Hou Hsiao-hsien

[Trees]

in the mid 1980s

Haha. HHH dropping E!

The Taiwanese director researches his projects meticulously. For his 2001 feature, Millennium Mambo, largely set in the hyper-charged twilight world of the Taipei rave scene, he threw himself into youth culture. The distinguished auteur hung out at the local discos and even experimented with ecstasy. He doesn't think it is a drug for his generation. "It relaxes you," he muses. "Young people have many, many pressures. When they take it, they can open their minds, relax and get rid of all these pressures. But I don't have these pressures.

\:D/

[Michael Kerpan]

Actually he has said he saw one Ozu film fairly early (Autumn Afternoon) and didn't think much of it at the time. He was more favorably impressed by I Was Born But. It seems he first became reasonably familiar with Ozu's work when he went to Europe to promote Time to Live, Time to Die.

[FakeBonanza]

Actually he has said he saw one Ozu film fairly early (Autumn Afternoon) and didn't think much of it at the time. He was more favorably impressed by I Was Born But. It seems he first became reasonably familiar with Ozu's work when he went to Europe to promote Time to Live, Time to Die.

If I'm not mistaken, he said more specifically that he found An Autumn Afternoon to be boring (at least upon his initial viewing). It's an interesting complaint given that Hou's films, like Ozu's, are too often accused of being "slow". That being said, having some understanding of Hou's personalty after reading a number of interviews, I wasn't at all surprised when he said he reacted more favourably to I Was Born But....

[alfons416]

anyone bought this?

http://www.yesasia.com/us/taiwan-new-wa ... /info.html

looks really nice but quite expensive. Would like ro see a review/screenshots.

[The Fanciful Norwegian]

I have it on preorder from JSDVD, but it hasn't actually been released yet despite the 12/31 date on YesAsia (JSDVD says the release is on the 19th).

[AisleSeat]

The Puppetmaster, A Summer At Grandpa's, and The Boys from Fengkuei can be viewed online or downloaded here.

[mff]

Is it worth buying the book by Richard Suchenski, even after reading the one by James Udden? I know that some of the posters here seem to like the book by Suchenski, but how does it compare to the one by Udden? Does he, or any of the other contributors, have more to say about films like Good men, Good women, Goodbye South, Goodbye, Millennium Mambo, Cafe Lumiere and Flight of the Red Balloon? James Udden didn't really bother to write anything in depth about these films, which I thought was disappointing.

[Raymond Marble]

Is it worth buying the book by Richard Suchenski, even after reading the one by James Udden? I know that some of the posters here seem to like the book by Suchenski, but how does it compare to the one by Udden? Does he, or any of the other contributors, have more to say about films like Good men, Good women, Goodbye South, Goodbye, Millennium Mambo, Cafe Lumiere and Flight of the Red Balloon? James Udden didn't really bother to write anything in depth about these films, which I thought was disappointing.

I haven't read James Udden's book, so I'll be no help in comparing the two. I was quite impressed with Richard Suchenski's, though--I'd go so far as to say it's the best academic study of a filmmaker I've read in probably years--but that said, it doesn't ever get too in depth about any of the films you list above, with the possible exception of Café Lumiere, which has an essay more or less devoted to it written by Wen Tien-hsiang. There's some incidental stuff about Good Men, Good Women and Goodbye South, Goodbye, but not much in the way of deep analysis, and very little / close to nothing about Millennium Mambo or Flight of the Red Balloon, if I remember correctly.

[whaleallright]

I would say the two books are entirely complimentary, scarcely redundant at all!

[Calvin]

The TFI have uploaded a before/after comparison for their restoration of Daughter of the Nile

[Michael Kerpan]

The TFI have uploaded a before/after comparison for their restoration of Daughter of the Nile

This film tends to get dismissed, even by some HHH fans, but I always liked it. Some similarities to the more polished Millennium Mambo.

[Trees]

The TFI have uploaded a before/after comparison for their restoration of Daughter of the Nile

Are home video release plans in place for this restoration?

[beamish13]

God, Daughter of the Nile is so wonderful. The scenes with the exasperated night school teacher and the protagonist's grandfather (Li Tian-lu, star and muse to Hou Hsiao-Hsien) are among the funniest in his entire oeuvre.

[perkizitore]

Early Works set by the Cinematek.

[zedz]

Early Works set by the Cinematek.

Shame the Boys from Fengkuei restoration is only SD, but it may well pop up on Blu somewhere else. The earlier films are minor and to my knowledge have always looked mediocre on DVD, so this could well be the best you'll ever see them.

It looks like you can't purchase the set until it's officially released next week, but if you're going to do so, don't overlook some of Cinematek's other superb releases, such as the Henri Storck and Andre Delvaus collections or the 1927-1937 Avant Garde 2-disc set.

[whaleallright]

I wouldn't call Green, Green Grass of Home minor. It's got some unfortunate compromises with the commercial genre Hou was working in at the time (including some stilted musical numbers), but in terms of felicities of narrative form, staging, editing, and so on, it's almost the equal of Boys from Fengkeui.

As for Cinematek, I'll put a word in for their DVD of Albert Capellani's The Red Lantern with Alla Nazimova, which features copious extras, mostly early-20th-century cinematic chinoiserie: http://www.cinematek.be/?node=30&dvd_id ... y=8&lng=en" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[Zot!]

Cool! I don't know how Hou suddenly became everyboy's darling, but I'm not going to complain if it means releases like this. Since these are noted as Belgian restorations, I wonder if they will be exclusive. I assume they will have English subs?

[zedz]

I wouldn't call Green, Green Grass of Home minor. It's got some unfortunate compromises with the commercial genre Hou was working in at the time (including some stilted musical numbers), but in terms of felicities of narrative form, staging, editing, and so on, it's almost the equal of Boys from Fengkeui.

As for Cinematek, I'll put a word in for their DVD of Albert Capellani's The Red Lantern with Alla Nazimova, which features copious extras, mostly early-20th-century cinematic chinoiserie: http://www.cinematek.be/?node=30&dvd_id ... y=8&lng=en" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Well, I'm glad you like it but I think you're selling Boys from Fengkuei way, way short. Green, Green Grass of Home is, if you put on your rose-coloured auteurist glasses and squint real hard, maybe half as good as the worst film he made afterwards: a generic film with flashes of talent, whereas The Boys from Fengkuei is the first mature, personal film of a great filmmaker. If those early works don't count as minor in comparison to what was to follow, I don't know what would!

[whaleallright]

I'll agree to disagree about this, though I'd suggest that purely in terms of pacing, narrative structure, staging, composition, etc., there's at least as much to admire in Green, Green Grass of Home as in the rather academic Cafe Lumiere and the almost anonymous Red Balloon. I certainly wouldn't call it generic, since while it indulges in some very un-Hou-like soft-focus close-ups of its stars, most of it transpires in static long shot or even extreme long shot, with an unfussy virtuosity that is unusual for any popular cinema of the period (that I know of). I also like the way Home largely displaces the romantic plot (the one the studio presumably put up the money for) and instead follows a variety of miniplots featuring the schoolchildren in Kenny Bee's charge. The family-dysfunction and environmentalist themes have a didacticism that's very unlike Hou's later work, but they still alternate and dovetail in intriguing ways, and add up to an interesting portrait of a community in small-town Taiwan. By comparison some of the more recent films seem to me to be little more than stylish glosses on art-cinema clichés. I suspect that the generally cheerful, breezy nature of Home has led it to be somewhat undervalued (even though it is surprisingly plangent at times).

In any event, bad or good, the early films are very interesting for Hou fans, since they both point toward the singular approach he would develop across the 1980s and 1990s and indicate the filmmaking traditions he came out of.

[Michael Kerpan]

I "love" Cafe Lumiere and only "like" the early "musicals" -- but even these "minor" films work so much better on the big screen than on one's pwn (normal size) TV. I was glad I got the opportunity to see almost everything when the retrospective came to the Harvard Film Archive.

[hearthesilence]

If you missed it during that traveling retrospective, you now have another chance to see The Puppetmaster projected from a 35mm print at MoMA.

[jindianajonz]

Interesting that they aren't advertising it as a lecture accompanied by a screening. Perhaps this bodes well for the rights issues being cleared up?

[hearthesilence]

In an earlier post, it was alluded that Bard College had taken steps to ensure the film was preserved - I'm wondering if that implied an action that would 1) create a new print (since only one English language subtitled print was known to exist) and 2) allow some greater flexibility in showing the film? That is, would there be some type of ownership right to that physical print that would grant it some limited flexibility in being shown?

[hearthesilence]

I was fortunate enough to see Flowers of Shanghai projected in 35mm twice in the span of a few months - first at Metrograph and now at MoMA, but the print they used at MoMA was brightened up quite a bit, at least by a full stop. If you're unfamiliar with the film, I don't think anything would seem amiss, but I recall one poster describing the inky blacks of the print he saw years ago - this was my experience with the one shown at Metrograph, and not quite what I experienced tonight. (FWIW, the logo for Bard's film department preceded the main feature, so I'm guessing this may have been a print they made during the traveling retrospective they put together.) The cinematographer Mark Lee Ping Bin was there and he commented on this, joking he needed sunglasses with this print, and one other audience member concurred that this print was too bright.

[hearthesilence]

Mark Lee Ping Bin gave a talk yesterday, the highlight of the ongoing retrospective of his work at MoMA, and they showed clips of his work, straight from the prints and DCP's obtained for the retrospective.

Before the talk there was a screening of Dust in the Wind on 35mm, and when they showed the final two shots for the talk, he said the print, like Flowers of Shanghai, was also too bright, but he said it may have been the age of the film elements at fault. Regardless, the print also had a Bard logo at the beginning, just like the Flowers of Shanghai print - I'm guessing the upcoming screening of The Puppetmaster will be using a print from the same collection, and possibly will look too bright as well, but regardless, at least it'll be a chance to see it in widescreen as the DVD severely cropped it to 1.33:1.