668-669 The Big City and Charulata

[zedz]

I've read that essay, and he did discuss Ozu and Mizoguchi in it, but I don't remember any mentions of Naruse. It was my impression that he was mainly aware of, and writing about, the major names in international arthouse cinema.

Ozu was hardly a major name in international arthouse cinema in 1963, so Ray may well have had some kind of 'insider knowledge' or access. If he was familiar with Ozu at that time, there's a much better chance that he was also familiar with Naruse.

[Michael Kerpan]

I think Naruse became known to the Cahiers folk around the same time as Ozu.

[Gregory]

zedz: I'd say he was nowhere near the stature of Kurosawa internationally then but was a tier below and still rather well known if for no other film than Tokyo Story (and Mizoguchi for Ugetsu and Sansho). Naruse didn't have a film anywhere near as acclaimed by critics as those three, as best I can tell from reading articles back then and looking at critics' polls, and so on. Ray's writing seems to reflect this order: writing quite a bit about Kurosawa, occasional mentions of Ozu and Mizoguchi, and never mentioning Naruse, at least not that I've seen. It's interesting to me how long this order of prominence among the four seems to have endured, even now.
In one place, in his essay on Kurosawa, Ray refers to Ozu and Mizoguchi as "the other two great Japanese masters," suggesting that he only considered there to be this trinity of great directors from Japan, at least at the time of writing that piece.

[zedz]

zedz: I'd say he was nowhere near the stature of Kurosawa internationally then but was a tier below and still rather well known if for no other film than Tokyo Story (and Mizoguchi for Ugetsu and Sansho).

Tokyo Story wasn't released in the USA until 1972, and it was only with that big NY retrospective that he started to develop his current profile. His films were barely even making it to the international festival circuit while he was alive, in sharp distinction to festival darlings Kurosawa and Mizoguchi.

EDIT: Jonathan Rosenbaum here confirms that 1972 was also ground zero for Ozu in France: no distribution or critical coverage until that groundbreaking retrospective rolled through.

So, if Ray was writing about Ozu in 1963, he was well ahead of the curve in terms of international reception.

[MichaelB]

Tokyo Story wasn't released in the USA until 1972, and it was only with that big NY retrospective that he started to develop his current profile. His films were barely even making it to the international festival circuit while he was alive, in sharp distinction to festival darlings Kurosawa and Mizoguchi.

EDIT: Jonathan Rosenbaum here confirms that 1972 was also ground zero for Ozu in France: no distribution or critical coverage until that groundbreaking retrospective rolled through.

So, if Ray was writing about Ozu in 1963, he was well ahead of the curve in terms of international reception.

Tokyo Story was first classified by the BBFC in 1965, so Britain seems to have been a bit ahead of the curve - but still behind Ray!

[zedz]

I seem to recall that Lindsay Anderson was an early booster of Ozu - not sure just how early, but maybe his opinion held some sway?

Ozu was a major director within Japan, of course, so anybody (like Ray or Anderson) who might have had a more direct connection to Japanese film culture (I presume Anderson knew Donald Richie in some capacity) would presumably have been made aware of his work.

[MichaelB]

This is interesting - the Monthly Film Bulletin's review of Aparajito, published in March 1958, says:

The theme of the sacrifice which parents may make in equipping children for a world which they can never really share - universal enough in itself - has rarely, if ever, been tackled by the Western cinemas, though in Japan Ozu has devoted twenty-five years and almost all his works to the exploration of this particular family relationship.

Tantalisingly, it's credited to "D.R.", but I always assumed that was David Robinson rather than Donald Richie. But I could be wrong.

[Michael Kerpan]

At least one online article indicates that Naruse's "Mother" showed up in France in 1954 and was well-received:

http://www.avoir-alire.com/la-mere-okasan-la-critique" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[Gregory]

Tokyo Story was acclaimed enough by international critics in 1961–2 to be a runner-up in the Sight and Sound poll. I don't know how many ballots it appeared on, but Richard Roud voted for it (then the director of the London Film Festival). If the film really screened at no festivals in the UK before 1965, that does surprise me.
Ray indeed was praising Ozu highly in the 1963 essay, and I wouldn't disagree that he was ahead of the curve.
In the Kurosawa essay (1966), by the way, he writes about how much more prominent the non-Kurosawa Japanese filmmakers had become internationally (mentioning Ozu, Mizoguchi, Kinugasa, Gosho, and Ichikawa specifically), and mentions that the Cinémathèque in Paris and the NFT in London have had seasons of Japanese masters, and young directors like Teshigahara and Hani have made their mark. This is p.181 in Our Films, Their Films in case anyone wants to track it down.

[MichaelB]

If the film really screened at no festivals in the UK before 1965, that does surprise me.

A BBFC certificate merely means that it was given a commercial release - it certainly doesn't mean that it didn't play festivals earlier. In fact, in the case of arthouse films it's overwhelmingly likely that they would have had festival exposure prior to BBFC submission.

And my evidence from 1958 shows that 'Ozu' was considered enough of a recognisable name even back then to be referred to by surname alone, so my guess is that at least one and possibly more of his films must have been screened in London prior to then.

[jojo]

Yeah, I seem to recall Bernardo Bertolucci relating a story of being surprised early in his career when he naively thought a successful screening at a single international film festival would lead to automatic commercial distribution outside of his own country later on, only to be slapped down by some U.S. film critic (Richard Roud, I think) who told him that many festival films, great or otherwise, only get that one international film festival screening and that's it (or they get released commercially at a much later date than hoped for). I would assume that this is how industry insiders and those in the business would encounter Ozu and/or Naruse and such long before even film critics do. If film critics back in those days were anything like the critics of today, they don't really make a big deal about a film at a film festival unless it wins a big award, as Kurosawa's films routinely did. And the ones that did win awards usually had some sort of perceived international mainstream appeal. Remember that for years, Ozu was considered "The most Japanese of all film directors in Japan" which of course sounds silly and ignorant now, but it was also a label that was code for "not very appealing to audiences outside of Japan." Some of Ozu's films may have screened in international arthouse festivals during the 60s and even 50s, but they probably didn't win as many awards as Kurosawa's films did and would only have caught the eyes of other filmmakers like Ray or well-connected film critics and program directors like Roud.

All that said, it's probably unlikely that Naruse was anything more than an indirect influence on Ray's films of this time period, even if we assume that Ray was indeed aware of his work in the early 60s. If we were to try to nail down any Japanese influence at all, it might be more accurate to say that The Big City and Charulata are probably more directly influenced by the shomin-geki genre, but it would be difficult to point to any one director as an influence.

[domino harvey]

The Cahiers crew of course thought Mizoguchi was the be all, end all of Asian cinema. Ozu only makes an appearance via a couple guest contributions to Year End lists for Tokyo Story with no indication that it even played France and was not acknowledged by Cahiers in the Young Turk as far as I know. Several Cahiers writers and contributors did indeed single out Naruse's Mother but no other Naruse films from the era were discussed to my knowledge

[aewb]

I seem to recall that Lindsay Anderson was an early booster of Ozu - not sure just how early, but maybe his opinion held some sway?

Ozu was a major director within Japan, of course, so anybody (like Ray or Anderson) who might have had a more direct connection to Japanese film culture (I presume Anderson knew Donald Richie in some capacity) would presumably have been made aware of his work.

Anderson wrote about Ozu (plus Mizoguchi) in his 1957 article 'Two Inches Off the Ground' after seeing Tokyo Story at the NFT. As he was an early champion and later a friend of Ray's it's quite possible Anderson recommended the film to him.

[MichaelB]

Anderson wrote about Ozu (plus Mizoguchi) in his 1957 article 'Two Inches Off the Ground' after seeing Tokyo Story at the NFT.

...which is on page 131 of the Winter 1957/58 edition of Sight & Sound, for those who have access to it.

It's a response to a National Film Theatre season of (then) recent Japanese cinema, and consists of a very brief introduction, a longer focus on Ikiru and the bulk of the piece concentrating on Tokyo Story. He doesn't mention any other Ozu films, so presumably this was the only one he'd seen up to then (and possibly the only one shown in the NFT season) - in fact, his main comparison neatly betrays its author: a parenthetical aside says:

(The overlap of sound is like something out of Diary for Timothy, and the poetic implications are the same.)

Still, this does firmly establish that at least one Ozu film was being discussed in some depth in a major English-language film publication as early as 1957. And since Satyajit Ray himself had written for the magazine earlier that year, he may well have read it at the time - it's not at all hard to imagine a culturally sophisticated and film-mad Anglophile like Ray having a subscription. (Naturally, I scoured Ray's piece for any references to Ozu or any Japanese filmmaker, but there weren't any).

[Michael Kerpan]

The Cahiers crew of course thought Mizoguchi was the be all, end all of Asian cinema. Ozu only makes an appearance via a couple guest contributions to Year End lists for Tokyo Story with no indication that it even played France and was not acknowledged by Cahiers in the Young Turk as far as I know. Several Cahiers writers and contributors did indeed single out Naruse's Mother but no other Naruse films from the era were discussed to my knowledge

As far as I can tell, there was a long wait between Mother and the next Naruse films to appear in France (probably not until the 70s).

Yes, Mizoguchi really seemed to be the Cahiers favorite...

[zedz]

We watched Charulata (or, Not Fucking Amal) last night and, wow, this is one beautiful transfer of one beautiful film. Transfer of the year for me so far, and I really never thought I'd see this film look so good. The extras are modest, but all extremely good, especially the one on Tagore.

[aox]

Is The Coward set in Assam?

I still need to watch this (haven't seen this one in ages), but I think it was set in North Bengal, not in Assam. Tea-estatea are not only popular in Assam, but also in the neighborhood of Darjeeling (Jalpaiguri and Coochbehar)! The locals in that car shop spoke fluent Bengali, not Assamese...

If he rode the train from Calcutta to Saliguri with the intention of taking a cab all of the way to Hasimara (probably a 4 hour drive back in the 1950s), it makes sense that he broke down at either Nagrakata or Jalpaiguri. Both the southern and northern train (the northern is more direct) lines between Saliguri and Hasimara run through numerous and constant tea plantations the entire way. I speculate that the Jaldhaka river was where the bungalow was located, but I have not a lot to go on.

I just watched this film for the first time this afternoon, and thought it was fantastic. Kind of on-the-nose, and obviously the melodrama is entirely premised on a huge coincidence (a common criticism from many members on this forum), but I found the flashbacks completely riveting.

Spoiler

Particularly the moment in the first flashback where she realizes that he will never be a partner who fights for her, and he is a coward to not go after his own selfish desires (namely, her). The acting from Mukherjee throughout the film, and that moment is incredible.

Ray not placing the flashbacks in sequential order was a masterful move.

A few questions:

Spoiler

1. Only talking about the present scenes and not the flashbacks: Did he ever have a second chance? Was she just playing with him? Was there a moment in the modern scenes where he could have fought for her (that note was weak)? If the answer is that it is ambiguous, I can accept that. I just want to make sure I didn't miss a key moment. She played coy but uncommitted which isn't surprising considering how hurt she was at being burned by him originally.

2. She had absolutely no reason to believe he would be at the train station hours later after he was supposed to leave. Why did she come back? The sleeping pills moment was borderline sinister. Was she gambling and giving him one more chance?

3. I believe it is implied that they were sexually active in the first flashback. "Had I known you were coming I would have put up a certain sheet." Knowing how conservative Indian culture is presently, how common was this among young college students in mid-twentieth century India? Or was it like anywhere else in a western counterpart culture (e.g. England)? She says herself in the first flashback that English culture and sexual relations go too far, but I can also interpret that there is enough time between the two flashbacks for that aspect of their relationship to bud (1 - 1 1/2 years)