my favorite movies of 1963:

(1) The Fire Within

(2) High and Low

favorite of 1963:

The Fire Within

[French: Le Feu Follet]

(Maurice Ronet, Jeanne Moreau, Jean-Paul Moulinot, Alexandra Stewart. Directed by Louis Malle.)

The director, Louis Malle, required Maurice Ronet to lose 45 pounds to play Alain, a recovering alcoholic on the verge of suicide as he struggles to relate to people. Malle apparently felt a deep bond with that character: he cast his close friend in the role, dressed him in Malle’s own clothing, and even gave him Malle’s own gun.

Alain, life is good!

Good for what?

The Fire Within is based on the same novel as one of my favorite movies of 2011: Oslo, August 31.

Stream The Fire Within on the Criterion Channel (with bonus features, including interviews with Malle and others — which are the sources for the information above). If you don’t subscribe, try a free 14-day trial.

2nd favorite of 1963:

High and Low

[Japanese: Tengoku to Jigoku, meaning “Heaven and Hell”]     天国と地獄

(Toshiro Mifune, Tatsuya Nakadai, Kyōko Kagawa, Tsutomu Yamazaki. Directed by Akira Kurosawa.)

This Kurosawa thriller influenced Parasite, my favorite movie of 2019.

The first half of High and Low is surprisingly confined to a rich family’s living room. The movie keeps throwing you off: at first it seems to be a corporate drama about men vying for control over a shoe company, but then the head of the company (Toshiro Mifune) gets a phone call from a kidnapper. The CEO is plunged into a moral dilemma about whether to comply with the kidnapper’s demands, possibly at the expense of his position at the company. You sense that this man — who lives up high on a hill, takes pride in his work, and is respected by the community — has never felt so powerless. He seems like he could go crazy. The truly crazy person is the kidnapper, whose motive turns out to be … air conditioning??? 🤯

I puzzled over the social commentary of this movie. I couldn’t figure out if the message was supposed to be more left/liberal or right/conservative. 🤔 The video below (which has a spoiler alert) suggests that the most obvious political take on High and Low might not be the correct one.

High and Low isn’t all black and white — figuratively or literally!  

Stream High and Low on Max or the Criterion Channel, which has bonus features including an insightful commentary track that explains how the movie was shaped by contemporary Japanese society, and clarifies what I said about air conditioning. If you don’t subscribe to the Criterion Channel, try a free 14-day trial.

Click here for the full list of my favorite movie(s) of each year from 1920 to 2020.