Japanese cinema is an important part of world cinema, and although there is a slight gap between today's Japanese cinema and Europe and the United States, the japanese films and Japanese directors of the past are definitely the best of their time.
Akira Kurosawa, Yasujiro Ozu, Kenji Mizoguchi, Akio Naruse, Masaki Kobayashi, and many others are internationally renowned master directors.
Among them, the three directors of Ozu Yasujiro, Kenji Mizoguchi and Naruse Mizuki are the most prominent.
The three-man film is extremely personal, but there is something in common in the difference.
Ozu, Mizoguchi, and Naruse, all three directors like to shoot movies from a female perspective.
In their films, the protagonists are mostly women.
Even if the starting point is the same as that of women, the foothold is not the same.
Ozu's family, Mizoguchi's big time, and Naruse's emotional entanglements.
Yasujiro Ozu goes out of his way to shoot "The Same Story": father and daughter depend on each other, and daughter grows up with a boyfriend. At first, the father did not agree, and finally, the father was relieved.
Most of Naruse's stories take place in modern times, and he likes to talk about the emotional experiences of modern women.
Kenji Mizoguchi focuses on women in ancient times and during the period of change.
The three people also have different treatments for the tone of the story and the ending.
Ozu is light in comedy, Mizoguchi shoots tragedy, and Naruse is sad with joy and joy in sorrow.
Yasujiro Ozu's films are lighthearted, including "I Was Born, But..." and "Good Morning.".
The protagonists of these two films are children, and the world of children is of course innocent, even if there are occasional dark clouds.
His many "marrying women" films, the overall style is also very sunny and positive.
If I had to choose the most "sad" one in his movie, it would be "Late Spring"—the last scene, the father holding an apple, sitting in a chair, and the loneliness comes to the fore.
Even in films like "Hen in the Wind," Yasujiro Ozu gave it a big reunion ending.
Kenji Mizoguchi is good at making tragedies because his core content is humanitarianism and realism, emphasizing the oppression of women in different systems and different eras.
Death is more enlightening, so he must end up dead.
At the end of "The Tale of Kinmatsu", the master mother and the male servant are both martyred, and Kenji Mizoguchi uses poignant love to attack the oppression and injustice of women in feudal society;
The heroine of "Lady Musashino" committed suicide by taking poison in order to escape the world. Shortly after her suicide, Japan abolished the crime of "adultery";
The Red Line is set in the mid-1950s when the Japanese Diet was about to introduce a law banning the sale of prostitution, and the film's protagonists are a group of women in the industry.
Yoshio Naruse is somewhere in between, he is not as bland in the plot as Ozu, and his films will create contradictions and conflicts to a large extent, but they must not be dead like Mizoguchi. (Of course, there are exceptions)
Although he is also about women's emotions, he is different from Kenji Mizoguchi, and he focuses on women's emotional problems.
Although "Confused" and "Miss Ayou" are both unrequited love, the themes are completely different, and the audience's viewing experience is also very different.
It can also be said that Kenji Mizoguchi spoke of the era, and Naruse Mizuki was a speaker.
In terms of shooting methods, Ozu's fixed lens has become a major symbol of him.
Ozu doesn't like fading in, fading out, melting, etc., and he doesn't believe in montages and explosive compositions.
Yasujiro Ozu's films, mostly fixed shots, shoot people, shoot streets, shoot stairs, shoot outside buildings.
A lot of pictures can be taken as computer wallpaper.
The low-angle up-and-down shot is also one of the characteristics of Yasujiro Ozu.
He believed that the Japanese way of life was always sitting, so he chose this method to make movies.
In order to be able to adhere to this photographic technique, Ozu Yasujiro took great pains.
In Hen in the Wind, there is this scene:
The wife returned home, and the landlord told her husband was back.
In fact, the wife can also know without the landlord telling, after all, Japanese people will change their shoes when they go home.
However, Yasujiro Ozu is reluctant to appear in his films, so he will use the "landlord tells" technique to promote the plot.
Kenji Mizoguchi's signature is "One Shot at a Time".
The so-called "one shot at a time" refers to the use of a lens to shoot a scene in a place that occurs in the script.
A typical example is the Yuan Lu Zhongchen Zang.
The film has a lot of long shots, and as for the close-ups, there are very few.
Take the "cutting people" incident at the beginning of the movie, Kenji Mizoguchi uses a long-shot approach, from the frontal panorama of the pine corridor to the appearance of characters in the corridor, and then to the occurrence of the "cutting people" incident, the whole scene is completed in one go.
Although there are supplementary shots during the period, Kenji Mizoguchi can hardly see the flaws through the transformation of sets and shots.
Compared to the previous two, Naruse's shots don't have a specific style. He pays attention to the variety of lenses, and actively tries and innovates various film techniques.
In his later period, Naruse liked to adapt literary works, and "married" with literature to reach the peak of his creation.
"Floating Clouds" and "The Book of Liberties" are representative works of literary adaptations.
All three directors have a royal female protagonist, Hara Setsuko of Yasujiro Ozu, Akyo Tanaka of Kenji Mizoguchi, and Hideko Takayama of Kiyo Naruse.
Yasujiro Ozu "single love" Hara Setsuko.
In his diary, he praised Hara:
"I've been making movies for more than twenty years, and it's very rare for an actress like Hara Setsuko to be able to understand the characters in depth and show superb acting skills, in fact, this is not a compliment, I think she is the best film actress in Japan."
Ozu's diary accounts of Hara Setsuko are almost always work.
However, readers who are keen on cp can always smell a hint of gossip in the words.
"Lately people have been rumoring that I am going to marry Hara." There is such a description in Ozu Yasujiro's diary.
Throughout his life, Ozu did not marry, and Hara Setsuko did not marry.
Hara suddenly retired after Ozu's death and lived in seclusion at Kiyomio-ji Temple, not far from the Ōzu Temple, where Ozu was buried.
What their inner thoughts about each other are unknown!
As the royal heroine of Kenji Mizoguchi, Tanaka appeared in 11 movies.
These include classics such as "The Daughter of the Western Crane Generation", "The Tale of the Rainy Moon", "Doctor Pepper", "Lady Wushuang" and so on.
The relationship between Kenji Mizoguchi and Tanaka Ayushiro is also a topic that many fans pay attention to after dinner.
Kenji Mizoguchi once told his friend, without getting drunk, that he was in love with Jun Tanaka.
Many of his friends around him also have the same feeling: Kenji Mizoguchi likes Tanaka Seiyo.
Tanaka Said in an interview: "At this point, I can tell you clearly that if Mizoguchi Really loves me Tanaka Atsuyo himself and wants to treat me as his wife and treat me Tanaka as a woman instead of an actress, I think that even if I have never been married in my life, I have actually achieved the happiness of marriage." "
Compared with the first two pairs, the relationship between Naruse and Hideko Takayama is not as good as imagined.
Hideko Takayama's assessment of Naruse is this:
"Mr. Naruse is a taciturn man who talks so little that he even gives a sinister feeling."
Photographer Yui Pillow Fu, who has worked with Naruse For a long time, unceremoniously refutes Hideko Takayama's statement, and he reveals that Naruse has no good feelings for Hideko Takayama, but only looks up to her acting skills.
The private disagreement did not affect the artistic cooperation between the two, and Naruse's dislike could not hide Hideko Takayama's brilliance in Naruse's films.
Many people should have seen Imatoshi's classic movie "Millennium Actress", and there are many opinions about who the prototype of Fujiwara Chiyoko is in the movie.
Imatoshi mentioned Setsuko Hara and Hideko Takayama in the interview, and some netizens saw the shadow of Tanaka Atsuyo in many details.
All three directors have several films that are not like their films, Yasujiro Ozu's "Floating Grass", Kenji Mizoguchi's "Yang Guifei", and Akio Naruse's "Autumn Coming".
"Floating Grass" is the most dramatically conflicted film in Ozu Yasujiro's films, although it also revolves around the family, but the relationships and conflicts between the characters are much more complicated than other films.
I still don't understand why Kenji Mizoguchi made such a movie as "Yang Guifei"?
The theme of the era is not in line with his talk, and the finished product is neither Japanese nor Chinese.
Naruse's "Autumn Is Coming" changes his previous style of female perspective, and the protagonists of the film are two children.
If you don't look closely, do you think it was taken by Yasujiro Ozu?
These three masters had a profound impact on future generations, and many people who later became masters regarded them as role models.
German director Wim Wenders admired Yasujiro Ozu, and he also made a documentary film about Yasujiro Ozu, "In Search of Ozu";
French director Godard likes Kenji Mizoguchi, saying: "The art of Kenji Mizoguchi is to make things appear as they are, and this "simplicity" is the most complex part of his films. ”
Yang Dechang, as the biggest supporter of Naruse Mikio, also praised his predecessors:
The final shot of his eighty-sixth work, "Confused". Gao Feng Xiuzi suddenly understood that coming down from the muddy hillside, the body that everyone carried out was the little uncle Kayama Yuzo, who was secretly in love with him. At this time, she rushed toward the group carrying the body. Running and running, as if abandoning all the peaks suddenly stopping, was captured by a single shot. In most movies, directors will do sensational treatment of the heroine's acting skills, which becomes a good opportunity to play with the audience's feelings at this time. The complete opposite of Naruse stopped at the peak station that was chasing after her like crazy, and she stood. Her expression suddenly became calm, as if she was saying to herself, "This is life." Then life will have to go on. Naruse quickly cuts off the frame and lets the movie end. Is there more unspoken tolerance than that?
Yasujiro Ozu, Kenji Mizoguchi, Kio Naruse, Akio Naruse, and Akira Kurosawa and Masasu kobayashi of the same period created the climax of Japanese cinema and the glory of world cinema.
With the passage of time, Japanese films have experienced a low ebb and recovery until today, and they still shine in the world film industry.
Also for Asian countries, in terms of film, Japan has a lot to learn, and the road to Chinese cinema is heavy and long.