Author: Tadao Sato
Translators = Chen Mei, Chen Duchen
Source = Excerpt from "Only Make a Movie for Women" - < Chapter 1: Self-Taught Temperament >
People close to Mizoguchi often mention him as a reader. Effort is his motto. At the same time, he forced everyone he worked with to make a greater effort. Tanaka came to Kyoto from Tokyo as the lead character in his film The Wave Girl. Mizoguchi asked her assistant Tsuruko Saganeda to deliver large bags of books to her dormitory, never mentioning filmmaking, but asking her to be patient with reading. "The Wave Girl" is a work that represents the world of literary music, and she plays a strong and very virtuous wife, encouraging her husband to become a master of playing the three-stringed piano. The books piled up in her dormitory were monographs on literary music. A popular star like her, who was overwhelmed with filmmaking, asked her to put aside her filming work and go to study, which was unimaginable even in the more leisurely situation at that time. Mizoguchi, on the other hand, believes that it is impossible for someone who does not understand Bunraku to take on the lead role in his work, so he first asks her to study seriously.
Asakusa's juvenile age
Kenji Mizoguchi on set
Kenji Mizoguchi was born on May 16, 1898, at No. 11, Shinhanacho, Yushima, Hongo-ku, Tokyo. As the eldest son of his father Zentaro and mother Masa, he has an older sister Shoushou who is three years older than him and a younger brother Zeno who is seven years younger than him. However, the household register records that he has a brother and a sister, and it is still unclear why.
For generations, the Mizoguchi family opened a construction plant in the town of Shinbashi Kaga. Zentaro is a dignified man, and it is said that in his childhood, there was also a kabuki actor family who wanted to adopt him as an adopted son. He was a believer in the Nichiren Sect and was honest and prudent. When he was young, he was once dragged by a friend to a tour, and he huddled in the corner of the house trembling, afraid to sleep all night, and this anecdote is still anecdote among his grandchildren. During the Russo-Japanese War, Zentaro, who inherited the family business, wanted to make a windfall by manufacturing military raincoats, but he did not expect that the war would end quickly, resulting in heavy losses. After that, he devoted himself to other careers, but they also failed miserably, causing everyone to rebel and finally had to sell the family property. Kenji Mizoguchi's mother, Maza, was born into a family of imperial physicians, and was a traditional woman who was considerate of her husband and worked hard. The failure of the family business made her depressed. To this end, the family moved to Asakusa and sent their ten-year-old daughter Shou shou to a geisha house called Mikawaya in Nihonbashi to learn their art.
Mizoguchi grew up in poverty, and his education was only after graduating from elementary school. He initially attended Asakusa's Tagawa Elementary School, which resembles a private school, and soon moved to the newly built nearby public Ishihama Elementary School. Here, he was in the same class as Matsutaro Kawaguchi, who later became a novelist. Kawaguchi also has only a primary school education. After graduating from elementary school, the two lost contact, and it was not until one of them became a new novelist and the other became a film director that the two reunited. As a director of Daiei Corporation, Kawaguchi was directly involved in many of Mizoguchi's works in the 1950s, and the two can be said to have been lifelong collaborators. On December 25, 1955, the Economic Weekly published a conversation in which they recalled their youth.
Mizoguchi: Good villains can not enter the pawnshop recently.
Kawaguchi: I didn't go, but the child still went. My big cub put my camera in the pawnshop. It's astonishing. [Laughs]
Mizoguchi: Ever since I married my wife, I've been in and out of pawnshops a lot.
Kawaguchi: I can basically be said to be a guy in a pawnshop. (Laughs) After graduating from Tanihori (Asakusa, Tokyo) Elementary School, he worked as an apprentice at a pawnshop in the valley called Fukushimaya. Face the willow basket with items all day long...
Mizoguchi: There is a beautiful girl in Fukushimaya.
Kawaguchi: A little older than me.
Mizoguchi: Really?
Kawaguchi: I was in the pawnshop for about half a year before I was kicked out of the store.
Mizoguchi: The girls in the pawnshop were pretty pretty. You're very close to the girl in the pawnshop. (Laughs) There seems to be another one, takeda's... Just behind Keiyang-ji Temple...
(Omitted below)
Mizoguchi: Do you remember the last time we met as a teenager?
Kawaguchi: I don't remember.
Mizoguchi: It was on the street, and I was with Hisako from the mason's house, Okabe and the Clogs Shop. In today's terms, it's like a bunch of rogue Ah Fei. There is a large ditch on one of the cross roads of the bouncing left guard gate. Just as everyone was plotting against you there, I saw you (with your eyes fixed on Kawaguchi) wearing a pinstriped kimono, a clogs on the bottom, and a strange hat, and walking over with a sense of satisfaction.
Kawaguchi: Is that really the case?
Mizoguchi: There are also beautiful girls in the Tsuzoemon family, right?
Kawaguchi: Yes, yes, yes.
Mizoguchi: Later, there was a Wakabayashi girl who made rainproof clogs, right?
Kawaguchi: Yes, that's a beauty too. (to the mouth of the ditch) is near your house. Later, she committed suicide with a young man named Mizuno.
Mizoguchi: Later you wrote about it in the magazine Literary Club. Kuko and Okabe and the others were furious about this, saying that you have shaken out all the things about your friends, which is really not a word.
Kawaguchi: That's enough to write a novel...
The conversation is reminiscent of the precocious and arrogant adolescent teenagers of the metropolis's merchant quarters. And that arrogant temperament is the proof that they have youthful capital.
After her sister Shoushou was sent to the Mikawaya Geisha Museum, she met Abang, known as the "Nihonbashi Famous Trickster Sanjie". Ahama was the mistress of Mikawaya and the kana Akiru (1829-1894: Popular novelist of the early Meiji period, real name Nozaki Bunzo). Lover. After Ahama's training, Shoushou soon became a maiko and was abolished along with the Chinese (who had titles and their families) who were nine years older than her, after World War II, along with the aristocracy. Guest Matsudaira Tadamasa is in love. The Matsudaira family was originally a prince of Ueda, Shinshu, and was made a viscount. Although he loves Shoushou very much, he is a person who has no autonomy. Shoushou soon became pregnant and soon miscarried. This may have been forced to abort in order to preserve the reputation of the Viscount's family. At that time, Chinese marriages were subject to the approval of the Imperial Household Agency. How can marriage to a geisha be approved? She was housed in a house in Asakusa and lived the life of a concubine. After Shoushou gave birth to his eldest son, Matsudaira Tadamasa, who was still single, was immediately designated to marry a Chinese girl. The Matsudaira family's mansion is in Ebara, Shinagawa Ward, and he often travels to and from Shoushou's residence. Shou Shouyi had four children, and like her father, she was a firm believer in the Nichiren Sect.
At the age of seventeen, she became the birthday of the family, and she had to take care of her sick mother and her younger brother Kenji, who had just graduated from elementary school and had nothing to do all day, and was regarded by the neighbors as ah fei, and even more needed to take care of the seven-year-old good boy, as well as the father who lived nearby, and the living expenses of the whole family were also borne by her. In 1915, her mother's condition deteriorated and she was admitted to Fuji Hospital in Asakusa Yoshino,, where she died in October, bearing all the expenses of Shoushou.
In 1915, the seventeen-year-old Ditch mouth still had no fixed occupation. Shoushou asked him to study at a drawing teacher named Watanabe in Imatogawa. The following year, Shoushou moved to Nihonbashi, and Mizoguchi was transferred to another cartographer in Hamamachi. However, he couldn't rest on his mind there. Eventually, he studied oil painting at the Aoibashi Institute of Western Painting in Akasaka Yukichi, chaired by Kiyoshi Kuroda. The head of the private school is Wada Sanzoku. This year, for Kenji Mizoguchi, it can be said that it is the only student life. At that time, the Akasaka Imperial Pavilion near the institute was performing an opera with dialogue led by the Rossi couple, and the background painting of the opera was completed by the institute, and Mizoguchi became interested in opera during the process of assisting in the drawing. Since then, he often goes to Asakusa to watch operas, and also goes to the qu art field to listen to lectures (similar to Chinese storytelling). ) and Rakugo (similar to Chinese stand-up comedy. He is widely read by the novels of Maupassant, Tolstoy, Natsume Soseki, Ozaki Momiba, Izumi Kyokaze, and Nagai Hekaze. It was 1917.
In the same year, Mizoguchi began working in the advertising design department of Kobe's "Ayushin Daily". But he only worked there for a little over a year before returning to Tokyo. Why he quit his job at a newspaper is unknown. I think it may be because he has reached the age when he should have a legitimate career, but he has never found the ideal career that he is willing to fight for all his life. It was not like today, when you could choose your job position through a job test just after graduating from high school or college. At that time, many people went to apprenticeships after graduating from elementary school, and when they were reluctant to learn for a while, they returned to their parents more than once, waiting for the opportunity to find another career. Some people have missed out on employment opportunities and become idle people. This arrogant attitude towards the profession of young people annoys parents. It seems that Mizoguchi is also a teenager who has made his sister painstaking. He entered the society at the age of fifteen, and after twenty years of age, he did not have a fixed occupation, and he wandered around all day, and his youth could be said to have been spent in the bleakness.
Studio in the twenties
In 1920, Mizoguchi became acquainted with Masayoshi Tomioka, a young actor from the HiwatoShima Studio, and several young friends who worked in other arts. Tomioka instigated Mizoguchi to become a film actor as well, and introduced him to director Osamu Wakasa. However, the number of actors was full, and only the assistant position was still vacant, so he became the director's assistant. At that time, Mizoguchi was twenty-two years old.
Mizoguchi's father and sister didn't approve of his film studio, and they reluctantly agreed after his repeated insistence. This was natural, because people at the time thought that movies were made by rogues who misbehaved. About ten years after Mizoguchi entered the Hiwato Xiangjima Studio in Tokyo, in the early 1930s, Yoshihito Iida, who met Mizoguchi as a screenwriter at the Nissho Kyoto Taiqin Studio, wrote an article about the staff of the Taehoku Studio, which is excerpted as follows:
Nikko is associated with the Chimoto group, a group known in Kyoto as the Leader of the Chihwa... Hirohisa Ikenaga, director of the Nikko Studio, is also a brother of the Senmoto group, and most of the on-site personnel in the studio's large props, small props, lighting and other departments are closely related to the Senmoto group, and some of the heads are tattooed. The owner of the small canteen called "Ronda", who has just been opened by the studio, the car team, and the eloquent and nicknamed "Aya" Inada, who is an eloquent guide in the studio, are all related to the Chimoto group, and many of them are with me as elementary school classmates... At that time, the film industry, whether it was actors or staff, were young people, almost all of them had bad life experiences; I also saw people who were beaten and then thrown into the blue dye tank of the printing workshop, and their whole bodies became blue and escaped; those who became assistant directors were often taken to the back without asking questions, and were punched and kicked by young actors; photographers even needed to hide short knives in their arms when shooting.
Masaichi Nagata, nicknamed "Aya", soon became the host of the first independent film studio. With his support, Mizoguchi's immortal masterpieces "Song of Langhua Sorrow" and "Gion Sisters" were released. In the 1940s and 1950s, he served as the manager of Daiying Corporation, and he was the producer of a series of masterpieces by Mizoguchi in his later years.
Song of Sorrow (1936)
The Gion Sisters (1936)
This was the case with the Nichiren Kyoto Studios around 1930, but before that, any Japanese studio was in the same situation. In the mid-1930s, Toho began to use modern management as the slogan for filmmaking, and since then, film companies have transitioned to modern enterprises, and people's vigilance in seeing this industry as the lair of rogue Ah Fei has also tended to fade. Especially at the end of the thirties, when militarism was rampant, filmmakers could no longer act recklessly, but could only seriously make a number of films that contributed to militarism, which were repeatedly praised by the government.
However, before this, the fact that the studio was regarded as the lair of the rogue Ah Fei also had its advantages. Because it is a company of this nature, there are no conditions for those who want to enter the studio, let alone qualifications. College graduates can enter, and people like Mizoguchi who only have primary school qualifications will not be turned away. Of particular interest is the fact that some people who have been expelled from universities or other businesses for their involvement in the socialist movement can easily find work in studios. At first glance, the position of the rogue Ah Fei and the left-wing activists is completely opposite, but in the point of being the enemy of the police, it is in the same vein. In the case of Yoshihito Iida himself, he was originally a bank clerk who entered the studio because he was expelled from the bank because of his socialist movement. There was a man named Shizuyoshi Terumai who worked as Mizoguchi's assistant director in the early 1930s. He often argued with his teacher Mizoguchi about some issues, and many of Mizoguchi's ambitious works at that time were said to have absorbed ideas formed after arguing with him. I don't know much about this man's experience, some people say that he went to the Soviet Union secretly, graduated from the Far Eastern Communist University, and returned home to become a fighter for a left-wing movement. From his imitation of the Edo period novelist Teramon Shizune (1796-1868): Essayist and scholar of the late Japanese shogunate, commonly known as Yagozoemon. For offending the shogunate with the Edo Chronicle of Prosperity, he later cut his hair and became a monk, calling himself a "useless man". As a pseudonym, he had abandoned ideology and was determined to turn to the irony of the world, and such a figure could work with hooligans, that is, the film industry at that time. In other words, one kind of person gradually becomes an entrepreneur from the rogue Ah Fei, let's call it the rogue trace; the other kind of person breaks away from the camp of left-wing fighters, causing the left-wing forces to fall. The fact that these two kinds of people can coexist is truly an incredible society.
Just like Mizoguchi in his youth, Teramon Shizuyoshi was twenty-two years old and had no fixed occupation, neither technical expertise nor education, but only a love of literature and art. The society of the time referred to this kind of person as a useless youth, and it was precisely the studio that became one of the few workplaces that could accommodate him. At that time, there was no sign that he had a great passion for film, let alone a fervent desire for the development of Japanese cinema.
About a year after entering the studio, Mizoguchi again proposed that he did not want to continue to work, and Shoushou was so upset that he tried to dissuade him. At this time, it coincided with the chaos caused by the abolition of male and female characters within the Nikko Company, resulting in a shortage of directors, which dispelled Mizoguchi's idea of resignation.
Through the above-mentioned conversation with Matsutaro Kawaguchi, Mizoguchi has talked about the situation at the studio at that time.
Mizoguchi: Originally, I wanted to be an actor, but I was not approved, so I had to become a director's assistant. However, sometimes there are some dramas.
Kawaguchi: Just do everything.
Mizoguchi: In today's parlance, it's called miscellaneous. He acted, worked as a technician, and worked dry cleaning.
Kawaguchi: Former assistant directors had to hold up reflectors to light up. Now that there is a division of labor, lighting belongs to the work of the photography department. In the past, the director's assistant did everything.
Kawaguchi: Weren't there lights at that time?
Mizoguchi: I only used the lights after that. For today's stage footlight and the natural light of a glass studio, it's an opaque studio.
Kawaguchi: Yes, yes, it's a dark studio... (Laughter)
Mizoguchi: At that time, I didn't know that there was such a thing as a lighting board. The year we came to the studio, there was an exterior photography team in the United States. We went to visit and found that the reflectors they used with silver paper were very convenient to use, so we began to imitate the use. We put silver paper on the sliding door partition.
Group portrait of Hinata Xiangdao Studio and director
The authoritative photographer Motogo Ohdong once said that Mizoguchi was a good young man who was honest and willing to work. Mizoguchi first worked as an assistant to director Tadao Oguchi. Oguchi is one of the oldest directors in the Japanese film industry. According to Mizoguchi's remarks in the above dialogue, he was originally a new drama (as opposed to the old drama (noh drama, kyogene, kabuki and other traditional dramas), and the drama genres that emerged at the end of the Meiji period absorbed Western modern drama techniques and reflected modern life mainly with realism. —Editor's Note) writer, the detailed experience is not known. In 1908, Yoshizawa shops built a studio in Meguro Yukikazu, and the following year held a story essay and set up a research department to train exclusive actors, and after Oguchi entered the department, he worked under the guidance of the melodrama writer Minister Sato Hiroshi. In 1913, the Japan Event Photography Corporation (Nikho) established a so-called glass studio with an all-glass roof and sunlight on Xiangdao Island in Tokyo. Xiao Gu went there as a screenwriter and director. He was a prolific writer whose works were dominated by new tragic themes, including Twenty Works such as Abandoned Mother and Rain of Tears in 1918, eighteen in 1919, and thirteen in 1920 as Mizoguchi's assistant.
The critic Kishi Matsumoto learned about the situation and wrote the following passage about Xiaokou:
Director Xiaokou is extremely motivated and strictly adheres to the limited number of days for shooting a film: two days in the studio and three days on location. Sadasuke Iguro Iguro, who had a keen interest in film and participated in the performance, and Eizo Tanaka, who had worked as a director's assistant to Oguchi for a while, both complained about such a short filming time... At that time, filming was just reading the script aloud, there was no such thing as acting instruction, everything was arranged by the photographer. (The Complete Works of Japanese Film Directors compiled by the Film Shun Newspaper)
Of course, not all directors are like Tadashi Oguchi. Even at the time, there were directors like Kensaku Suzuki, whose work could not be estimated once it was filmed, and he had a drill spirit, and he was one of the first directors in the Japanese film industry to be keen on shooting realistic works. When he was filming the masterpiece "Human Suffering" (1923), there was an actor who needed to play the image of a skinny hungry man, and Suzuki ordered him to go on hunger strike for a while. Although this is only a mass role for passers-by, the actor faithfully carries out the director's orders, playing a thin and faltering figure. However, when this image appeared on the screen, the previous faltering became a comical gait of bouncing and jumping, presumably due to the photographer's mistaking of the speed at which he was preparing to shoot. The actor was so annoyed by this that he chased after the director in the studio and shouted, "Suzuki, this guy should be killed!" "This is a memory I heard directly from Hiroshi Inagaki, a director who was a juvenile actor at the factory at the time and later won an award at the Venice Film Festival, who later filmed "The Life of Unable to Loosen" (1958).
Women of the Night (1948)
Eizo Tanaka came to the studio because of the setbacks of the new drama movement, and finally became a director after working as an assistant to Tadashi Oguchi for several months, and he can be said to be the director who has made the most artistic work for the studio. His works are like paintings full of Japanese style, carefully guiding the performances of the actors, with special attention to meticulous psychological depictions. Kenji Mizoguchi served as an assistant to Tadashi Oguchi and junzo Tanaka successively. As you can imagine, Mizoguchi learned a lot from Eizo Tanaka. One of Mizoguchi's early masterpieces, Whispers of Paper Man in Spring (1926), was based on a script by Eizo Tanaka. However, directors and actors with artist ambitions, such as Kensaku Suzuki, Eizo Tanaka, and Sadanosuke Ikasa, are exceptional.
Today's assistant film director is the only way to become an artist. At the height of the film industry's boom, its door was just a slit that was difficult for even high-achieving graduates to graduate from top-notch universities with honors. However, when Mizoguchi entered the film industry, the director's assistant was nothing more than a chore. Even when he became a director, he never directed the performance, did not pay attention to the technical work, and the only concern was to grasp the progress of the photography. The camera is placed in a certain position, each scene is left to the actors themselves to perform at will, the director just stands next to the camera and reads the script, at most telling the actors the requirements for the general activity within the scope of the camera. Such a job really doesn't require any special talents, and it's no wonder that people who have graduated from elementary school can be hired as director's assistants. And after two years of conscientious work, he was successfully promoted to director.
Of course, at that time, not all the people who became directors like Mizoguchi were only qualified to graduate from elementary school. The director who introduced Mizoguchi to the Nichiren Studio was director Osamu Wakayama, who was born in 1886, twelve years older than Mizoguchi, and graduated from high school. Director Kensaku Suzuki, who became Mizoguchi's mentor and friend in the study of plays mentioned above, is thirteen years older than him and graduated from a commercial school. Director Eizo Tanaka, who is also in the same studio and has a mentor-apprentice relationship with Mizoguchi, is also twelve years older than Mizoguchi, and after graduating from a professional school, he entered the actors' school and is an intellectual who is willing to bear hardships and stand hard work.
Let's take a look at some of Mizoguchi's contemporaries. At the end of the silent film, director Shimi Murata, who is also at the Nichiho Studio and is regarded as a strong competitor of Mizoguchi, is a young master of a rich family. After graduating from the prestigious school Tokyo Higher Normal High School, he paid for his family's new drama movement, first becoming a stage actor and then a budding director in the film industry. He was four years older than Mizoguchi.
Masanosuke Nagamizoguchi, a two-year-old from a wealthy family, studied English for several years after graduating from elementary school, ran away from home at the age of fifteen, and became a new actor. When Mizoguchi joined the Hiwato Xiangjima Studios, Itagasa was the star of the factory's most popular male and female characters. Soon, he felt that the male and female characters had certain limitations, so he turned to directing. When Irie Kasa became an actor, he was deeply dissatisfied with the film's method of directing too primitive, and he secretly thought to himself that once he became a director, he would have to make a film charm with a finer division of the camera.
Dr. Caligari's Cabin
At that time, most Japanese films were made with the director at his fingertips. Nevertheless, director Kensaku Suzuki has begun to devote himself to pursuing a directorial approach that can be called the embryo of realism; director Eizo Tanaka has also begun to transplant the aestheticism of new drama into the film. In addition, although most Japanese films do not pay attention to the artistry and skill of film, there have been some active characters such as Griffiths, Straushen and Chaplin in the United States in the foreign film world. At the same time, the German film "Dr. Caligari's Cabin" also gave the world a great impact. Under the impact of these foreign films, people of Mizoguchi's contemporaries, both intellectuals with academic qualifications and those who only graduated from elementary school, poured into the studio in order to become film directors. Ubahara, who is a year older than Mizoguchi, is the first person to graduate from UTokyo and want to become a director. If a prominent person like him, who came from the highest school, wanted to mix in the film industry, he had to get special approval from kumamoto's top figures who gave him scholarships.
Daisuke Ito, who was the same age as Mizoguchi, also came to Tokyo after graduating from high school to attend classes at Meiji University and studied drama under kaoru Koyamauchi, and turned from playwright to director. The same age, Uchida Tumulu, graduated from the second grade of middle school and entered the film industry after a period of apprenticeship in piano tuning. Early sword-and-sword films for Sakato's wife Saburo (a type of Japanese genre film in which sword fights are used as entertainment films. Fumitaro Nikawa, who injected a new expressive technique, is one year younger than Mizoguchi and is a graduate of Chuo University. Tasaka Kuryū graduated from the old No. 3 Junior High School, Hiranosuke graduated from the Keio Commercial School, which is equivalent to the old high school, and Kajiro Yamamoto graduated from Keio University, all four years younger than Mizoguchi.
It can be seen that in Mizoguchi's era, there were many film directors with only primary school education, and at the same time, many people graduated from the old middle school. Soon, old high school and college graduates were also eager for movies. In other words, the film industry at that time was already a veritable world with a position of power. This has been going on for a long time. Born in 1905, Hiroshi Inagaki has not completed elementary school because he has been a child star for a long time, and he has become a master by self-study. Born in 1912, Shinto Kanto was a disciple of Mizoguchi who graduated from high school and has been active in the front line of movies ever since.
However, these people who only have a primary school degree and can constantly compete with their peers with higher education in the front line are only a minority, they are all strong personalities and unremitting efforts. When they entered the film industry, the film basically did not pay attention to the standard, and most of them were finished. However, when they experienced the creation of the film first-hand in the form of an apprentice, Japanese cinema is moving to a higher level every year. Those conservative artisan directors who could not keep up with the development of the situation were eliminated one by one. In the process of competing with the newly enrolled highly educated, it is not enough for the lowly educated to be satisfied with the technical practice of the teacher, they must also have the arrogance to overwhelm the young and even subdue them, and at the same time constantly improve their self-cultivation.
The age of self-study and strengthism
Kenji Makiguchi (Middle) Andoyo Yodanaka (right)
In 1922, Mizoguchi became the director of the Hiwato Xiangjima Studio in Tokyo. In the summer of 1923, the Great Kanto Earthquake struck and the studio was devastated. Nisshuo also had a studio in Kyoto, so Mizoguchi moved to Kyoto to continue his work. Since then, Mizoguchi has been transferred from Nichizo to direct films for various film companies such as Emerging Films, Daiichi Films, Shochiku, Toho, ShinToho, and Daiei, and still uses Kyoto as a base for living and working.
Mizoguchi, who likes to chase fashion and is sensitive to the trends of the times, believes that only in Tokyo can it not be left behind. He traveled to Tokyo several times to make films, but the only successful work was "Ai wei gorge" (1937). Why do you fail so badly when you work in Tokyo? Is it because Mizoguchi, while happy to chase trends, is sometimes not necessarily receptive to some fashionable trends? Or is it because Tokyo lacks a suitable film crew? I am afraid that there are both reasons. There are more people with an old-fashioned craftsman temperament than in Tokyo, and the film crew and actors who meet Mizoguchi's requirements must be people who work hard like craftsmen. In short, Mizoguchi is a director who never gives nuanced and specific instructions, and all problems are thought out by the film crew, who first make their own efforts to do it, and then let him correct it and make a decision. In this way of working, he must have a group of loyal and excellent talents who can fully understand his intentions.
As a result, Mizoguchi spent his life working mainly in Kyoto, which had a decisive impact on his career. He has worked extremely diligently, and since coming to Kyoto, the birthplace of traditional arts, he has thoroughly studied Kabuki, Noh, Japanese dance, bungaku, and bangraku. The purpose of studying Kabuki and Bunraku is to explore the origins of Japanese plays, especially the methods of actors. The Kabuki of Kyoto and Osaka have a deep relationship with traditional love dramas centered on beautiful men. Studying these traditional arts has undoubtedly laid a solid foundation for his works of popular art created in the 1940s, as well as works based on classical literature and drama such as "The Girl of the Western Crane Generation", "The Tale of the Rain Moon", and "The Tale of Konmatsu" created in the 1950s.
In addition, Tokyoites see Kansai (referring to the area around Kyoto and Osaka. People's customs and feelings will feel very fresh. "The Lamentation of Langhua" (1936) is Mizoguchi's first innovative work in Japanese cinema to express Osaka customs in Osaka.
Tanaka Didn't have a formal education. Therefore, she believes that forcing her to read is a challenge to her lack of academic qualifications, and she reads the book with a confrontational mentality. However, Mizoguchi forced the actors to read, not just for Tanaka Atsushiro. Kyoko Kagawa was also asked to study the Japanese Middle Ages (1185-1573) when she played the slave girl Yasuho in the film "Yamanakata Daifu". The history books of slavery. For the role you play, you should try to have this knowledge, which is an important condition for playing a good role. Mizoguchi pushes this point beyond, and everyone who works with him must be as willing to work hard as himself. He doesn't allow himself to work hard and some people are lazy. Director Konzaburo Yoshimura mentioned in a memoir entitled "The Life of Cinema" that once, when he went to visit Mizoguchi on the set of "My Love Is Burning", he heard Mizoguchi shouting to the film crew like a thunderbolt: "You are robbers, robbers who destroy Japanese movies!" Director Yoshimura couldn't help but be surprised, thinking that what happened was just due to the unsatisfactory setting and camera procedures.
This kind of angry posture of loud and loud rebuke is really ironic, but it also reflects a typical attitude from scholars. All those who have gained considerable status through self-study are very conceited, believing that they can not succeed by relying on their talents alone, but mainly rely on their own hard work. And, from the standpoint of believing that only hard work can grasp the essence of things, there is nothing more resentful than a man who, without effort, easily attains superiority by virtue of academic qualifications, beauty, or other talents. Regardless of whether you have a degree or not, not thinking hard is the most intolerable.
Once, playwright Yoshihito Iida came to Tokyo with Mizoguchi and stayed in a high-end hotel. During the meal, the chef pushes the cooking cart near the table, lights the fire in front of the guests, and blows up the steak on the spot. Mizoguchi was so touched by this scene that he shouted, "Great, great, where can you see such a new thing in Kyoto!" ”
Although this scene is refreshing, but it is not so unusual to be excited, Yoshihito Iida probably thinks it is a bit frivolous, and it is inevitable to laugh and be generous. But, for Mizoguchi, it is the so-called gaffe, or frivolity, that is revealed entirely because of the passion for new things. I often need to update my knowledge, which is the goal of Mizoguchi's efforts. In the era of new directors, Mizoguchi made many works based on foreign novels or imitating foreign films. Perhaps it was this flippant imitation that prompted him to later return to the solemn traditional aesthetic consciousness.
There are also many interesting episodes of Mizoguchi chasing fashion. Mizoguchi not only reads his favorite books, but also never spares some of the books that people around him often talk about. The aforementioned assistant director Shizuyoshi Termon once boasted about the latest popular books on literary tendencies and ideologies and asked Mizoguchi if he had read them. Mizoguchi had clearly not read it, but replied vaguely that he knew a little bit about it. Then order the assistant to rush to the bookstore, which will help to understand the topic of books to buy and read all night. This mentality of not losing to young people in new knowledge often leads to the abuse of knowledge that is half-understood. During the filming of The Tale of the Rainy Moon, Mizoguchi asked Yoshihito Iida to revise the first script he had written, with special emphasis on him learning from Salvador Dalí. No one knows how much Mizoguchi knows about Dali and how he is prepared to apply it. However, the admonished considered that Dalí was a surrealist and crammed many surreal images into the revised script. However, this runs counter to the direction Mizoguchi is pursuing. Nevertheless, Mizoguchi could not object, as it had been modified at his behest. Helpless Mizoguchi, he thought of a way to take the script to the president of the big picture, Nagata Masaichi, to read through it, and Nagata immediately said after hearing it, I can't understand this script, so I can return to the original idea. Mizoguchi was never heard mentioning Dalí's name again.
The Tale of the Rainy Moon (1953)
We should not laugh at the act of showing new knowledge that we do not know much, and we should not attribute it to the lack of systematic cultivation caused by low academic qualifications. Even a college graduate, who can understand the essence of Dalí's surrealism?
Not knowing how to pretend to understand is a kind of bluff, and in general, the bluff can be seen as a person's shallowness. However, the bluff of the ditch mouth is a bluff that is not afraid to expose shortcomings, and this bluff is precisely to try to eliminate the ignorance. In the world of the film industry, bluff has become one of the substantive elements of work, rather than accusing it of frivolity, it is better to regard it as a cute childishness and give it a high evaluation. Don't see Mizoguchi's strict demands on the people around him to make endless efforts as a terrible phenomenon that should be cursed, but rather a glimpse of what a vibrant world our film industry is. These anecdotes are important materials that cannot be ignored to understand Mizoguchi's work, and his strict attitude can not only improve the morale of his peers involved in Mizoguchi's works, but also facilitate the acquisition of budget.
At one point, Mizoguchi told Tanaka that Japanese actors don't understand the real life of the bourgeoisie, so they can't play bourgeois life well. Tanaka saw this as a challenge to himself, so he immediately bought a luxurious mansion and lived in it. In terms of life, she had no need to buy a huge house, and it would be more convenient for her to live alone in a hotel, and the reason why she made this decision was entirely to confront Mizoguchi's words. Around Mizoguchi gathered a group of people who wanted to fight with Mizoguchi. Since it is a decisive victory or defeat, of course, there will be losers. Takako Irie, who had been a protagonist in the silent film era, a host of an independent production agency, and a filming opportunity for many of Mizoguchi's masterpieces, later lost her stardom and returned to the film industry under the sympathy and care of many filmmakers. She played a small role in Mizoguchi's "Yang Guifei". Mizoguchi was never satisfied with her simple performance. Mizoguchi probably believes that although the company asked her to play this role, he could not lower her requirements because she was a frustrated actress, and she was in a mood of relief. Takako Irie understood Mizoguchi's mood and voluntarily quit the role. Mizoguchi, as if waiting for her to quit, immediately proposed to the company to replace the famous actress Haruko Sugimura. After Takako Irie had such a humiliating experience, she quit the film industry and never returned. This small incident caused the indignation of some people around Mizoguchi, who knew very well what an important star Takako Irie had been in Mizoguchi's past works, and Mizoguchi's move was too ruthless. But for those who do not work in his work, Mizoguchi will certainly purge them without appeasement. He believes that he is so earnest and tireless, and that the people he works with must be people who are equally willing to work hard. Indeed, only those who can withstand mizoguchi's test of drive can make a name for themselves in Mizoguchi's films.
Yang Guifei (1955)
At the beginning of the sound film, Isuzu Yamada, who played the main role in the two masterpieces "Nanawa Sorrows" and "Gion Sisters" that determined Mizoguchi's reputation, became an actress at the age of fourteen and has been playing the role of a cute girl since her father was an actress and her mother was an artist. These two films are her milestone transformation from a cute girl to a formal big actor. In her later autobiography, Coexistence with Cinema, she recollected the situation as follows:
Mr. Mizoguchi usually treats people very well, but once he enters the work, he will toss you like crazy, and even make you feel unbearable physically. I remember that during the filming of "A thousand origami cranes", my head was immersed in the wash basin for a long time, making me worse than dead, and the ditch was indifferent to the side.
Once it was very cold, and I was in a corner of the set during the break, and The mouth of the ditch came over and asked, "It's cold," and said that he would put a coat on me. I thought it would be nice if he could give people more attention at work.
At that time, critics put Mizoguchi in a sadistic hat. Indeed, he has such an unusual fanatical energy in his work, showing a complete sense of greed of the artist. But I'm not discouraged by this, and I never complain. In the work of making films, between the director and the actors, the heart is always in a state of white-knife intersection and fierce fighting, which is most typical of Mr. Mizoguchi's directing work and has become the basis for his directing.
Most of the people who worked with Mizoguchi were self-taught: the playwright Yoshihito Iida was also from a business school, and many of the actors were not so-called intellectuals. And it is these people who are best able to withstand the challenge of what can be called bluff.
Mizoguchi wrote in the preface to Yoshihito Ida's Script Collection:
As my assistant, Ida Jun has been working for me for a long time. I didn't like to talk non-stop. Language is too slow, very unfree, and anxious when it comes to expressing a person's thoughts. I am often angry because I can't find the right language, and the words that rush out can't help but feel like the language of angry hate. Therefore, people see me as an unreasonable barbarian, but this is not my fault, but the fault of language. Ida Jun knows my mood best, and he doesn't mind helping me work.
I know the most about Yi Tian Jun's work attitude than me. Ida Jun's first draft was always boring, and after my guidance, he would write a completely different and unexpected second draft, which made me feel overwhelmed more than once. If the first draft is the surface, then the second draft is to draw something on the inside. Although the first draft was boring, the direction it was aimed at was basically correct, so I gave my opinion on the second draft. Soon, the third draft that came in was a unique and glorious play...
This article is reprinted with the permission of the publisher
<h1>
</h1>
<h1>"Making Movies Only for Women: The World of Kenji Mizoguchi"</h1>
<h1>(Sun) Tadao Sato / author</h1>
Chen Mei, Chen Duchen / Translation
Yazhong Culture Beijing United Publishing Company
December 2019
Economic Observer Book Review
eeobook
Read difficult articles and grow a little bit every day