Ozu was placed on the altar, and Hara Setsuko was also put on the shrine, in the Japanese world, she was the "eternal saint", and in the Chinese world, the film critic Mike's words were equivalent to a rune for her:
"A faint joy, for me is the untraceable commotion brought about by the clothes of the original knot. Her presence is reassuring, especially because after a slight surprise, it is even more dignified: it is such a person who is always incompatible with the environment, no matter how elegant it is, it is difficult to ensure that it will not hurt the hands and feet, but I don't know how, and I have effortlessly achieved tacit understanding with heaven and earth. Obviously, it is flesh and blood, but it is like stepping on a lotus platform, the seven passions and six desires in the mortal world, and the shadow covers the transcendence of the immortal family. ”
Not to mention that Mike confuses Hara Setsuko's screen with the actors themselves under the screen, just to say that the image that was put on the stage is obviously born from her image in Ozu's film. Such an image has become the standard format of the original sub-image, or even the only format, which makes people feel a little overdone.
In fact, Hara Setsuko has starred in more than a hundred movies in her lifetime, and her image is not as changeable as that of big actresses such as Hideko Takayama and Isuzu Yamada, but it is by no means monotonous. In the "Tribute to the Original Festival" section of the beijing film festival just past, Chinese audiences had the privilege of witnessing "another original festival" on the big screen. A few years ago, in the book "Hara Setsuko" edited by the "Movie Shunbun" publishing house, Sato Tadao analyzed the 13 memorable heroines played by Hara Setsuko. Although it still focuses on Ozu's films, it does not erase the glorious image of Hara Setsuko in other directors' films, and is much more objective and decent than the style of "only recognizing Ozu's Hara Setsuko".
Tadao Sato pointed out that in terms of expressing emotional restraint and restraint, Hara Setsuko is not as good as Tanaka Atsuyo and Yamada Isuzu, and in terms of the softness and delicacy of performance, she is not as good as Hideko Takayama. She is good at "women of the new era", that is, new women with Western style of brightness, high level of knowledge, and more sensitive to human dignity. Sato gives an example of Yukiko, a blind girl in the 1938 film of the same name based on Andrei Kidd's Pastoral Symphony (director: Saf Yamamoto), whose style of work is Western-style and completely devoid of a japanese local atmosphere. In fact, this kind of movie may be classified as Sato's so-called concept film. Also in this category are Akira Kurosawa's "I Have No Regrets about Youth" and "Idiots", Konzaburo Yoshimura's "Anjo Family's Ball" and Keisuke Kinoshita's "Cheers to Big Miss", and Imai Masa's "Aosuyama Mountains". The character settings and plot settings in such films are to serve a certain (political or artistic) concept of the director, so the actor's performance can only be a conceptual interpretation, so it is inevitable that it is unreal, blunt, and contrived, which is why many film critics criticize the performance of The Pathogen In such films.
The original setsuko in Ozu's film, in comparison, is much more natural. However, due to Ozu's strict requirements for the performance of the actor, she does not like the actor's performance to be extremely familiar and flowing, preferring to be familiar, and sometimes it is easy to cause the actor's performance to be rigid and rigid, specific to the original festival, she often hangs a mask-like smile in Ozu's films, which seems mysterious and sometimes awkward. Personally, I think that Setsuko Hara's performance under Naruse's lens is the most natural. Naruse is particularly good at expressing the feelings of the characters through non-verbal such as the actor's body movements, subtle expressions, and eyes, and because he shoots female films, it is especially suitable for actresses to play their acting skills, and those with high acting skills such as Hideko Takayama are of course like fish, and Hara Setsuko, which is usually only played in Ozu films, is also played exceptionally in Naruse's films.
The earliest collaboration between Setsuko Hara and Naruse was "Rice". In the film, Ken Uehara and Setsuko Hara play a couple in a period of boredom, and the marriage is on the verge of collapse. Through her varied body posture, subtle movements, eyes, words, and even sudden bursts of laughter, Hara Jiezi portrays a housewife who has lost the joy of life after being consumed by life and tasteless marriage. There is a scene in the film: after learning that her boring husband and her niece are flirting, her reaction is not anger or anger, but suddenly sits on the stairs and laughs uncontrollably. Analyzing this scene in "Rice" in her book Naruse Mikio's Film, Catherine Russell points out that Setsuko Hara relies on gestures and facial expressions to convey her disappointment in her husband and her unspoken desire to change her life, and her performance goes far beyond the mask-like smile she is known for in Ozu's films. Because the first half of the film has the repressive feelings she has accumulated over the years, this laugh is like a stone-shattering explosion, revealing her wordless pain as a working wife.
In another work of Naruse with a similar plot, "Sudden Rain", Hara Setsuko also plays the wife of a working family, and Sano Plays Her incompetent husband on Tuesday, this family situation is even more unbearable than "Rice", there is a feeling of Pepsi lamentation between poor couples, plus countless small disturbances brought to her by community affairs, and Hara Setsuko's pain and depression are also more profound and sad. Naruse is particularly good at presenting the real situation of the heroine by presenting the real situation of the heroine in the eyes of others and the poor couple behind closed doors. In this film, Hara Jiezi took an umbrella to the station to pick up her husband, seemingly loving and envious of others, but in fact, her husband drank all night and did not return. Naruse also often filmed scenes of husband and wife quarrels, and women were often able to express their desire to be uneasy in the room by loudly accusing their husbands, implicitly revealing the emergence of women in the new era, which is unimaginable in Ozu's films.
Hara's more wonderful interpretation of the awakened woman appears in "The Sound of the Mountain". The film is adapted from Yasunari Kawabata's novel of the same name, but the perspective shifts from the novel's Ieko Nobugo to the daughter-in-law Kikuko played by Setsuko Hara, who continues to play her husband, and the marriage between the two survives in name only, which can be seen from the fact that the couple does not have a face-to-face shot from the beginning to the end of the film. Instead, Kikuko and Gonggong Shingo have a certain intimate relationship, and when they appear on the street together, they look more like a couple, although both are careful and Naruse has no intention of making an incest film. Compared with the traditional daughter-in-law in the original work, who cannot leave any image, Kikuko in the film can release her desires to the fullest, laughing when she is sad, and crying when she is happy. One of the reasons for the collapse of a couple's marriage in "Rice" and "The Tempest" is that there are no children, implying that if there are children, the situation may be improved. However, in "The Sound of the Mountain", the daughter-in-law played by Hara Setsuko seems to be weak, but in fact she is decisive and brave, and has a fierce force, privately beating off the fetus in the abdomen, completely erasing the possibility of improving the situation of the couple, and even filing for divorce. Therefore, although the story is tragic, Hara Setsuko gives the image of her daughter-in-law a brilliance, far more hopeful than the obscure endings of "Rice" and "Sudden Rain", "Sound of the Mountain" is the sound of her inner hope.
The last film that Hara Setsuko and Naruse collaborated on was "Mother and Wife", which did not have much praise for both Naruse's director and Hara Setsuko's performance, but there were also intriguing points, all because of the setting of the character played by Hara Setsuko and the direction of the plot in the film, which was very Ozu-style, but subverted Ozu's bright and beautiful world. The daughter Sanae played by Hara Setsuko returned to her mother's house because of the death of her husband, and her family members have arranged marriage for her, but it is her insurance money that is valued. Sanae falls in love with Kuroki, a young winemaker played by Tatsuya Nakayo, only to unexpectedly marry a tea ceremony master and abandon romance for family responsibilities. She wants to take her mother to Kyoto to live with her, and the story is all about Ozuwa, but her mother does not want to leave. Film critic Yu Akira said: This kind of filial piety conception, which is taken for granted in the Ozu world, is reduced to the mother's reluctance to go to Kyoto under Naruse's lens, that is, the image of Sanae's filial piety is hollowed out, reflecting the so-called filial piety arrangement, which may be just wishful thinking. The film not only obscures Ozu Kazumo, but even deconstructs the star image of Hara Setsuko herself: there is a scene in the movie where Kuroki kisses her, which actually deconstructs the chaste image of her "sacred virgin", and the media also hyped up the gossip of "sacred virgin kissing". In fact, in 1948, when the filming of "The Virginity of Time" was already used, a similar gimmick was already used, and the heroine played by Hara Setsuko in the film fell into a love triangle and then had a miscarriage, which completely subverted her consistent pure screen image, the movie is said to be a big seller, and "Mother and Wife" has actually become Naruse's most popular movie.
In "The Surprise of Japanese Pictures", Tang Zhenzhao once quoted a passage from Donald Richie in "Women in Japanese Movies", saying that there is a great distance between real life and the Japanese female figure on the screen. They are oppressed in reality, but they can release themselves on the screen and let themselves play as much as possible, and many Japanese directors consciously use them as the central role of the film. He cites Kenji Mizoguchi, Keisuke Kinoshita, Kun Ichikawa, Hahitojin, and Masahito Imamura as examples, but ultimately believes that Naruse is the director who best understands the situation of Japanese women and the nature of their plight. In fact, in addition to Hideko Takayama, Setsuko Hara is also one of the actresses who can best convey the theme of director Naruse's portrayal of the modernity dilemma faced by Japanese women. Compared to the unnatural Hara Setsuko in the films of Akira Kurosawa, Konzaburo Yoshimura, Masamune Imai, and Hara Setsuko, who wears a no-show mask in Ozu's calm and waveless world, I prefer to watch Hara Setsuko laugh and cry in Naruse's movies.
In Naruse's films, Hara "also has a body and a heart" and "every inch is alive."