Tag: Black & White

Kisses (くちづけ, Yasuzo Masumura, 1957)

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tumblr_nwj79ycwjz1tvmqcgo1_500The debut film from Yasuzo Masumura, Kisses (くちづけ, Kuchizuke) takes your typical teen love story but strips it of the nihilism and desperation typical of its era. Much more hopeful in terms of tone than its precursor and genre setter Crazed Fruit, or the even grimmer The Warped Ones, Kisses harks back to the more to wistful French New Wave romance (though predating it ever so slightly) as the two youngsters bond through their mutual misfortunes.

The film begins as Kinichi and Akiko experience a meet cute whilst visiting their respective fathers who’ve both landed up in gaol. Kinichi’s dad is a politician who’s been accused of “electoral fraud” which he swears is some kind of plot (even though this is the third time he’s been accused of it) whereas Akiko’s father is a government official who’s embezzled a large sum of money in an act of desperation to pay for her mother’s medical treatment. Just as Kinichi is leaving the prison, Akiko is getting into a situation with the rather rude receptionist because she owes something for her father’s room and board. Kinichi becomes offended on Akiko’s behalf and plonks down more than enough money alongside a few choice words for the lady on the counter before flouncing out. Akiko chases after him with his change even though he tells her to get lost in no uncertain terms. Eventually the two end up spending the day together though things turn a little sour towards the end. In this unlucky world, can two crazy kids ever make it work?

In essence, Kisses is an innocent film. Though there may be a few hints of darkness lurking around the edges, its tone is more or less cheerful and fuelled by the idealism of youth. Both Kinichi and Akiko are realists, they’re both older than their years, put-upon and a little desperate but also a little naive. Kinichi’s grumpy and sullen, perhaps nursing a wound from his mother walking out on him. Even when he asks her for the money to bail his father out of gaol she tells him to grow up before treating him like a child by declaring that he himself is collateral on the loan. Akiko’s mother is hospitalised with TB – the misfortune that’s had her father reduced to this shaming state of affairs. To make matters worse it’s not as if she can even tell her mother why her father hasn’t visited for a couple of weeks or explain why the nurse was complaining that their insurance has expired. Her father is also in poor health and likely will not cope very well with remaining in prison hence why she (briefly) considers becoming someone’s mistress or going on a date with a dangerous and unpleasant man to get the money to bail him out.

In any other seishun eiga this situation would be a recipe for a disaster, but somehow it rescues itself from the brink of despair and becomes almost more of salty rom-com than anything else. After the initial cute sea-side and roller skating date, there are crossed wires, mislaid messages and a last minute dash to work out a forgotten address but the film never loses its youthful energy and guileless wit. The world outside might be cruel, but in here it’s just normal, and if a boy and a girl want to blow some time at the races or the beach, who can blame them. They’re young, they’re kind of unhappy but they’ll figure it out and probably be OK which is a lot more than you can say for the usual protagonists of these kinds of film.

Kisses doesn’t have the searing, angry eyes of Masumura’s later work. Yes there is dissatisfaction with the world as it is, but also hope and acceptance, rather than an attempt at rebellion. Neither of the two young lovers is trying to change the world. Forced to be older than they are, both are savvy and realistic but not quite old enough to be fearful or self-centred. Full of youthful nonchalance, Kisses is a tale of innocent romance which is only improved by its layer of ironic whimsy.

Kisses is available with English subtitles on R2 UK DVD from Yume Pictures.

The only (short) clip I could find only has Russian subs…but it’s of a song which is very pretty.

Black Test Car (黒の試走車, Yasuzo Masumura, 1962)

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tumblr_n2w2l2mX1a1tvmqcgo1_1280The automobile business is a high stakes game. Do you want to play faster, shinier and sleeker, or safer, family friendly and reliable? Family cars are the best sellers – everyone one wants something that’s reliable for getting to work every morning, getting the grocery shopping done and that you won’t worry about taking your kids to the park in. However, it’s the 1960s and lifestyles are shifting, men (in particular) are marrying later and they want to have fun before they do – hence having quite a lot of disposable income they can blow on a flashy two-seater sports car with no wife to complain about it. Tiger have just finished a new prototype called the Pioneer they plan to launch as a revolution in commercial sports cars which is super speedy but with the convenience of an everyday sedan. However, the Yamato company are also set to launch a new car and it keeps looking suspiciously like the Pioneer – does Tiger have a mole?

Black Test Car (黒の試走車, Kuro no Test Car) begins with the prototype model of the Pioneer bursting into flames during a test run. Not the best start, but it’s early days and at least the driver wasn’t hurt. The guys at Tiger suspect sabotage as they can’t find anything wrong with car’s design. Onoda, the man who’s in charge of the project, has summoned some of his best employees to become the “industrial spying” department to flush out the mole. However, their first few plans fail and Yamato always seems to get there ahead of them. Yamato’s “chief of spying” is a slightly sleazy older man by the name of Mawatari who lost his wife and daughter during the Manchurian campaign (where he also may have been a more official kind of spy). Luckily (for some more than others), Onoda’s protege, Asahina, is dating a girl who works in the hostess industry and it’s suggested to him that he get his girlfriend to spy on Mawatari as he has a particular fondness for a certain hostess bar. The shady dealings only get worse from here on in, blackmail, bribery, pimping and prostitution – is this the yakuza or the automobile industry?

Yasuzo Masumura turns his cynical eye to big business and finds just as must drama as in your cold war spy epic. Onoda is a fanatical company man whose primary reason for living is his work. He barely comes home, rarely sees his children and views his precious Pioneer as his legacy. As such, he’s determined to find the man who’s betraying all his secrets and has become something of a petty dictator in the process. “We’re industrial spies!” he keeps declaiming, as if those words had any kind of authority. He’s not a policeman, he’s not a warrior for justice, he’s just a guy at a car firm who’s poured altogether too much of himself into a few scraps of metal.

His assistant, the up and coming Asahina, seems set to follow in Onoda’s footsteps. He’s young and ambitious, he wants to get the head of department job so he can marry his girlfriend who is still working as a bar hostess (which he doesn’t actually seem to mind about if she doesn’t mind about it either). The girlfriend, Masako, worries that work is changing him. When Asahina asks her to spy on Mawatari she refuses, but when he half jokes that he might not want to marry her she if won’t do as he says, she eventually agrees. Later he asks her for more than that which might just be enough to nip this young love story well and truly in the bud.

Having lost out several times already, the Tiger guys think they’ve got an angle and decide to launch the Pioneer way ahead of schedule to undercut Yamato’s price and release date. However, right away there is a scandalous accident which ends up all over the papers as the driver of the car (who survived unscathed, there were no serious injuries involved) drags the wreck all over town with a loud speaker to announce just how dangerous he believes the car to be. Of course, he’s a stooge, set up by Yamato and aided by another undiscovered mole in the Tiger camp. This incident is the last straw for those who still have a moral backbone at Tiger – culminating in violence and suicide, it leaves the fresh faced executives wondering whether they’re on the career ladder at a respectable firm or among the ranks of thuggish gangsters prepared to lie, cheat and extort to get along.

Shot in a noirish black and white with a moody jazz score, Black Test Car has its film noir overtones with the immorality of big business at its centre. At the beginning of the film everything is for the company – no one thinks of themselves or their own soul, they just want in and to climb the ladder while its there. Or so it seems because everyone is also taking kickbacks whilst blackmailing other people for doing exactly the same thing. There are spy cams interpreted by lip readers, undercover prostitutes masquerading as nurses and men in bushes with microphones – not a dignified way of doing business. At one point Onoda scoffs “you can’t get hung up on  morals. You’ll just have remorse” – this is the choice that presents itself, would you rather have the flashy sports car or retain your humanity?

Black Test Car is available on R1 DVD with English subtitles courtesy of Fantoma.

(unsubbed trailer)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=31_7Ve8SPJU

 

The Inheritance (からみ合い, Masaki Kobayashi, 1962)

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the inheritance Japanese posterKobayashi’s first film after completing his magnum opus, The Human Condition trilogy, The Inheritance (からみ合い, Karami-ai) returns him to contemporary Japan where, once again, he finds only greed and betrayal. With all the trappings of a noir thriller mixed with a middle class melodrama of unhappy marriages and wasted lives, The Inheritance is yet another exposé of the futility of lusting after material wealth.

The film begins in a framing sequence in which Yasuko, an elegant woman dressed in a fashionable outfit, sunglasses and large black hat, is aimlessly window shopping when she encounters a familiar face she’d no desire to see ever again. The pair head for coffee with Yasuko lamenting that her pleasant afternoon has been ruined by the necessity of spending time with this “unpleasant” man. We then flashback to some time previously when Yasuko was just a poor secretary working for a top executive and lamenting over her sad life in her “concrete coffin” of a tiny apartment. When her boss discovers he has a terminal illness he makes a surprising declaration – he isn’t going to leave all of his money to his wife. The law says she has to get a third so she will, but the couple had no legitimate children and Kawara wants an heir. Apparently, he has three illegitimate children with whom he did not keep in contact so he intends to find these young people of differing ages and divide the money between them. As you can imagine, this news pleases no one and it’s not long before everyone is scheming how they can manipulate the situation to grab some of the money for themselves.

Shot this time in 2.40:1, The Inheritance has a slightly more whimsical air than some of Kobayashi’s other efforts. Aided by Toru Takemitsu’s jazz infused score, there’s a feeling of a chaotic, black farce lurking below the surface as the complicated schemes and counter schemes play off against each other all while an old man lies dying and largely, it seems, alone. In fact, the dying man himself is relegated to little more than a plot element, a physical countdown to the zero hour of his death and the release of his funds. Though charged with the task of tracking down these, until now forgotten, offspring, Kawara’s underlings immediately start thinking about the best way to spin their assignments. Maybe it’s better if they just can’t find the kids, or maybe if they find them and manipulate them into a more beneficial course of events. The only thing that matters is sticking to the course of action which is most likely to bring them into contact with the money.

The children themselves? Well, they’ve not turned out quite the way Kawara might have hoped. He stated that they’d only get the money if he finds out that they’re honest, decent, right living people. However, the oldest, a son, is a delinquent college student who likely wouldn’t be able to cope with receiving a sudden large lump sum of money so he’s out. The middle daughter is a nude model living a lifestyle Kawara would most likely regard as “immoral” so she will require some “fixing” if her side is to prevail. The youngest child, a seven year old daughter, has sadly passed away after being adopted in another town. However, the enterprising wife and her paramour have an ace up their sleeve in the form of another child they can substitute in her place. This child is quiet, well behaved and in all an ideal candidate for Kawara’s money (if only she actually were his daughter).

Our story is being recounted by Yasuko, so how does she fit into all of this? Commentator, heroine, perpetrator? We can guess a little of what must have happened from her appearance in the later framing sequence with which the film began. Though apparently wealthy, this Yasuko doesn’t seem particularly happy (even bar her unwanted reunion with Kawara’s lawyer). After being entrusted with the task of tracking down the oldest son who then develops a crush on her, Yasuko finds herself ensconced in Kawara’s household and eventually becoming his mistress. The affair begins with a quasi-rape after which Yasuko receives a large amount of money in a white envelope – an offering which repeats itself after each encounter with Kawara. At first she tries to pretend there was something more to it but eventually admits she got used to taking the money. Though she later tries to refuse Kawara’s offering, the corruption has already set in.

Recounted in a world weary tone by Yasuko, The Inheritance is another, though less abrasive, look at greed and lack of moral authority. Kawara is dying and perhaps regrets his devotion to his career rather than something with a greater legacy. However, he evidently showed no interest in his children before and has no real desire to meet and have a relationship with them before it’s too late – he simply wants an heir. His marriage turns out to be mostly physical convenience and even his wife is not so broken up about his illness so much as irritated to have sacrificed the last seven years and only receive a third of what she assumed would all be hers. The underlings scheme amongst themselves and unwittingly open a door for a challenger nobody expected. In some ways, from our point of view, the “right” person won but this was a game that had no right to be played. A sordid farce of squabbling over a dying man’s estate and for what, in the end? A fancy hat? Kobayashi doesn’t push as hard here as he has before, this time he casts veniality as black comedy rather than a social evil but still the lesson is clear, in most cases avarice will get you nowhere and even if you play the slow game and win you may not like where it takes you.

The Inheritance is the fourth and final of the early films from Masaki Kobayashi available in Criterion’s Eclipse Series 38: Masaki Kobayashi Against the System DVD boxset.

 

Coup d’Etat (AKA Martial Law, 戒厳令 Kaigenrei, Kiju Yoshida 1973)

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Snapshot-2015-11-18 at 01_34_49 PM-1660087891Having taken avant-garde story telling to its zenith in Heroic Purgatory, Yoshida returns to the realm of politics with a far more accessible effort in Coup d’Etat (AKA Martial Law, 戒厳令 Kaigenrei). Inbetween the two films, Yoshida had made another more mainstream offering, Confessions Among Actresses, which had been moderately successful with both audiences and critics but with Coup d’Etat he came back to the artistic fare he’d been pursuing since leaving Shochiku. Unlike the other two films in Arrow’s Love + Anarchy boxset, Coup ‘Etat deals with a right wing rebellion rather than the communists and anarchists which are more familiar to the post-war world.

The film begins with a nervous young man brutally stabbing an elderly businessman in the street before taking his own life. On claiming his remains, the man’s sister finds a letter addressed to Ikki Kita – a well known right wing intellectual in favour of the institution of martial law. Kita, or more particularly his work, becomes a figurehead for a putative revolution organised by young army officers who have become disillusioned with the elected government, its plans for increasing Westernisation and treatment of the poor. They seek to overthrow parliament and put the Emperor back in charge for a kind of paternalistic socialist state. Kita remains on the fringes of this movement, coming into contact with a young soldier who wants to join the revolution and advising him but repeatedly making it clear that he is not involved with the coup itself. Nevertheless, even if not directly involved, Kita will still pay the price for his radical ideas.

Less an examination of the historical events of the time or the coup itself, Coup d’Etat is a psychological portrait of Kita’s last days. Marking the only time Yoshida was not involved in the screenplay (this time leaving things entirely to playwright Minoru Betsuyaku) the film follows a much more linear structure rather than playing with time in the same way as Eros + Massacre or Heroic Purgatory. Kita had written a hugely influential book which advocated moving to a system of martial law under the paternalistic care of the emperor alongside nationalisation of industries, minimisation of private property and a better welfare state. However, Kita is a public intellectual not an activist. He takes no personal part in the armed struggle (though he is aware of each of the actions and close to the people who facilitated them), yet still he pays the price. Whether this is an indictment of his lack of physical commitment to the ideals that he spoke of, or an indictment of a system which seeks to shoot the messenger is up for debate but in any case Kita is “betrayed” by the very same emperor that he worshipped as a god.

Having said that, it’s Emperor Meiji who hangs on Kita’s wall. What Kita and the officer class wanted was a “Showa Restoration” in line with the “Meiji Restoration” but almost the reverse as they returned to a form of paternalistic government where personal freedoms were restricted but everyone was well cared for. We actually don’t learn a lot about Kita during the film (a strange thing to say about a “biopic” which is often how the film is described) but it seems that he had a strict childhood in which he was prohibited from feeling fear – each time a boy was a afraid, he was supposed to cut himself as a punishment. Yet Kita is afraid and this tension between intellectual thought and irrepressible emotion is one that restricts his physical actions to the point that he remains a solitary figure entrapped by his own ideology. That he is then betrayed by the very figures that he sought to exult is the very highest form of tragedy and it’s difficult not to believe that the real coup d’etat is being perpetrated against Kita himself.

Perhaps because of its relative narrative simplicity, Coup d’Etat is a visual masterpiece taking Yoshida’s especial gifts for composition to new heights of beauty. Once again shot in black and white 4:3 Academy ratio, the film is an unsettling maze of shadows and light coupled with uncomfortable angles and a musical score that’s almost like a science fiction film. Yoshida’s prognosis is indeed bleak – the young soldier for example who’s unable to carry out his part of the mission and eventually falsely confesses to having been a spy simply because he felt insignificant and wanted to be a part of something is symptomatic of the self-centred ineffectuality of the younger generation. Once again, youth has been evaluated and found wanting though age doesn’t fare much better in the end. The filming of Coup d’Etat was delayed for sometime as Yoshida underwent an operation to remove a tumour from his stomach. His ultimate satisfaction with the film and the feeling of having come to the end of a cycle coupled with the need to recuperate more fully kept Yoshida away from the director’s chair until 1986 though he’d never return to it with the same intensity as in his political trilogy.

Available now on blu-ray in the UK as part of Arrow Films’ Kiju Yoshida: Love + Anarchism box set.

Scene from near the end of the film:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L4A0rZwpOqc

Reviews of the other movies in the set:

Heroic Purgatory (煉獄エロイカ, Kiju Yoshida, 1970)

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Heroic Purgatory PosterThe second film contained within Arrow’s Kiju Yoshida boxset is perhaps his least accessible. Ostensibly, Heroic Purgatory (煉獄エロイカ, Rengoku Eroika) is an examination of leftist politics in the years surrounding the renewal of the hugely controversial mutual security pact between Japan and America. However, it quickly disregards any kind of narrative sense as time periods blur so finely as to leave us with no objective “now” to belong to and characters switch identities with no warning or discernible reason. Yoshida is not really after objective truth here – there is no truth in cinema, film lies repeatedly until it finally exposes the truth.

What there is of a plot begins with the scientist Rikiya Shoda who, it seems, may have been a part of a left wing activist group in the ‘50s who were intent on assassinating an ambassador but may or may not have had a mole in their midst. Now, in the contemporary ‘60s era his quiet life is disturbed when his wife, Nanako returns home with a distressed teenage girl who begins insisting Rikiya and Nanako are her parents. Sometime later another man arrives claiming to be Ayu’s father – he’s even installed a spy cam on her because this is apparently something she does quite often. The “father” eventually leaves without Ayu but then we jump back to the ‘50s where Rikiya and the “father” seem to be part of the same left wing cell but for some reason did not recognise each other in the modern part of the film. There are repeated interrogations regarding a spy, confessions, reversals, executions and betrayals but where does it get us in the end?

There’s no making sense of Heroic Purgatory, that’s not really what it’s about. It’s the very essence of avant-garde, gently eschewing literal narrative in favour of a deeper meaning. At the end what we’re left with is a scientist who professes love to be the highest calling and a wife who answers the question “what do you do when your husband’s working?” with “Think about my husband”. This isn’t some kind of anti-feminist statement in so much as a defence of a thirty year marriage which has, apparently, survived all this chaos. What has clearly perished is the left wing student movement which has ultimately failed to instigate any real kind of social change. The film wraps itself around the dates at which Japan’s defence treaty with America was or would be renewed – something to which the leftwing movement was completely opposed to and failed to prevent. Not only did they not succeed in breaking the American security pact in the ‘50s but interest in the protests themselves slowly dwindled. The film ends with a sign reading “Dead End” which you can only read as being in reference to the eventual demise of armed leftwing rebellion in Japan.

Though Heroic Purgatory is in no way Yoshida’s most easily digestible effort, it may be one of the most beautiful. Shot in 4:3 academy ratio and in glorious black and white with Yoshida’s preference for over exposure, every scene of Heroic Purgatory drips with elegance in its exquisite framing. Yoshida pushes focus to the bottom of the frame, rarely having anything other than empty space above the halfway line. Further adding to the sense of pressured claustrophobia and confusion, Yoshida’s gift for strange compositions is the perfect match for his dreamlike, incoherent, floating tale. Pushed to the edges of the frame, the actors are literally left with nowhere to run in Yoshida’s largely industrial wasteland of a stage set.

The film begins with what looks like a suicide, but turns out not to be. Accompanied by violent, stinging music, we’re trained to expect something terrible to have happened though once again Yoshida has fooled us with clever camera trickery. The music throughout is more like something from a horror film, low level thrumming strings and brief breaks of choral singing set us on edge and make us even more uncomfortable than we already were.

Heroic Purgatory is a poem of beautiful incomprehensibility. Strange and elliptical, the film is visual experience which demands emotional over intellectual engagement. Beautiful, fascinating and ultimately inscrutable Heroic Purgatory is a film that haunts with its refusal to explain itself and is likely to reverberate in the mind long after the final credits have rolled.

Available on blu-ray and DVD as part of Arrow Films’ Kiju Yoshida: Love + Anarchism box set.

Original unsubbed Japanese trailer (slightly NSFW – contains nudity)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=544O9Nj4-ks

Reviews of the other movies in the set:

Eros + Massacre (エロス＋虐殺, Kiju Yoshida, 1969)

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Snapshot-2015-11-17 at 11_12_15 PM-1889818228One of the foremost avant-garde filmmakers of the New Wave era (though he detested this term which, in fairness, is a retrospective and often arbitrary label), Kiju (Yoshishige) Yoshida has remained largely unseen in the West. Some of this is his own fault – fiercely independent, Yoshida nevertheless found himself working with ATG after leaving Shochiku but the relationship was an unusual one and often far from easy. All but the latest film in Arrow’s Kiju Yoshida boxset, Coup d’Etat, were completed more or less independently and only distributed though ATG and as such not truly “ATG” films. Though it bears many of the hallmarks of a late ‘60s ATG movie, Eros + Massacre (エロス＋虐殺, Erosu Purasu Gyakusatsu) is one such effort and the one which helped to make Yoshida’s name even if it was only seen in an abridged version.

Structurally complex, Eros + Massacre mixes the world of the Taisho anarchists, Osugi Sakae and Ito Noe, with the contemporary Tokyo of the sixties through the prism of two modern students who are running a research project into the events surrounding their ultimate assassination during the panic after the great Kanto Earthquake of 1923. Eiko is a sexually liberated modern woman who engages in casual prostitution and her boyfriend, Wada, is a sexually impotent young man with a traumatic past and habit of playing with fire. The vision we see of the Taisho era is filtered through the perceptions of Eiko and Wada and, in fact, we start to see them as living with us in a real sense as Ito wanders around modern Tokyo, observing the fruits of her struggle and in one notable episode being interviewed by Eiko.

The film exists in two distinct versions – this is less to do with any kind of censorship, either commercial or political, than a legal or possibly moral issue. The fact is, the other of Osugi’s mistresses, Kamichika Ichiko, was still alive at the time the film was completed and had also become a serving politician. Unhappy with her portrayal in the film and unwilling to have a potentially embarrassing event from her previous life dragged back into the spotlight, she threatened to sue and Yoshida voluntarily decided to recut the film to remove many of her scenes as well as renaming the character to distance her from her real life counterpart. The shorter version of the film is the one which helped make Yoshida’s reputation and though nothing in the shorter version is not in the longer one, this version feels a little less “avant-garde” in tone than the intended full cut of the film.

Yoshida often gives way to surreal incidents such as the clash between the Taisho era followers of Osugi and a group of young rugby players tussling over the white wrapped remains of Osugi, the expressionist scene in which the mistress, Itsuko, clutches at a knife hovering in mid air causing the screen to fill with blood raining down from above or the repeated stabbings of Osugi each re-imagined in differing scenarios. His framing is always beautifully idiosyncratic as he makes use of the edges of the frames, disembodying his actors or dividing them with walls and windows. There is no sense of conventional narrative as timelines blur into each other becoming evermore indistinct and the dialogue is often elliptical or poetic rather than offering naturalistic content. Nevertheless, the shorter version retains fewer of these flourishes than are present in the original cut of the film.

Eiko is interested in Osugi because of his free love philosophy rather than any other political aim. Other than their interest in sexual politics, Eiko and Wada do not appear to be particularly politically active in any other way. Osugi’s ideas of total freedom do not even go down very well with his comrades who don’t approve of the way he treats his various women and his disingenuous denial that there is any discord between his band of concubines seems wilfully naive. Osugi’s treatment of the three women in his life – his wife, Yasuko, mistress Itsuko (who is financially supporting both Osugi and his wife despite Osugi’s advocacy of free love insisting on financial independence of all parties), and now his latest lover Noe, is extremely self-centred and unfair. As the first to live in this unorthodox fashion, it’s unsurprising that the arrangement comes in for criticism from all quarters. Yoshida posits that it was Osugi’s free love lifestyle that eventually lead to his shock execution during the chaos following the Great Kanto earthquake as his modern ideals threatened the very idea of the traditional family and ultimately the state itself.

By contrast, Eiko’s modern sexuality appears merely an attempt to ward of her sense of ennui. Where for Osugi sex was a political action (or so he would have it), for Eiko it’s a means of trying and failing to add some kind of meaning to her life. Eiko and Wada are not committed to any kind of rebellious action – they’re simply bored. They literally play with fire without understanding its consequences. Yoshida’s other central tenet is that youth is not beautiful – it is destructive. By implication, Eiko and Wada’s selfish pursuit of personal freedom and the modern commodification of desire is nothing more than willful self destruction.

Yoshida has stated that his primary idea for the film is how to bring about a revolution and to ask the question of what it is that needs to change. Osugi is shown up as a hypocrite whose ideals are imperfect and self centred, though his eventual murder is dictated by his refusal to conform. The fact that he envisioned a different future, wished to live in a different way, was sufficient enough to necessitate his death. The modern couple misuse their own freedom and are willing to watch the world burn just to feel the heat. They are incapable of effecting real social change because their focus is always inwards rather than a dedication to the betterment of all mankind. Confounding, intriguing and beautifully shot Eros + Massacre is far from easy to digest but is an essential entry in the history of Japanese avant-garde cinema.

Available now in the UK as part of Arrow Films’ Kiju Yoshida: Love + Anarchism box set.

Reviews of the other movies in the set:

Morning for the Osone Family 大曾根家の朝 (Keisuke Kinoshita, 1946)

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81avzyD41gL._SL1500_So, after making the subtly subversive Army, Kinoshita found himself persona non grata but all that changed with Japan’s final surrender and the coming of the Americans. You might think that means an end to the system of censorship and a greater freedom of expression but the truth is one master had simply been swapped for another. The Americans now imposed their own censor’s office and banned the depiction of various dangerous or inconvenient ideas including anything xenophobic, militaristic or anti-democratic. In short, the complete reverse of before but perhaps no less restrictive. However, the new requirements were undeniably closer to Kinoshita’s true feelings so there were fewer problems when it came to getting a film made. Accordingly Kinoshita began working on Morning for the Osone Family soon after the surrender and the film was released in 1946. Extremely raw and probing, the film deals with the effects of the war on a well to do, liberal intellectual family but turns their plight into a metaphor for the country as a whole.

The film begins in the Christmas of 1943 as the Osones gather together around the piano for a rendition of Silent Night as they prepare to say goodbye to the daughter’s fiancé who’s been drafted and will shortly be leaving for the war. The celebration is short lived as their peace is shattered by an ominous knock at the door. Oldest son Ichiro is carted off by military police for having written a mildly subversive essay in a newspaper. Whilst all this is going on Yuko’s fiancé, Akira, takes his leave handing her a letter to say she needn’t wait for him with the future so uncertain. It’s at this point that meddling fascist uncle first appears to reveal he has written to Akira’s family to break off the engagement because they are of a high status and with Yuko’s brother’s arrest he feels it’s inappropriate to bring them shame. As the war drags on, Uncle Issei comes to have more and more control over their lives but will the progressive atmosphere of the Osone household ever be able to withstand the bluster of Uncle Issei’s militaristic fervour?

Made immediately after the war, Morning for the Osone Family is filled with the bitterness and anger of disillusionment. Coloured by the knowledge of Japan’s impending defeat, the events can’t help but take on a portentous air and it’s pretty obvious the Osone family will never be able to return to that final Christmas in 1943 before everything was taken away from them. The obnoxious Uncle Issei becomes a metaphor for Japanese fascism as a whole with his heartless militarism and personal corruption. During one telling episode, Yuko remarks that the more they simply obey him the worse he’ll get and that they should stand up to him every now and then. The mother, Fusako, agrees but thinks it’s impossible. Later, in a last impassioned speech, she laments that she should have done more, said no earlier, but she tried to do what was expected of her. Fusako voices the rage and disappointment of the masses of ordinary people who went along with things they didn’t agree with because they felt it was the proper thing to do. Now she sees no need for the pretence, in this brave new world it’s time for the younger generation to do as they see fit without feeling beholden to these corrupt ideas peddled by those who claim to speak for everyone but have only ever been speaking for themselves.

Oddly, Morning for the Osone Family may have the most overtly propagandistic feeling of any of the films in Criterion’s Kinoshita and World War II boxset. Though it ends on an undeniably powerful declaration of hope for renewal and rebirth, its epilogue feels like a step too far – both hollow and needlessly over the top. Apparently this final scene was added at the behest of the Americans who wanted more deliberately democratic sentiments which may explain its on the nose tone though it isn’t entirely out of keeping with the rest of the film and most likely represents Kinoshita’s real feelings. Morning has arrived after a long night filled with pain and sorrow, all that remains now is to banish the darkness and welcome in the light.

Spring in a Small Town (小城之春, Fei Mu, 1948)

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spring-in-a-small-town-1948-001-two-couples-in-the-householdReview of this Chinese lost classic up at UK Anime Network

Fei Mu’s Spring in a Small Town is often regarded as one of the great lost masterpieces of Chinese cinema. Completed in 1948, it stands on the borderline of China’s transformation into a communist state and ultimately paid the price for its “questionable” politics (or, indeed, lack of them). Fei like many at the time relocated to Hong Kong where he set up a production company but sadly died not long after at just 44 years of age and Spring in a Small Town became his final film. Based on a short story by Li Tianji, the film is a complex portrait of frustrated hopes and failed marriages against the backdrop of a society in rapid change.

Yuwen is a married woman who lives for her daily errands which take her out of the decaying house she shares with her invalid husband and his school aged younger sister. Her one pleasure in life is the solitary walk she’s accustomed to take along the ruined wall which leads into town. Her husband, Liyan, believes himself to be suffering from tuberculosis and confines himself to what remains of their estate and its once fine garden. The house is little more than rubble in places and bears the heavy scars of the war years on its un-repaired exteriors. One day, an old friend of Liyan’s, Zhang – a doctor, comes to visit. Unbeknownst to anyone, Zhang and Yuwen grew up in the same village and were, in fact, childhood sweethearts until time and circumstance forced them apart.

Shot through with Chekhovian melancholy resignation (but perhaps without his trademark sense of humour), Spring in a Small Town is a tightly wound character drama which uses the plight of its characters to deliver a much wider message. Yuwen narrates her inner life for us (a stylish device which anticipates the technique coming into its prime nearly twenty years later in the French New Wave), giving voice to thoughts that could never be expressed directly. Her unhappiness is the first thing that strikes the viewer along with the decayed grandeur of her surroundings. Having become more nurse than wife to a husband that she never loved, Yuwen has resigned herself to a life of morning walks and embroidery devoid of all stimulation. Zhang’s unexpected re-entry into her life spells both doom and salvation. Liyan suspects nothing and even sees Zhang as a potential match for his sixteen year old sister, Xiang! Zhang’s arrival threatens to throw a hand grenade into this delicately balanced yet unhappy household with long buried emotions slowly working their way to the surface.

Fei keeps the tension up by keeping a tight lid on the repressed emotions of the time. What could so easily have become an overwrought melodrama retains its emotional power precisely because of its naturalistic restraint. Spring in a Small Town has been described as “the Chinese Brief Encounter” and it certainly shares something of that film’s powerful emotional manoeuvring pushed through with a level of reserve many would consider typically British. Both films also resolutely reinforce the prevailing social order of the day where duty conquers all and properness comes before personal happiness. However, where Brief Encounter ends on a note of melancholic restoration, Spring in a Small Town dares to be a little more upbeat (if still just as melancholic) with a sense that spring may really have returned to these four people after a long and hard winter. The frost has finally thawed and new life can begin again.

It’s not completely clear what exactly the new regime found problematic about Spring in a Small Town though it’s certainly a long way from socialist realist cinema. The world it depicts is an upper class one with not a little sorrow over the decline of this once noble house and fretting about its legacy neither of which gel very well with communist party guidelines. Otherwise the film is fairly apolitical which would render it a little frivolous from their point of view but far from trivial in ours. Enormously influential since its rediscovery by the Fifth Generation filmmakers in 1980s, Spring in a Small Town is a gloriously melancholic character study that deserves to finally take its rightful place alongside finest romantic dramas the golden age of cinema has to offer.

Crossroads of Youth – Barbican centre 2nd August 2012

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London was treated to something very special today as Korea’s oldest surviving silent film was screened at the barbican exactly the way its original 1934 audience would have seen it.

Young-bok has been adopted into Bong-Sun’s family as her intended husband. For seven long years he’s done everything that’s been asked of him, no matter how tedious or demanding, without complaint. Now 21, Bong-sun’s father is beginning to think the time for Young-bok’s marriage is near seeing as Bong-sun is now sixteen. However, tragedy strikes as Bong-sun is seduced by another man from the village. Heartbroken, Young-bok takes off for the city to make something of himself there, leaving his mother and sister behind in his home village.

Although Yong-bok is a good and kind young man, his heartbreak leads him to waste his life in drink. When working at the station one day he catches sight of the man who crushed all his young hopes in the village – little does he know of the havoc he is still to wreak on Young-bok’s city life.

Unbeknownst to Young-bok, his younger sister has come to the city to look for him following the death of their mother. Unable to find him she takes a job as hostess in a bar where she falls prey to the same man that ruined Bong-sun and an even worse friend of his. Young-bok also begins a tentative romance with a girl, Ge-soon, who pumps petrol but she has her own problems as her father’s ill health and rising debts have decreed she is to become the third wife of a money lender to satisfy them. Can these three young people find each other and happiness despite the poverty and hardship to which they’ve been subjected?

In contrast to the way silent films were usually seen in the west, in Korea rather than the intertitles we use to give crucial information of the story a live narrator (byeonsa) would interpret the action and/or act some of it out. As I understand it director Ahn’s original script is lost (though fortunately a brief synopsis had survived) and a new version had to be put together by closely watching the film and filling in the gaps.  Kim Tae-yong director of Late Autumn and Family Ties effectively re-directed the piece for for the stage along with Cho Hee-bong who fills the role of the narrator. The new script is obviously not afraid to embrace the melodrama of the film’s storyline in a self aware way, even throwing in a few knowing jokes at its own expense.

The performance began with a song by two young actors portraying Ge-soon and Young-bok, both of whom had absolutely wonderful voices and interpretation. Even though there were no subtitles for this first part it didn’t matter as the heartfelt intention of the song came across perfectly. Once this finished the film started playing with English subtitles for what the narrator was saying. Occasionally the subtitles didn’t cover the length of the narrator’s speech or perhaps missed some of the nuances of his humour but there was never a problem knowing what was going on. There was then another song about half way through covering a particularly intense scene between Ge-soon and Young-bok with the narrator adding occasional dialogue in the middle and a final song song functioning as an epilogue. The film was accompanied throughout by a band of four musicians playing an energetic and lively score which worked extremely well with the film and atmosphere.

All in all it was a fascinating and extremely enjoyable experience which deserves to be seen as widely as possible.

Secret Cinema: The Third Man (11th December 2011)

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My second visit to Secret Cinema (proper that is, excluding last summer’s The Lost Boys) was every bit as impressive as the first. This time I was in on the ground floor so to speak so I felt much more involved the run up to the event itself. So what were the clues – a pan European Post-War setting, smuggling, spy drama, involvement of The British Consulate?! I was pretty sure I’d figured it out but then they kept throwing the occasional curve ball like the simultaneous screening in Afghanistan that made me doubt myself. In the end though what else could it have been other than Carol Reed’s seminal film The Third Man.

Upon receiving my instructions from ‘The Provost’ it seemed I’d been put into the British military police group (Guardians) and was to be attending a funeral so I needed to wear a black armband or scarf and bring a single flower to lay at the grave. After traveling somewhat nervously to what turned out to be a disused warehouse near The Barbican I identified my meeting point and began to wait there despite being quite early. However, I was soon approached by The Provost who greeted me warmly but warned me that I might be in for a bit of a surprise.

He was not misleading me, though I had been assigned as a guardian I was ordered into a different alleyway by a Russian soldier along with people from all the various groups. We were then led a bit further down where we were passed on to the criminal element who informed us that we were now all part of his gang – we were smugglers and bootleggers and were to avoid the police and particularly the Russians at all costs. He then led us a further on again and we witnessed the funeral of ‘a very important man in Vienna’ (Harry Lime of course) from the public side of the railings outside the churchyard. We then heard some strange noises and were instructed to run the next part of the journey to evade capture by the police! Our ‘boss’ (who himself had a heavy limp) then deposited us at the entrance gate which was staffed by some very scary Russians!

Once we’d gotten through the check point we were lined up the courtyard and escorted into a ‘secret’ entrance which involved some very difficult terrain. Bypassing the main entrance we were lead across some planking and into a narrow corridor leading to a basement which was almost pitch black – it was incredibly difficult just to see the person in front of me so I could follow them and I nearly tripped a few times because I couldn’t see if there were steps. We climbed over beams and squeezed through dark and narrow passageways into what was the brewing/distilling area for the bootlegged alcohol until we eventually found the stairway into the main area.

Once inside were free to roam around and engage whichever tasks took our fancy. I wandered around exploring and taking photos looking for where the action was and it wasn’t long before I tracked down ‘Holly’ and ‘Lena’.  After that I tried to keep following them but I lost them a few times. Some highlights: The French police raiding the old lady’s apartment, meeting Dr Winkel and his ‘friend’, the children’s hospital (some lucky man was getting some attention from a nurse one time when I went by), the ‘lab’ right at the top of building which I later helped the British/Russian military police raid (this was very exciting!), being pushed into a room and taught drill and right at the very end I ended up stood right in front of ‘Lena’ as they brought ‘Harry’s body’ out of the sewers and had to tell her who it was! I didn’t know what to say at first, whether I was supposed to play along or not but I just answered honestly and it was a bit sad, I felt quite bad about it. After the big showdown we were all led into the various areas for the screening. I ended up in Cecil’s seminar room so he introduced the film which was preceded by a really funny noiresque short about a trio of people who were really bad at trying to murder each other.

I think I probably enjoyed Battle of Algiers a bit more because it felt like such a big experience, I was quite moved/overwhelmed as I left that screening streaming past the actors in posed in white gowns and attitudes of peace. The Third Man, despite being one of my favourites, obviously doesn’t quite have that sort of resonance so even though I really enjoyed it perhaps it didn’t quite impact me in the same way. As always though it was extremely well done and the only thing I really hope for next time is some more comfortable chairs for watching the film (and for it not to be freezing cold!).