William Dieterle
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Connections, in both directions
As the film became ever more numbingly alienating, not to mention enervating, my thoughts turned towards the 1945 gothic romance Love Letters, which also used amnesia as its theme.
The Age of Adaline (2015)
Directed by Lee Toland Krieger
influenced by Portrait of Jennie (1948)
Themes
But the true inspiration is those old-fashioned romantic fantasies from the 1940s, the kind that used to run on Channel 11 in the middle of the day, classics like “Portrait of Jennie” or “Stairway to Heaven.”
There are a few moments of quiet grace (Kong and Ann’s skate across a frozen pond — an homage to Portrait of Jennie?) that work very well.
Their seemingly innocuous exchange serves as a perfect storm of destiny and chance for Light, who soon finds himself in possession of a “death note” gifted to him by Ryuk (Willem Dafoe), a devil-like figure with a gift for gab who suggests a cross between Emil Jannings’s satanic trickster from F.W. Murnau’s Faust and Walter Huston’s Mr. Scratch from William Dieterle’s The Devil and Daniel Webster.
The Wrestler (2008)
Directed by Darren Aronofsky
influenced by The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939)
Characters
With his long, dyed-blond locks and ravaged face, he looks like a creepy cross between a crazy Gorgeous George and Charles Laughton’s Quasimodo in The Hunchback of Notre Dame .
The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001)
Directed by Peter Jackson
influenced by The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939)
Visuals
A giant spidery-like sea serpent, a monster who looks like a cross between King Kong and Charles Laughton in The Hunchback of Notre Dame, and sinister horsemen on fiery black steeds are among amazing sights that practically jump off the screen in 3D-like presentation.
Now, there’s nothing wrong with a romantic fantasy—try Mitchell Leisen’s Death Takes a Holiday (1934) or William Dieterle’s Portrait of Jennie (1948)—but it’s probably not the wisest of moves to try to sell one to a teenage audience as a horror movie.
(Back in the '30s before unflinching naturalism was possible the romance approach to biography in American movies like The Story of Louis Pasteur made more sense.)
Based on Shinkai’s own novel of the same name and reframing his usual fixations through the lens of Japanese history, “Your Name” is an unclassifiable experience that starts like a hormonal riff on “Freaky Friday,” morphs into an apocalyptic version of “Portrait of Jennie,” and somehow manages to layer a gender-swapping 12th century tale over the ongoing trauma of 3/11 in the meantime.