From 43 years in the film, Masahiro Shinoda shot a total of 36 films, and in 2003, he completed the masterpiece "Spy Sorge", fulfilling his promise to quit the film industry. His works often present fatalistic and absurd tragedies, and often touch on the sinking posture of people in the fall. At the same time, he can always face the impermanence and loneliness that often appear in the world with a calm mind--although it is slightly nihilistic, it can indeed broaden people's minds.
Masahiro Shinoda (born 1931) is a Japanese director and screenwriter. Graduated from waseda University's Daiichi Faculty of Literature in 1953, and entered the film industry in the same year, where he studied under Yasujiro Ozu and Shibuya, and was known as Japan's "New Wave Three Masters" along with Nagisa Oshima and Yoshida, and founded the independent production company "Performance Society" in 1967, becoming one of the main leaders of Japan's second independent film movement, and his "Heart Skynet Island" (1969) is recognized as a masterpiece
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="178" > boyhood</h1>
On March 9, 1931, Masahiro Hieda was born in Gifu.
On January 12, 1990, "Boyhood" directed by Masahiro Shinoda was released.
Based on the original book "The Long Road" by Kashiwara And the manga of the same name by Fujiko Fujio A, the film should not be missed if you want to understand The childhood of Masahiro Shinoda, especially the psychological perspective of the world that he began to develop as a teenager.
The story takes place in the summer of 1944, the bombing of Tokyo, a pivotal point in World War II. The father, who was about to go to the battlefield, instructed his wife to take refuge with his son and take refuge in the house of his uncle in the countryside of Toyama. The focus of the film is the contradiction and conflict between his son's status as a Tokyo native and his children in the countryside after he transferred to a local elementary school. It is also in this summer full of joy and sadness that Sada Masahiro remembers his boyhood.
Masahiro Shinoda's childhood and adolescence coincided with the 15-year war of the Japanese invasion of China. In the past 15 years, the lives of the chinese land have been destroyed, and the Japanese mainland has also been tragically poisoned. The war caused a great shock to Masahiro Shinoda's family: like his peers, he was indoctrinated by militarism and "to die for the country", and his family was scattered and withered due to the long war—the bigger family change occurred in the fourth grade, and his best sister died of tuberculosis.
Seeing that his family had fallen and his sister had died, Masahiro Shinoda began to question the rationality of militarism and began to think about what "death means to life" exactly. Before he could figure it out, the Japanese announced their surrender on August 15, 1945, and the U.S. military took over Japanese soil in its entirety.
At that time, Masahiro Shinoda was 15 years old. Like thousands of Japanese, he was so shaken: there were decadent ruins everywhere, displaced people everywhere. In contrast, americans in full military uniforms and tall horses, and their aggressiveness that is so strong that they are dismissive.
In parallel with the subversion of values, japan's post-war stagnant Japanese society finally left enough "blank time" for the local people. It was also in this juvenile era when worldview, values and morals were formed that Masahiro Shinoda realized that militarism blinded people's eyes to the world, and instead used war to devour countless lives of innocent people. Behind it is the ugliness and cruelty of Japanese politics that "uses all things as dogs."
It was through this reflection that he strengthened his concept of a profound examination of human politics and past history. So he began to read a lot of books that could help him delve into this problem, and gradually cultivated a calm and objective way of dealing with others, and was always able to detach himself from himself and look at the relationship between the individual, family and politics.
Years later, he recalled: "I was like a neurotic teenager in adolescence. ”
The son jinji in "Boyhood" is such a character: sensitive, impulsive, cowardly, shy, he suffers all changes, but he is silent. The film also recreates how he viewed Japan, the war, and the relationship between the people during his adolescence.
There is a detail in the movie: on the large white paper at the door, the prop prepared by Masahiro Shinoda is the slogan of "student soldier, military dog". This detail is his teasing and mocking of militarism in a flash. He is restrained and stoic, and because of this, "Boyhood" has always been cautious in its presentation of war, and he only uses the lines of some small characters or the shots of a quick glance to express his attitude. For example, the owner of the photo studio laments that the situation is difficult and the business is difficult, which is to reveal how the war makes the little people panic for a long time, and what they do their best to fight and maintain is nothing more than three meals a day and a stable life.
Similar treatment, there is a set of control shots: on August 2, 1945, Toyama City was bombed, Jinji returned to Tokyo with his mother, and the hungry passengers on the train watched the soldiers eat canned food - the real victims of war are always the lowest tens of millions of people.
In addition to the portrayal of the trauma of war, the most wonderful thing about "Boyhood" is its reproduction of the complexity of human nature. For example, when the children in the movie visit the class leader's house, they see Hitler's painting hanging on the wall, which not only reveals why the class leader treats his classmates violently, but also investigates deeply: Who released the evil in the child's heart? But it is even those who have evil thoughts in their hearts that also have a positive side: in the face of adults' persecution and reprimands, they would rather be beaten and bruised in the face than choose to inform.
Although Shinji In "Boyhood" returns to Tokyo, Shoda Masahiro's thoughts are not over.
In his infancy and adolescence, when the Japanese army invaded China, he was indoctrinated by militarism like his peers. The picture shows stills from "Boyhood" with autobiographical overtones
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="177" > from Waseda to Shochiku</h1>
Five years after Japan's surrender, Masahiro Shinoda was admitted to the First Faculty of Literature at Waseda University, specializing in the history of drama in the Edo period.
Waseda University, regarded as a "school for civilians," is not only a first-class institution in Japan with a long history, but is also known for its revolutionary and democratic student style. It was also at this stage that Masahiro Shinoda, who was good at athletics, became famous in school. In his later years, he recalled that when he was an athlete in college, he was grateful for the strong physique he had developed, which allowed him to work as a director with great physical exertion; he also thanked the school's studious, industrious and thoughtful teaching tradition, which strengthened his rapid maturity in thinking and academic improvement.
During college, my mother died of illness. After burying his mother, he devoted himself to the study of komatsumon's left-guard drama, both to divert his grief and to "explore the true meaning of so-called human death from the vigorous martyrdom of the Komatsumon left-guard drama." ”
These academic studies laid a solid foundation for his future filming of Japanese historical themes, as can be seen in the future "Assassination" (1964), "Skynet Island in the Heart" (1969), "Rogue Man" (1970), "Long Gun Quan III" (1986) and "Humble Mihu" (1974) and "City of Owls" (1999), which also laid the thick foundation of his scholarly director.
In this regard, he and Shuji Terayama, an alumnus of the fifth year younger, can be said to be the same: the origin of the classic reconstruction of classical drama between the two is their origin. The difference is that Masahiro Shinoda specializes in classical drama, while Shuji Terayama uses classical theater as a springboard to specialize in surreal avant-garde drama. As a good story in the film world, two people with very different film demands (Masahiro Shinoda is traditional and elegant, and Shuji Terayama is avant-garde and crazy) have collaborated on five films ("Tears on the Mane of a Lion", "Red Face in the Sunset", "Dry Lake", "Rogue Man" and "Epitaph of My Love"). However, this is an afterthought.
After graduating, Masahiro Shinoda joined Shochiku (one of Japan's five major film companies, the other four being Toho," "Toei," "Nihon," and Kadokawa As an assistant director, and became a colleague with the flag bearers Nagisa Oshima, Kishige Yoshida, and Osamu Takahashi, who later formed the Japanese New Wave camp.
In the beginning, Masahiro Shinoda worked as Ozu Yasujiro's deputy and observed the works of famous directors such as Akira Kurosawa, accumulating a lot of valuable experience. But more importantly, he began to reflect on the relationship between the works of the two predecessors and the self.
He once commented on the two: Ozu is confident, and there is sadness lurking in the warm bottom; while Kurosawa is cold, and his anger is wrapped in eagerness and urgency.
Ozu's films are warm, but also vicissitudes, even cold, because he can always confidently assert through movies that "life is like this."
He saw that the essence of this cycle of life is ruthless, such as "Tokyo Story", a film that makes countless people cry, which is actually his most ruthless work, and it is not an exaggeration to say that it is a gentle version of "Kaiyama Festival Examination". What Ozu has to say in "Tokyo Story" is that you are born to be human, and you must get used to accepting loss, accepting separation, and accepting cruelty, so that you can live with peace of mind — this is the most solant core of Ozu Yasujiro's films.
Kurosawa is angry, with a strong personality and emotional intensity, with an ambition to try to find a way out for a person's concrete life. This determined that his films became eloquent and eager. For example, "Rashomon", or "The Desire to Be Born", "Red Beard", all have a strong sense of responsibility to be a life mentor. This urgency has led to his films losing their richer possibilities.
But Masahiro Shinoda grew convinced that none of them would be his role models. Because Ozu's films, although beautiful, are divorced from reality; Akira Kurosawa's films, although cold, are demure.
After figuring out these questions, he confirmed that the film he wanted to make should belong to young people and echo the current reality and politics. And this initial ignorant idea impulse actually coincided with the artistic demands of the later Japanese New Wave.
After in-depth study of the works of his predecessors such as Yasujiro Ozu (1) and Akira Kurosawa (2), Masahiro Shinoda decided to rebel, and he confirmed that the film he wanted to make should belong to young people and should echo the current reality and politics
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="176" > the Japanese New Wave outlier</h1>
The rise of the Japanese New Wave in the 1960s and 1970s has its historical inevitability.
Previously, in the golden age of Japanese cinema, Akira Kurosawa, Yasujiro Ozu, Kenji Mizoguchi, Kiyo Naruse, and Keisuke Kinoshita were all masters of feature films. This group of people can not only broaden and dig deep into the breadth and depth of human nature and society through film, but also be particularly prolific — they are creative and almost exhaust the genre they can shoot. This is too difficult for the audience, and it seems that it is still those themes and content. This provided the ground for another narrative-leaning New Wave film.
The movement began in 1959 and 1960, when Nagisa Oshima, Osamu Takahashi and Masahiro Shinoda introduced Streets of Love and Hope, Only She Knows, and One-Way Tickets to Love. In August 1960, Masahiro Shinoda released Shuji Terayama's Dry Lake– at this point, a new wave movement that was very different from Japan's golden age film group from external form to inner thought was officially launched in Shochiku.
The Japanese New Wave was deeply influenced by the French New Wave, sympathizing with the poor people at the bottom in thought, and supporting young people to challenge society in action, but in the end, he liked to end with failure, and was good at some unstable and disharmonious techniques and elements.
Masahiro Shinoda's "Dry Lake" and "Dried Flowers", shot during Shochiku, are typical examples. Take "Dried Flowers" as an example, this black-and-white film that mythologizes criminals, scored by Takemitsu, adapted from Shintaro Ishihara's "Pure Love in the Sludge", tells the story of a gangster lone killer Ikebe Ryo who has no hope and purpose for survival, and after encountering a problem girl, Kaga Mariko, he resolutely gives up his life. It's a film with a strong sense of nihilism: the hero and heroine are torn apart by a dangerous and desperate external world just as they want to establish an emotional relationship, and they don't even have time to recognize their own existence and sense of tragedy.
Unlike his New Wave colleagues, Masahiro Shinoda's films have preserved deep Japanese cultural connotations from the beginning. As he said, "No Japanese person is willing to die for freedom, but dying for beauty or aesthetic purity is a very Japanese act." "In conventional film noir, tragic protagonists often blindly pursue freedom and sacrifice their lives for it. His protagonist, on the other hand, is obsessed with beauty, and finally self-destructively murders, entirely for the sake of faith in beauty. Perhaps similar to his protagonist's desire for beauty, When Shooting This Film, Sada Masahiro also pays attention to the characteristics of beauty, so the narrative skills of this film are gorgeous, the picture is beautiful, the rhythm is smooth, and there is a kind of exuberant passion - the visual appeal of formal beauty makes him different from other colleagues.
In this trend, Masahiro Shinoda is neither like Nagisa Oshima, who "does not forgive one", nor like Masahira Imamura, who claims to be only interested in the "lower body and the bottom of society", and from his debut film "Love One-Way Ticket", he has embraced a gentle way of rebellion. Sex, violence, and political criticism are the basic elements of the new wave, and he does not touch them, but takes them lightly, without blind anger.
Nagisa Oshima, Yoshida Yoshishige, and Masahiro Shinoda are called the "Three Masters of the New Wave", but Masahiro Shinoda and the other two are relatively different in narrative and aesthetic appeals, the most obvious of which is in the setting of the protagonist. The protagonists in Nagisa Oshima and Kishige Yoshida are mostly simple-minded, rude young people who have a cynical game mentality towards life, and even have a tendency to self-destruction. However, the protagonist in Masahiro Shinoda's work is more intelligent, but he is also caught in contradictions. In addition to Ikebe Ryo, who is unconsciously obsessed with beauty and dedicated to "Dried Flowers", the same is true of Shinichiro Mikami in "Dry Lake": he actively participates in the student movement groups involved in social reform, on the one hand, he disdains and resents the evil deeds of the power class, and on the other hand, he accepts the pleasure of middle-aged women. Not to mention, Shinichiro Mikami's bedroom is covered with posters of dictators such as Hitler and Mussolini.
This is contradictory, self-consistent, and it is what Masahiro Shinoda tries to warn the audience: everyone has positive dreams, but they will always slide into the abyss of desire to gradually degenerate in the frustrations and temptations of real life, and the impermanence of the world is the force that accelerates people's depravity.
From 1964 to 1965, it was Masahiro Shinoda's last two years in Shochiku. During this time, he filmed three works: Assassination, Sasuke the Ape, and Beauty and Sorrow.
Masahiro Shinoda's tenth work, Assassination, was the first costume film he shot. Nobuo Yamada, a screenwriter who collaborated with Hiroshi Inagaki on samurai films, adapted a piece of Sima Liaotaro's historical novel "The End of the Curtain" called "The Wonderful Eight Langs", and the protagonist was the famous "Dewa Ronin" Kiyokawa Hachiro in the late shogunate period. He was born in a chaotic world, won the battle of literature and martial arts, and had the ambition to pacify the world. In order to suppress the Restorationists and pardon them for murder, the Baomu faction formed a 50-man "Langshi Team" to serve as the vanguard of the Baomu. In fact, the curtain is only a cover, and he is really on the side of the reformers. Just as he was full of ambition and plotted to establish the Kiyokawa shogunate, he was drunk one night and went alone, and was assassinated from behind by his old enemy and samurai Sasaki.
"Assassination" is a masterpiece that fully shows that Masahiro Shinoda borrows the aesthetics of world cinema: the narrative structure is shaped like "Citizen Kane", using a puzzle-style multi-perspective narrative to allude to the political position of Kiyokawa Hachiro Shadow; the editing technique refers to Godard's early film techniques, the sense of rhythm is relaxed, especially in the narrative climax, it will be more impactful, such as the last moment, the film switches back and forth between the subjective and objective shots, taking the audience to switch back and forth between the assassin and the assassinated, which constantly approaches the urgency of the protagonist Visually bring the audience into the narrative and ask: Should this assassination be carried out?
The film was a great success, and Masahiro Shinoda filmed "Sasuke sasuke's Strange Tales" and "Beauty and Sorrow" in succession. In his sequence, the former is not outstanding, but in terms of theme, continuing the consistent style of sympathy for the vulnerable, but in terms of narrative, shot and editing technique, innovation is lackluster.
And "Beauty and Sorrow", adapted from Yasushi Kawabata's famous work, is the first color film of Masahiro Shinoda, which tells the story of the writer Satoshi Yamamura who derailed with the young girl Yachikusa Kaoru 20 years ago, and 20 years later, Yamamura Satoshi reunited with the eight thousand grass kaoru with the female student Kaga Mariko; the passionate and seductive Kaga Mariko seduced Satoshi Yamamura's eldest son and stirred up their family, and the result was that she was not out of love, everything she did was just to avenge her teacher, because she loved her teacher deeply...
Beauty and Sorrow is Masahiro Shinoda's work that best combines literary interest and film form. After that, he left Shochiku to start his own era of independent production.
Masahiro Shinoda and Nagisa Oshima (top) and Kishige Yoshida (part 2) and called them the "Three Masters of the New Wave"
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="109" > the era of independent production</h1>
Masahiro Shinoda, who is no longer bound by the blockbuster factory system, has begun to devote himself to his favorite themes and stories, and gradually ushered in the heyday of the era - according to the division of the times, this boundary will be clearer.
At the end of the 1960s, during the exploration period, he made three films in five years: "The Island of Execution", "Burning Clouds" and "Heart Skynet Island".
In "The Island of Execution", set in World War II, Masahiro Shinoda incorporates his boyhood thinking about life and death and pushes it to the audience with a highly metaphorical art form – this extremely literary thinking blocks the possibility of the audience entering the story more directly, resulting in both word-of-mouth and box office failures.
"Burning Clouds" was his first film to be selected as one of the top ten films of the year. Shui Mimian's original novel tells the story of a deserter who falls in love with a prostitute during his escape and is eventually arrested. In the process of scripting, Masahiro Shinoda incorporates more facts about the Japanese invasion of China to show the crushing and destruction of the japanese people at the bottom of the war.
Later, Masahiro Shinoda launched "Skynet Island in the Heart", which has been rated as the best work in his career by many people so far – whether it is aesthetic appeal, film structure, narrative method or experimental, artistic and creative, it is impeccable. The story is taken from the works of Konmatsumon Zoemon. The script was originally written for Kyori (a humanoid drama), and later Konmatsu adapted the script of Kabuki based on it. Masahiro Shinoda adopts the script of Kabuki.
He presents the story with a concise stage image. Borrowing the rules of the traditional Kabuki stage into the art form of the film, supplemented by minimalist expressionism, creating non-specific abstractions, such as art scenes, using the calligraphy of his cousin Shinoda Peach, ukiyo-e artist Hidesen no Kusanagi double paper painting, and Kuritsu Kiyoshi's art, the picture presents more ambiguous signifiers. At the same time, the transformation of its scenes also allows the viewer to feel the rhythm of pure glass. In reality, the "kuroko" who operates the pure glass in human form not only plays a role in guiding and controlling the people in the play on the screen, but on the other hand, they can make the viewer think of the manipulative role of the god of destiny - just like at the beginning of the movie, Koharu and the dead body lying side by side under the Taikoo Bridge.
Stills from "Skynet Island in the Heart"
This work also allows Masahiro Shinoda to walk with "Shochiku Chief Actress" Iwashita Shima. In the movie, Iwashita Shima plays the roles of a lady and a prostitute: Lady Kenshu and a protector, and the prostitute is lazy and charming, and the two characters are easily switched between the circular stage, and Iwashita's performance is a must.
The 1970s and 1990s were the most mature and stable period of Shoda's creation, but at each stage, he had a focus and favorite theme.
For example, in the 1970s, he became obsessed with costume themes, and successively filmed "Rogue Man", "Silence", "Humble Mihu", "Sakura No Mori No Mankai", "Lonely Blind Girl Ah Ling" and "Night Fork Pool" - these films gradually distanced him from the New Wave director camp, because they were all based on Japanese history, which deviated from the inertia of the New Wave with contemporary youth as the protagonists.
In the 1980s and 1990s, Masahiro Shinoda began to explore the patriarchal shadow of modern Japanese society around the theme of World War II, which was both a question of the Japanese militarist tradition and a healing of his childhood and adolescence. This is the "Boyhood Trilogy" led by setouchi Shonen Baseball Company (1984), Shonen Era (1990), and Setouchi Moonlight Serenade (1997), which not only touched the Japanese people's nostalgia for the bumpy career before and after the end of World War II, but also triggered people's reflection and questioning of traditional Japanese patriarchy.
At the same time, Masahiro Shinoda also maintained an interest in historical themes, and "The Right to the Long Gun" (1986), "Maihime" (1989), "Writing Music" (1995) and "City of Owls" (1999) are his other masterpieces. The difference with the historical themes he shot before is that he pays more attention to the visual effects at the image level, and has been criticized by many heavy forms and light content - this is a bit similar to Zhang Yimou's creative method in the years after "Heroes", visually reaching the pinnacle, but the story is a few breaths short.
Masahiro Shinoda's finale is Spy Sorge, set in World War II. The film's protagonists are Richard Sorge, a spy who provided Japanese military intelligence to the Soviet Union during World War II, and Hidemi Ozaki, a Japanese journalist who provided him with intelligence. In the film, Sorge is portrayed as a spyer with ideals of peace and international communism, while Ozaki is portrayed as a character who wants to contribute to the Chinese people ravaged by Japanese militarism.
But it is such a film that summarizes the director's lifelong artistic pursuits, life feelings and political concepts, but it has been snubbed in Japan - in the "Film Centennial Masterpieces" selection organized by the "Film Shunbao", No work was shortlisted by Masahiro Shinoda, and it was never seen in the selection of major film awards in Japan that year.
He rarely responded to this, but in an interview with his wife's photography, he calmly said: The energy is not supported, go home early to rest.
Shima Iwashita, the wife of Masahiro Shinoda, who participated in Yasujiro Ozu's works "Autumn Day" and "The Taste of Saury", was the chief actress of Shochiku for 16 years, and won the best actress award at the first Japan Academy for "Lonely Blind Girl Arin" in 1977
END
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This article was originally written by Zhidao Education New Educator Magazine text/Qingyan