This August, while one film is getting the 4K re-issue, two new films and a collection of a director’s blitzing work joins the Criterion. The collection comes from a Swedish director who made his nation look to more realistic ways of the world with his four movies sympathizing with the working-class people. Wayne Wang gets his second film on the Criterion Channel with another independent story about Chinese-American identity. Japanese master Akira Kurosawa sees one of his most sentimental films, and a virtually unknown American indie gets re-released for all to experience for the first time.
Bo Widerberg’s New Swedish Cinema (1963-69)
In contrast to fellow countryman Ingmar Bergman’s dramas of love and religious symbolism, Bo Widerberg made his mark with socially conscious films based on true stories that breathed new life into Sweden’s cinema. These four films are from a very timely era in the world that went after conventions of relationships in working-class settings. His feature debut, The Baby Carriage, follows a young woman who suddenly becomes pregnant and tries to start her life independently. His cinematographer was Jan Truell, himself later a major director in the late 60s and 70s. His follow-up, Raven’s End, is loosely based on his upbringing in the 1930s, following a young man who wants to get out of his dead-end town for something bigger in the city. This was a story reminiscent of the kitchen sink realism from Britain in the late 50s.
Moving to color films, Widerberg would gain an international reputation with two true stories that reflected his growing political tunes. Elvira Madigan follows the titular character, a circus performer, who has won the heart of an army lieutenant, a man married with children, who abandons all to go with her elsewhere. Even being chased down by authorities won’t stop them, but with little money, the freedom they desire may indeed, and their love will end. In 1969, Widerberg’s most political film, Adelen 31, won the Grand Prix at Cannes and was nominated at the Oscars. It portrays a working-class family who gets caught up in labor unrest that ends in tragedy as people are shot down by military forces.
Dim Sum: A Little Bit Of Heart (1985)
Following the success of Chan Is Missing, writer-director Wayne Wang followed it up with a story about the gulf between generations within a Chinese-American family. Actual mother-daughter Kim and Laureen Chew star together as the mother who clings to tradition when she is foretold that she will die in the new year while the daughter has her own plans that don’t include her mother. It is a film that uses similar techniques as one of Wang’s favorite directors, Yasujirō Ozu, emphasizing the separation between child and parent.
Dreams (1990)
Akira Kurosawa’s final masterpiece consists of segments that have occurred to him in his sleep and with a common character throughout that represents Kurosawa. These eight episodes are set in different places and time periods, moods of how the director had felt when he was a young boy, a young man during World War II, or hiking in the mountains. One episode is a moment when the Kurosawa representative finds himself in the middle of a field with Vincent Van Gogh, played by Martin Scorsese. It is endearing to Kurosawa as his own type of autobiography in revealing who he really was about.
Drylongso (1998)
In Oakland, a young art student goes out on the streets to take photographs of vulnerable people, namely women who are victims of violence. When an apparent serial killer is found to be present, the student realizes the victims are people whom she has taken pictures of. Director Cauleen Smith made a big statement on the gender differences between Black men and women and how men were not seen as abusers, influenced by her volunteer work in Oakland. However, it never got the proper recognition past Sundance acclaim and now it is here 25 years later.
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