Battle Royale #10: Battle of the Japanese Masters (The Results)

And another Battle Royale has come to an end.  You were asked to make your choice between two Japanese cinema giants - Yasujiro Ozu and Akira Kurosawa.  Now, as some have told me, perhaps this is an unfair fight, for Kurosawa is so well known throughout the world, while Ozu is not nearly as famous in the West.  Maybe an Ozu vs. Mizoguchi fight would have been a better choice - a fairer fight.  But alas, 'twas not to be.  This is Ozu vs. Kurosawa, and since, I am assuming now, that most of my so-called fan base (if one can call it that without sounding too egotistical) are of the more cinephiliac bent, there should be no one claiming to not knowing the work of Ozu.  And let's face it, anyone who likes cinema, should be well aware of the works of Yasujiro Ozu, and if they are not, then shame on them.  But I digress.  Let us get on with the results of this supposedly slanted tenth Battle Royale.  

Of course, perhaps the preceding paragraph was merely just a way to more easily break it to all those Ozu fans and voters out there, that there boy lost the fight.  Yep, that's right fight fans, Kurosawa beat out his mentor and champion, by a cool four votes.  With 46 votes being cast (and yes, that number could and should be higher), the man who gave the world Seven Samurai (a film in my personal top ten btw) beat out the man who gave that same world Tokyo Story (not in my top ten, but still a great work of art), by a score of 25 to 21, or 54% to 46%, if you will.  Perhaps this is due to more people - more voters - being familiar with the works of Kurosawa over Ozu.  Perhaps not.  My vote went to Kurosawa, but that's just me.  I'm a fan of Keisuke Kinoshita after all, and no one knows who that is.  Anyway, congrats to AK and all that.  Let's talk about that aforementioned rather weak voter turnout this time around.  Pathetic even.  

So far, in Battle Royale history, our best turnout was the Battle of the Hollywood Hoofers, where Astaire took down Kelly, 34 to 32.  For those of you unskilled in basic math (and that is probably me a lot of the time), that is 66 votes cast, way back in our second battle.  Godard and Truffaut almost matched that, when they pulled in 64 votes in their battle, which, incidentally, was won by Godard, 34 to 30.  But other than those two rounds, voter turnout has been mostly in the fortysomething range, even dipping as low as a mere 28 when De Havilland took on her sister, Fontaine, and lost 15 to 13.  So my question, ladies and germs, is where the hell are all my voters!?  I know those classic and foreign film cinephiles are out there in cyberspace somewhere.  Must I pit Adam Sandler against Will Ferrell to get people to notice?  Clooney vs. Pitt?  Edward vs. Jacob!?  Now, even though I dig both Clooney and Pitt (my vote goes to Brad), and watch as much modern cinema as I do classic, I am not going to do that with the Battle Royale.  No sirree.  I will stick with the classics of cinema.  

That being said, the goal, as I have been saying since almost the beginning, is to get those votes into the triple digits.  I know we can do it people.  I know we can.  But such an argument is null and void right now, since this Battle Royale is over and the next one will not be appearing until March 1st.  Why March 1st, you ask?  I will tell you.  As I am sure you have noticed, I have an Oscar poll running right now (unless you happen to be reading this more than a month after I have written it, then this whole thing is pretty much null and void) and since I do not want competing polls, Battle Royale will not return until after the Oscars.  So March 1st it is - and this one is going to be a real battle of the sexes.  Oh yeah, and get prepared to vote and making all your friends vote as well, because we are getting that vote count well into the triple digits, baby!  Until then, have fun.

Battle Royale #10: Battle of the Japanese Masters

Happy New Year to all my faithful readers and true believers.  Welcome to the tenth Battle Royale here at The Most Beautiful Fraud in the World.   It is an ongoing series that will pit two classic cinematic greats against each other - and you can vote for who is the greater by clicking your choice over in the poll at the top of the sidebar.

For our first Battle Royale of 2013, we are traveling to the Far East.  To the Land of the Rising Sun.  To Japan, and to the great masters of their long and vast cinematic tradition.  It is a battle between the man considered the most Japanese of all Japanese directors and the man known as the most Western.   Of course, it is Akira Kurosawa going up against Yasujiro Ozu.  It is the great samurai versus the great family man. Granted, Kurosawa was never a samurai, or even a swordsman, and Ozu was never a family man, having stayed single and living with his mother until her death, just two years prior to his own, but these are the films the two directors are most known for making.  Sure, Ozu made some social commentary films, and even a gangster film, and Kurosawa made many films that did not involve samurai or ronin, but their signature pieces are family dramas and comedies, or Gendai-geki if you prefer, and samurai, or Jidai-geki if you will, respectively.  Yes, there were other great Japanese masters, from Mizoguchi to Naruse to the oft-forgotten Keisuke Kinoshita, but when one thinks Japanese cinema, one surely, fairly or not, thinks of Yasujiro Ozu and Akira Kurosawa first and foremost.  And so, this is the battle we respectfully offer up to you now.

Ozu would come first, making his debut in 1927 (many of the director's early films are now, sadly lost), and hitting it big with his first great film, I Was Born, But..., in 1932.  Ozu's career was filled with many great films, mostly centering around traditional Japanese family life and marriage, and he is noted for influencing many a future filmmaker, most notably, his Battle Royale opponent.  Kurosawa made his first film in 1943, and through the help and encouragement of Ozu (he championed the younger director's first film, and helped to get it a wide audience), and came to great prominence, both inside Japan, and, in a real first for a Japanese director, across the globe, in the early 1950's, as films such as Rashomon and Seven Samurai made their way around the then-budding festival circuit.  To this day - fifty years after Ozu's death and final film, and almost twenty after Kurosawa's - these are still the two Japanese directors with which most western cinephiles identify.  Ozu is still considered the great master of classic Japanese cinema.  While everyone was making a big deal over Vertigo topping Citizen Kane in the most recent Sight & Sound critic's poll, Ozu's subtle masterpiece, Tokyo Story, was quietly voted the greatest film of all-time in that same organization's director's poll.  Meanwhile, Kurosawa is the more well-known name here in the west, and his Seven Samurai is pretty much a lock for any self-respecting greatest films list.  I know it is on mine.

So there ya have it kiddies.  Who will you pick as the greatest of the Japanese Masters?  All you need do is to go on over to the poll, found conveniently near the top of the sidebar of this very same site, and click on who you think is the greater of these cinematic legends.  And remember, you can comment all you wish (and please do comment - we can never have too many of those - and it will make me feel less lonely) but in order for your vote to be counted, you must vote in the actual poll.  After doing that, then you can come back over here and leave all the comments your little hearts desire.  Who knows, maybe we will get some sort of lively cinematic discussion going.  And also please remember to tell everyone you know to get out the vote as well.  I would like to see us reach triple digits in votes.  Voting will go until midnight, EST, the night of Friday, Jan. 11th (just over two weeks from the starting gate).  The results will be announced the following day.  So get out there and vote vote vote.

Film Review: The Secret World of Arrietty

In today's world of sleek picture perfect computer animation - the kind of Pixar/Dreamworks kind of stuff that is nearly flawless in its look but utterly cold and antiseptic in its feel - it is always a welcome respite to be able to peer upon the classic cel animation style of Japan's Studio Ghibli.  It may not live up to the near impossible standards of today's aforementioned picture perfection - nor to that younger generation of why nots that crave the smooth shiny coating to the chewy yummy center of things - but its charming visual cadence and soft, watercolour like appearance, give the studio that brought us the brilliant Spirited Away, the succulent My Neighbor Totoro, the haunting Grave of the Fireflies and the adorable child's tale of Ponyo, the most elegant and painterly of looks - and to this old school animation guy, that is the best thing one could hope for.

The latest lovely piece from Studio Ghibli is The Secret World of Arrietty, or as it was originally known in its native Japan, The Borrower Arrietty.  Written by Japanese anime master Hayao Miyazaki (director of three of the aforementioned studio works), along with Keiko Niwa, and based on Mary Norton's classic children's book The Borrowers, the Secret World of Arrietty, directed by first time director and Miyazaki protege (and, at just 38, the youngest director in Studio Ghibli history) Hiromasa Yonebayashi, is the story of the most charismatic of Miss Norton's Borrowers, a young and most curious girl by the name of Arietty.  For those not in the know, Borrowers are little people (small enough to stretch out in a human's hand) who live in the nooks and crannies of houses and live on items they borrow, but that will not be missed, such as sugar cubes and tea leaves.  In our story, little Arietty is seen by a human boy, and it is with this much taboo event that the Borrowers lives erupt in very unwanted excitement and danger.

First released in Japan back in 2010, the film finally winds its way to the States in, as is par the course for Studio Ghibli films, a Walt Disney distributed English dubbed version.  Sadly though, unlike earlier releases of films like Spirited Away and Howl's Moving Castle, where the films were released in both Japanese and English versions in the US (the Japanese tending of course to play in the more art house kind of venues) it would seem that Arrietty is being released in an English only rendition this time around.  Now granted, the English version is not a bad film - hearing real life husband and wife Amy Poehler and Will Arnett as Arrietty's parents is somewhat odd but still quite fun - but to hear a film in its native tongue is always the preferred way.  But alas, as far as theatrical release goes, Disney's English language dubbing is what we get (the UK also has their own version, with Saoirse Ronan as the titular little person), so I suppose it is what we must live with it - unless of course you were able to seek out the original Japanese version which incidentally is available on DVD, and as I have already stated, is the preferred way to watch said film.   But either way, the tender yet vivid animation on the film is quite stunning and the story, though perhaps a bit more slight than some other Studio Ghibli works, is nonetheless quite enthralling.

Criterion Critiques w/ Alex DeLarge

What follows is part of a regular series of reviews on the always wonderful, and quite indispensable Criterion Collection, written by our special guest reviewer Alex DeLarge of the Korova Theatre. 

GODZILLA (Ishiro Honda, 1954)

Released on Criterion Blu-ray 01/24/2012; Spine #594

Caveat: This is the original uncut Japanese version. To fully appreciate this film, you must understand it on its own terms; you must put to rest the campy films spawned by this classic. Godzilla is a parable of the atomic age, a monster awakened by science tainted with moral lassitude; a destructive and dire warning that mankind stalks the nightmare’s abyss.

 

The giant Jurassic creature stirs from its millennial slumber because the United States is testing atomic bombs in the Pacific Ocean: this beast the rises from the murky depths and ravages Odo Island before advancing upon mainland Japan…and laying Tokyo to ruin. It is also a metaphor concerning science run amok: Dr. Serizawa fears that his volatile creation the Oxygen Destroyer, though it will kill Godzilla, will be used as a weapon to escalate the arms race and obliterate mankind, he laments “Bombs versus bombs, missiles versus missiles, and now a new superweapon to throw upon us all. As a scientist-no, as a human being-I cannot allow that to happen”.

 

Dr. Yamane (superbly portrayed by Takashi Shimura!) believes that this creature should be captured alive and studied, even at the risk of total catastrophe: knowledge is more important that human life. While the debate rages, so does Godzilla as millions die in the ensuing firestorm of Tokyo, eerily reminiscent of the Allied firebombing of Japan only a few years earlier. When one woman on a train compares this war with her survival at Nagasaki, the chilling catharsis is finally revealed.

 

The film is deftly directed by Ishiro Honda and focuses upon the characters and their moral dilemmas…not a rubber-suited monster amid crushed dioramas. When Godzilla is filmed in medium and long shot, the towering silhouette is reminiscent of a rising mushroom cloud as the cities fiery tendrils rake the darkening sky. The creature’s nightmarish roar is like Munch’s scream, a discordant reverberation as nature fights back to reclaim the world. But science does not fail us: Dr. Serizawa burns his research and utilizes his desperate weapon to kill the Beast and makes the ultimate sacrifice for Japan…and the whole damned human race. He takes his secrets to his watery grave. But if these nuclear tests continue, Dr. Yamane asks, will another Godzilla awaken? Or something worse?

 

Final Grade: (A)

 

*************

About Alex: "To state things plainly is the function of journalism; Alex writes fugitive reviews, allusive, symbolic, full of imagery and allegory, and by leaving things out, he allows the reader the privilege of creating along with him." Alex can be found hidden deep within the dark confines of his home theatre watching films, organizing his blu-ray and dvd collection and updating his blogs. Please visit the Korova Theatre and Hammer & Thongs to see what’s on his mind.

 

The Strange Decadent Beauty of The Makioka Sisters & the Elegant Old World Way the Japanese Do Melodrama

The natural beauty of the blossoming rain-dabbled cherry blossoms.  The old world elegance of brightly coloured and delicately designed kimonos.  The deep-hued wooden interiors of the Osaka homes.  The cheaply lit bars and opulent restaurants.  The eponymous snow-capped peaks in the not so far off distance.  The knowing, cunning look of each of the four titled sisters as they slowly and intricately weave their way through the rapidly changing world around them.  The innocent yet passionate stares of one husband for his sister-in-law and the unsurprised, revealing look of the sister-in-law as she takes in these obvious glances.  The traditions and rituals of arranged marriages.  The hissing finality of the train whistles.  These are the images, the sounds, the moods and transactions of Kon Ichikawa's 1983 masterpiece The Makioka Sisters.

Ichikawa's film, the third and by far most famous adaptation of the 1948 novel, is a perfect example of a mood piece.  With stares and words that mean more than what meets the eyes and ears, every nuance, every backward glance, every sideways motion give way to a multitude of emotional theories.  And though the film is of course reminiscent of such classic Japanese filmmakers as Ozu and Naruse, it is the 1950's melodrama that comes to mind more oft than not while watching this gorgeous motion picture.  With allusions to Sirk's Written on the Wind and Quine's Strangers When We Meet (on purpose or not - and it is more likely the latter) Ichikawa breathes vibrant life into his WWII set period piece. But then this is not a movie about the war (mentions of the tragedies of such are done in only peripheral moments) but about family and duty and tradition.  A film rife for the melodramatic touch it gets.

The Makioka Sisters is the story of four sisters from a once prominent Osaka family who, thanks to the great depression, have now fallen on harder times.  Now granted, these harder times, though forcing them to sell the family business, are still times of prominence when compared to the abject poverty that hit Japan in the 1930's and became even worse after the war.  We still see a family of ways and means but a family that does not know how to cope with being what they have become.  But still, Ichikawa, a director who showed the horrors of this war torn era in The Burmese Harp and Fires on the Plain, never delves into the squalor that the youngest sister subjects herself too in order to be free of the restrictive past.  Perhaps in the day and age of 1980's Japan, when the boom of their economy was hitting astronomical levels, Ichikawa was afraid audiences would not take to being reminded of their sometimes ugly past.  Instead, the director, even with the inherent sadness, gives us just the beauty of the past.

As far as the social structure of the family goes, it is headed by the eldest sister and her husband (the husbands in the story are what one would call adoptive husbands as they came from lower stations in life and took their wives' family name) who do their best to keep their once good name out of the muck.  She is run afoul by the third sister's refusal to marry any of the train of prospective husbands brought in front of her and the youngest sister's wild ways (smoking, adopting western style of dress, working for a living, sleeping around), as well as the second sister's attempt at usurping control of the family (not for any nefarious soap opera reasons, but for what she thinks is the good of her sisters).  The story, with all of its traditions and rituals, plays out like an Ozu film, though without Ozu's sense of subtle style, but there is more than just this going on here.

As I said before, and in what is essentially the whole point of this piece, all of this, even in the traditional, melodic feel of old world Japan and the classic Japanese cinema of Ozu and Mizoguchi, is pure 1950's Sirkian melodrama.  The way Ichikawa lights his film, the movement of his camera, the natural beauty juxtaposed with the inner turmoil of his characters is all Sirk.  Now I am not saying Ichikawa's film was necessarily influenced by films such as Written on the Wind or A Time To Live and a Time to Die, or for that matter the works of Nick Ray or Richard Quine or even Satyajit Ray, which also bear resemblance here (Ichikawa, who started as an animator, considered himself a cartoonist at heart and Chaplin and Disney were his biggest influences) but the feel of the film still conjures up memories of this bold, oft-maligned cinema of the past.  

Then again, much of this also conjures up the cinema of the mostly forgotten fellow Japanese director Keisuke Kinoshita and his groundbreaking work on such films as The Ballad of Narayama and The River Fuefuki.  Of course with Kinoshita being the closest thing classic Japanese cinema has to a Douglas Sirk, perhaps this is all mere happenstance.  Whatever the case, The Makioka Sisters is a true masterpiece of cinema and deserves to be recognized as such.  Its recent restoration (it made a repertory round last Summer) and release as part of the ever growing Criterion Collection (a beautiful transfer indeed) will hopefully make this happen.

The Weird Weird World of Nobuhiko Obayashi's Gleefully Demented and Brilliantly Batshitcrazy Hausu !!!!!?!

Hey you!  If you have ever taken the time to wonder (and who hasn't!?) if there were a film out there somewhere that is equal parts Dario Argento, the crazy psychedelic world of Sid & Marty Krofft, 1980's pop music video, the works of Guy Maddin and soft core Japanese schoolgirl porn, well look no further because your search has finally ended - and what strange strange fruit it has borne.  This film cannot, or make that should not be explained.  It may very well be the film for which the term batshitcrazy was invented to describe.

This movie - needing to be seen to be believed - recently played in glorious 35mm at Midtown Cinema in Harrisburg Pa as part of the Artsfest Film Festival.  It was appropriately enough the special midnight showing that happens each year as cosponsered by the festival and the cinema (a tradition that has also been host to A Clockwork Orange, Hedwig & the Angry Inch, Pink Flamingos and Beyond the Valley of the Dolls).  Approximately 95 people, most of whom had never seen the movie before, watched Obayashi's mad mad mad mad masterpiece.  Applause filled the theater afterwards.

Being the story of seven schoolgirls with names such as Gorgeous, Fantasy, Sweet, Kung-Fu (my personal fave), Prof, Melody and Mac (all of course possessing a quality to match their monikers) visiting what of course ends up being a haunted house (story idea by Obayashi's preteen daughter) where the most gleefully enjoyable blood bath ensues and girls are eaten by killer pianos and light fixtures or are beheaded and come back to try to eat the others (not to mention the evil killer cat, the noodle-eating bear and the fat demented watermelon man!?) the film is not what one would typically call great cinema. But damned if it isn't great cinema anyway.

I remember (which is easy because it was just last year) buying the Criterion blu-ray sight unseen.  The poster image of a psychotically-drawn cat was more then enough to make me plunk down whatever amount it was and buy the damned thing.  Upon watching it (projected onto the big screen after hours at Midtown Cinema of course) I knew right away the right spur-of-the-moment decision had been made.  Purposely cheap looking and full of some of the most splendidly maniacal cheap thrills this cinephile has ever seen, Hausu (aka, House) is easily one of my newly minted favourite films.  Damn it, it will even get a place of honour in my personal 100 greatest films canon.

Stealing from one of my own recurring features, here briefly are my 10 Favourite Things About Hausu.

1) Most would probably say this is an annoying quality but for me it means something powerful (musically speaking) has happened.  Just like that whistle in Kill Bill, the recurring theme song of the movie - In the Evening Mist I believe it is called - stays in my head for weeks each and every time I watch the film.  In fact it is in there right now (he says as happily humming said tune as he types).

2) The names. Several have been changed when translated, but let us go with the ones from the English-language release (since that is the only one I have seen).  Gorgeous (called Angel in the original Japanese-language version) is always dressing herself up.  Fantasy is a dreamer.  Sweet will do anything to help. Melody is the musician.  Prof is the smart one - you can tell because she wears glasses.  Kung-Fu kicks ass.  Mac eats a lot (I am guessing this is some take on stomach and not the ubiquitous McDonald's reference).

3) Obayashi's use of such garishly cheesy sets and designs and special effects.  If this film had been done in any sort of traditional way it would not be nearly as enjoyable as it ends up being.  It is blatantly - and quite arrogantly - cheap and that is just the way it needs to be.

4) One character (Gorgeous's wouldbe step mother) goes nowhere without her off camera wind machine.  Constantly wind swept in every scene (even when no one else is) may be a not-so-subtle rag on the melodramatic ways of classical cinema.

5) Kung-Fu.  I told you she was my favourite.  Randomly kicking ass (stuck cabinet doors, mice, a telephone, that crazy-ass cat, ghosts and skeletons) and stripping down to her underwear (for no apparent reason other than to titillate the male audience members) she is the sexy go-to girl in this bunch.  This kitten is fast as lightning indeed.

6) That rerelease poster image (see below) that made me buy the disc sight unseen.  It now adorns t-shirts, hast and mouse pads.  What a great maniacal cat.  The image actually nicely combines two of my wife and mine's own cats.  It has the orange colour of our oldest cat Alex but the demented killer-on-the-loose look of our youngest Fanny.

7) "Do you like melons?"  "I hate them!"  "What do you like?"  "Bananas!"  - Once you see the movie this will suddenly become freakin' hilarious to you.

8) The seemingly out-of-place (but just as appropriately perfectly in place) presence of English language pop songs by Godiego.  I suppose if the movie is going to be batshitcrazy, the soundtrack might as well be as well.

9) Not to give anything away, but a piano eats a girl.  To put it as bluntly as I can, it fucking devours the bitch.  All the while that damned haunting melody is playing - ironically by the actual character Melody.

10) Everything else that I could not fit in the first nine spots.  From the Partridge Family-esque bus ride to the Fantasy's fantasies about her "manly" teacher to Gorgeous's aunt eating eyeballs to Obayashi's criticism of the atomic bomb (the director is from Hiroshima) to the closing credits that appear to be part of some seventies Japanese variety show to Mac's severed head taking a bite out of Fantasy's ass to pretty much everything else.

Anyway, that is it for now kiddies.  My only request is that you go out and watch Hausu.  If you have any sense of cinematic love, you will not regret your decision.  If you do, well it's only 88 minutes, and you probably don't have any friends anyway.  But before I go, please allow me one more shamelessly decadent image from this shamelessly batshitcrazy movie.  This movie that will bore into you freakin' soul and lay eggs that will later hatch and become a billion batshitcrazy babies ready to devour your mind with insane catchy pictures and tunes that will never leave your head.  A demented infinity for us all!!

The Sadly Neglected Beauty of Keisuke Kinoshita's River Fuefuki

If you think classic era Japanese filmmakers such as Kenji Mizoguchi or Mikio Naruse are underrated masters that (until recently) have never gotten the respect (outside of their home country) often reserved for Kurosawa and Ozu, then the fateful, undeserved obscurity of compatriot Keisuke Kinoshita will blow off your proverbial socks.  Directing 42 films in the first 23 years of his career (before slowing down to a Terrence Malick-like pace for the remainder), Kinoshita was not only an amazingly prolific filmmaker, but also a creative artist that can easily stand toe to toe with any of the aforementioned classic Japanese Cinema masters.  A creative artist - an auteur if you will - who should be more well known in the West.

With each successive film of Kinoshita's that I see (and I just discovered him this past month thanks to Film Forum's Japanese Divas series) I fall more and more in cinematic love with him, and I think that The River Fuefuki (Fuefukigawa in transliterated Japanese) is the be all and end all of that love - the artistic climax if you will.  Made in 1960, just two years after The Ballad of Narayama (along with Twenty-Four Eyes, probably the director's best known work), The River Fuefuki is the epic story of one family and the turmoil of the lives throughout seventy-plus years of war and torment in what was known as the Sengoku Period (or Period of Warring States).  Seeing each generation succumb to the siren call of war (there are no less than a dozen and a half of battles throughout the story) while the elders lament what could have been, the film plays as great, almost Shakespearean tragedy.  Of course Kinoshita has I am sure, more Japanese classics in mind, but since I am not very familiar with these, allow me to compare it to the tales of Shakespeare's histories.

What really makes The River Fuefuki pop though is not the story - though the way it is told and those portraying these parts are all very riveting in their own right.  What really makes the film stand out is Kinoshita's filming technique.  Sort of comparable to one of Kurosawa's Jideigeki films, if it were made by the likes of a Dario Argento or even a Godard.  Always one to experiment with new visions, Kinoshita is easily the most stylized director of all the Japanese Masters, and is at least just as visually innovative if not more so (though in a more classically elegant way) than any of the New Wavers that came after him.  This kind of stylization in filmmaking may not be for everyone's tastes (the likes of other super stylists like Seijun Suzuki or Nobuhiki Obayashi or even their American blood brother Quentin Tarantino are surely an acquired taste to say the least - a taste I happen to quite enjoy) but Kinoshita was still extremely popular, both critically and financially, in his time.  It is still sad to think how completely unknown he is today in world cinema.

But it is this super stylization that makes Kinoshita's films work as well as they do - and in turn makes me fall deeper and deeper in love with the auteur's oeuvre with each new viewing.  His work with the bright garish primary colours of Carmen Comes Home (made in Fujicolor in 1951, it was Japan's first colour film), his manic, tilting camera in the sequel, Carmen's Pure Love, his use of mood-changing hues in The Ballad of Narayama, the back-and-forth bifractured storytelling of The Tragedy of Japan.  These things are what make Kinoshita such an alluring filmmaker - and in The River Fuefuki, it is no different.  Shot in crisp black and white, Kinoshita swathes the canvas with swooshes of colour (better seen than described - just take a look at the stills that still do not do this film the justice it deserves on the big screen).  The director's use of colour and his way of freezing shots in mid-battle and his use of ghostly imagery make him possibly my favourite director of the moment - a position held by Andrei Tarkovsky, Nicholas Ray, Kenji Mizoguchi, Ernst Lubitsch and William Wellman when I first discovered them.  Seriously, I sat there in the theater and was completely mesmerized by Kinoshita's visuals while being emotionally jarred by what was going on in and around them.

Perhaps a Kinoshita retrospective will come about soon (any potential organizers please note that I am always open to lending a helping hand) and these films, just like the rediscovery of Naruse a few years ago, will finally get the respect and adoration they deserve.  Kinoshita certainly deserves the accolades that Ozu, Kurosawa, Mizoguchi and (more recently) Naruse have gotten from the West.  Incidentally, in 1943, with Kinoshita's debut film, The Blossoming Port, the director was awarded the New Director Award - in the same year another director, Akira Kurosawa also made his debut.  I am not trying to dismiss the accomplishments of Kurosawa (he is and will always be one of my all-time favourite directors), I am just trying to put out there the fact that perhaps we need to re-introduce the great, but mostly unheralded (outside of Japan) career of Keisuke Kinoshita.  Just watch any of his myriad of films (so many different genres, so many different styles), especially The River Fuefuki, and you will surely agree with me.  If not, who wants to know you anyway.

Wife! Be Like a Rose!

This wonderfully titled 1935 near-masterpiece of tragic longings, directed by the oft-overlooked "third" master of classic Japanese cinema Mikio Naruse, has the grand distinction of being the first ever Japanese sound film to be commercially released in the US.  This initial release (in 1937 and under the retitled name of its protagonist Kimiko) was met with an overwhelming critical disdain.  The film was called plodding and disorganized (though Mark van Doren in The Nation would hail the film as a powerful work of cinematic humanism and call it "one of the most moving films I know."), but I am here to tell you they (except for the precognitive Mr. van Doren) were wrong - dead wrong.

This is the story of Mikio, a young Japanese woman who lives in that strange world between generations, between cultures.  As was true at the time of many Japanese women Mikio's age (she is about twenty in the story) at this time of a burgeoning new society that was just then opening its proverbial doors to the west, old tradition clashed with this newer, freer society.  Dressed, as was the norm, in traditional clothes in the evening - kimono and such - but in more modern western clothing (somewhat reminiscent of Marlene Dietrich's then contemporary attire) during her days as a professional working women - something that was not the norm (and in fact was quite shocking at the time and would actually a few years later become completely forbidden as traditionalist ways were to become resurrected during Japan's imperialistic uprisings that would eventually lead to war).  

This juxtaposition of ideas - old vs. new, country vs. city, good vs. evil - would become a recurring factor in Naruse's oeuvre throughout the years.  Another recurring factor of Naruse's cinema would be that of the unfortunate woman whom tragedy would regularly make a fool of - but a woman who would make whatever she could out of these tragic circumstances.  Mikio is just this kind of strong woman character that Naruse would become famous (well, sort of famous) for championing.

Mikio, played both traditionally and modernly by the stunning actress Sachiko Chiba (the director's fiancee at the time, this would be the second of six films she would do for Naruse within a two year period), is burdened at home by a drunken, depressed mother (drinking sake and writing poetry all day) and burdened from afar by her estranged, missing father (her mother's poetry, published in the local newspaper, is nothing more than a series of lovelorn pleas to her absent husband).  Mikio wishes to marry but in order to do that (as Japanese culture insisted on at the time) she must find her father and bring him back home to act as go-between with her fiancee's family.  When Mikio tracks down her awol father, she finds he has a whole other life and a whole other family.

Naruse's use of intricate (and often subtly manipulative) camerawork combined with Sachiko's natural beauty and poise (as well as Naruse's use of western movie references - Mikio and her father play a scene out of Capra's It Happened One Night while trying to hail a cab) make Wife! Be Like a Rose! a most powerful melodrama indeed.  The final scene, in which Mikio realizes she will not (nor should she) get her so desired fairy tale resolution, is a work of art in and of itself.  Naruse's use of sudden shift changes and close-ups and the way he can make a scene pop off the screen in a way (this style already evident in the director's silent work) merely add to the already intense emotions running through the air between all the actors concerned.

In Noël Burch's 1979 book "To the Distant Observer: Form and Meaning in the Japanese Cinema" he does what pretty much only Mark van Doren had done back in 1937, and praises the film as an early masterpiece of Japanese cinema.  Perhaps this has helped the film's reputation somewhat but lo and behold, there is still no DVD release of the film anywhere on the whole goddamned planet.  I suppose, especially considering the director's third class status beneath Ozu and Mizoguchi, we should just be glad at Criterion's release of Naruse five remaining silents (as part of their great Eclipse series) and leave it at that.  Personally I don't want to leave it at that and I am still hoping for a DVD (preferably through the aforementioned Criterion series) release sometime during my lifetime.

Dragnet Girl (Ozu, 1933)

It was a rare foray into the gangster genre for the master so well-known for detailing the everyday rituals of the (then) modern Japanese family, but even in this oeuvre-oddity one can clearly see the early workings of many of the signature motifs that would later come to define the great Yasujiro Ozu.  Considered the most "Japanese" of Japanese filmmakers, Ozu was still, like his younger contemporary Akira Kurosawa, influenced by western filmmakers, and that influence is not more evident that in his 1933 silent gangster movie, Dragnet Girl.

Opening with Ozu's famous "pillow shots", there is no doubt this is an Ozu film.  Rows of hats hanging on hooks, businessmen hurrying through the streets, their shadows rushing along behind them in hopes of keeping up, pans of typewriters clicking away in an anonymous office.  These quite simple yet beautiful and strangely alluring shots open Ozu's picture, and the director will go back to these shots again and again throughout, creating a mood that is both formal and soothing but also arousing and potentially dangerous in its oft-disarming fashion.  Like I said, pure Ozu.

The difference here, as opposed to the grand auteur's later, more austere works such as Late Spring, Early Summer, Tokyo Story and Autumn Afternoon, is that potential danger that lingers in the quietude of those aforementioned "pillow shots", actually does explode in Dragnet Girl.  It explodes in quick bursts (sometimes off-screen entirely!?) in the way one would expect the familial catharsis to happen in the director's later works.  There it is emotional but here it is physical.  Different but the same in many ways.  With its Jazz Age exuberance and touches of classic Hollywood, Dragnet Girl is certainly much more westernized than most of Ozu, but still very much an Ozu motion picture from start to finish.

As far as a gangster film goes, though influenced by the early precode films of Hollywood (and probably the Poetic Realism of early French sound cinema) and with a look that reputedly mirrored von Sternberg, Dragnet Girl, the story of an up and coming mobster and his titular moll, and the tragedy that ensues in this world of petty crime and romantic larceny, is much more esoteric (aka, more Ozu-like) than any of these particular influences.  Ozu's use of quiet space (and since this is a silent film, I of course mean quiet in the physical sense of the word) and his methodical pacing (and those beloved pillow shots!) make for a gangster flick with the heart of a poetic dreamer.  Perhaps the influence of Poetic Realism is stronger than I first alluded to oh so parenthetically and offhandishly.

Whatever the case, Dragnet Girl ends up being one of the earliest works of Ozu, even in a genre he so rarely (only twice that I can be sure of) went to, that shows what the great auteur would one day become.  Influenced by Film Forum's current retrospective, "5 Japanese Divas" (info can be found here) this film helps to kick off my personal proclamation of Japanese Cinema Month (a deeper explanation can be read here) and I think this very modern work of said national cinema, and the way it leads to the whole breadth of what is to come in that very same cinema, may be the perfect intro to the rest of this month full of Mizoguchi and Naruse and Kurosawa and Ichikawa and, of course, Yasujiro Ozu.

April is Japanese Cinema Month!!

In my infinite power of creation I have declared April to be Japanese Cinema Month.  Well, at least as far as my movie viewing habits go.  My goal is to watch (mostly) Japanese films in the month of April.  I will (of course) still be keeping current on new releases and I do plan on watching a few non-Japanese films this month (such as my new Criterion Blu-Ray copies of Senso, Black Orpheus and Topsy Turvy) but for the most part - it is going to be all Japan, all the time!!

I have already kicked off this proclamation a few days early (March 30th to be exact) by watching Seven Samurai on the big screen at Midtown Cinema and will end it a few days late (exact date being May 7th) at Film Forum in New York with a restored 35mm screening of Kon Ichikawa's The Makioka Sisters.  Inbetween there will be at least 40 other Japanese films.  Many of these films are part of Film Forum's month long Japanese Divas Series.  I will also (finally) be watching the rest of my Kurosawa 100th Anniversary Box Set - a thing I should have done long ago, but kept putting off in favour of other films - as well as a few other Japanese odds and ends.  A tentative list of what I plan on watching this month - this Japanese Cinema Month - follows.  A few of these are films I have already seen, but due to my lack of knowledge and exposure to Japanese Cinema (the non-Kurosawa variety at least) most will be first-time viewings.  An asterisk represents a film I have already seen.

Dragnet Girl (Ozu, 33)

Sisters of Gion (Mizoguchi, 36)

*Osaka Elegy (Mizoguchi, 36)

Women of the Night (Mizoguchi, 48)

Street of Shame (Mizoguchi, 56)

Carmen Comes Home (Kinoshita, 51)

Twenty-Four Eyes (Kinoshita, 54)

Drunken Angel (Kurosawa, 48)

Stray Dog (Kurosawa, 49)

Scandal (Kurosawa, 50)

Wife! Be Like a Rose (Naruse, 35)

*Life of Oharu (Mizoguchi, 52)

*Ugetsu (Mizoguchi, 53)

*Sansho the Bailiff (Mizoguchi, 54)

Early Summer (Ozu, 51)

Pitfall (Teshigahara, 62)

*Woman in the Dunes (Teshigahara, 64)

The Face of Another (Teshigahara, 66)

The Idiot (Kurosawa, 51)

The Lower Depths (Kurosawa, 57)

The 47 Ronin (Mizoguchi, 41)

Repast (Naruse, 51)

Okaasan/Mother (Naruse, 52)

Floating Clouds (Naruse, 55)

Flowing (Naruse, 56)

Yearning (Naruse, 64)

Early Spring (Ozu, 56)

Tokyo Twilight (Ozu, 57)

Equinox Flower (Ozu, 58)

Late Autumn (Ozu, 60)

The End of Summer (Ozu, 61)

*Rashomon (Kurosawa, 50)

*Throne of Blood (Kurosawa, 57)

Yojimbo (Kurosawa, 61)

Sanjuro (Kurosawa, 62)

*Late Spring (Ozu, 49)

*Tokyo Story (Ozu, 53)

Red Beard (Kurosawa, 65)

An Inn in Tokyo (Ozu, 35)

Dersu Uzala (Kurosawa, 75)

*Kagemusha (Kurosawa, 80)

Madadayo (Kurosawa, 93)

Princess Yang Kwei-Fei (Mizoguchi, 55)

Tokyo Olympiad (Ichikawa, 65)

I will toss in a few other things, such as some early rare Ozu silents, the original Japanese version of Godzilla and maybe some Shimizu.  Perhaps I will also toss in a Takeshi Kitano or two, to give the month at least a tiny bit of modern flair. 

As you may have noticed, other than a few latter day Kurosawas and a trio of films from Hiroshi Teshigahara, everything on this list is pre-new wave cinema.  I figure if I were to put in Imamura and his new wave pals or too much of modern Japan (Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Takashi Miike, Miyazaki etc) I would have to extend this to a two-month celebration.  As it is, my month of Japanese Cinema is already going to go a week long, so I suppose modern Japan is another story for another time - perhaps in the Fall. 

And btw, I will be writing about a few of these films here at The Most Beautiful Fraud in the World.  Not all of them of course (that would be crazy!!) but a few of them, when the spirit strikes me, will find their way into the annals of said blog.

Tonight I will kick off this momentous month-long (+) occasion (aside from the aforementioned Kurosawa precursor) with a screening of Ozu's silent gangster flick, Dragnet Girl.

NYFF 2010: Pale Flower

As I have noticed a good many of my critical compatriots do recently, I too must preface this look at the 1964 film Pale Flower, with the (quite sad) admission that I am woefully lacking in my knowledge of the films of Masahiro Shinoda.  Actually I am woefully lacking in my knowledge of most things under the banner of what one might call the Japanese New Wave (a handful of Imamura and Oshima aside, but only a handful).

That being said, my introduction to Shinoda came just yesterday with the press screening of Pale Flower (one of twelve Shinoda films playing in this year's New York Film Festival's Masterworks Series) at Walter Reade, and I must say, I was more than a little impressed.  To answer (and paraphrase a bit) John Lennon's rather absurdist question, yes Shinoda-san, you passed the audition.

Pale Flower is one of those stunning discoveries one makes that, much like Burnett's Killer of Sheep three years ago, only makes one angry that it took this long to finally discover it.  The story of Muraki, a Yakuza killer who returns to his old turf after a stint in prison, to find things pretty much the same as they ever were.  Well, everything except for Saeko, a beautiful young woman who is now a regular at one of the requisite seedy gambling dens run by the local Yakuza boss.  As reckless as she is stunning, Saeko (Mariko Kaga) quickly becomes the pivotal point in the life of Muraki and of course, as always does the femme fatale, his demise (or at least his entrapment back in the same problems as before).

Considered one of the high points of the Japanese New Wave (though still with remnants of Ozu in it) Shinoda, just like his French compatriots, took the notions and ideas of film noir and planted them inside Pale Flower.  Obviously (or at least it should be obvious) influenced by what Godard and Truffaut were doing in the West the years just prior and combined with what his own contemporaries were doing right out his own front door (Oshima, Imamura, Seijun Suzuki), the film is layered in such a way that one must assume it had some sort of rather strong influence on both Martin Scorsese, and later on, Quentin Tarantino.  Of course what filmmakers did not influence Scorsese and QT?

Now at the time, since the French and Japanese New Wave's were coming together pretty much simultaneously, one's influence on the other is just guess work (did these directors even see each other's works during this period?) but one must figure there was some sort of cross-cultural influence here, or at the very least, influences from the same places as each other.  While the French New Wave got off the ground with the determination of a bunch of upstart film critics who wanted to change the world, the Japanese New Wave was born from the studio system (which may explain the influence of Ozu hidden away in Shinoda's camera work at times) and therefore perhaps not as entrenched in film culture as their European counterparts.  Yet, there must have been some influence (that's all I'm sayin').

Enough speculating, the film stands on its own (influence-free) merits and damn well should.  My favourite scene (among many!) is Saeko's insanely giddy impromptu late night car race through the strangely deserted streets of Tokyo with a seeming stranger and the even stranger aftermath.  Cross-cultural influence or not, this is so Godard it ain't funny.  Stark and harrowing, irreverent yet stoical, Shinoda is a surprise well worth the wait - although I am still angry it took this damned long to discover him.  Now I must go out and gobble up all available DVD's of Shinoda's work.  These include the Criterion editions of Samurai Spy (65) and Double Suicide (69); the Masters of Cinema editions of Assassination (64) and Silence (71); as well as Punishment Island/Captive's Island (66) and (of course) Pale Flower.  There are also some Japanese editions, but these are probably sans English subtitles (though the visual beauty of Shinoda makes up for lack of words).