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Oshima Nagisa 2
Stylistic Self-negation
Changing Styles
• A variety of visual and narrative styles.
• Different visual and narrative styles employed in each film
• Deliberate refusal of relying on a constant and enduring visual (narrative) styles.
Changing Styles • Referential and self-referential style - formal characteristics made of cinematic quotations
• Reference to Brecht Theatre, films of French ‘nouvelle vague’ (Jean-Luc Goddard) and Alain Resnais, British social realist films, etc.
• Self-referential: conscious about his own film styles
Experimental film making
• Style is different in each film but is con-sistentely experimental.
• New, unexpected, unpredictable and the most importantly challenging and subversive (aesthetically and politically)
• Unconventional and non-realistic
• On the verge of being vulgar and offensive
Unconventional film making
• Throughout the film the camera are tilted – crooked, precrious images
• Corresponding to the film’s subject – insecurity of a boy of a single parent
• The Town of Love and Hope Oshima’s first film.
Unconventional film making
• Bold compositions making most of the wide screen format
• Garish, raw and lurid colours in Oshima’s second film, Cruel Story of the Youth
Unconventional film making
• Sexual energy in utter hopelessness and poverty is expressed by the use of symbolic colour - red in Sun’s Burial
• Red of the national flag• Red of blood (hemorrhage)• Red of hot desire
Experimental Film Making
• 100 minutes discussion and debate about the Japanese politics and political betrayal in the setting of a wedding reception.
• Brechtian chamber drama • Night and Fog in Japan, Alain Resnais’ Nuit et
Brouillard (Night and Fog)
Experimental Film Making
• The film is made of only 43 shots (c.f. 2,000 in Violence at Noon)
• Even more jagged camerawork with hand-held camera
• Format of chamber drama, ‘discussion drama’ shot in sets - 1& 2/1 hour debate on the left-wing politics in 1960.
Powerful and Subversive Images
• Direct expression of sexuality and pleasure in Pleasure of Flesh
• Struggle between sexual repression and liberation in Violence at Noon.
Experimental Film Making
• Reference to soft-porn film genre • Reference to gangster film genre• Avant-garde and surrealistic narrative and images• In Pleasure of Flesh
Experimental Film Making
• Mise-en-scène constructed by close-ups and extreme close-ups.
• Overexposed, whitewashed photography• Frenetic pace of editing (2,000 shots)• Godard-like jagged jump cuts• Complicated flashbacks in Violence at Noon
Experimental Film Making
• In the format of a typical ‘coming-of-age’ film, Oshima vents his frustration with the apathy of young generation in Japan through this image of frigidity in Sing a Song of Sex
• Oshima created a series of politically subversive images.
Experimental Film Making
• Changes in gender roles - a girl obsessed with sex and a man with death in Japanese Summer: Double Suicide
• Signs – written words and symbols became conspicuous elements of Oshima’s films
Experimental Film Making
• Shifting styles - in the beginning the film is shot in somber instruction film - later, it adopts more self-reflexive avant-garde style (characters and Oshima speaking to the spectator).
• Artificial compositions – symmetry, profile, straight-on, and framing
Experimental Film Making
• The Diary of a Shinjuku Thief, one of the most experimental of Oshima’s films
• Reference to Goddard’s La Chinoise
Experimental Film Making
• Shot as a cinematic collage• (Collage = a picture made by sticking other
pictures, photographs, cloth etc.)• Collage of documentary film, (avant-garde)
theatrical performance, words and the cameo appearance of cultural icons of the 1960s (Yoko’o Tadanori, Tanabe Moichi, Kara Juro, etc.)
Experimental Film Making
• Entirely shot on location from Kochi to Hokkaido.
• Cinema-véritè like realism shot with long lens and hand-held camera.
• Shot with available, natural light
• Fidelity to landscape and figures in it.
• ‘Boy’ did not have previous acting experience.
Experimental Film Making
• Image of loneliness - a boy denied education and happiness in The Boy
• Long shots against the background of forlorn landscape and indifferent cityscape.
Experimental Film Making
• The Ceremony• A grandiose set was
constructed by the art department of Daiei Kyoto Studios
• Solemn photography and stylized mise-en-scène
• Events are shown in bold flashbacks.
• Conventional representation with Brechitian detours.
Experimental Film Making
• Stylized and contrived compositions in Ceremony – symmetrical and unsymmetrical, bold compositions
• Metaphor for patriarchal order and disorder
Powerful and Subversive Images
• Individuals crashed with the weight of family - image of claustrophobia in Ceremony
Late Film Making Styles
• Pursuit of total pleasure and happiness at the time of the Sino-Japanese War in In the Realm of Senses.
• Shot in lurid colours and bold composition
Late Film Making Styles• Its mise-en-scene creates
claustrophobic atmosphere.
• Strong and deep colours with low-key lighting (Eastmancolor).
• No demarcation between spiritual and physical love - solemnity and gravity of love-making images
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bk_aOjfkCrY
Late Film Making Styles
• Pursuit of pleasure and the price to pay for it - image of uncontrollable passion and guilt in Empire of Passion
• Shot in somber and rich pastel colours
Late Film Making Styles
• Underlit - dominated by deep green and brown colours.
• Styles closely associated with genre movies - film noir, ghost film and historic drama.
• The same motif but a lot less intense than In the Realm of Senses
Late Film Making Styles
• Oshima shifted his film subject from heterosexual to homosexual love
• Shot in more conventional war-film style
Late Film Making Styles • Mixture of stylistic and impressive images and conventional visualization.
• Mixture of sloppiness and sophistication
• Star vehicle: David Bowie, Ryuichi Sakamoto and Beat Takeshi
Late Film Making Styles
• Ideas shocked the viewer – Max, Mon amour• Forbidden love with an animal
Late Film Making Styles
• Highly aesthetic historical drama
• Beautiful and stylized set design
• Audacious costumes designed by Wada Emi
• Mesmerizing sword play
• Deep and strong colours