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Since I've seen most of the major Kurosawa movies, I've been told to move to Ozu. Thing is I have no idea where to start, and summaries of his movies are not helping because frankly they all sound very similar. Does anyone have any recommendations? Tokyo Story seems to be his most famous but frankly having never seen his films I simply have no idea where to start. I know he made both silent and sound films too.

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I have seen Late Spring, Early Spring, and Tokyo Story, all pictures made in his mature (postwar) style. If anyone out there has seen some of the earlier ones, I'd be interested to hear about them. You could begin with any one of those. Kurosawa is the master of action, Ozu of non-action, so to speak. Ozu takes some getting used to, because he ignores a number of conventions (the kind you don’t realize they’re conventions, until they’re gone). Often you see the actors head on, almost at floor level –“tatami shots,” they’re called. There is very little action in his movies and not much story and you may complain at first that they are slow and static, until you understand what he’s doing and appreciate the care and detail of his work. I first saw Tokyo Story in college and it went right by me at the time; I had to return to it when I was older and wiser. Well, older, anyway. :thumbsup:

I really don’t want to tell you too much, because it would be interesting to see what you think coming to one of his movies cold turkey.

Hiroshi Inagaki's Chushingura is one of my favorite pictures. There is also Teinosuke Kinugasa’s Gate of Hell.

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Don't miss Mizoguchi's "Sansho the Bailiff!!!!!!!!!!'

It's incredibly beautiful on the big screen -- the moonlight on the pampas grass for me is like "THE SILVER SCREEN" itself -- but it should still be powerful on a TV monitor

oh my GOD what a movie.

Ozu is great, Tokyo Story is very fine, noble restraint, but it's so modern it's missing a certain romantic dimension -- if you want noble restraint carried to the nth, it's there in INCREDIBLE degree in Sansho......

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Ok what I did is a very foolish thing, that I forgot to mention in my first posting: deepdiscountdvd had a sale, and I ordered Tokyo Story and Floating Weeds, since they seem to be the two most discussed ones. They havent arrived but I'm afraid to open them since I have heard that he is such an "acquired taste." Basically along with the first post I also have buyers remorse and am wondering if I should perhaps start with a different film :thumbsup:

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Ok you've convinced me. :) Anyone seen Floating Weeds, which also seems to be a popular film of his?

By the way dirac, you're right that Kurosawa is the master of action and suspense, but he's also a very subtle director. For instance, the Seven Samurai has had so many rip-offs it's hard to count, and I've seen a few of the ripoffs, but none of them have the character-buidling of 7S. And the final scene of Ikiru is probably one of the most beautiful scenes in cinematic history.

It doesn't look like much Mizoguchi is on dvd, except for Ugetsu ...

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Package arrived today and I braved it and watched Tokyo Story. Well, I guess if Ozu's an acquired taste, I acquired the taste easily because the two hours flew by. A few things struck me: the beautiful, haunting soundtrack, and the bleakness of the movie. I thought it was an incredibly true-to-life family drama, and I loved how Ozu tracked conversations from start to finish, and included all the introductory polite exchanges as well as the awkward pauses. I didn't find it slow at all.

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So far the only film by Ozu I've seen is his last one, "An autumn afternoon" (in French "Le goût du saké") but I'm going to Paris tomorrow morning for a few days and have had a look at the cinema programs there... and there are three cinemas showing "Tokyo story", so after reading this thread I hope I can manage to see it !

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I got the titles confused, but thanks for bringing it up, because it's very worthwhile and I doubt I'd have ever seen it. A black and white Japanese film I saw sometime in the last year from the 50's, I believe, but wasn't paying close attention to was what I thought 'floating Weeds' was: It had to do with various rackets, money for a son's tuition, some prostitution and homosexuality in the characters, too. But I just can't figure out what it was--more tragic sort of thing and there were a lot of fights between the petty criminal man and one of the women, and perhaps more than one, not sure.

This film is very interesting and is also first time I hear westernized Japanese film score--in first half the background stuff has mandolin and/or accordion sounds that reminded me of 'Cinema Paradiso' and even vaguely of 'Rome Adventure,' but this may have been frequent. I know little of Japanese cinema, probably having seen 15 or 20 classics once or twice each, but I had always thought I heard a more classical Japanese music in them.

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canbelto--I had only watched about 45 minutes of it last night when I posted, trying to figure out my phantom black and white Japanese film about various rackets. Then I watched the rest: It is absolutely beautiful! I think I liked it more than any Japanese film I have ever seen, and for some reason I've had a resistance to Japanese culture, not because I have anything against it intrinsically, but because, like many island cultures, there's a lot of insularity.

It was so subtle and complex with the interplay of relationships and milieux, and the exquisite performances. And those colours! I kept looking at those red flowers the 'the Master' described as 'pretty flowers.' They look like Poinsettia or Amaranthus Summer Poinsettia. And there was more traditional sounding Japanese music in the theater scenes and others. I almost wanted a sake, and I never have liked it...because the wife's tiny steps to heat it were so perfect. The ending was completely unique for me.

Well, thanks again, as I don't think I'd have ever seen it. (especially since I thought I'd already seen it, and hadn't.)

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I thought the most heartbreaking scene was when the "Master" promises to come back when he's a "successful actor." You know he never will, and that he'll never come back. It was just a very sad conclusion, very "unHollywood," as there's absolutely no happy ending. The son doesn't accept his father, and the father doesn't stay to fight.

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I thought the most heartbreaking scene was when the "Master" promises to come back when he's a "successful actor." You know he never will, and that he'll never come back. It was just a very sad conclusion, very "unHollywood," as there's absolutely no happy ending. The son doesn't accept his father, and the father doesn't stay to fight.

Yes, it's heartbreaking, but I wasn't sure there was no happy ending at all. Wasn't there some sense of contentment in the companionship of the actress and the 'Master', even if it was very compromised, but if only because they had both been so abusive of each other before and were now trying to be forgiving and supportive? I'm not sure about this, and even less sure what would happen with the boy and the other beautiful actress that he'd eloped with. I thought it possible that it was an imperfect, but not totally tragic ending. Tell me if you think that's completely impossible, as I may well be off here. It's true he would never be a 'successful actor,' and the mother had been using the phrase 'to be somebody' in a way that was very stark. But I thought he might still find remnants of happiness even in small-time theater.

Another fantastic stylistic element was the boy's choppy movements when he first falls in love with the beautiful girl. I hadn't ever seen anything like the way he moved, that may be something Japanese.

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Well I agree that the Master and his mistress do seem resigned to a life together, but I thought of it as a kind of stoicism on the part of the Master, and helplessness on the part of the mistress. Instead of watching his son grow up, he's again on the road with a rather manipulative woman who has to use her 'feminine charms' just to get them another gig.

I just thought there was so much "what could have been" in the movie that I found unsettling. For instance, if the son had come downstairs a minute earlier, would the father have left? What's going to happen to the son and the actress? I thought the scene of the son, the actress, and the mother all crying was so hard to watch that I had to turn away.

I've just rarely seen a film where so many characters at the end of the film are so heartbroken.

By the way Floating Weeds is a remake of a silent film Ozu made in 1934, which is on the other disc. I havent seen that yet, but I will.

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By the way Floating Weeds is a remake of a silent film Ozu made in 1934, which is on the other disc. I havent seen that yet, but I will.

I'm going to look for this this afternoon, in meantime have put hold on 'Tokyo Story' and looked at some other Ozu titles. Agree about the scene with the three at the end--I kept thinking the boy would change his mind and run after his father, but the mother seemed to think that the father wouldn't want him to even if he tried to catch him.

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Well there's a heavy subtext of class in the film. The "floating weeds" of the movie are obviously of the underclass, composed of drifters and women of questionable repute. The father realizes that if he truly wants to do right by his son, he has to let him go and not burden him with the knowledge/presence that he's the son of a lowly actor. It's a very depressing conclusion, a bit like the movie Stella Dallas. I don't know if I can watch another Ozu film. The two I've watched (Tokyo Story and Floating Weeds) both seem to go by the famous axiom "Life is disappointing."

dirac, are Late Spring and the others just as depressing?

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Ok I saw the silent version of Floating Weeds. If pressed to choose, I'd actually say the silent version is better. Although it's shorter, less picturesque, and without dialogue, I found that it packed more of an emotional punch. And the difference, I think, is generational. So much of Floating Weeds depends on class. In 1959, the stigma of being the son of an actor, or dating an actress, no longer seems so pungent. The emotions of the 1934 film are more raw, with the final confrontation being so painful that one has to look away. In the 1959 film, Ozu is more contemplative and philosophical. The pace is more leisurely.Not that the thread of heartbreak isn't there -- it is, but in the silent film the conclusion is more shattering. The movie packs more of an emotional wallop. There's no silver lining to the cloud. In 1959, the final shot seems to indicate, "Life goes on." In 1934, the idenitical shot seems much bleaker, more haunting.

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I'm not going to be able to get this, having just looked, but thanks for the report. It would stand to reason that the earlier version would be darker because of changing attitudes to theater in many cultures, and Japan's was one that especially metamorphosed in thousands of ways throughout the 20th century.

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Yesterday I saw The Hidden Fortress. I highly recommend it as it's considerably more lighthearted than most Kurosawa films (and most Japanese films in general, come to think about it). George Lucas admits in an interview on the dvd that it was the inspiration for Star Wars. The two bumbling peasants became R2D2 and C3PO, and the Princess obviously became Leia. Toshiro Mifune's character is a mix of Obi-Wan and Han Solo.

Now does anyone have any recommendations for Mizoguchi films? I've dipped my toe into Ozu, I've pretty much exhausted Kurosawa (except for RedBeard -- going to watch that tonight), so anyone know where to start with Mizoguchi?

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Canbelto,

Life of Oharu, Ugetsu and Sansho the Bailiff are supposed to be 3 great masterpieces, but I am fond of the early White Threads of the Waterfalls (there's a great tracking shot in it) and Utamaru (sp) about the great painter who is prohibited from making art for six months. Any Mizoguchi is great as film, though some of the attitudes toward women--ahead of their time at the time--seem a little disturbing today.

Here's David Thompson's recomendation to see at least one Mizoguchi on the big screeen:

"Mizoguchi worked with scale, space, and movement, and movement on a TV set is like a fish moving across a tank, whereas movement on a real screen is that of a great fish passing us in the water. So the greatness of Mizoguchi is no easier to discover now than it was in 1975. And this is a greatest that could one day soon be lost. By 2010 will it be possible to see these films on the screen they deserve?"
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Canbelto,

I haven't watched Mizoguchi for years--I saw four late films in one day at UCLA which was wonderfully intense--though I am very tempted to strart looking at them again.

I hesitate to recommend one particular film over the other--my own preference is for one with particulary fluid tracking shots--but I will post these helpful capsule reviews from the National Film Theater written sometime ago courtesy of Pacific Film Archives:

(more here with some right and left clicking: http://www.bampfa.berkeley.edu/resources/p...ion/index.html)

Oharu: Here Mizoguchi consolidated the genre he made much of in his last years: a personal drama placed in an historical epoch (here the Genroku era) reconstructed in meticulous detail and containing implicity criticisms of the social forces which destroy innocent victims. The protagonist is the daughter of a samurai (Kinuyo Tanaka) who marries below her and then decends to concubine, prostitute and beggar. An historical fresco of great insight and depth, combining image and sound with and exciting freedom. Japan 1952. With Toshiro Mifune.

Ugetsu was the film which introduced Mizoguchi to the West. Its two parallel narratives eventually eventually concentrate on a potter desperately trying to continue his craft in a war-torn medieval village, who meets a phantom princess and is lured away to a land of sensual delights. Once again modern parallels are discernible but it rmains Mizoguchi's most celebrated period film with its superb lyrical images of misty lakes and lawns. And even he never equalled the emotional pull of Ugetsu's final reel. Japan 1953. With Machiko Kyo.

Sansho is not only a great classic of World Cinema, but one of Mizoguchi's most probing and rigously worked period pieces. Set in the 11th centurn, its packed narrative combines barbaric violence ( the corrupt opulence of Sansho's court) with a family story empasising loyalty and self-sacrifice. Particularly unforgetable are the kidnapping scenes on the beach, the flight through the forest and the son's search for his mother on the seashore. A work whose riches increase with each viewing. Japan 1954. With Kinuyo Tanaka

Story of the Late Chrysanthemums. This ficitonalized account of kabuki actor Onoe Kiunosuke--toppled from stardom by an illicit affair, finally reaching maturity through his lover's self-sacrifice--arguable marks the peak of Mizoguchi's art. Apart from the three scenes on the kabuki stage, the film is constructed in 'sequence-shots', long, mobile takes that refuse 'natural' continuities and instead create a delicately artifiical mesh of cross-rhythms and modulations. The plot premises are angrily feminist. Japan 1939 With Kakuko Mori, Shotaro Hanayagi

National Film Theater

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