There were four great masters in the golden age of Japanese cinema.
Akira Kurosawa, Akio Naruse, Yasujiro Ozu, and Kenji Mizoguchi, each with their own film style.
Unlike Akira Kurosawa's fast shots, Yasujiro Ozu's still shots, and Naruse's changeable shots, Kenji Mizoguchi's shots have dynamic picture beauty.
The Tale of the Rainy Moon is one of Kenji Mizoguchi's most famous works, which shows the cinematic aesthetics of Kenji Mizoguchi.
The beauty of the painting, the ink painting style, the use of depth of field, one shot at a time, the long shot of sports, and the scene scheduling are all shown in the film.
The first is the beauty of the picture.
At the beginning of the film, the camera slowly moves to the left until Genjiro and his wife Miyagi appear in the picture, and the camera turns to still.
The Yuan Shilang family is loading ceramics on the car, preparing to pull it to the city, taking advantage of the chaos of the war to touch the fish, making a lot of money, and the Ruyi abacus is playing very well.
A shadow appeared in the distance, and the younger sister Ah Bin pulled his brother-in-law Fuji Bing Wei to prevent him from following his brother to the city to become a broken samurai.
However, unable to resist her husband's stubbornness, Fujibei ran to Genjiro's side, the characters changed from virtual to real, and the two pulled the car to the city.
At this time, the main characters of "The Tale of the Rainy Moon" all appeared, and the story really began.
Genjuro's ghost is confused, and Fujibei's unrealistic redemption has also opened the curtain, and this opening method seems to be slowly unfolding like a picture.
At the end of the film, the camera slowly moves sideways to the right and then stops.
Genjuro reformed from evil to righteousness, focusing on the family, no longer greedy for money and lustful, and Fuji Bing Wei worked hard to plow the land, no longer high and far-reaching.
This way of ending is like a picture scroll gradually closing, echoing the beginning, the story is over, Genjuro and Fujibei, after some gains and losses, have become the top pillars of the family's eight classics.
In the process of opening and closing this painting, Kenji Mizoguchi also allows the audience to see what the painting looks like, that is, the ink painting style.
Its style is fresh, free and ethereal, and it integrates the artistic conception and ink interest of Japanese painting into every picture, blending with lyricism and scenes.
When the defeated soldiers were not paying attention, the two families secretly carried the burned porcelain to the ship and sold it in the city through the waterway, and the picture was very beautiful.
Kenji Mizoguchi takes ink painting as the background, the set is small and beautiful, with the help of the thick and light virtual reality of the ink color to express the object, highlight the interest of pen and ink, and pursue the artistic mood.
In the background, the ink-splashed river trees are magnificent, and the tone of the pen is soft and poetic, reflecting the aesthetics of ink painting "between the like and the unlike", and the artistic conception is far-reaching.
The second is the long lens, and Kenji Mizoguchi's long lenses have an unchanging formula.
First the fixed shot begins, then the character walks into the shot, then the camera follows the character and finally becomes a long shot from a distance.
But in this invariance, Kenji Mizoguchi joins the change, making his long shots different from the long shots of people-dominated people in European films, and Kenji Mizoguchi's long shots often blur the timeline and sense of space.
Rugenjuro is fascinated by Wakasa and sings with her night and night.
When the two are in the hot spring fish and water party, the camera moves to the left, the character disappears, the hot spring appears, the hot spring disappears, and the land appears.
When the camera rises from left to left, the night becomes daylight, and Genjuro and Wakasa appear in the picture again, cooking and playing together.
This long shot replaces the transition, and only the unchanged lens is used to achieve the transformation of the scene and the advancement of the plot.
It also makes it difficult for the audience to perceive the changes in time and space, no wonder Kenji Mizoguchi is highly regarded by the French New Wave, and his long shots are innovative on the basis of Bazin, rather than blindly imitating.
The third is a one-shot and depth-of-field application.
Kenji Mizoguchi is probably the most knowledgeable master of depth of field among Japanese directors, moving low-angle shooting, fixed long shots, and long shots of long-range sports.
In "The Tale of the Rainy Moon", he uses the combination of these lenses to bring about the depth of field changes to create a look and feel of the end of the world.
As for a one-shot, just as Yasujiro Ozu never explains his low-angle shots, Kenji Mizoguchi has never spoken long about one of his shots.
But his ability to tell stories with the lens will not be questioned, after all, Hou Xiaoxian, Yang Dechang, and Wong Kar-wai are highly respected for this, and Hou Xiaoxian even pays tribute to "Sea Flowers".
Finally, there is the scene scheduling.
At the end of the film, the heart-washing Genjiro returns to his hometown, running from the far side of the camera to the near side, and the camera follows him into his home.
Genjuro pushed the door in, the house was dark and empty, after turning around, Genjuro went out of the door, shouting loudly outside the house, looking for the figure of his wife Miyagi, the camera did not follow him out, but stopped inside the house.
After Genjiro's voice came through the back door, the camera began to move to the right.
The light changed from dark to bright, there was an oil lamp and stove in the room, Miyagi was cooking on the side, Genjiro was ecstatic when he saw this scene, ran to Miyagi's side, and after confessing, he held his son and slept on Miyagi's side, while Miyagi picked up the knitting clothes.
This section of scheduling, the follow-up of the camera, the actor's position, the change of light are perfectly coordinated, it looks silky and comfortable, suggesting that the prodigal son looks back, and also clearly shows that the Miyagi and the warm scene seen by Genjuro are illusions.
In addition to the aesthetics of the film, the strange story of "The Tale of the Rainy Moon" is like China's "Liaozhai Zhiyi", which interprets the true meaning of life of family and love with strange power and chaos and yin and yang errors.
Genjuro and Fujibeibei were honest countrymen, but neither of them was able to measure up, and because of the war, they went to the big city to sell porcelain, so all kinds of strange things happened.
Genjiro was confused by the female ghost, and spent all day enjoying the fish and water, completely forgetting the wife of the chaff in the family, resulting in his wife being killed by the defeated soldiers.
Fortunately, thanks to the guidance of the high monk, he was not mistaken by Meise, escaped from the haunted house, returned to his hometown, and was reunited with his son, and his wife exchanged her life for his prodigal son.
Fujibei was bent on being a samurai, causing his wife to be humiliated by the rogue and reduced to a prostitute, and he took the head of the enemy general by chance, and from then on, the high-ranking official Houlu did his best.
After meeting his wife at the liquor store, he felt a lot of guilt in his heart, so he dropped everything and reconciled with his wife, this ending is not the original intention of Kenji Mizoguchi, but forced by the production company.
In the end, the movie has a fairytale ending, but watching "The Tale of the Rainy Moon" is more than just weird talk.
In "The Tale of the Rainy Moon", Kenji Mizoguchi added the feminism, realism, traditional noh drama and visual arts he had been pursuing, making his films both friendly and ornamental.
Even if there are not so many thrillers and mysterious elements in the film, and people are mainly everywhere, it will not make "The Tale of the Rainy Moon" lose its color, because this has made "The Story of the Rainy Moon" circulated to this day, rather than a momentary curiosity.