Mikio Naruse

[jegharfangetmigenmyg]

I see what you mean re. Mizoguchi's martyrs, but if I remember correctly (it's been a long time since I saw his films) it's more pronounced in his later work, and not as much in his early work which I was referring to. Am I wrong? As for Kurosawa, I saw his work in my "formative" film years, and I was only sold on a handful of his film. I found and find him way too heavyhanded, sometimes overly melodramatic and sometimes even hamfisted. I re-watched Rashomon, and while technically it is definitely an interesting film, and of course a very important one, historically, the ending just completely ruined the film for me. Actually, I'll have a hard time naming a film where the ending was more destructable to my overall experience...

[Michael Kerpan]

I love lots of Mizoguchi films -- but self-sacrificing, suffering women was ALWAYS a staple of his film output (looking at the films that survive -- though pretty much all of the films from his first 10 years are lost). Taki no shiraito (Water Magician) is an amazing film -- but it definitely does the martyr thing. Same for Downfall of Osen and Oyuki the Virgin. Naniwa Elegy and Sisters of Gion are a bit out-of-the-ordinary -- as they were made in reaction to Naruse getting two of HIS films in the Kinema Junpo top 10 the year before (and Mizoguchi could not stand to have Naruse nipping at his heels). I think the (not particularly friendly) competition between Mizoguchi and Naruse was pretty one-sided -- unlike the friendly competition between Naruse and Ozu (which benefited both -- and they seem to have welcomed this).

Rashomon is the film that single-handedly put me off taking any interest in Japanese cinema for around 20 years.

[jegharfangetmigenmyg]

LOL, makes sense. I wouldn't say that I hate Rashomon that much, though. Of course, in film school, Kurosawa was the first Japanese director we watched, but I wasn't inspired to delve into Japanese cinema before we got to Woman in the Dunes. But I must say that the few Kurosawa's I've rewatched have given me zero interest in revisiting his work further.

Everything you've written makes me think that I'll love Naruse, so I'm really looking forward to getting to know him now.

[Michael Kerpan]

jegharfangetmigenmyg -- Best wishes on your quest to find more Naruse. I hope you enjoy his work as much as I did.

[jegharfangetmigenmyg]

Thanks, Michael, and thanks for the advice! I will post an update here when I've begun digging into his work.

[dadaistnun]

I posted some screenshots from the new Japanese Blu-ray of the 4K restoration of Floating Clouds over in the appropriate thread. No English subs of course, but I couldn't resist picking this up I love the film so much.

[Michael Kerpan]

dadaistnun -- Those Naruse screenshots look pretty nice.

[Stefan Andersson]

Sorry if this has been posted before -- a good resource:
https://mikionaruse.wordpress.com/

[Michael Kerpan]

Sorry if this has been posted before -- a good resource:
https://mikionaruse.wordpress.com/

Such nostalgia. Don did a great job with this -- and it was such fun to work together with a great batch of others on the many-years-long "All the Naruse for Everyone" project . Life felt a bit empty for a while after it finished.

[black&huge]

I posted some screenshots from the new Japanese Blu-ray of the 4K restoration of Floating Clouds over in the appropriate thread. No English subs of course, but I couldn't resist picking this up I love the film so much.

is the currently available BFI blu ray that released this year using this 4k resto or a different source?

[Ogre Kovacs]

is the currently available BFI blu ray that released this year using this 4k resto or a different source?

From the BFI booklet About The Presentation:

Floating Clouds has been restored by Toho Co., Ltd in 4K resolution and is presented in High Definition in its original aspect ration of 1.37:1 with original mono audio.

[black&huge]

thank you! i just found it odd it wasn't advertised on the actual back cover pics or in the product page details

[DJBillyMac]

Mikio Naruse feature via Metrograph and Japan Society. would love for this to lead to some releases of more of his films here.
https://japansociety.org/film/mikio-nar ... etrays-us/

[hearthesilence]

Yeah, I heard rumblings about this after the Shimizu retrospective last year. Very happy for this.

[Michael Kerpan]

Theoretically the Harvard Film Archive will also be getting the Naruse retrospective (or that WAS the plan, a while back).

[Drucker]

Yeah, I heard rumblings about this after the Shimizu retrospective last year. Very happy for this.

The Naruse retrospective is presented by the John and Miyoko Davey Classic Film series, and I got the sense last year's Shimizu retrospective was too.

Caught Hideko The Bus Conductress and Three Sisters With Maiden Hearts in a relatively well attended back-to-back screening tonight. The former was fairly light-hearted and enjoyable. There's a handful of comical scenes and the film mainly deals with a bus conductress and driver struggling to save their route. It's a really lovely tale and there are some moments of laughter, but it certainly felt a bit minor. Maiden Hearts however I felt was a really strong film, featuring the tragic story of three sisters growing up a household with a domineering and negative mother, and one sister who feels obligated to try to protect everyone else in the household. There's some very creative editing which I enjoyed and beautiful camera movements throughout the film. Some of the acting is a bit stiff, not surprising as this was his first sound film. There are some brief moments of levity in this one, such as a recurring joke (I think?) around members of the family having too much of a sweet tooth. But there's also some really effective and powerful moments which highlight the plight of women in society.

[Michael Kerpan]

Hideko seems light hearted -- until the unexpected kick in the guts at the very end when you discover

Spoiler

the bus has been sold out from under her (and her fellow townspeople's) feet

during the course of the adventure we had been watching.

[Drucker]

Hideko seems light hearted -- until the unexpected kick in the guts at the very end when you discover

Spoiler

the bus has been sold out from under her (and her fellow townspeople's) feet

during the course of the adventure we had been watching.

Spoiler

Which makes the final, uplifting scene, all the more puzzling in my opinion, as they seem to once again be on a bus ride they are enjoying, with positive music and an uplifting finish. Does the transaction not occur in the final scene? Or rather, does it occur before the story starts and the person in the suit is collecting their keep? I'd still argue the film is mostly light-hearted, and seems mostly to be promoting the a spirit of every person in the town matters, regardless of how small their story is.

[Michael Kerpan]

I think that last scene is when

Spoiler

they are riding back to town unaware that the bus is, in fact, making its last run.

[Drucker]

Right, exactly. But given the soundtrack and the energy of Hideko and the bus driver, I guess I didn't read it as a 'kick in the guts' perhaps. And certainly not as much of a kick in the guts as Three Sisters!

[hearthesilence]

With the Naruse retrospective shifting to his postwar films, the handful I remember are fairly crushing in how the women end up in such sad lives while so many of the men around them exploit and abuse them and generally treat them like shit. However, I also remember the films constantly referencing the war, and it's very complex, especially when you factor in other films outside of Naruse's work. IIRC casualties of the war often come up, leaving many widows, fatherless children or even widows who are damaged from being denied children, and the plots often play out the consequences years after the fact. I'm not an expert on how feminism and paternalistic traditions in Japan were impacted by the war or perhaps more importantly by the rise of nationalism that took over the country and led it to war, but it would be interesting to compare these issues to what was happening in American culture during the same time. (Jonathan Demme's original cut of Swing Shift comes to mind as a great film that deals with these issues on the American side.)

[Red Screamer]

I’ve been taking part in this year’s Naruse fest and it’s been great fun. I can’t say I’m yet convinced of some claims people are making — that he is “as careful a visual stylist as Ozu,” for example, or that nearly everything in his late era is a singular masterpiece — but I’ve enjoyed over a dozen, often not-that-dissimilar films in a short period of time which is itself a pretty strong testament. My favorites have been pretty orthodox so far (Sound of the Mountain, Floating Clouds, Wife, Be Like a Rose!, etc.) but I’ll put in a good word for a few that seem less talked about: Sudden Rain, which is a suburban marriage comedy that would pair well with Good Morning, offering an excellent, atypical Setsuko Hara performance and sharply choreographed scenes in a different stylistic approach from Naruse’s usual subtle modulations. Plus A Wife’s Heart, which plays one of my favorite Takamine performances against the charms of Toshirō Mifune, and A Woman’s Sorrows, which combines some wild 30s style curlicues with a surprisingly blunt and brutal film about the marginalization of a wife.

The only film that I haven’t liked has been Mother, which I found hard to connect with given its heavy sentimentality, cute kid performances, and relentless plotting. When a Woman Ascends the Stairs is as good as I remembered and it’s clearer to me now why it exported better than the rest of his filmography: it’s more recognizably melodramatic and more fast-paced than many of his other, equally great films. Using a Hollywood style trick like putting loud sound transitions at the beginning of scenes to grab attention is the sort of subtle device that is rarely noticed but could seemingly make or break an international film on the art house circuit.

As always, a director retrospective brings interesting details to the fore. Naruse clearly loved to rework the same elements in different films, but without seeing these back to back I don’t think I would have noticed his penchant for offbeat musical choices in his soundtracks or gossipy, miserly mothers/mother-in-laws being his most commonly villainized type! Very much the opposite of the Tokyo Story / Make Way for Tomorrow problem.

[Michael Kerpan]

Are you watching the Naruse retrospective at the Harvard Film Archive? I've been trying to catch pretty much everything they are showing (except I was both out of Boston and in the hospital -- in suburban Chicago while on a mini-vacation) last weekend. I have seen all of Naruse's films, but around 30 I have never seen except in unsubbed Japanese form, so seeing them some of them subbed (finally) is a treat.

I didn't really understand Naruse until I started seeing him as "not another Ozu" (it took about 6 movies, long ago, to begin to understand this). I was once a bit wary about Mother (my very first Naruse film 25 years ago) -- but it finally conquered me. Sudden Rain has always been a great favorite -- possibly Naruse's funniest movie (but still with some disconcerting barbs).

[HinkyDinkyTruesmith]

I caught all the screenings in NYC back in May and June and while some of my favorites are pretty widely well regarded (The Sound of the Mountain, Wife! Be Like a Rose!) I want to voice my strongest admiration and affection for the effortless Daughters, Wives, and a Mother and the impressive and visually splendid Summer Clouds. Both are odd films, with complex webs of characters and extremely meticulous socioeconomic plot structures, but they are highly rewarding. The former especially contains some of Naruse's most wonderful sequences, and also features (I believe) the only scene between Hideko Takamine and Setsuko Hara.

That being said, I do not think he's as great a filmmaker as Ozu; but to compare them is the same as comparing Howard Hawks and John Ford. They share certain tendencies, sometimes seem to deliberately play off each other (Ozu's The End of Summer, made at the same time as the two Naruses I mentioned, also features a complex web of characters), and are both highly skilled employers of montage –– but the comparison, in the long run, becomes less and less fruitful.

[hearthesilence]

tbh, I don't think it's ever been helpful to sell a director to a new viewer by saying they're somehow the equivalent to another existing director, whether it's calling Naruse another Ozu or calling an unfamiliar filmmaker that generation or that country's [fill in the heralded filmmaker of your choice]. It's likely to misdirect a viewer and possibly lead them to evaluate how this less familiar work measures up (or fails to measure up) in the specific ways that define the other filmmaker's work.

I'm a little green on the politics of Japanese studio filmmaking, but I remember Donald Richie and others discussing this - IIRC Naruse made a lot of films that he didn't care for and didn't feel all that thrilled to make when he was given those assignments. Meanwhile someone like Ozu or Kurosawa had longer, more consistent stretches partly because they had more say over what they would make. That's a bit helpful to know in case you do a deeper dive into Naruse's underseen filmography - if it turns up less buried gems than other major auteurs, it doesn't become all that surprising.

When he's great, his work is on par with their most celebrated films, but not for the same reasons - at his best, his work doesn't strike me as that of a Mizoguchi, Ozu or Kurosawa acolyte, it's wholly his own way of filmmaking and interpretation. My two favorites may be Late Chrysanthemums and When a Woman Ascends the Stairs, the former for being a dazzling adaptation that brilliantly and organically weaves together three disparate stories - perhaps one of the greatest adaptations I've ever seen from a screenwriting perspective - and the latter because in hindsight, it doesn't feel too much like a defeatist film to me. His films have a tendency to set up a fate or outcome that's impossible to escape (at least to me), but Keiko completely and understandably owns hers. She chooses it wholly, and it's one of many viable paths available to her, all of which she recognizes, many of which plausibly appear as a "better" course of action from a practical perspective, yet I completely buy it when she chooses what she believes is right for her.

With some of Naruse's other films like Sound of the Mountain, I feel like I get a better appreciation after putting them into historical context, whether it's the effects of the war (which I posted about earlier) or the social or traditional mores of Japan, which make a huge difference, especially when it's about marriage. IIRC quite a few of Naruse's films were breaking taboos in this regard.