Why are Japanese films so terrible?

Making my way through the films of Masahiro Shinoda

Watched this last night, fantastic:

http://eurekavideo.co.uk/moc/catalogue/harakiri/

The samurai duel near the end, shot amongst grass swaying in the wind, is a sequence of pure cinema, image/sound/performance all working together. The anti-hierachy politics and complicating of the samurai code is typical of that early sixties quasi-Marxist strain of Japanese cinema (eg Onibaba, Pitfall) that I find so intense, and so inspiring.

Yeah that's a classic, love Kobayashi's Kwaidan as well. Some great staging and sets on it. The song in the third story is just some of the best music set to film that I've seen lately.

Get that inspired feeling from the booklet that comes w/the DVD, which has a good interview w/Kobayashi, talking about his films but most of it devoted to Harakiri. A few comments that show a lot of integrity and humility (his insistence that his films are really collaborative) and his debt to Takemitsu's scores.

'for the damaged right eye'

that's a great one. though I like 'Atman' as a study, and 'White Hole' is incredible for the electronic music by Yuasa, and 'KI or BREATHING' is a little slow but ends up working because of the Takemitsu score. I still haven't seen 'Funeral Parade of Roses' yet -- it looks so amazing

julio, have you seen Shinoda's 'Petrified Forest'? That one has such a great Takemitsu I'm thinking of hunting it down

Not seen that. I was just looking at his Samurai Spy and the credits have this really spiky theme by Takemitsu. It is something like spy music, if spy films were creation of medieval Japan, if you see what I mean.

I'm finding one delight after another with Toru. Great to actually hear these with the images they were designed for (and they really feel designed, not tacked on). Wish I could get that w/Morricone but I don't think I ever come across any of the films he soundtracked in the 70s, so only the Leone/spaghetti stuff for the moment, but it reminds me I have to see those films.

my favorite Takemitsu = his scores, the fusion with his sources go so deep that by the end you nearly feel that Monteverdi or Bach or John Barry or Ligeti or the Shadows or whatever must have been Japanese

Morricone's weirder 70's scores were mostly for bad films like 'Exorcist II', where he just clearly felt free to do whatever without repercussion but it does mean limited rewards when hunting down the films to see the music in context. Have a feeling that is not true of Toru. I'm saving 'Rikyu' for some special night, that is my favorite score of his

Yeah, you really feel he's delved deep into his sources, so skillful he is at adapting them for whatever scene.

Someone needs to write about these soundtracks, good opportunity now that the films themselves are more available (not sure if this ws the case 5 years ago). And he is fairly unique in that many people would then say he wasn't ignored at all, that his orchestral works get a fair hearing. The argument needs to be made that the works for the hall don't have as much pay-off.

Bet Morricone is jealous tho'. He's always tried to say that he really is a COMPOSER. When, no, I'd say he's written incredible music, as orig as anybody's in the 20th century, its just that the space for these happen to be shared with the images.

as orig as anybody's in the 20th century

uhm

japanese new wave is quite widely available now, there was almost nothing a few years ago when i was interested in this stuff

funeral parade is v interesting, possibly not 'great' but more than a historical curiosity

What are you talking about, man? Funeral Parade of Roses is most definitely 'great'. In fact, even that I would say was an understatement.

no it isn't

i think ichikawa was maybe the 'greatest' filmmaker of this period but he was temperamentally from an older generation

oh and seijun suzuki was brilliant and needs defending from the unfortunate patronage tarantino and that ilk

Accrding to wiki Ichikawa made no films from '67 till '71, which is the period Matsumoto was active in as a feature filmmaker.

Not sure about scaling the er, greatness of FPR but there were few films made in '69 that were better. You can put it in another way: its a better adaptation of Oedipus Rex than that made by Pasolini.

Anyone seen 'Pitfall'? I want it but it's 'spensive on Amazon.

Pitfall is gd - excellent commentary track on the Masters of Cinema DVD by Tony Ryans - but a bit more socially realist than either Face of Another or Woman of the Dunes

is £12 here: http://www.moviemail-online.co.uk/film/dvd/Pitfall-Masters-Of-Cinema/

(which isn't dirt cheap, but also isn't the £50 it is on amazon)

It is not worth £50. Is it OOP?

You can rent it from I Love Film, of course.

yes, oop i think. Eureka were victims of the sony warehouse fire and lost a lot of their stock. i can imagine them not re-pressing the older titles in their catalogue (and this was one of the first 10).

(no guarantee that it's available from moviemail either tbh. they are quoting a 2 week delivery time...)

not seen pitfall but woman of the dunes is great, as is oni baba (all in a similar vein). thought Face Of Another lacked a certain something though. that said, the shots in the surgery were stunning...

am currently working my way through Eureka's 8dvd box of Mizoguchi films. Ugetsu Monogatari was latest. think i prefer his work to Ozu's (which is comparing chalk and cheese, i realise).

mizoguchi was better than everyone

think i'd take at least some of kurosawa's samurai stuff over the best of mizoguchi. they are just bigger in scope if nothing else.

idk

they have more extras & spectacular scenarism

nobody cld give you a tracking shot like mizoguchi, nobody

talking of whom, this looks p tasty, and a gd compliment to the MOC box:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Mizoguchi-Collection-DVD-Minosuke-Band%C3%B4/dp/B004SXSRS2/ref=wl_it_dp_o_npd?ie=UTF8&coliid=I2VE3G809MNXZK&colid=J68FNACBJQ61

also, Eureka/MOC slowly seem to be transferring their titles to Blu-Ray, or Dual-Format editions, so maybe that will happen w Pitfall

awesome

ive been waiting to see those films for ages

have mizoguchi's "story of late chrysanthemums" queued up to watch soon

their end of 2011 editorial has a few words to say on the subject of BR only releases if you didn't see that. they do specifically say "Work immediately focused on getting our entire catalogue back in print." which is promising. (the late mizoguchi box was £100 on amazon for a time but has come back down to the previous price)

new AE mizoguchi box is on my wishlist, yes 8) and the early kurosawa (which was down to £14 earlier in the week) is in the post...

must also pick up Harakiri...

doc films is doing a naruse retrospective but it's really a pain to get there across town

Mizoguchi and Renoir are my blind spots! I mean, they've made some really good films but it hasn't hit me yet in a way that keeps me awake at night. Which happens, could be something to do with not seeing any of Mizoguchi's films on the big screen where you can never miss a great tracking shot.

A bit underwhelmed by Pitfall, although its possible one of the best attempts to do something Kafka-like, which is why I don't see much of a socialist realist dimension.

The ICA are running a ton of Japanese dramas in Feb, looking fwd to catching up on a couple of them by researching the terrific midnighteye webzine.

Saw Harakiri this weekend. Wow. Kwaidan was wonderful but this one really just worked me over, just powerful and satisfying on every level, from the tableaux to the politics to the final battle scenes

Eyes bugged out in the first ten seconds when the ronin introduces himself as belonging to the Fukushima Clan from Hiroshima.

Oshima's Death by Hanging is a film I'm still recovering from. Might be his best, although I have much to see.

Season of recent Japanese film coming up and I just didn't do it could be a good on, following from Oshima.

watch Akasen Chitai (Street Of Shame) yesterday, another of mizoguchi's brothel dramas (and his last film). was much of a muchness.

what do people reckon is the most famous japanese film? (i ask because someone accused me of being obscure by saying someone looked like kyuzo from seven samurai)(i think that must be in the top 3, along with godzilla and maybe ringu)

spirited away prob.

I suspect that its not so much you mentioned the film but that you named one of the characters from it.

I'd add some anime - can't say I care for any of it, but Miyazaki and the like wd be the black hole in this thread. xp

just saw a breakdown of Miyazaki's films by earnings & Spirited Away is by far the biggest - Spirited Away 32%, Totoro 13%, Howl's 11%, Mononoke 11% etc

i did have to look up the name...

think the real answer may also include Pokemon The Movie. various internet lists mention Akira, which i'd overlooked. and tokyo story, which i think way fewer people have seen compared to SS.

i will ask my mum 8)

also Miyazaki's films have generated nearly 4 times as much money as his nearest anime directing rival, including TV series - anime market outside Japan is lot smaller than internet nerdz would have you believe

Godzilla must be the most famous character but the Americanized version of the original film may be more famous.

watch Akasen Chitai (Street Of Shame) yesterday, another of mizoguchi's brothel dramas (and his last film). was much of a muchness. ― koogs, Sunday, February 5, 2012 11:17 PM (Yesterday)

Eyah. Would you be so condescending to another one of ford's western dramas? Most of Mizoguchi's films were geisha films not brothel films. The distinction is important, to both the characters and the film's vulgar/fresh execution, with Mizoguchi completely abandoning his long take style (contrast with his preceding Princess Yang Kwei-Fei) and foregrounding Toshiro Mayuzymi's perverse score (one of his best). Easy to see as proto-New Wave, and the last shot of the debutante prostitute nervously attempting to seduce passing men is as devastating as any of Mizoguchi's shots.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qGBNZizzY74

Gearing up to watch Kobayashi's Human Condition over the next two weeks, all 10 hours of it. Anyone seen it? Avoided finishing the slate article comparing it to Berlin Alexanderplatz as it was dropping too many spoilers

Xp that mayuzumi score is crazy! Carl Stalling-level disjunctiveness

Xpost tried getting thru it a couple of years back but there's something about Tatsuya Nakadai's unchanging bug-eyed "I'm about to cry" expression throughout the entire thing that really irked me.

Better not watch "The Sword of Doom" then.

Ha! Thing is I've watched him and thought he was great in a bunch of other films including "SOD" but he was just *too much* in "The Human Condition".

XP Yep, Stalling is a perfect point of comparison - it gives Street of Shame its cartoonish swagger* and provides a real statement of intent to the opening of the film.

* Cartoonish swagger by Mizoguchi standards obviously.

> Eyah

sorry to sound so dismissive. i've seen a few of them now and this just wasn't the best of those i've seen.

but yes, you did pick out my two favourite bits - the electronic score and that last shot, which was stunning

(there's another film where the debutante is paraded through the red line* district in her finery and that's my favourite scene of that film)

i didn't like machiko kyo's westernised Mickey, i think that's the reason for a lot of my dislike of the film. she's been great in everything else i've seen (oharu and rashomon especially. ugetsu most recently) but all those parts have been more traditional.

("red line district" being the literal translation of "Akasen Chitai", and a slightly different term to that we'd use in the west)

> oharu

gah! this wasn't her.

Street of Shame is really really good, I don't think I've ever seen any movie about prostitution (even among Mizoguchi's oeuvre) that would deal with the subject with such complexity and care, and it was made in the 1950s. Easily my favourite movie by Mizoguchi.

It's a pretty important detail (as Koogs) that then name of the movie was changed from "Red Light District" (the literal translation) to "Street of Shame". The English title actually misrepresents what the movie is about, as Mizoguci tried to present a broader, more understanding view on prostitutes than just the "shame" aspect, even if he was critical on the exploitation of women. In some of his earlier geisha movies (like the 1930s version of "Sisters of Gion") the shame aspect and straightforward condemnation of the profession are more obvious, but by the 1950s Mizoguchi's take on these issues had become more rounded and humanist. It's sad that he died after making his (in my opinion) best movie, I think he stull would have had a lot to say.

"as Koogs points out"

the whole geisha thing itself changes so much between 30s and the 50s though. in the 30s it was transitioning from the courtesan to the more deregulated prostitution. and the american control in the postwar period was trying to move it into the shameful (which the japanese people weren't really feeling). i think he captures this well in his various films. (i think his sister was involved, which is why he feels such an affinity)

i did think the action of the women in this film, specifically how they were dragging people in from the streets, was a bit o_O

^ all this gleemed from several short intros on the MoC dvds i've been watching, is not a very detailed knowledge, i admit.

not seen sisters of gion, but it's part of the new box that's out at the end of the month so i'll see it soon. it also appears on amazon that those 4 double packs of later films are out soon on dual format bluray. oddly the secondary titles aren't shown in the cover shots but "Number of discs: 3" would suggest they are still pairs of titles.