This year coincided with the centenary of the founding of the Japanese film production agency Shochiku Film Cooperative (later known as Shochiku Pictures), and the Shanghai International Film Festival specially planned the Centennial Unit of Shochiku Pictures, showing Masaki Kobayashi's "Cut Belly", Nomura Yoshitaro's "Sand Instrument", Ozu Yasujiro's "Only Child", Keisuke Kinoshita's "Kaeyama Festival Examination" and Kurosawa's "Scandal", which roughly outlined Shochiku's centennial silhouette to some extent.
As a "century-old store", Shochiku has shown different styles with the development of social, political and economic development and the changes of mainstream cultural forms. Loud names such as Yasujiro Ozu, Kenji Mizoguchi, Akira Kurosawa, Keisuke Kinoshita, Masaki Kobayashi, Yoshio Naruse, Yoji Yamada, Nagisa Oshima, Masahiro Shinoda, and Takeshi Kitano are like shining coordinates that together paint a map of Shochiku's art. These directors are not only known to Chinese directors, such as Zhang Yimou who does not hesitate to express his admiration for Akira Kurosawa, but also well known to Chinese film fans, more and more domestic film fans are more willing to personally go to The Little Bean Island in "Twenty-Four Eyes" in addition to watching movies, and go to Kyoto to feel the Gion in Kenji Mizoguchi's long shots.
Great directors and works can also build cultural communities, and the late Iranian director Abbas directed "Like Mu Love River" in Japan, echoing the theme of "family" in Ozu's work.
Although the five Shochiku works screened at the Shanghai International Film Festival are completely different in terms of age, genre, authorial style, theme and genre, they have an inherent continuity, that is, seeking change in the face of fate, as well as self-struggle and inner struggle in the process of changing fate. For shochiku's century-old fruitful achievements, these five films are only enough to peek into the leopard. Following the main theme of Shochiku's film, based on the perspective of oriental culture, combing through its shared value is the meaning of the title of this article.
Yasujiro Ozu: A man who observes time and family bonds
In Jia Zhangke's "Platform", many years later, Yin Ruijuan paced and held the child, Cui Liangliang slumped on the sofa and fell asleep, and the kettle on the stove was turned on. This stable and peaceful picture is a metaphor for Cui Mingliang's complete farewell to the lives of young and wandering artists. The only thing that was still agitating was the boiling water in the pot. Kettles are also important images common in Ozu Yasujiro's films, red kettles, green kettles, and water bottles of various colors placed on the edges of the frame. Bright colors, but the location is inconspicuous, there is always a certain style to say and rest for the audience to discover and taste, which is the typical Ozu style.
Ozu's film is such a silent story of the desolation and beauty of the passage of time. In addition to the kettle, there are also food boxes and various props that can be seen in daily life, which are quietly changed in different scenes and picture frames. In one empty shot after another, these silent props and scenery will more or less change until the audience perceives or subconsciously feels that something is wrong; or Ozu in the same film, will always fix the lens in a few specific spaces to shoot empty shots, in the empty shots, the changes in light and shadow and the occasional passerby have become the scale of marking time; the empty shots and wall clocks at the station are more clear about the theme of time.
Ozu's still-water emotional structure fits the change of time on people, always happening in silence. For the vast majority of people, the life of Hollywood-style drama conflict is just a hilarious story in film and television works, and ordinary people are often faced with a trivial life day after day. When a long enough time distance is opened, the great changes in the white cloud dog and the vicissitudes of the mulberry field are obvious in front of the eyes, and it is inevitable that there is a kind of desolation that "everyone who looks far away is sad" as Zhang Ailing said. This sense of desolation is a unique aesthetic taste of oriental culture.
Achieving this desolation relies on the repetition of details. Most of the content in Ozu's films is eating, dialogue, marriage and funeral, and similar stories are told in the reincarnation time named after the seasons, such as "Mai Qiu", "Early Spring", "Autumn Day and "Late Spring". Repetition, reincarnation, and symmetry become another sense of form in Ozu's films. Stories, characters, and seasons carry the passage of time in a cyclical cycle. For decades, A cast of powerful actors such as Kasa Chihto and Setsuko Hara have played from "son" and "daughter" to "father" and "mother" in Ozu's films. When you first watch Ozu's films, it is easy to be moved by the sense of form of his films, and the actors' actions, expressions, and dialogues have been precisely designed, such as "The Other Side of the Flower", "Autumn Day" and other films, the sisters stand up together, or the action of waving their hands in a neat and uniform manner, in addition to the sense of harmony, it is also slightly comedic.
This obvious sense of design comedy action actually incorporates elements of Hollywood comedy movies. Ozu is a fan of Hollywood comedy master Liu Beiqian, who has benefited a lot from Chaplin, who is exquisite and accurate in his comedic action design, always writing Huang Ting at the beginning, just right. Although Liu Beiqian's comedy is different from Chaplin's, Chaplin's sense of precision is learned just right. Ozu's films also have a precise sense of joy similar to Liu Beiqian's, which is placed in Ozu's everyday images and does not contradict it.
Ozu imitates the low-angle photography of Japanese people sitting on a tatami mat to watch, and although the actors always have smiling expressions as the traditional Japanese way of life fades away, they are also denounced as "false" by the rising "Japanese New Wave" juniors, but Ozu's film does not hide that "eating men and women, people's great desires". It is only expressed in light comedy strokes that fit the identity of the character, such as Stephen Chow's "nonsense". However, compared with Zhou Xingchi's deconstruction of "all overheated, all crazy", such stems in films such as "Good Morning", "I was born, but...", "Floating Grass" are all "painting snakes" to children to complete.
Ozu's "fan brother", German director Wim Wenders, went to Japan decades after Ozu's death to shoot the Tokyo in Ozu's films, but the Tokyo of the Ozu era has been covered by modern Tokyo, and Wenders has been empty. In fact, in modernization, the transformation of family ethics, such as "Tokyo Story" and "Only Child", as small as whether to buy a golf club that represents a modern lifestyle, such as "The Taste of Saury", etc., are all Ozu's concerns. Ozu's classicism lies in looking at people in the bondage of time and family. Therefore, although tokyo in Ozu's films no longer exists, Abbas can still film Ozu's situation in contemporary Tokyo. "Ru Mu Ai River" uses excellent sound and picture alignment techniques to bring out the kind and clear audible voice of grandma on the other side of the phone, but the juxtaposed picture is the helpless and weak figure of grandma in the distant view, and its scene seems to make people see Ozu's "Tokyo Story" again.
Almost all of Ozu's works were photographed in Shochiku, and he left a valuable legacy for Shochiku. Times are changing, lifestyles are changing, but the sense of time and family themes in Ozu's films are still often new topics for Orientals. In such a special context at present, the moment of talking with the family is the bit of the deceased, and it is done and cherished.
Akira Kurosawa: He and his contemporaries carried the banner of Japanese cinema
The Shochiku Centennial Section exhibited Akira Kurosawa's "Scandal", which was obscured by the aura of "Rashomon" produced in the same year, which made Kurosawa and Japanese films internationally famous. The "Cut Belly" exhibited together also imitates "Rashomon" in terms of narrative form. Nevertheless, "Scandal" still embodies the common humanitarian spirit in Kurosawa's follow-up films such as "Seven Samurai", "Heaven and Hell", "The Lower Level", "Heart Stick", "Heart Piercing Sword" and so on, as well as the inner struggle and struggle that began in this regard.
Kurosawa's peak films were not made in Shochiku. His remakes of "Spider's Nest City" and "Chaos" based on Shakespeare's plays "Macbeth" and "King Lear" deeply impressed the Western film industry. Lucas, the founder of the Star Wars series, used the two robots in Star Wars, C-3P and R2-D2, to pay tribute to two comical characters in Akira Kurosawa's Sengoku Heroes. Against the backdrop of the global "big movie explosion" of the 1950s and 1960s, Akira Kurosawa had a huge influence in the Japanese and Western film industry.
Despite its dazzling brilliance, Akira Kurosawa's light could not hide the sparkle of Masaki Kobayashi and Keisuke Kinoshita of the "Four Horsemen of Japanese Cinema" of the same era, as well as Masahiro Shinoda, Nagisa Oshima, and Masahito Imamura in the "New Wave of Cinema". For example, Keisuke Kinoshita's "Kaoru Kao of The Mountain Festival", based on an ancient and cruel folklore in Japan, was filmed through the scheduling of drama and attracted widespread attention, and later Shohei Imamura remade the film and won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival. Another Palme d'Or by Imago was won for directing Shochiku's film Eel. Unlike Ozu, Imamura Masahira always photographs people and lives that Ozu disdains to shoot, and his films are often biologically oriented and end up in praise of human vitality and will to survive...
At this time, the directors of Shochiku have distinct personalities, and their artistic creation and expression techniques are like a thousand sails competing. If Akira Kurosawa is a Westernized director, then the oriental aesthetic expressions of Keisuke Kinoshita, Masahiro Shinoda and others have a greater significance in adhering to cultural subjectivity. For example, Masahiro Shinoda's "Skynet Island in the Heart" uses experimental techniques to integrate traditional art forms such as humanoid glass and calligraphy to tell the famous story of martyrdom in Japanese history, which can be described as a combination of East and West.
In the 1990s, Japanese cinema as a whole was no longer what it once was. Takeshi Kitano, Kurosawa's successor to Akira Kurosawa, also lived up to the prestige of Japanese cinema, directing his masterpiece Sonata in Shochiku. "Sonata" brings together all of Kitano Takeshi's narrative motifs: violence, childhood and memories, and the film is also like its name, and the structure is also like a sonata, unfolding in a rhythm of allegro, slow board, humor, etc., and Kitano Takeshi's cold humor is stained from time to time, which is refreshing.
Kenji Mizoguchi: Integrating Eastern aesthetics into "cinema", a Western import
Kenji Mizoguchi continued the tradition of being good at shooting female melodrama in the early days of Shochiku, he called himself "only for women to make movies", is a full-fledged feminist director, his works are basically women's themes; Kenji Mizoguchi uses Japanese Sekisai dialect in serious films, changing the old calendar that Sekisai dialect can only be used in burlesque films before, contributing to the development of sound films; Mizoguchi Kenji's melodrama is praised by the German scholar Elsather as "the best melodramas in Hollywood to compete with" If Kenji Mizoguchi is called "brother with a long shot", I am afraid that he will get a considerable amount of recognition.
Kenji Mizoguchi's greatest contribution to Japanese cinema, and even to Oriental cinema, is to integrate oriental aesthetics into the "film", an imported product of the West, and reach the height of perfection, and has a wide and far-reaching influence in the world film world, from the film master Tarkovsky to the contemporary long-lens master, almost no one is under the "anxiety of influence". Compared with the Western film lens based on the perspective relationship of Western painting, Kenji Mizoguchi's transverse long lens "Mirror Shifting Scenery" is more like Chinese scroll painting, "standing outside the painting, deliberately in the painting". Kenji Mizoguchi also showed an interest in Chinese culture, filming films such as "Yang Guifei" in Shochiku.
Most of the women in Kenji Mizoguchi's films are "insulted and damaged", and women's tolerance, strength, bravery, desire for love, dedication and self-sacrifice are fully demonstrated. Excellent actresses such as Tanaka Atsuyo are the prerequisites for the realization of these female images, and at the same time, Mizoguchi Kenji is extremely strict with actors. In the context of the mutual perfection of actors and directors, Kenji Mizoguchi gives actresses full performance space and complete emotional experience through "one shot at a time".
There are various theories about the background of the formation of Kenji Mizoguchi's long shots. One theory is that the complete time and space of the long-shot shot were convenient for the early Japanese film Benshi (equivalent to a film narrator) to interpret; the other theory is that Mizoguchi was indirectly influenced by American films. But the more important reason should be decided by Kenji Mizoguchi based on the examination of emotional mood and aesthetics in Eastern culture. Oriental emotions nourish not only Kenji Mizoguchi, but also Chinese director Wu Yonggang, and what interests people is the similar aesthetic path and theme choice between the two. Director Wu Yonggang is also very interested in women's themes, and his masterpiece "Goddess" is an unquestionable gem of Chinese cinema. For long shots, director Wu Yonggang also has a unique lyrical point. In the 1962 opera movie "Jade Hairpin", on the wedding night, Li Xiuying gave Wang Yulin a fold of "three covers", which gently expressed Wu Yonggang's strong feelings. Wu Yonggang specially borrowed the track to help the "three covers" scene to the end. Although it is a pity that this long shot is edited into more than 30 shots in the finished film, Wu Yonggang chose to use the long shot to express the most important scene in the special significance of "Jade Hairpin", that is, he saw the potential of the long shot to transform space into time and emotional tension.
This time, Shochiku came to Shanghai, the production center of early Chinese films, and more similar dialogues and issues based on the common culture have yet to be unfolded.
Yoji Yamada: Faithfully continues and defends the "Shumin" film tradition
Director Yoji Yamada, known as Shochiku's "Evergreen Tree", "Standard-Bearer of Sunset Movies" and "Spokesperson for the Japanese Soul", became Shochiku's "cash cow" with the series of films "The Story of Injiro". The series began in 1969 and was filmed in 1995, with a total of 48 films, and the "common people" image of "Ah Yin" in the film is deeply rooted in the hearts of the people, and Yoji Yamada has also "used" this role many times in the recent "Family Suffering" trilogy. Since then, Yoji Yamada has filmed the film works "The Yellow Handkerchief of Happiness" and "The Call of the Distant Mountains" in China, which have triggered a movie-watching boom. Since the beginning of the new century, Yoji Yamada's "Samurai Trilogy", "The Kiyobei of Dusk", "Hidden Sword Ghost Claw", and "Samurai's One Point", although it tells the story of the samurai class, it is either a samurai who "receives a pension" or a samurai who is about to be eliminated by history at the end of the shogunate... Samurai who seem to be in the upper class have also been injected with a strong sense of commoners by Yoji Yamada.
The so-called "Shumin drama" refers to a film that reflects the lives of small people in the middle and lower classes of Japan. Shochiku's "Shomin" film tradition originated from the establishment of the "Kamata Photography Institute" in 1920, which established the tone of its Shomin films from the very beginning, drawing on Hollywood elements in terms of photographic angles, lighting, photographic techniques, editing, etc., and establishing the creation method of the director-centered system.
Throughout Yamada Yoji's career as a director, the most prominent narrative motif is how to find and excavate the shining points of human nature and the highlight moments of life in the weak, the poor, the insulted and the damaged, which is also the core proposition of Shochiku's early filmmaker Gosho Heinosuke and his assistant Naruse Mikio and other Shochiku filmmakers in film creation. Their love for the disadvantaged, their ridicule of fate, their revolution in photography techniques, and their profound excavation of Japan's national character have left a strong mark on the history of Japanese cinema by Shochiku's shogun film tradition.
From the perspective of the genre and style of the film, Yoji Yamada has always continued the warm family films and sad female melodrama that Shochiku is best at, and in terms of artistic style, he has also continued shochiku's "Kamata-Ōfune tone", and the photography space is mainly family space, which is a concrete embodiment of the Japanese people's deep family view. Yoji Yamada's "humor of the common people" is the artistic feature of his works, and unlike Yasujiro Ozu's quiet and introverted cold humor, Yoji Yamada's small character humor is more closely related to daily life and has a more comedic character. Japanese film scholar Tadao Sato believes that Shochiku's "Kamata-Ōfune tone" "creates a calm atmosphere created by actors with a sense of common people, a slightly cautious and cautious humor and sentimentality of the people." In contrast, early Chinese films, from 1922's "Labor's Love", to Zhao Dan's "The Crow and the Sparrow", and then to the recent series of small characters performed by Ge You, Huang Bo and other actors, are deeply loved by the audience. Whether it is a common people or a small person, the film that tells the joys and sorrows of the common people has always been deeply loved by Chinese and Japanese audiences. Shochiku centenary may be just another starting point, and we look forward to the near future when Chinese and Japanese filmmakers can jointly tell the common joys and sorrows of the people in the East.
Author: Gao Yuanyuan
Editor: Xu Luming