JAPANESE MOVIES - ANY OTHER FANS ?

[charliechaplinfan]

Chio, I can see why you would make the comparison to Italian neo classcism given that description.

Mr Arkadin, I know what you mean about Tokyo Story. My copy is Tartan video and it is a bit grainy, is there a version you'd recommend, it's such a good movie it needs the very best treatment.

[ChiO]

CCF asked:

My copy is Tartan video and it is a bit grainy, is there a version you'd recommend, it's such a good movie it needs the very best treatment.

At least here in the U.S., there's one word: Criterion.

[charliechaplinfan]

I think you're right Chio, might just have to treat myself to top quality. Here we have a company called Eureka, I've bought quite a few films from them and they are very good quality, they are usually Kino or Criterion licensed for use as region 2.

I've been watching my latest Yimou Zhang film The Story of Qiu Ju directed by Yimou Zhang in 1992 and starring Gong Li. It doesn't have the beauty of Raise the Red Lantern or The Road Home, it doesn't have the visual quality of Red Sorghum and it isn't a sweeping epic like Hero or House of the Flying Daggers. Gong Li, a very beautiful woman is not above playing dowdy and in this film she is extremely dowdy. it's the tale of one woman's fight for an apology after the village chief kicks her husband in the private parts. The chief quite willingly gives compensation but will not apologise and Qiu Ju takes her battle for an apology to the district, the city and then takes a private law suit. In the end she realises she has taken matters too far. The ending is reminiscient of 400 Blows by Francois Truffaut.

This is a film that rewards the viewer for sticking with it for the first 15 minutes, it's hard at first, it feels a little like a documentary but what emerges is a compelling film.

These are the ones I've seen and still have to receive To Live and I am going to order Shanghai Triad. Any other recommendations for Yimou Zhang.

[charliechaplinfan]

I've been watching a couple of Ozu films. Late Spring and Late Autumn, both films tackle the same theme, a girls reluctance to get married and break up the happy home she shares with her one widowed parent, in Late Spring it's a widowed father and in Late Spring it's the mother. In both films concerned family members or friends matchmake trying to arrange good matches for their nieces. These films say a lot about the tradition and what is expected of Japanese girls from middle class homes. Neither girl has the desire to find her own husband, although it is an option for them, both except marriage only after they believe that their parents will remarry and therefore not need them anymore. As always Ozu uses some of his usual actors. Setsuko Hara playing the daughter in Late Spring and the widowed mother in Late Autumn.

[Dawtrina]

I've seen a few Kurosawas since my last post here, all new to me.

Ikiru is the famous one, and it had eluded me for the longest time. I'm happy to say that I found it as powerful as the critics maintain. Takashi Shimura was stunning.

The other couple go together and date way back to the beginning of Kurosawa's career.

Sanshiro Sugata was his first film as a solo director and it's interesting, but nowhere near as solid as his later work. It's a very surprising wartime propaganda film, mostly free of actual propaganda, subtly depicted as a period piece about judo. The phrasing of some scenes, especially the fight scenes remind of later ones in his samurai movies. Shimura is in this one too, but far less effectively, though that's through no real fault of his own.

The sequel, Sanshiro Sugata II, is somehow better, even though it's far more overtly propagandistic, less visually effective and missing the symbolism of the first. It's better because it's far clearer and more consistent, it has more memorable characters and the fight scenes are more believable. The acting is better too. They're not the best of Kurosawa's films but they're interesting early pieces.

[charliechaplinfan]

I don't know what it is about Ikiru, it's very hard to describe but it is really moving.

[ChiO]

I saw THE CRUCIFIED LOVERS (Mizoguchi) last night. For a melodrama set in feudal Japan, it is unrelentingly modern in tone. Lovers on the lam a la THEY LIVE BY NIGHT, with a family scene that in spirit reminded me of REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE. Clearly more of a Ray melodrama than a Sirk. Again, Mizoguchi is concerned with choice, but here it seems to be focused more directly on the conflict between free will and societal constraints. I'm a sucker for shots at night involving water and reflections, and this film has one of the most stunning I've ever seen. There are several instances of echoing -- repeating an shot, but forcing the viewer to decide whether it has the same meaning it had previously due to changed circumstances. The final shot, which echoes the opening, is a marvelous combination of eternal bliss and sadness. Mizoguchi's use of sound throughout is spectacular.

Although this film takes a distant backseat to SANSHO THE BAILIFF, UGETSU and THE LIFE OF OHARU in the West, apparently this is considered his masterpiece in Japan.

[charliechaplinfan]

I would put it on a par with Ugetsu and Sansho with The Life of Oharu slightly below.

I have my silent Ozu set and Mizoguchi's Fallen Women set. What shall I watch first?

[ChiO]

Unless there is a movie in the bunch that I just have to see immediately, I watch in chronological order to get a sense of the director's development. Too much of one director consecutively? Then: the earliest Ozu, followed by the earliest Mizoguchi, Ozu, Mizoguchi....

I have the Mizoguchi set, but the only Ozu silent I have is THE STORY OF FLOATING WEEDS. Enjoy -- I know you will.

[Mr. Arkadin]

I have the Ozu silent set, Floating Weeds, Tokyo Story, Late Spring and Autumn. Has anyone made works that are so graceful, yet honest? I'm continually baffled by his ability to deliver real life situations in a way that is never tense or jarring, but reflective and tranquil. I wish he ran the cable evening news!

[ChiO]

My home collection is the Silent Ozu set, EARLY SUMMER, LATE SPRING, A STORY OF FLOATING WEEDS, FLOATING WEEDS, and the Late Ozu set, and I've seen TOKYO STORY (my favorite -- so why don't I have it?).

Has anyone made works that are so graceful, yet honest?

The only other director that immediately comes to mind is Max Ophuls, but it certainly is a small club.

[charliechaplinfan]

Unless there is a movie in the bunch that I just have to see immediately, I watch in chronological order to get a sense of the director's development. Too much of one director consecutively? Then: the earliest Ozu, followed by the earliest Mizoguchi, Ozu, Mizoguchi....

I have the Mizoguchi set, but the only Ozu silent I have is THE STORY OF FLOATING WEEDS. Enjoy -- I know you will.

That's what I decided to do, I watched the first Ozu, The Tokyo Chorus and the first Mizoguchi Osaka Elegy.

Tokyo Chorus is a family comedy, not as polished as his later films but I could see his style emerging. It's the story of a family man who is employed in Japan in the midst of the Depression, the place he works at sacks an old guy for no reason and the man protests to his bosses and finds himself out of work too. He's promised his son a bicycle but now has no bonus to buy one with. He fails to find work, his family start running out of money and then his daughter gets very sick and has to go to the hospital. He sells his wife's kimonos too pay the hospital bill. He finally finds work hwlping his old college professor by carrying a sandwich board, his wife happens to see him working at this and is digusted, not the work she envisaged for him. His film ends on a happy note with the restuarant full of old pupils of the professor and the man employed as a teacher.

Osaka Elegy was my favorite of the two. It could easily compare with the precodes, a woman who has a father who has embezzled from his firm and will go to prison unless the money gets repaid and a brother who will blow his education and good career for the want of a bit more money. She becomes the mistress of the owner of the firm where she worked as a telephone operator. This isn't the life she wants, she wants the man she was fond of in the firm but can't have him because of what she has done. Another man decides he wants her for himself and when she rejects him she is picked up by the police. Shame is brought on the family and although the father knows that she has bailed out the family, she is allowed to walk out into the darkness, alone with her siblings thinking she has done what she has done for purely selfish means.

The actress Isuzu Yamada also appeared in Tokyo Twilight where she plays the mother who has abandoned her family years before.

I'd love to inhabit the graceful world of Ozu, I'd love to go to Japan and drink up the atomosphere of his movies. It probably can't be found anymore.

I love Ophuls too.

[charliechaplinfan]

This is my new list of viewing

I was born but.... an early Ozu silent family comedy told through the eyes of children, reminiscient of when Ozu uses children to tell a story in his later work.

That Night's Wife an Ozu film from 1930, the title perhaps isn't the best translation as it doesn't really fit the action. This isn't that Ozu like, it's a touch expressionist and a touch noir. I watched this with the Japanese titles (which I can't read) but still felt that I came away with a good understanding of the story.

Sisters of the Gion is a superb 69 minute film by Kenji Mizoguchi. It concerns two geisha's a very traditional one and a modern one who plays men off against one another and ends up paying the consequences. It shows the very seamier side of the geisha's world and also the poverty that never seems very far away. The most touching moment is when the loyal older geisha discovers that her old patron who she has taken in after falling on hard times has deserted her.

I watched Onibaba last night, directed by Kaneto Shinoda. It is a very beautiful film, the long swaying grass that is integral to the story is captured so beautifully and given life on the soundtrack, giving the grass a power and atomosphere that drives the story and what a story. Set in the 14th century Japan a man is forced to join the army to fight in the fuedal lord's wars. He leaves his mother and wife behind, they would starve if they didn't take to killing all the samurai on the way back from the war when they lie down to sleep in the long grass, they strip their bodies and throw the bodies down a deep hole on the ground. A deserter comes back from the war and tells of the death of the son. Soon the daughter in law and the deserter are meeting secretly and making love behind the back of the old woman. The old woman soon finds out and his jealous but does not know how to seperate them. One night she comes across a samurai who wants to find the road back to Kyoto but he is lost. He wears the mask on a demon. The old woman walks him to the hole in the ground that he doesn't see in the dark on the night and he falls to his death. The women climbs into the hole to rescue the treasure and the mask which she then uses to scare her daughter in law on her nightly assignations. She is forced to reveal to the daughter in law that it is she who was frightening her, the demon mask has attached itself to her face and won't come off, not seeing the mthoer in law falls to her death in the hole.

The film is powerful, there is partial nudity, not gratutious but not always necessary. It was made in the same year as Woman of the Dunes and shares many similarities.

[charliechaplinfan]

I saw WOMEN OF THE NIGHT (Mizoguchi, 1948) last week and was shocked. The tone is so unlike any other Mizoguchi film I've seen. At first I thought I was watching an Italian neo-realist (with, perhaps, a dash of Jules Dassin) movie with Japanese actors. Then it suddenly became the prototype for Samuel Fuller's mid-'50s to mid-'60s films. Mizoguchi follows the lives of three women: a war widow who turns to prostitution to survive; her younger sister who is a club singer and who stole the physical affections of her sister's boss prior to her sister becoming a prostitute; and, a young niece who becomes a prostitute after running away from home and being raped.

Although the narrative is a blunt, but sympathetic, expose on the plight of women in post-war Japan, the subtext is anger over the devastation of Japanese society and accompanying Western cultural imperialism. Over the opening credits, the music is based on the opening figure from Beethoven's Fifth Symphony and it recurs throughout, but most obviously in the final scene. Jazz is heard, often at unexpected times. The only music that one would associate with Japanese music occurs when the women sing together, alone in an apartment. In the final scene, a gang of prostitutes beat a prostitute who wants to leave the business. It occurs in the only clearly artificial studio set in the movie, a bombed out Christian church that has only two stained glass windows surviving, one of which is the Madonna looking down on the beating.

There are still Mizoguchi touches such as action in the background of a frame that has no apparent connection with the narrative, but which adds a depth and naturalism. This, however, may be in many respects the least "Mizoguchi" of his movies.

I remembered you'd watched this Chio. I've never seen such a bitter movie, rightly bitter at the destruction of a way of life and the depths some women have to sink to to survive. It is the least Mizoguchi like movie that I've ever seen. Was he deeply bitter about Japan's part in the war? Was he reflecting the public mood of the time? Was he highlighting a section of society that gets swept under the carpet. The notes on the case implied that he distanced himself from the movie later on. I'm glad he made the movie, it's a great companion to his last movie Street of Shame. The latter film still shows that life was still difficult for some in Japan.

here's what i wrote on another thread about the film

I watched one of the rawest and painful of women's films. Women of the Night 1948 is made in the style of Italian neo realism and is included in the Mizoguchi set of Fallen Women. Set soon after the war it follows the life of three women. Fusako who's baby is dying of TB, her teenage sister in law and her sister. Fusako's son dies of TB and she discovers that her husband was killed in the war, no longer wanting to be a burden on her husband's family she gets a job from a man who has shown an interest in her. His interest is more than having her as his secretary but for the time being it suits whilst he continues to try and seduce her. Fusako finds her sister, Natsuko again after two years and discovers her parents have died of malnutrition. Her sister works as a dance hall hostess. Not long after she discovers her sister is sleeping with her boss whilst she is at work. Fusako dissappears, the next we know she has been spotted working in the red light district. Her sister goes to find her but gets rounded up by the police as a suspected prostitute. At the hospital where she is taken she finds her sister. Natsuko has syphilis and is pregnant by the boss who is also an opium smuggler. She decides to keep the baby but drinks to relieve her misery. The baby is born in a women's shelter but dies. Fusako again goes to work on the street. There she meets her young sister in law who is getting beaten up by other prostitutes because she has trespassed on their territory. The story of the sister in law is probably the worst of all. She leaves her parents house and runs away to Osaka. There she meets a student who takes her for a meal in a restuarant, shown to a private room he attacks her, takes her money then rapes her. He then leaves her only for her to be stripped for her clothes by the women who have been downstairs in the restuarant. She in turn has no money to return has to sell her body.

This is no film showing the tradition of the geisha in Japan, it's about prostitutes who are at a much lower rung in society.

It's powerful, almost too powerful. The end of the film is Fusako pleading that no other women should have to live like them, can't just one of them have the chance to be set free, this scene is set amongst the ruins of a Christian church and images of the Virgin Mary. The film is sad because they have no choice, they would rather have family lives, all the women are prostituting themselves just to survive.

[charliechaplinfan]

I've just watched The Bad Sleep Well, another great movie.

A couple of questions

1 Is Kurosawa the best director ever? (and that includes Chaplin) he can do war films, historical epics, crime, traditional Japanese stories so well. I never cease to be amazed. I've yet to watch a romance although this film did have a very touching romance in it.

2 Why did it take me over half an hour to realise that Toshiro Mifune was playing the lead? HIdden behind his glasses, he was a different person. I suppose I'm used to him playing leaders not salarymen and only when he is revealed not to be a salaryman I realised who was playing him.

Again as with Kurosawa, am I looking at one of the biggest acting talents to grace the screen. Particularly in terms of Japanese actors. There are many that turn up again and again and I'm used to seeing them and they are good but Toshiro is a step above, true always has the more flamboyant roles. In terms of actresses I can think of 5 or 6 that are equally noteworthy and outstanding.

As for the movie itself, it's one of the most enjoyable noirs I've ever seen. It unravelled slowly and was very compelling. I found it a little confusing in the beginning, with all the reporters. I've recently read quite a bit on Japan and their way of business. The salarymen wouldn't dream of dropping their bosses in it and suicide is honourable in Japan, the honourable way to leave the earth should you have not behaved completely honourably in your time.

3 Is it because I'm a woman that I sat glued to the end hoping that it wasn't Nishi in that car and that he would live happily ever after with his wife?