Three from Japan

Every once in a while it's enjoyable to dip into some of the fine films that were made in Japan in the 1930's and early 1940's.

Here are three I watched recently:

Hideko The Bus-Conductor [1941]
Mikio Naruse made what film critics have called shomingeki [lives of common working class people] dramas. All of his films have an easy style with very tight scripts and good character development. With rather simple technique, in most of his films, he is able to convey a lot about his characters. Many of his films are like novellas. Hideko The Bus-Conductor is only about an hour long and not as complex as some of his films but memorable still.
Hideko (Hideko Takamine) is a young woman working as a ticket-taker on a slow bus line. She and her co-worker come up with a plan to turn the bus into a tour bus. They get a friendly writer [visiting from out of town] to compose a script for Hideko to read. They convince their penny pinching, crooked boss to agree to their plan and end up winning a potentially legal battle with him with help from the writer. Naruse captures the small town milieu with beautiful fog shrouded mountains in the background and the quiet roads that probably won't benefit from a tour bus. The ending is both sweet and ironic. Good film.

Our Neighbor, Mrs Yae [1934]
Just who is Yasujirô Shimazu? Because I didn't know better I confused him with Hiroshi Shimizu who has four films on the Eclipse box set. But Shimazu was a wonderful director in his own right. Our Neighbor, Miss Yae is about a two families that live next door to each other. It just so happens one family has two boys and the other two girls. The younger sister (Yumeko Aizome) is in love with the older brother and she flirts with him often even though she is too young to marry. When her older sister comes to visit - due to marriage trouble - it causes a rift because she too fancies the older brother. Shimazu presents a slice of life in pre-war Japan that appears easy going but that has many modern issues such as divorce and extra-marital affairs. The film's style is elegantly effortless. The opening shot in particular is fine and some of the transitions are quite dynamic - such as when they all go to the city to see a movie. There is also a good scene at a baseball game. Not a perfect film but a good one.

The Lady and the Beard [1931]
Yosijuro Ozu is known by everyone as the filmmaker who made dramas about regular folks who struggle with trying to find love and fit into Japanese familial and societal obligation. A good number of his earlier [silent] films were light comedies with a much more rambunctious style than he had later in his career - when he never moved the camera. But these early films too dealt with this obligation - albeit in a less stringent way. The Lady and the Beard is a silent 'student comedy' about a bearded young man named Kichi who is independent and oblivious of what people and society expect of him - especially regarding his appearance. He is also a Kendo champion which comes in handy when he prevents a couple thieves - led by a woman gangster - from robbing a young woman. The grateful woman comes back into his life and tells him that if he wants to get a job he should probably shave the beard. In time, other woman fall for him including the female gangsters he once challenged. It's a simple but terrific film. The actor who plays Kichi is played by Okada Tokihiko who has a great physical presence.

Kagemusha

Akira Kurosawa’s Kagemusha is visually impressive but the plot is both weak and convoluted to the point that it is hard to follow or even really care about what happens. However, stylistically it is a very interesting film.

It as though Kurosawa had imagined it as a play and then was given millions to create it as an epic, which he then decided to keep in the format of a play with a few scenes of great color, movement and light. Much of the action takes place off-screen and instead of seeing action we are told about it. When the emperor is shot we hear about it and then later the would-be assassin explains to his interlocutors how he did it and we see him shoot a tree.

Vincent Canby's New York Times review astutely notes:

Kagemusha is majestic, stately, cool, and, in many of its details, almost abstract. It appears very much to be the work of a director who, now seventy years old, is no longer concerned with the obligations of conventional drama or even with moral questions. He is, instead, contemplating history, not as something to be judged but, rather, acknowledged and, possibly, understood.

We keep being told about war but never really see it. Instead riders on horses charge around or the battle takes place just over the hill. All other times we see scene after scene take place indoors or around the various outposts. This, of course, is a stylistic choice by Kurosawa and while I have no direct facts as to why he chose to make the film this way it seems as though financing had something to do with it. After all we do know that Kurosawa had trouble getting funding after his previous two films and his disaster in trying to work in Hollywood.

However, despite this the film is still rather effective due to the prince and pauper formula about the poor thief doubling as the emperor. But too the final scene is particularly strong because of the stylistic choice, which involves showing us gunners firing from fortified positions, various battalions charging to their death and the reactions by the commanders and the [now] former emperor stand-in all powerless to the carnage they are witnessing. We never actually see the slaughter and it is made more powerful because we don’t. And then Kurosawa gives us a series of amazing final shots with bloodied horses and people dying in super slow motion.

Although Kagemusha is not a remake per se it is a film that had been made before in Japan and to my mind the earlier version is a better film. Directed in 1963 by Umetsugu Inoue it is titled Daisan no kagemusha (The Third Shadow Warrior). It's better precisely because it shows us the action all the way through and draws us into the story in a way that Kurosawa's film does not. We care about the character in Umetsugu's film because we see the challenges that the hero faces continually and wonder when and if he will be caught. In time he becomes the emperor because the people who know him to be a double all die. While in Kurosawa's film the double never escapes and is always in a role, which - granted - is part of the film's message.

Overall, Kurosawa is after bigger themes and grander statements. For an excellent overview of all these themes you can't do better than Donald Richie's chapter on the film in his book The Films of Akira Kurosawa.

I think both films should be seen because both can be enjoyed and appreciated for different reasons. Umetsugu's film can be found on eBay or on some Asian DVD websites. Kurosawa's film is available on Blu-ray from Criterion and looks great.

Kuroneko

One of the best films I've seen this year is the 1968 Japanese horror film Kuroneko directed by Shindō Kaneto’s who is known for directing Onibaba a film somewhat similar in plot and theme.  But while that one is a bit more realistic this one is a ghost story of sorts in a sub-genre known as bakeneko mono or monster-cat tales.

The film's first scene involves a group of samurai who invade the home on Yone (Nobuko Otawa) and her mother-in-law Shige (Kiwako Taichi) whom they brutally rape and murder. The two women lay dead and a cat comes along and laps up their blood, which leads to them being transformed into vengeful spirits or bakeneko, "beautiful cat-like women" who have taken an oath to kill and suck the blood of all Samurai.

Subsequently, they settle in a home deep in the forest where they lure samurai to kill them. As the story unfolds we learn that the mother has a son - married to her daughter-in-law - who went off to war. He returns and is promoted to samurai by the local warlord who tells him to go in search of the spirits that are killing the samurai. He, of course, doesn't realize that these spirits are his mother and wife.

The story is quite good as it builds tension amid some of the horror elements - although to be honest the film is not particularly scary or bloody. At least by today's standards. However, the cinematography is stunning both in the use of black & white lighting but also the staging of each scene in the forest and some visual references which recall the influence of Nōh theatre.

Overall, the formal elements are terrific and the fillm's story really builds a very engaging suspense.

More info here:

MediaSeized analysis
Film Ref review
DVD Outsider review
DVD Beaver review

Lost Island of VHS...

Wife! Be Like A Rose - Mikio Naruse - 1935

This is a terrific film from what many call the fourth master of the classic Japanese cinema: Mikio Naruse. Naruse, no doubt, stands on his own in film history but having never seen any of his films this one felt like a fusion both in style and content of two of those other great masters Yasujirō Ozu and Kenji Mizoguchi. Like the films those two filmmakers made this film deals with domestic issues in 1930's Japan as well as the plight and/or roll of women in the society. In this film a young woman (Sachiko Chiba), soon to be married, goes to the country to bring back her father who left his wife and kids for a geisha twenty years before. What she does not know is that he has fathered two other children and is quite happy in his present life.

Despite the built-in drama and serious themes Wife! Be Like A Rose is on the lighter side and almost comedic at times. In part, this is due to the actress Sachiko Chiba who charms and smiles in each scene. Nothing much seems to phase her as she comes to accept the fact that reuniting her mother and father in not in the cards. [The Japanese title is Kimiko, which is the main characters' name].

Stylistically, the film also incorporates the "tatami shot" - used notably by Ozu - in which the camera is placed at a low height, along with distant framing shots and smooth camera movement which were utilized so well by Mizoguchi.

I'm am not sure why only one Naruse film is available in the US on DVD. I can only guess there are rights issues. Perhaps Criterion will eventually unspool a few of them in an Eclipse set. One can only hope.

A longer review of the film can be found here.

An interesting piece of history on the film when it opened and closed in New York in 1937 is here.

There are good notes on Naruse retrospectives at Filmforum and Harvard Film Archive.

Also a good piece over at The Evening Class.

It's time for Naruse to be re-discovered...or maybe just discovered.