Cinema Talk

Still reeling from the post-viewing high of Kanzashi, I decided to give this earlier Shimizu feature a try. It isn’t nearly as great and it suffers from a few narrative hiccups, but for the most part, it is further reinforcement of just how skilled Shimizu is as a filmmaker. Not only that but with this film, it is becoming more and more clear that he has his own recognizable style. Really, I got off on the wrong foot with Forget Love for Now since it seems to provide little representation of what he has going on in this and Kanzashi.

Two blind masseurs, who make a hobby of counting how many people they pass, find work in a secluded town. One of the masseurs, Tokuichi, inadvertently falls in love with the kind Michiho. The two begin a playful but infrequent relationship. All hope appears lost for Tokuichi when Michiho develops an interest in Shintaro, a lonely man who continues to prolong an uneventful vacation with his nephew.

Like Kanzashi there is no noticeable “drama” here and the sensibility is similarly carefree and happy. There’s silly comedic hijink that only deepens the theory that Shimizu’s world is one of never-ending happiness. That’s a pretty superficial assessment, though, and a false one at that. Once again, essentially nothing important happens on the surface, but Shimizu’s films seem to be more about what his characters don’t say, rather than what they do say. Perhaps it is difficult to comprehend but there really is a heartbreaking, almost tragic, would-be romance floating underneath the cutesy humor.

In a way, I’d like to think of this film as a poem, if not a fully-fleshed out character-driven film. The short running time (65 minutes) contributes heavily to such a feeling, but the moments of heartbreak and beauty are presented in such a fragmented way. This is not a criticism at all, in fact it is praise as really no one was making cinema like this during 30s. To say that Shimizu’s cinema is a precursor to Wong Kar-Wai’s is a bit of an exaggeration. Yet in this film, Shimizu captures some wonderful moments and does so in a way that is fleeting but memorable. A perfect example would be he sequence in which Tokuichi passes in between Shintaro and Michiho. Once again, a masterpiece from Shimizu but I still prefer Kanzashi as that one feels a bit more balanced and a lot more developed.

My first exposure to the cinematic world of Hiroshi Shimizu came with 1937’s Forget Love for Now (Koi mo wasurete) and honestly, it was a tad bit disappointing. It is a very fine film, no doubt, but between the non-ideal viewing conditions and somewhat melodramatic sensibility, it didn’t nearly live up to my expectations. This film, on the other hand, seems to correct all of the problems I had with that film. If anything, Kanzashi is one of the most undramatic films of all time, at least in a traditional sense. It downplays all the conventions of storytelling and yet communicates something extremely profound, if unexplainable.

The film opens with a fairly long tracking shot that follows a pair of women making their way to a hot spring resort. We cut to another group that includes by a recuperating war vet, Osamura. While taking a bath, his toe is pricked by a hairpin, which had been left there by Emi, one of the women in the opening sequence. He is baffled by his discovery but also sees a poetic illusion within it, leading the professor (another resort guest) to believe that some immediate romantic spark exists between Emi and Osamura. Emi returns to the resort to apologize but Osamura attempts to downplay the injury. They both become absorbed into an ideal way of living, shared with resort neighbors.

At the time of it’s release, Shimizu’s film was written off as being purely escapist and it is easy to understand why. Once the principle characters are introduced, little drama is injected into the story. Instead, the film is built around a series of snapshots ranging from awkward (Emi and Osamura’s first meeting) to silly (the snoring contest) to heartbreaking (the poignant finale) and all of this is filmed in Shimizu’s extremely austere style. His camera remains static for most of the film, with only a few exceptions. Combine this with Shimzu’s sharp humor, which is perfectly profiled in the introduction of the professor, and the result is something that anticipates the early features of Fassbinder, as well as the films of Tsai Ming-Liang.

Even when stacked up against the best of “plotless Asian” cinema, Kanzashi feels uneventful but this is, if anything, a strength. Where the film isn’t so much escapist entertainment, as it is about people participating an escape, it perfectly captures moments bursting with emotions nuanced to the point of appearing trivial. The “group” that we follow is almost like a perfect family, but underneath their fleeting moments of happiness, is something overwhelmingly sad. From time to time, Emi receives messages from Tokyo that encourages her to come back. In the end, everyone returns to Tokyo except for her. We know little to nothing of Emi’s past but it is lack of character exposition that makes the film so powerful. It captures a brief period of time in which essentially nothing happens, at least not on the surface, but underneath is a lot of drama and it is riveting as hell. In other words, a complete masterpiece.

It’s quite funny that this came out the same year as Anderson’s This Sporting Life since this film represents a deviation for the “angry young men” genre, occasionally approaching a level of parody. Proclaiming it as an ancestor to modern quirky indie films may be an exaggeration but it does maintain a free-form style not unlike that in Altman’s more immediately groundbreaking Brewster McCloud. Still, this is a few years earlier so it is exceptionally evolved for its time, especially considering how dull and repetitive many of the British New Wave’s features were becoming. An enjoyable way to spend 90-some minutes but one shouldn’t expect substantial emotional resonance.

William Fisher is a lazy young man frustrated by the constant nagging of his parents, as well as the demands of his multiple girlfriends and his dull desk job as a clerk for a funeral home. He frequently escapes from reality to the country of Amborsia, a dream in which he is the prime minister. His optimism carries over to some of his real life experiences as he attempts to become a screenwriter in London. However, it is clear that he is over his head and in the mean time, he meets Liz, the only girl who seems to understand him and the only girl he seems to have genuine feelings for. They plan to escape to London and start a life together but William feels attached to his “boring” lifestyle and can’t fully make up his mind.

While well-regarded for its strange comedic sensibility, even more is written about the poignancy in Billy Liar. At the risk of giving the final sequence away, I must say that it is a very emotionally relevant decision made by the film’s protagonist. He ultimately resists the change in his life that he is so eager to facilitate. While it is disappointing to see William run away from the beautiful Julie Christie, it also communicates something deeper, in retrospect, that I think every human can relate to in some form. Even if we despise our current way of living, we are still attached to its rigorous flow.

Now, this is probably giving the film too much credit. It basically goofs around for ninety minutes and tries to deliver something profound within the closing sequence. The rest of the film plays about in a much more inconsequential but equally riveting manner. The self-consciously “serious” finale is a bit jarring, though, in spite of Schlesinger’s best attempts to have it play in with the rest of William’s fantasies. It’s almost impossible not to think of Brewster McCloud and its finale, which tries similarly attempts to be poignant but pulls it off in a way that corresponds with the rest of the film’s silly, carefree tone.

On the complete other end of the “60s British realism” spectrum from Saturday Night and Sunday Morning is this. Outside of the angst, black and white cinematography, and Rachel Roberts, they’re fairly different. Where as that film uses it’s “angry young man” facade to get to something more complex, this film uses it as pretty much everything. Not to say that this is bad, but coming off of a viewing of Reisz’s classic, it feels particularly shallow. To Anderson’s credit, though, he seems to have a greater confidence with the camera.

Frank Machin joins a local rugby league to release his emotional baggage, but in the process he collects more worries. He lodges with Mrs. Hammond, a sensitive widow, who he has been harboring a crush on for quite some time. However, Machin, due to his rugby experience and short temper, is too violent to ever make a genuine human connection. In the mean time, Mrs. Weaver, the wife of the league’s owner, begins to show her feelings for Machin, which only adds to an ongoing laundry list of concerns.

This more of a straight-forward 60s British rebel film, perhaps even to the point of being the genre’s purest example. This creates a lot of problems, the most obvious being that the film is built around a juvenille concept of someone “fed up” with society. This is an understandable way to feel but in Machin’s case, his dissatisfaction feels to have been developed by an outsider. Now, thankfully, this isn’t a heavy-handed after-school lesson but it still shows very little interest in comprehending its protagonist. Instead, he drifts from scene to scene with lots of anger, which is fun to watch in its own way but the film never rises above superficial outbursts.

On the other hand, this is a bit more stylistically distinct than Saturday Night and Sunday Morning. It has a similar formal sensibility but the structure, perhaps gimmicky, is actually quite ahead of its time. Nicolas Roeg wouldn’t begin to make a name for himself in the UK’s film industry until the late 60s but it seems that the narrative techniques that made him famous, are on display here. Of course, it’s a far manner that is far more crude and far less polished, but there is something poetic going on here. Of course, any possible advancements made in this film have been made irrelevant with time. Technically, it’s nothing special but at least it does make something that isn’t so fresh seem worthwhile.

It’s possible that I’m becoming a bit burnt out with Mizoguchi, but this is definitely one of the lesser works I’ve seen from him in awhile. It has its fair share of merits, such as the usually great cinematography, but ultimately the drama is too silly to want to take seriously. This is almost a completely conventional (and uninteresting) Hollywood melodrama that is formed around a narrative that sounds like something from a Hollywood screwball comedy. Don’t get me wrong, this is far from being bad, but Mizoguchi has done this type of film many times and with better results.

Shinnosuke is introduced to Shizu, as a proposed marriage. He thinks he will have no problem falling in love with her but there is one problem, he mistakes Shizu for her sister, Oyu. Oyu is now a widow which seems to give Shinnosuke a chance, but law requires her to tend to the child, thus forbidding a re-marriage. As a reaction, Shinnosuke marries Shizu but spends all of his time with Oyu. At first, Shizu is okay with this progressive type of marriage, but Shinnosuke begins to feel bad Shizu and his attempts at loving his own wife are, ironically enough, resisted.

In some ways, this story anticipates a similar type of marriage in Naruse’s Repast. In that film, Hara decides to continue her marriage based on a mutual respect, rather than love. Such a hopeful idea is harshly treated here. In retrospect, it is sort of reactionary on Mizoguchi’s part to create the “other side” of these complicated marriages. He was vocal about his distaste for Naruse, though it mostly came from social issues. In any case, where Naruse’s film is nuanced and almost deadpan, Mizoguchi’s is over the top and silly. Of course, there’s enough visual “power” for him to rely on but dramatically speaking, this is one of his lesser efforts. Thankfully, he pulled off many similar films much more naturally in the 50s: Uwasa no onna and Gion Bayashi both come to mind. Watch those films, not this one.