of the US, but what did it lose?
Before defeat, Japan was plagued with a different kind of evil. This Japan did have a soul. It did have a meaningful connection to the past. The Emperor represented the Japanese people’s connection to their history and to their island nation as sacred homeland than mere geography. Through the Emperor, Japanese blood was one with Japanese soil. But with Japan as an imperialist power in its own right, the Yamato spirit had grown cancerous and risked everything. In doing so, it committed great crimes all over Asia and got embroiled with war with US(and then USSR) and then lost everything and had to start from scratch as the Tokyo Shoeshine Boy and Mamasan of the US. In a way, Gondo’s attempted putsch and the son’s overly ambitious battle plan at the end of KAGEMUSHA have something in common with Japanese imperial ambitions. They put all the eggs in one basket, took a huge gamble, and lost everything. Still, militarist Japan stood for something. Japanese people were bound together, high and low, not only by material need but a sense of national culture and spiritual connection to the past. It's as if Japanese had something like the covenant through reverence for the Emperor.

KAGEMUSHA - 1980

With defeat and US occupation, there were surely great gains in freedoms and economic development. Lots of good positive stuff in many walks of life. But a people cannot live with bread and liberty alone. They need meaning, connection, & pride as a people, and those essentials were lost. The new elites promoted this soulless Japan, and in a way, the kidnapper’s attack on the rich could be, on some subconscious level, a strike against their perfidy. After all, in a nation with meaning, even the poor might feel some ‘spiritual’ connection to the rulers. In his autobiography, Kurosawa said he despised the military dictatorship during the war(and didn’t believe in the literal divinity of Hirohito), but if the Emperor had told the people to commit mass ritual suicide, he would have. What this suggests was that pre-defeat Japan, though defined by some very dark atavistic ideas, was a nation of meaning. There was some real connection between the rulers and the ruled.

In contrast, the kidnapper, like most post-war Japanese, has no soulful connection with the rulers(who are really servants of the US as shogun) or to the nation. Japan is just a marketplace, or worse, a big brothel. Japanese are no longer part of a tree but mere mushrooms growing on rotting wood, which seems to be the theme of ATTACK OF THE MUSHROOM PEOPLE(which came out the same year as HIGH AND LOW). Just like underwater atomic blast unleashed Godzilla, something about the New Order made way for the monstrous soul of the kidnapper, especially as he was conceived to be more than a mere individual. He stands as an archetype of soul-malaise, as the inspector, in contrast, stands for duty, dedication, and professionalism amidst the national shame. In other words, while Kurosawa could empathize with those who felt a blinding rage about the New Order, it didn't absolve one of the obligation of being a decent person with a sense of responsibility to the community.

In BAD SLEEP WELL, Kurosawa felt nothing but contempt for undying loyalty based on profits. Why should underlings sacrifice their lives for men who care for nothing but their own privilege and money? But in KAGEMUSHA, despite the oppressive and unjust ways(by modern standards) of the feudal order, Kurosawa is fully of empathy. It is an order of culture, tradition, and meaning, indeed one that so moves the thief that, in the end, he chooses to die in its honor even though he could have lived out his life as a free man without attachment. (The pathology of the killer in VENGEANCE IS MINE is also associated with the theme of weakness. Not only is the killer living in post-defeat Japan but he was raised by a Christian father who seemed so weak and pathetic. It’s as if the son over-compensates as the absolute opposite of his father. His characterization is both more mundane and terrifying than Takeuchi in HIGH AND LOW. Whereas Takeuchi is a damaged soul, a man-turned-monster by whatever circumstances, the killer of Imamura’s film defies all labels and brands and yet is nothing more or less than a man. And if Takeuchi, on some level, can sense his own sickness and feel normal human emotions — no matter how much he represses them — , the psycho in VENGEANCE truly unnerves us as evidence that man can be so far removed from human values but still be utterly human.)




But in a nation without meaning, the rich are simply rich and the poor are simply poor. Consider the new West. In the past, despite class tensions, white folks of a national community might have felt some cultural and spiritual link with their rulers. Today, there is only status for the rich and resentment among the poor. Indeed, if the mob rounded up rich globalist urbanites and threw them into a bonfire, would most of us care? As much as I loathe BLM and Antifa, I watched with pleasure as they ransacked parts of Manhattan and boutique stores around L.A. In a way, Antifa’s embrace of BLM is a reaction to white elite’s embrace of Magic Negro and Diversity. White elites have been telling the white masses, “You are a bunch of ‘racists’, and we GOOD white elites care about blacks and diversity.” Antifa, filled with ranks of lesser whites with cruddier education, romp around with a twist of the white elite logic. Antifa whites in the streets say, “We embrace black rage and attack privileged blue cities filled with white elite privilege.” Elites used pro-blackness as fancy perfume. Antifa uses pro-blackness as Molotov Cocktail. Elites want to pretend it’s mostly about ‘peaceful protesters’, but reality says otherwise. (Amusingly enough, the elites are trying to unite BLM with globo-homo in the hope that all that ‘gay’ stuff may pacify black rage somewhat. Don’t be so black with rage, wave the colorful rainbow with smiley face. And let’s sing about black trannies for a change.)

White America once seemed the model for all the world, but it has proven to be a delusion, something that can be discerned in HIGH AND LOW. What has this White America done in the post-WWII period? It ceded power to Jewish globalists and defined its essence as youth culture based on black rhythms. It favored short-term thrills over long-term virtue. Fast-forward to 2020, and White America is a trashy, soulless entity that either marches with globo-homo and BLM thuggery or cravenly cowers in the corner while its heritage, statues, monuments, and symbols are torn down everywhere. If this is the fate of White Americanism, why should any majority population follow down the same path? In a way, the white-cuck elites of the GOP are like post-war Japanese elites that played doggy to the US as long as they received regular doggy biscuits. GOP is now a useless cuck-party whose only purpose is to cower before Jews and play roll over as long as the cuck-collaborator insiders get their doggy treats. The White American Model to all the world is “Surrender your identity, body, and soul to the worship of Jewish globalists, decadent homos, and wild Negroes.”

This is why neither capitalism nor leftism can serve as the Core Principle of a People and Culture. Capitalism is useful as economic system, and leftism can do good by emphasizing some measure of equal justice and people’s interests. But capitalism ultimately comes down to ‘muh profits’, and leftism, in its puritanical obsession with justice-and-more-justice, ends up waging endless war on all culture and tradition that doesn’t satisfy the latest demands. (What capitalism and leftism have in common is a kind of radical amnesia that emphasizes the hype-or-passion-of-the-moment at the expense of all else.) Thus, ideally capitalism and leftism must revolve around something else. It’s no wonder that Jews have chosen a kind of national-socialism for themselves while pushing either soulless capitalism(or libertarianism) or ‘leftism’ on everyone else. Libertarian whites will never unite as white people as they’re all about ‘muh individualism’, and ‘leftist’ whites will be too obsessed with stamping out ‘white privilege’ and ‘racism’ to ever develop a sense of white identity or white culture. As for conservatism, it can only say ‘oh, please stop’, as Bill Buckley did. Only neo-fascism can save a people, and that is why Jews, despite all their diatribes against ‘fascism’, practice a form of fascism for themselves. But it’s a bad kind like German National Socialism because it’s imperialist and supremacist than national-humanist. Still, Jews understand the need to fuse respect for Jewish tradition/identity with some measure of individualism and acceptance of modernity. It's not an accident that Jewish Power is founded on both traditional tribalism and modern individualism.

One thing that might disturb some viewers about HIGH AND LOW is the mention of capital punishment as just desserts for the kidnapper. The inspector played by Tatsuya Nakadai is presented as an admirable character, and it is his idea to convict Takeuchi on murder as well, thereby sending him to the gallows than merely have him serve fifteen years for holding a child hostage. Was Kurosawa okay with capital punishment? If so, maybe it had something to do with his samurai background. After all, Japanese culture is one where it’s worth dying for honor. Then, death is surely an option for a unrepentant psychotic punk.

It is also an avant garde cinematic experiment—in fact a whole series of them—a fact that most viewers are too enthralled to even notice. It really sneaks up on you.

Kurosawa’s modernist touches were only that: touches. HIGH AND LOW has traditional narrative conventions with heightened style, but it is far from avant-garde, which reached its artistic peaks with Hiroshi Teshigahara’s FACE OF ANOTHER and perhaps Yoshishige Yoshida’s EROS + MASSACRE, which isn’t easy watching. Seijun Suzuku got canned for his avant-garde experiment BRANDED TO KILL and later returned to modernism with the TAISHO TRILOGY. There is a fresh and exciting quality to HIGH AND LOW, and one can find seeds of movies like THE FRENCH CONNECTION, which too is essentially conventional storytelling. HIGH AND LOW is even less avant-garde than THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE and DR. STRANGELOVE, both of which stick mostly with conventional narrative form.



Now, some people think modernism is part of a linear progression, something more ‘advanced’. But while modernism created whole new possibilities and pushed boundaries, the arts can’t be judged like science. We can value Pablo Picasso and Igor Stravinsky, but the notion that their works are ‘more advanced’ than those of Sandro Botticelli and Richard Wagner is one of those unfortunate conceits that did much to undermine art and creativity. Consider the damage done to serious music by university departments controlled by modernists who insisted on certain ‘radical’ schools of music as the ‘most advanced’. Modernism is most painful when those who don’t really get it apply it inappropriately to works that don’t have a genuine modernist bone in its body… like Kurosawa’s ridiculous color schemes in DODES’KA-DEN.

Perhaps, Kurosawa got confused with modernism because of RASHOMON with its unusual(at the time) chronology. But in fact, Kurosawa gave a rather conventional treatment to a genuine piece of modernist writing by Akutagawa. To be sure, Kurosawa did revolutionize film-making. No one had done action like Kurosawa in SEVEN SAMURAI, a hugely influential film. And YOJIMBO’s sardonic sensibility was new in cinema. And in films like IKIRU, HIGH AND LOW, DERSU UZALA, and later RAN, Kurosawa chose the somewhat unconventional approach of reaching the dramatic peak before the first half and then spending the rest of the film to return, re-examine, and/or resolve the issues. In the more conventional dramatics of SEVEN SAMURAI, the tension builds and builds until reaching crescendo in the final scene. In IKIRU, HIGH AND LOW, DERSU UZALA, and RAN, the emotional peak is reached in the first third or half of the film, and for that reason, some viewers might find the rest rather anticlimactic. Stanley Kauffmann much admired IKIRU but thought the long funeral scene where the guests piece the puzzle together overlong and redundant. The emotional peak of DERSU UZALA is when the Goldi hunter bids farewell to the Russian explorers, and as the result, the story following the reunion unfolds more like a long aftermath than second act. RAN reaches its emotional peak in the first hour, and the rest, like APOCALYPSE NOW following the helicopter raid, tends to meander in search of shape and meaning. HIGH AND LOW is feverish drama in the first hour, and the rest of the film is about picking up the pieces and is markedly different in tone from the first act and half. Alfred Hitchcock did something similar with PSYCHO where the seemingly lead character is killed off in the first third, followed by the rest that’s about piecing together the puzzle.

IKIRU - 1952

The first hour of HIGH AND LOW is clearly the best. The final twenty minutes are pretty suspenseful. But the second hour is problematic. It is good cinema but only good. Perhaps, Kurosawa should have balanced the second hour more between the police and the kidnapper. Also, instead of presenting the police as so cool and professional, it would have been more interesting to dramatize them with warts and all(as every police department has its own problems and failings). And it would have been better if Takeuchi was examined a bit more than kept as a cipher with a troubled soul. He’s presented more as a cold-blooded reptile than a sick-souled man. Kurosawa said the artist he admires most is Dostoevsky but he missed a Dostoevskyian opportunity. At best, the kidnapper is Dostoevskyian only on the surface.

The police work may remind us of the head samurai’s preparations in SEVEN SAMURAI. He surveys the nearby region, scours for weak spots, draws up a map, and pools resources to devise a plan of battle. Still, it’s more compelling in SEVEN SAMURAI than in HIGH AND LOW. But that may owe largely to the fact that defense of a village is simpler and clearer than navigating a huge city for tidbits of clues that may lead to the criminal. Protecting a haystack is simpler than finding a needle in one. In SEVEN SAMURAI, the planners know what they are defending. In HIGH AND LOW, the planners have too many ideas and too few leads. A far more challenging and elusive task.