FILM
AN ERA ON SCREEN
John Ford directed more than 130 films, including the 1956 classic The Searchers. Courtesy: Warner Bros
‘A Brighter Summer Day’ comes to Boulder’s International Film Series BY MICHAEL J. CASEY
A
crime drama about rival street gangs, a romance between two high schoolers, a history of shadow politics and a young man who feels destined to become the Taiwanese Elvis — these are the components that comprise Edward Yang’s 1991 historical drama, A Brighter Summer Day. But cinema is so much more than its components, and this movie defies simple description. A Brighter Summer Day — screening Dec. 10 as part of the International Film Series’ 9 Days of ’90s: Movies That Defined a Decade — is a dense and complex look at Taipei in the early ’60s. The film takes place following the Chinese Civil War that left the communists in power of mainland China, dubbed the People’s Republic of China, while the nationalists fled to Taiwan to establish the Republic of China. It’s a movie stuffed with history and invention and enough space for everything to develop and echo. For the anchoring action, Yang draws on a real-life event anyone alive during that moment would likely remember. Everyone else would just see it as Shakespearean drama. In short, Yang does for Taipei what James Joyce does for Dublin, Ireland,
and William Carlos Williams does for Paterson, New Jersey. But don’t let those lofty comparisons frighten you: A Brighter Summer Day is as lush as it is dense. Yes, there are over 100 speaking parts, and some of the narrative strands benefit from a working knowledge of political turmoil in Taiwan, but most of the film revolves around Si’r (Chang Chen) and Ming (Lisa Yang), two young actors who are effortlessly believable on screen. Yang, who died from cancer at 59 in 2007, was part of the 1980s Taiwanese New Wave, a rejuvenation of national cinema designed to give new voices a platform on the world stage to feature autobiographical experiences and artistic developments. Thanks to both, the reputation of A Brighter Summer Day has grown in status over these past 30-plus years, so much so that it placed on the once-a-decade Sight and Sound poll of the greatest movies ever in 2012 and 2022.
ON SCREEN: A Brighter
Summer Day. 2 p.m. Dec. 10, International Film Series, Muenzinger Auditorium, CU Boulder, 1905 Colorado Ave. $9
Lisa Yang (left) and Chang Chen in A Brighter Summer Day. Courtesy: Cine Qua Non Films
BOULDER WEEKLY
PAGE TURNER ‘John Ford’ returns to print in new expanded edition BY MICHAEL J. CASEY
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ohn Ford is cinema. Born in Portland, Maine, in 1894 — just as motion picture cameras were first being put to good use — Ford followed his older brother Francis out to Hollywood and started working in a career that would last half a century, directing more than 130 films and winning six Oscars. Along the way, he gave the silver screen some of its founding myths, transformed the Western genre and painted a picture of American history so fraught with contradiction that he seemed to be revising it as he went. Joseph McBride has written extensively on the Hollywood director, always when Ford’s legacy needed rescuing. His first book on the filmmaker, which he co-authored with Michael Wilmington and first published in 1975, has been revised and expanded and will be rereleased by the University Press of Kentucky on Dec. 5. Defending Ford’s legacy takes some doing, and McBride provides the perfect guide. With a sharp eye and welcoming style, the author explains how Ford was an artistic visionary who hated explaining himself, an individualist who believed in community and a member of the
Irish diaspora who showed how the constant waves of immigration shaped the American experience. McBride’s career as a film scholar and historian — one of the best — practically started when he interviewed Ford on the day of the director’s unwitting retirement in 1970. McBride’s inclusion of that interview in this revision is enough for Ford fans to go out and buy another copy. He also includes three new essays — one on Ford’s silent pictures, another on the filmmaker’s treatment of race and a third on his use of Irish comedy — that further expand on the director’s oeuvre (a word Ford would have no doubt hated). The result is a shade over 300 pages that breeze by oh-soquickly and drive the reader back into the indelible films that started it all.
ON THE PAGE: John
Ford: Revised and Expanded Edition by Joseph McBride and Michael Wilmington is on sale Dec. 5 via The University Press of Kentucky.
NOVEMBER 30, 2023
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