Transcript Shinoda Masahiro

Shinoda Masahiro
Nihilist Style
Shinoda Masahiro
• Born in 1931, entered
Waseda University
and then 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 by young filmmakers
labeled as ‘Shochiku Nouvelle Vague’ films.
• Most of them are poor imitations of Oshima’s.
• Exceptions are …
Early Shinoda
• Shinoda Masahiro (1931- ) and Yoshishige
Yoshida (1933 - )’s films.
• 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
assassin 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 and Shinoda remained in Shochiku
unlike Oshima and Imamura.
• Ideas, subjects, themes, scripts forced upon him.
• Though 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 was previously
influenced by French nouvelle vague, American film
noir and European art cinema, there was no turn
back to the former Shochiku style.
• Loss of stylistic innocence and development of more
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, selective focus composition in
a wide screen format
Normal over the shoulder shot
Chiaro-scruro (low-key lighting, high
contrast) images
Symmetrical composition and chiaro-scuro lighting
combined mise-en-scène
Chiaro-scuro lighting and wide-screen composition
with empty space on the right
Chiaro-scuro lighting and wide-screen composition
with empty space on the top of the screen
Chiaro-scuro lighting and selective focus
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)
Middle Shinoda
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Montage (editing)
Jagged jump cuts
Ignoring the 180 degree rule
Theatrical long cut and cinematic rapid cut
Middle 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.
Middle 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.
Middle 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 Shusaku’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 at junctions of
Japanese history
• 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
Tokugawa’s 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.
• 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