Transcript Shinoda Masahiro

Shinoda Masahiro
Nihilist Style
Shinoda Masahiro
• Born in 1931, entered
Waseda University
and passed the exam
at Shochiku. Imamura
Shohei and Oshima
Nagisa were his
colleagues. He retired
from filmmaking after
Spy Sorge (2003)
Early Shinoda
• The success of Oshima Nagisa’s Cruel Story of
Youth (1960)
• A ‘series’ of youth films labeled as ‘Shochiku
Nouvelle Vague’ films by young filmmakers.
• Most of them are poor imitations of Oshima’s.
• Exceptions are …
Early Shinoda
• Shinoda Masahiro (1931- ) and Yoshishige
Yoshida (1933 - )
• Auteur and filmmakers with self-conscious styles
Early Shinoda
• The debut film
• One-Way Ticket for
Love (1960)
• About rock’n rollers
and their nihilistic life
styles with sensual
imagery.
• Commercial failure
demoted him to
assistant director.
Early Shinoda
• Dry Lake (1960) - caricature of college students
who are infatuated with the idea of revolution and
subversive actions, and looking forward to a
social turmoil that their terrorist activities might
cause.
Early Shinoda
• My Face Red in the Sunset (1961) - cartoon-like
stories about alienated assassins. A corrupt
construction company owner commission them to
assassinate a journalist who is about to expose his
ill-doings, but things get complicated when an
assasin falls in love with the journalist.
Early Shinoda
• Shochiku discontinued ‘Shochiku Nouvelle Vague’
and returned to the former production policy
which targeted the female audience - family
drama, humanist drama, melodrama and other
genre films.
• Yoshida, Shinoda remained in Shochiku unlike
Oshima and Imamura.
• Ideas, subjects, themes, scripts forced upon him.
• While working in compliance with the demands
of the studio, Shinoda was no longer innocent
follower of the Shochiku tradition.
Early Shinoda
• After the renovation in filmmaking through
Shochiku nouvelle vague, which had previously
influenced by French nouvelle vague, American film
noir and European art cinema, there was no return to
the former Shochiku style.
• Loss of stylistic innocence and self-conscious
stylization
Early Shinoda
Early Shinoda
• Sharpening of aesthetic sensitivity, sophistication
of representation methods and attempt of bold
experimentation
• Sensuous modernism
Painterly aesthetic composition in a widescreen
(cinemascope) format
Painterly aesthetic composition in a widescreen
(cinemascope) format
Symmetrical composition
Over the shoulder, off-screen composition
Chiaro-scruro (low-key lighting, high
contrast) images
Reflected shadow
Extrem camera angles (particularly high angle)
Framing
Silhouetting
Frontal and profile shots
Frontal and profile shots
Telephoto shot (disappearance of depth)
Surrealistic and easthetic image
Swish pan (camera movement)
Early Shinoda
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Montage (editing)
Jagged jump cuts
Ignoring the 180 degree rule
Theatrical long cut and cinematic rapid cut
Early Shinoda
• Pale Flower (1963) - A hard-boiled Yakuza
returns to the Tokyo underworld after three years
in prison. He meets a mysterious, wealthy
woman who hangs out in illegal gambling houses
for excitement. They fall in love but their
relationship is doomed.
Early Shinoda
• Assassination (1964) - At the closing stage of the
Tokugawa Shogunate, assassination became a
disturbing political tool, a masterless samurai
tries to prevent the outbreak of civil war,
changing allegiances between the Shogunate and
the Emperor.
Early Shinoda
• Samurai Spy (1965) odd (unusual) samurai
film about three spy
rings which are
involved in mutual
betrayals and
bloodsheds. Empty in
content but displays
Shinoda’s visual
bravura.
Shinoda after Shochiku
• Double Suicide (1969)
- extremely stylistic
adaptation of
Chikamatsu’s play,
The Love Suicide at
Amijima. Jihei, the
merchant, is married
and has two children,
but is desperately in
love with an upmarket courtesan,
Oharu.
Shinoda after Shochiku
• Jihei’s infatuation
brings to him and his
family financial,
marital and social ruin.
Koharu is out of his
reach when she was
bought out by a
wealthy merchant.
This eventually leads
to the double suicide.
Shinoda after Shochiku
• Mixture of traditional
theatre (bunraku /
kabuki) and cinema;
avant-garde theatre
(Awazu Kiyoshi’s set
design); ukiyo-e and
cinema
Shinoda after Shochiku
• Scandalous Adventures of Buraikan (1970) - at the
time of the great social reform led by the Tokugawa
Shogun, a group of outlaws, actors of a banned
theatre troupe, and a corrupt monk rebel against the
rigidity of the Shogunate.
Shinoda after Shochiku
• The film is set during the time of puritan
‘Tempo Reform’ in which everything
pleasurable was banned - the theatre, ukiyoe,
novels, expensive meals, dolls, sweets, etc.
Six actors from a theatre troupe, an
eccentric monk and a useless fortune teller
fight for the freedom of expression.
Shinoda after Shochiku
• Silence (1971) - adapted from
Endo’s novel, the film is
about a Portuguese Jesuit
missionary and the Japanese
peasant converts, who were
persecuted and forced to
renounce their faith. Shot by
Miyagawa Kazuo with rich
pastel colours.
Shinoda after Shochiku
• Under the Blossoming
Cherry Trees (1975) a story about a ghost
woman who puts
under her spell the
man who abducted her
and dominates him by
the use of her sexual
power.
Shinoda after Shochiku
• The Ballad of Orin (1977) - Goze is a blind
female itinerant shamisen player and storyteller.
Orin is a goze though she was expelled from a
group for breaking its rules and having an affair
with a customer. Traveling alone, she is a
popular entertainer, but men are after not only
her music but also her body.
Shinoda’s Subjects
• Japanese History
• Historical incidents and
situation
• Radical changes and shifts
in history
• People’s reactions and
responses to them.
Shinoda’s Subjects
• Dry Lake - the 1960s and political movements
• Assassination - the arrival of Perry’s fleet in Japan
and the ensuing political and social upheaval
• Samurai Spy - 1600; the victory of the Tokugawas
and the last phase of civil wars
• The Scandalous Adventures of Buraikan - the
‘Tempo Reform’
• The Silence - the time of persecution of Christians
• McArthur’s Children - the aftermath of the defeat
in the second world war
Shinoda’s Subjects
• Reaction to such changes
• People who find it difficult to cope with them.
• Often disillusionment with radical shifts in
value, ideology, and political and social system.
• Nihilistic rather than ethical response to drastic
shifts
• Violence and subversion
• Strong images of death and corruption