35-37 Naruse: Volume One

[ellipsis7]

Another piece, this time from The Guardian, by David Thomson, re: Naruse and the BFI/NFT retro...

Blows to the heart

A prolific director of domestic dramas, Mikio Naruse is hardly known in the west. Yet he ranks alongside Kurosawa and Ozu as a Japanese master, writes David Thomson

Saturday July 7, 2007

The world of film in the UK is about to discover a new master director. It's not that a new Japanese talent appeared at this year's Cannes festival. In fact, Mikio Naruse died in 1969. Nearly 40 years after his death, the National Film Theatre is urging us to take Mikio Naruse very seriously. To which the obvious question arises - what have we been doing for nearly 40 years?
I do not blame the National Film Theatre or the British Film Institute. For years, I can remember one of the Institute's true scholars and loyalists, John Gillett, calling to any gathering of enthusiasts: "You have got to see Naruse!" Nearly 25 years ago, Gillett curated the one and only Naruse season - modest in scale - that the NFT has ever mounted. And over the years, whenever there was a Japanese season, Gillett did his best to smuggle some Naruse films into it. And so a few pictures have had screenings in London: Wife! Be Like a Rose! (1935); Street Without End (1934); and The Whole Family Works (1939).

These are small, quiet, family films. One might call them "modest" except that the feeling is intense, and sometimes nearly out of control. So one can see why Geoff Andrew entitled this current Naruse season - far larger than the last one - "Quiet blows to the heart". After all, that language and that approach fit comfortably into the widespread notion that there are two types of Japanese films: resigned family stories (above all the work of Yasujiro Ozu), and robust fighting pictures (of the sort that made Akira Kurosawa famous). But suppose that scheme is nonsense?

In 1939, which country produced more films - the US or Japan? The major studios in America made just under 400 a year; the Japanese are reported to have made 500. If the informed filmgoer can name Ozu, Naruse and Mizoguchi as having functioned in the 30s, then our American list ought to cut out after Lubitsch, Hawks and Ford, instead of running on to include another 30 or 40 directors.

Not that the west knew any of those Japanese professionals in the 1930s. It was said that only one Japanese film - Kinugasa's A Page of Madness - had come out of Japan in that period (because it was wildly expressive and artistic). And that film only survives because Kinugasa, as an old man, found a print in his garden shed.

Japan was a severe, militaristic, increasingly fascistic state by 1939, ruined thereafter by its own intransigence and cruelty, and then rescued by the US. I have seen fewer than 1% of Japanese films of the 30s, but those pictures do not fit with the broad sense of what was happening in our enemy-to-be. Moreover, the "discovery" of Japanese film that did occur in the 50s has always seemed like a canny catering to western tastes and assumptions.

I have never heard how it happened, but there was clearly a campaign in the early 50s to bring Japanese film to the west. Equally, I think it turned on the peculiar pro-western sympathies of Akira Kurosawa, an exceptional figure in that he seemed to spend a lot of time watching western films.

He had already made a Tokyo film noir, Drunken Angel, in which the young Toshiru Mifune was a moody gangster dying of tuberculosis. However, Rashomon (1950) was the turning point. It was a period film, with lavish costumes and swordplay, but it had a theme that was very close to western postwar existentialism: who knows what the truth is? Who knows what really happened?

Though not highly regarded in Japan, Rashomon won the Golden Lion at Venice in 1951. The gates were open: Kurosawa began to produce a series of power-house films: The Idiot (1950, from Dostoyevsky), Living (1952, about a clerk who learns he has cancer and who tries to make his life worthwhile) and Seven Samurai (1954), a film that on its own helped maintain the art-house circuit outside Japan and which established the equation: Japan equals action. By now, Mifune was an international star. At Venice, the association with Japan was pursued with the last great films by Mizoguchi: The Life of Oharu (1952), Ugetsu Monogatari (1953) and Sansho the Bailiff (1954), all of which won prizes at the festival. The Mizoguchi pictures were period, beautiful, tragic and Shakespearean - they are, I think, the apogee of Japanese film. But by the late 50s, the works of Ozu were also out on the festival circuit and in foreign release. These were family pictures, very restrained stylistically, and stoic or quietist in attitude. They were the least western - but they found an audience, too. Yet Naruse got left out.

Naruse was from a large, impoverished family. He had no real secondary education and was only 15 when the death of his father forced him to get work as a props man at the Shochiku studio. Once there, he took 10 years to work up to the level of directing. But nothing about his personality seems to have helped. He was chilly, a taskmaster and not much liked - except by the actresses he favoured in his work. Without doubt, Kurosawa was far better as a self-promoter and far happier in western circles when he toured the festivals.

The Whole Family Works embodied his attitudes as well as any. It is a story in which everyone in a large family group has to work if they are all to survive. Until the end of his career, he saw poverty as a condition of infection. Because of that, the strength of his characters - the women, above all - lies in adjusting and resigning themselves to this state of affairs. And here, I think, we face a matter or a tone that is vital to Japanese film. In American and western films as a whole, the medium encourages a dream or a fantasy in the audience. It says, you can be happy - it's up to you; you can win - it's up to your competitiveness; you can emerge from anonymity - if you want it enough.

In the works of Naruse and Ozu (to name just two), however, those assumptions are regarded with gentle irony or disdain. Why do you expect to be happy? Do you think it's a right? Don't you see that life is essentially a sport for losers, the unlucky, the commonplace? Don't you see that people will be calmer and more content if they understand that the pursuit of happiness is at best a game and at worst a mania that can leave you crazy?

The NFT programme for the Naruse season quotes the American critic, Phillip Lopate, who has written on Naruse with great insight: "If Naruse's films are invariably about disappointment, he himself does not disappoint - no more than does Chekhov, an artist he greatly resembles in stimulating our appetite for larger and more bitter doses of truth."

This season includes 20 Naruse pictures. He may have made four times that number, but many have been lost. Five come from the 30s, just one from the 40s, and 15 from the 50s and 60s. For some reason, confidence or touch deserted Naruse in the years of the war and the recovery. We don't know why. Was disappointment too dangerous in those years? Was his focus so intensely domestic that he could hardly function in a time of hysterical external concentration?

No one seems able to give a satisfactory sketch of Naruse biographically. Nor is it easy to understand the confusion of the 40s when Naruse's way of seeing - which ranges from stillness to considerable movement, and so has the best of Ozu and Mizoguchi - seems so secure and fruitful at either end of his life. In Repast (1951), Setsuko Hara plays an unhappily married woman who has to look after a difficult niece. The girl's unruliness tempts the mature woman to wonder if she could end her marriage. In Mother (1952), Kinuyo Tanaka is the wife of a laundryman. When he dies, she tries to revive his business. And in Lightning (1952), Hideko Takamine plays a settled woman who wonders whether she can marry.

Naruse made these three films in two years (the moment of Rashomon), three films that were unknown for decades in the west. They are sister-films, if you like, almost interchangeable. Yet they offer three actresses - the great Japanese actresses of that moment Hara, Tanaka and Takamine - wonderful roles. It may be that the best way into Naruse's work is quite simply in terms of how he sees those women.

Naruse's fans observe that he becomes intoxicating: the more you see the more you want. When a Woman Ascends the Stairs (1960) is marvellous. Hideko Takamine is a middle-aged widow and bar hostess who dreams of having her own bar. The film I most want to see is Floating Weeds, about a love affair between Takamine and Masayuki Mori (the potter from Ugetsu).

I wonder how many other Japanese directors there may be from the 30s and other decades waiting to be rediscovered. I suspect in a few years' time, Naruse will be as well-known as Ophuls and Renoir.

A Mikio Naruse season, with a special release of When a Woman Ascends the Stairs, is at the National Film Theatre, London SE1 until July 31 (www.bfi.org.uk) Box office: 020 7928 3232.

[reaky]

Second-last paragraph: Floating Clouds, I think.

Still, Thomson has obviously come along since his entry on Naruse in his Biographical Dictionary, in which he confided that he hadn't actually seen any of the films but was really, really looking forward to doing so. Thanks for that, David.

[MichaelB]

Still, Thomson has obviously come along since his entry on Naruse in his Biographical Dictionary, in which he confided that he hadn't actually seen any of the films but was really, really looking forward to doing so.

If you have the latest edition (4th?), read the very last paragraph.

[reaky]

Fourth! I've still got the second. Does he say anything interesting?

[foggy eyes]

If memory serves, something to the effect of 'I've seen some now, and they are... ineffable'. Again, thanks David.

[ezmbmh]

Last Paragraph, 4th ed.

"Very well: the above was a ruse: I have seen Naruse films and they are...ineffable. But I hold to the official stance of vital anticipation. Thus far I have seen nothing made by Nicholas Thomson (but he is only thirteen)."

His kid, I presume, and Thomson deciding to be cute rather than have anything real to say. I agree the above listing shows he's moved forward, though he still doesn't seem to have seen, or appreciated much.

[ellipsis7]

Very little I have read yet on Naruse is actually about himself and his films, mostly first and always default is comparison and talk about other peoples' films, Ozu, Mizoguchi, Kurosawa, Fassbinder etc., Thomson profile no exception. I''m still not persuaded yet to dip my toe in this pond....

[Michael Kerpan]

Very little I have read yet on Naruse is actually about himself and his films, mostly first and always default is comparison and talk about other peoples' films, Ozu, Mizoguchi, Kurosawa, Fassbinder etc., Thomson profile no exception. I''m still not persuaded yet to dip my toe in this pond....

How do you propose talking about a comparatively unfamiliar director? By offering comparisons and contrasts, one can give someone unacquainted with his work an idea of what to expect (or what not to expect). If you do like the work of both Ozu and Mizoguchi, the odds are considerably better than even that you'll find Naruse worth investigating also. If you like neither, the odds against liking Naruse's work are pretty high.

[Murasaki53]

Just acquired the box set and watched 'Repast'. I was blown away by it. A marvellous film from start to finish. It was also great to see how Shinsaibashi in Osaka looked years ago (as I used to live there).

However, I have two questions:

1. About the single mother in Tokyo who Michiyo meets and whose welfare payments are coming to an end: are we meant to conclude that her husband has simply upped and left? Or is he a POW still being held by the Russians?

2. Is it just me or are the final words narrated by Michiyo meant to be didactic?

[Tommaso]

2. Is it just me or are the final words narrated by Michiyo meant to be didactic?

I very much suppose so, and though I don't remember the exact words now, I felt that this end very much endorses a highly traditional view on marital relations. The didacticism in "Repast", but also - to a much lesser degree - in the other two films, made them rather difficult for me in the end (whereas it never disturbes me in Kurosawa's films, for example, perhaps because the things Kuro lectures us about are much closer to my own views and interests).

I'm still unsure whether I like Naruse or not. I guess the only way to find out is to watch more of his films. I admired the apparent effortlessness of these films and also much of the visuals, but as yet, Naruse doesn't quite do it for me. But I have the same problems with Ozu: the slowness, the problems of Japanese society that I cannot really tune myself in to as a westerner...

[Michael Kerpan]

I don't think these three film are particularly "didactic" at all -- certainly far less so than many of Kurosawa's films.

As someone who has been married for over 30 years, what strikes me about "Repast" (and other Naruse films touching on marriage) is the uncanny authenticity of its portrayal of marriage and married people. For a marriage to last, one has to give up LOTS of illusions and accept lots of compromises. Hara's unhappiness initially is perfectly justified (from one perspective) -- and yet her experiences in Tokyo lead her to a different perspective. She sees her much sexier cousin has feet of clay, she sees just how hard it is to find work of any sort, she sees how Japanese marriages more typically work, she sees the rigors of being a woman "on her own". And, most importantly, she gets a better sense of proportion in balancing the virtues and faults of her husband.

Naruse's perspective (like Ozu's) is ultimately one of realistic humanism -- not conservatism.

The central issues that Ozu and Naruse deal with are not even remotely uniquely (or especially) Japanese -- they are ones that face virtually all people as they grow older, cope with jobs (and lack thereof) and parenthood, and eventually cope with aging and death. The specificity of detail -- in the end -- (paradoxically) makes their films all the more universal.

I don't think we can know the exact circumstances of Hara's single-mother friend in Tokyo. The details of why she is being left without any sort of help ultimately make little difference. It is the callousness of society's total lack of concern for people in her situation that is more important.

[Tommaso]

I don't think these three film are particularly "didactic" at all -- certainly far less so than many of Kurosawa's films..

You're quite right, Michael, on this point and on all the other points. Being unmarried, I probably cannot quite give an informed opinion. I only have the feeling that Hara's husband in the end did not deserve such an easy form of forgiveness. There is a change in Hara's character, but not as much so in the her husband, at least that was how it seemed to me after just one viewing of the film.

Naruse's perspective (like Ozu's) is ultimately one of realistic humanism -- not conservatism.

Certainly humanistic, and perhaps a little idealizing. That's why it appears 'didactic' to me. Kurosawa might be even more didactic, but he teaches us a rather grim view of the world, which I find ultimately more realistic (the only exception I can think of at the moment is the end of "Rashomon", and perhaps his three late films, but the last two are hardly major works).

The central issues that Ozu and Naruse deal with are not even remotely uniquely (or especially) Japanese -- they are ones that face virtually all people as they grow older, cope with jobs (and lack thereof) and parenthood, and eventually cope with aging and death. The specificity of detail -- in the end -- (paradoxically) makes their films all the more universal.

Yes, of course, the issues are universal, but the specific situation is more identifiably Japanese to me than that of the clerk in "Ikiru" or that of Mifune's role in "I live in fear". But I don't want to start that sort of discussion again, you know: who is more 'Japanese', or are Mizoguchi/Kurosawa more western than Ozu/Naruse (swap around these four directors in all possible combinations), and are their films better or worse for that... I just try to come to terms with the fact that so many people here are blown away with Naruse's films, whereas I'm not at the moment (and usually, I'm pretty easy to excite). Your points about marriage might be one bit of the explanation, and ultimately perhaps the way one reacts to a specific work of art has to do not just with purely technical or aesthetic considerations, but also the much less thematized point where you are in your personal life at a particular point. And somehow I tend to be more in a "Ran"-mood at the moment...

[Michael Kerpan]

Never forget -- it took me at least a couple of years to be "swept away" by Naruse. So how could I ever insist that people should fall in love with his work immediately!

Over the course of two+ years, I saw "Woman Ascending", "Late Chrysanthemums", "Mother", "Sound of the Mountain" (temperature beginning to rise), "Floating clouds", "Repast" (subbed in French) .... but only with my _second_ viewing of "Repast" (still subbed in French) did I begin to succumb (utterly) to Naruse's vision.

I think it takes a few viewings to recognize just how fundamentally decent (and kind-hearted) a guy Hara's husband is here. The film tells us that he arrives at Hara's family's house some undefined (but not minimal) period time before she does. I like to fantasize that Sugimura (H's mother) used part of the time in coaching him in what to say and what NOT to say -- when the two finally meet. (I think Repast features Sugimura in one of her most likeable roles). But possibly he manages to say and do just the right things due to his own good nature (and true affection and respect for Hara).

[forweg]

I very much suppose so, and though I don't remember the exact words now, I felt that this end very much endorses a highly traditional view on marital relations.

Well, according to the book that comes with the set, Naruse's screenwriters wanted to end the film with a divorce, but Toho found this unthinkable and basically forced them to change it.

[Michael Kerpan]

Well, according to the book that comes with the set, Naruse's screenwriters wanted to end the film with a divorce, but Toho found this unthinkable and basically forced them to change it.

ONE of the screen writers felt this way -- no indication (as far as I recall) that Kawabata or Naruse or Ide (her collaborators) agreed with her on this point. While I admire Sumie Tanaka -- and understand her point (and even sort of agree with her that Hayashi would likely have written a bleaker ending, had she lived to complete the book) -- I also find no fault with the ending that was adopted for the film.

(Remember -- the script for Naruse's adaptation of Kawabata's "Sound of the Mountain" was actually _bleaker_ than the book).

[forweg]

According to Russell, both Tanaka and Ide felt the film should end with divorce, and only Toho is mentioned as opposing this ending. I assume Russell's word is accurate.

[Michael Kerpan]

According to Russell, both Tanaka and Ide felt the film should end with divorce, and only Toho is mentioned as opposing this ending. I assume Russell's word is accurate.

Kawabata was the literary executor -- no one, not even Toho -- could force him to approve anything he disapproved of. I believe only Tanaka withdrew from the project as a result of the disagreement.

While I respect Russell, I would also note she has a very definite agenda -- in analyzing Naruse (and Ozu etc.). while I mostly agree with her approach to Naruse (as far as it goes), I find her approach to Ozu close to untenable.

[ellipsis7]

BTW MK I am just reading Hasumi's OZU in Cahiers edition, as you have reccommended - very good, and like Yoshida Kiju's book, describes Ozu as anything but the archetypal and most Japanese of directors.... Rather he is a individual auteur with a strong style and unique vision, taking influences from the West and Hollywood as much as from Japanese culture... IMHO this confirms his greatness, and paints him in a progressive light, as opposed to the more traditional conservative framings, that the 'most Japanese' description implies...

[Michael Kerpan]

Hasumi's book on Ozu (like Bordwell's) is indispensable. I have not yet gotten Yoshida's, alas.

Narboni's book on Naruse is probably equally essential.

At the moment,, it is by far the best Western text on Naruse.

[Murasaki53]

" I don't think these three film are particularly "didactic" at all -- certainly far less so than many of Kurosawa's films.

As someone who has been married for over 30 years, what strikes me about "Repast" (and other Naruse films touching on marriage) is the uncanny authenticity of its portrayal of marriage and married people. For a marriage to last, one has to give up LOTS of illusions and accept lots of compromises. "
I very much agree. I think Michiyo senses the essential companionability that exists between her and her husband that can form the basis for a good marriage once the initial intensity has passed. It is this grasp of psychology that is one of the reasons I find Naruse so compelling. It was only the final words of the film that seemed just a tad didactic. I also think that Russell gets it wrong when she describes the husband as boorish (which I think she does in the accompanying book - I'll have to check later).

"Never forget -- it took me at least a couple of years to be "swept away" by Naruse. "
I feel like this right now about Ozu. After watching Repast I thought I'd give Floating Weeds another go. This is the only Ozu I've seen and I really struggled to see what everyone was going on about after the first couple of viewings. Now I feel like I'm undergoing a Damascene type conversion. Next up is Tokyo Story.

[Michael Kerpan]

I also think that Russell gets it wrong when she describes the husband as boorish (which I think she does in the accompanying book - I'll have to check later).

I'm pretty sure you are right. Russell is clearly pretty hostile to the husband in "Repast". I didn't really recognize the film from her description of it. Her Repast comments were her least useful ones.

"Never forget -- it took me at least a couple of years to be "swept away" by Naruse. "

I feel like this right now about Ozu. After watching Repast I thought I'd give Floating Weeds another go. This is the only Ozu I've seen and I really struggled to see what everyone was going on about after the first couple of viewings. Now I feel like I'm undergoing a Damascene type conversion. Next up is Tokyo Story.

I think "Floating Weeds" is a good starter Ozu for those who are not familiar with quieter Japanese films already -- but it is especially atypical (there really is no "typical" Ozu). I highly recommend "Early Summer" -- if this doesn't generate a bit of Ozu love I'll be surprised.

[heemee]

Any more Naruse from MoC any time soon ?

[peerpee]

Nothing lined up at the moment. BFI hope to get theirs out soon, and hopefully there'll be some more from Criterion/Eclipse in the next year.

[Murasaki53]

At 50.29 the picture wobbles momentarily on my copy of 'Sound of the Mountain'.

It doesn't interfere with my enjoyment of this excellent film but I just wondered whether anyone else has had this experience.

[Michael Kerpan]

Even the best releases of these old Japanese films seem to show a little wobble here and there. Some of the older films (especially non-Toho ones) can be pretty hard to watch -- in terms of jiggling.