Film Forum is showing Samuel Fuller's 1955 film "House of Bamboo," the first American film shot in occupied Japan, and in bright color and gorgeously wide format. I went to see it for the scenery (though the story has its interest, too). Aspects of Japanese mid-century culture I know from black and white films and photographs in exuberant if touristic profusion! The Great Buddha at Kamakura as if time doesn't pass, and the lost Frank Lloyd Wright-designed Imperial Hotel as confirmation that it does. The finale, with winks to the Prater scene in "The Third Man" and the merry-go-round in "Strangers on a Train," takes place on the rotating globe of the amusement park atop a department store at Asakusa. That's the Sumida River above, Sensoji below.
