Yasujiro Ozu

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whaleallright
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Re: Yasujiro Ozu

#426 Post by whaleallright » Thu Oct 31, 2013 3:53 pm

Neat, although they missed a good opportunity to program one of Suo Masayuki's Ozu pastiches, such as Abnormal Family or Sumo Do, Sumo Don't.

Am I alone in wondering what Ozu has to do with In Vanda's Room? Sure, like a lot of other contemporary filmmakers Pedro Costa likes Ozu's films and claims to have been influenced by him. But there's little of Ozu—that I can see—in his work. Frankly there's a pretentious solemnity to Costa's films that I imagine Ozu would find risible.
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Michael Kerpan
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Re: Yasujiro Ozu

#427 Post by Michael Kerpan » Thu Oct 31, 2013 4:53 pm

I have a problem with people who profess "reverence" for Ozu and utterly fail to see the centrality of humor in (almost all of) his films. (This means Wenders too).

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Re: Yasujiro Ozu

#428 Post by Red Screamer » Thu Oct 31, 2013 6:22 pm

Michael Kerpan wrote:I have a problem with people who profess "reverence" for Ozu and utterly fail to see the centrality of humor in (almost all of) his films. (This means Wenders too).
I certainly see an Ozu-esque sense of humor in what I've seen of Wender's work, especially Wings of Desire. He has an overall tone that is much more "serious" but the humor stays intact.

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Re: Yasujiro Ozu

#429 Post by Michael Kerpan » Thu Oct 31, 2013 7:58 pm

I didn't find much humor in Wings of Desire -- But more importantly, Wenders shows no sign in Tokyo Ga that he understood this aspect of Ozu (a probelm he seems to share with Schrader).

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hearthesilence
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Re: Yasujiro Ozu

#430 Post by hearthesilence » Thu Oct 31, 2013 9:03 pm

It's been a while since I've seen Wings of Desire, but he wrung some humor out of Falk's fame as "Columbo," didn't he? The first meeting in the flesh with Damiel was warm and amusing.

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Re: Yasujiro Ozu

#431 Post by Michael Kerpan » Thu Oct 31, 2013 9:12 pm

I remember a bit of humor around Falk, but not the other (doesn't mean it wasn't there).

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whaleallright
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Re: Yasujiro Ozu

#432 Post by whaleallright » Fri Nov 01, 2013 1:03 am

To be fair, the Ozu films that first gathered acclaim in Europe and America in the early 1970s are among his most melancholy—and it may be that Wenders just responds to this aspect.

By contrast, Costa's insistence that his austere, recondite films derive from the cinema of Tourneur, Ford, Ozu, etc. just seems willful, and pretty obviously apes similarly perverse sentiments expressed by his hero Jean-Marie Straub. It's as though Costa (and Straub) want to lay claim to being the proper inheritors of a grand classical tradition, despite making movies that are designed to alienate a popular audience. In other words, I detect something like bad faith here.

35 Shots of Rum definitely "gets it," though. The red rice cooker motif is at once an obvious homage to similar objects in Ozu's color films, a nod to his playfulness with visual motifs, and—in the way it's deployed as a totem of father-daughter affection, a tribute to way simple objects and gestures in Ozu's films can be dense with emotion and meaning. I don't know if it speaks of "influence," but there's definitely an affinity between Denis's elliptical narratives and those constructed by Ozu and Noda. And she clearly imposed a kind of discipline on herself for this film and it's completely devoid of the nihilistic attitudinizing and arty obscurity that mars stuff like White Material.
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Re: Yasujiro Ozu

#433 Post by mattkc » Fri Nov 01, 2013 11:03 am

Sorry to derail a second, but there's nothing in Straub-Huillet designed to "alienate", unless by that you mean an attempt to engage spectators in something that on first sight will little appeal to most sensibilities. Straub has time and again fought against this misconception of alienation in their films.

Why chide someone for loving something else? Tourneur's influence on Costa seems apparent. (Tourneur's humor is rather drab anyway, in contrast to Ozu's, Ford's.) It's clear from his writing and interviews that he thinks Ozu, Chaplin, Ford, etc., are the greatest—and would therefore likely influence him as a filmmaker. Why does that mean his films have to be like theirs, or bear their influence in any recognizable shape? [In any case, I probably agree "In Vanda's Room" is out of place in the program.)

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Re: Yasujiro Ozu

#434 Post by Michael Kerpan » Fri Nov 01, 2013 11:09 am

Claire Denis's bit of Talking with Ozu (one of Criterion's extra) struck me as showing the best appreciation of Ozu of any of the participants.

I would think it quite possible that one could genuinely love an artist (of any sort) and yet create works that show little or no trace of influence from such source.

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hearthesilence
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Re: Yasujiro Ozu

#435 Post by hearthesilence » Fri Nov 01, 2013 12:24 pm

To be honest, I can't get behind any criticism that lambasts filmmakers for missing some element of another filmmaker they admire, it just seems wrong, like you're demanding something closer to a clone than another individual voice.

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Re: Yasujiro Ozu

#436 Post by Michael Kerpan » Fri Nov 01, 2013 12:32 pm

In some ways it is easier to like artists who are unlike oneself more than it is to like ones who are more similar -- the latter can seem threatening. Thus, Beethoven loved Mozart but was quite ambivalent about Haydn (whose work provided both a foundation for his own work and -- until Haydn grew old and infirm -- was a competitor). Mizoguchi was quite complimentary towrds Ozu and Shimizu (whose work largely did not intersect with his own) but adamantly hostile towards Naruse (who he saw as trespassing on HIS territory).

Ozu didn't seem to worry, he always seemed willing to support colleagues and young up and comers who showed promise (even when, like Kurosawa, they were pretty ungrateful).

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Re: Yasujiro Ozu

#437 Post by mattkc » Fri Nov 01, 2013 12:56 pm

Michael, what did Mizoguchi have to say about Naruse? It fascinates me he even had an opinion of Mikio! I would have thought he was a bit blind to his contemporaries, beyond the early acknowledgement of Ozu and Shimizu's powers.

Naruse seems to have been of the same temperament in this regard as Ozu (giving Tanaka her first job as assistant director, after she was shut down by her favorite director, Mizoguchi, and her former husband, Shimizu, unless I'm mistaken...) Aside from Yamanaka and the gentle praise bestowed on some Naruse, do we know of any colleagues Ozu admired significantly?

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Re: Yasujiro Ozu

#438 Post by FerdinandGriffon » Fri Nov 01, 2013 1:05 pm

mattkc wrote:Sorry to derail a second, but there's nothing in Straub-Huillet designed to "alienate", unless by that you mean an attempt to engage spectators in something that on first sight will little appeal to most sensibilities.
Absolutely.

I can definitely see Ozu's influence on Costa in the latter's rigor and minimalism. And anyone who doesn't think Costa has a sense of humor should see Sweet Exorcism, his contribution to the Centro Historico anthology. Even the title is a gag.

Though I do agree that the series is a bit of a disappointment. When I first heard the title announced I had been hoping that it would include the films made out of Ozu's unproduced scripts after his death. As it is, only having 1 and a 1/2 Japanese seems odd, and hasn't Kore-eda been quite obstinate in interviews that Still Walking is more of an homage to Naruse than Ozu?

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Re: Yasujiro Ozu

#439 Post by Michael Kerpan » Fri Nov 01, 2013 2:10 pm

I've read a number of catty things Mizoguchi said about Naruse -- but can't find them offhand. I just recall they were uniformly negative. For example, it seems that Naruse winning both the no. 3 and 4 spots in the Kinema Junpo poll (for Every Night Dreams and Apart From You) really ticked off Mizoguchi (despite the fact that he got the number 2 spot, behindf Ozu). My impression was that, among other things, Mizoguchi didn't think that such a low-class individual as Naruse should be making major films. Naruse brrought out a really creepy side of Mizoguchi.

Ozu also spoke very highly of Shimizu. I think he was supportive of his "student" Shibuya (who was given the job of directing the last script Ozu wrote).

Unfortunately I didn't buy the French translation of Ozu's Film Diaries back when this was available. This would be the easiest place to see what he said about contemporaries. I do know that the Japanese film that he was most impressed by was Naruse's Floating Clouds.

In some ways, Kore'eda's Still Walking owes a big debt to Shimizu -- as he was most likely to depict positive relationships between adults and children.

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Re: Yasujiro Ozu

#440 Post by zedz » Fri Nov 01, 2013 3:52 pm

Michael Kerpan wrote:I didn't find much humor in Wings of Desire.
Which ending did you see?

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whaleallright
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Re: Yasujiro Ozu

#441 Post by whaleallright » Fri Nov 01, 2013 4:04 pm

A few follow-ups:

I wasn't castigating any filmmakers for not absorbing Ozu's influence in all its potential forms. Like I said upthread, I think Wenders is largely drawn to the strains of humanism and melancholy--and a certain quality of stillness he observes in the later films-- and that's fine. Re. Costa, I believe he truly admires the directors he says he admires. However I think that any influence is "processed" to such a degree that it comes out largely undetectable, or at least as quite willful. Costa like other cinephilic directors (esp. contrarians like Lav Diaz, Albert Serra) indulges in the parlor game of challenging critics and audiences to spot the influence (a game many critics are quite willing to engage in, with often gaseous results). I guess this game goes back to Godard. Anyway, this is where I detect some bad faith.

As for Straub, I admire his work (and that of his wife, which is really saying the same thing). Some of it is relevatory, and it's been useful for me as a film student and teacher. But I'm not sure that we need to take his pronouncements about his films at face value. Yes, he argues that his films are not alienating (btw I'm not necessarily speaking in terms of Brecht's Verfremdungseffekt--I mean alienating in a more basic sense). He also thinks that his films are doing substantive political work (or at the very least, participate in the class struggle). I'm not sure either thing is true. I think the evidence is with me. Most of his films have only ever, and will only ever, appeal to a small group. I don't think this is just because of some failure of imagination or will on the part of the mass audience.

I'm not really down with the World Socialist Web site's Trotskyite dogmatism, but they do have a smart film critic in David Walsh, and I largely agree with what he says here re. Straub and Huillet:
Still, it is difficult to be entirely enthusiastic about a project whose production one feels is permeated by rigidity, self-seriousness and a nearly religious attitude toward art. The work is remarkable for what it is, a film of a Schönberg opera, but there is something disturbing about left-wing artists so frightened of chaos, emotion and confusion, and finding it so difficult to reach, rather than intimidate, an audience.
Now back to Ozu...?

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Re: Yasujiro Ozu

#442 Post by Zot! » Fri Nov 01, 2013 4:18 pm

Isn't Ozu's contribution to cinematic form his formal mastery? His humanism and humor, while important to enjoying the films, are not important to the "legacy", and Ozu is not entirely unique among his countrymen, or even a broader survey of filmmakers in terms of his thematic approach and his ability to balance what otherwise might be a pat melodrama. But add the static low angle and people moving in and out of an empty frame, and all of a sudden it's Ozu. It's not surprising to me that the formal conventions are what excites most filmmakers who cite him as an influence, but might otherwise have their own ideas.

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Re: Yasujiro Ozu

#443 Post by Matt » Fri Nov 01, 2013 4:23 pm

But Ozu was never strictly a formalist. He had an idiosyncratic style, but it was never style for style's sake; it was always in service to the characters and how they relate to each other.

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Re: Yasujiro Ozu

#444 Post by Michael Kerpan » Fri Nov 01, 2013 5:00 pm

There are many aspects of "late Ozu" that exist in some of his earliest suriving films, which are "purely stylistically" very different form his late films. The superficial (visual) formal aspects of Ozu are relatively insignificant. (In other words, I agree with Matt).

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Re: Yasujiro Ozu

#445 Post by knives » Fri Nov 01, 2013 5:04 pm

But as discussed elsewhere on the board (vis Harold Bloom) that doesn't really matter in terms of inspiration.

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Re: Yasujiro Ozu

#446 Post by Michael Kerpan » Fri Nov 01, 2013 5:22 pm

knives -- I don't seem to have a threaded view -- so I have NO clue who you are responding to.

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Re: Yasujiro Ozu

#447 Post by Zot! » Fri Nov 01, 2013 5:39 pm

Matt wrote:But Ozu was never strictly a formalist. He had an idiosyncratic style, but it was never style for style's sake; it was always in service to the characters and how they relate to each other.
Fair enough, I suppose that stripping the approach it of it's intent does change it. If you consider that, I'm not sure if simply repurposing the technique does carry much weight. What did people think of Cafe Lumiere? It seemed to be fairly respectful in my opinion.

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Re: Yasujiro Ozu

#448 Post by knives » Fri Nov 01, 2013 5:42 pm

My Internet seems to be going slow today. I was primarily responding to Jonah who seems to be suggesting there is a level of deceit going on when someone like Straub states they are influenced by Ozu. Though I think my comment fits well when attached to Matt's also.

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Re: Yasujiro Ozu

#449 Post by Gregory » Fri Nov 01, 2013 5:45 pm

Michael, then would it be accurate to say that you (and Matt?) see Ozu very differently from Bordwell, who strikes me as saying, perhaps above all else, that the formal visual characteristics of Ozu's films are extremely significant?
If so, I'd tend to agree. I haven't gone back to the Bordwell book much in the last five or six years because, impressive as the book is, it seems to me his approach is not the best aid to understanding and appreciating Ozu's films, and while the ways in which the films were made is often worth considering, it's not the be-all and end-all. It's like a type of literary criticism that tries to analyze prose by diagramming sentences or using other "metrics" to look at the work, rather than focusing on, as Matt said, the characters and how they relate to each other per se.

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Re: Yasujiro Ozu

#450 Post by mattkc » Fri Nov 01, 2013 6:44 pm

Is there a way of thinking about Ozu in which objects, patterns, colours, spaces, rhythms, have relationships to each other similarly major as that of the human beings, not in extension of them but autonomously? Which would not be particularly analyzable as characters are. (I'm still discovering Ozu and have no clear feeling about this.) Certainly, stories are the backbone (he's a commercial artist!), people are the determinant factors in framing, cutting; he is no abstract filmmaker or anything of the kind. And he's not cultivating a style for its own sake, it has a purpose, but I wonder if that purpose is limited to only expressing characters and stories, or if there aren't non-stories of non-characters also drifting about along the way. Undoubtedly humans are the current carrying the film through all its gestures, but these seem sufficiently expanded by the context, not only of traditions, politics, etc., but also non-anthropocentric ones, that those seem included alongside the cyclical habits and communions, a bit covertly. (Perhaps this is a too Straubian reading ; ) In any case, I think Bordwell's book does a fine job of taking both sides: Ozu as storyteller, Ozu as formalist. He clearly views them as inseparable, but at times the two didn't particularly feel profoundly linked with a purpose, in his portrayal (I've only read parts).

Perhaps the question of whether in art generally things must be subjugated to a story or humans in order to be substantive—a common proposition made by implication—is pertinent. It seems to me not the case. A surprising amount of music lacks such a justification.

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