Oshima Nagisa 2

1
Oshima Nagisa 2

• Stylistic Self-negation

2
Changing Styles

• A variety of visual and narrative styles.
• Different visual and narrative style employed in
  each film
• Deliberate refusal of relying on a constant and
  enduring visual (narrative) style.

3
Changing Styles

• Referential and self-referential style - formal
  characteristics made of cinematic quotations
• The lack of any consistent style paradoxically
  becomes Oshimas visual and narrative style as
  auteur.
• Style negating itself style deconstructing
  itself.

4
Powerful and Subversive Images

• 
  Style employed in each
  film is different but the powerful and
  subversive images are constant as his political
  themes and concerns are.
• Images of poverty and desperation in crooked
  composition in Town of Love and Hope amoral
  relationship in shocking raw colours in Cruel
  Story of Youth

5
(No Transcript)
6
(No Transcript)
7
(No Transcript)
8
(No Transcript)
9
Powerful and Subversive Images

• Sexual energy in utter hopelessness and poverty
  is expressed by the use of symbolic colour - red
  in Suns Burial
• Images of wedding are turned into those of
  conformism and betrayal in Night and Fog in Japan.

10
(No Transcript)
11
(No Transcript)
12
(No Transcript)
13
(No Transcript)
14
(No Transcript)
15
Powerful and Subversive Images

• Direct expression of sexuality and pleasure in
  Pleasure of Flesh
• Struggle between sexual repression and liberation
  in Violence at Noon.

16
(No Transcript)
17
(No Transcript)
18
(No Transcript)
19
(No Transcript)
20
(No Transcript)
21
(No Transcript)
22
Powerful and Subversive Images

• Oshima vents his frustration with the apathy of
  young generation in Japan through this image of
  frigidity in Sing a Song of Sex
• Changes in gender roles - a girl obsessed with
  sex and a man with death in Japanese Summer
  Double Suicide

23
Powerful and Subversive Images

• Cruelty of capital punishment stretched to the
  extent that everything starts looking like a
  farce in Death by Hanging
• Image of loneliness - a boy denied education and
  happiness in The Boy

24
Powerful and Subversive Images

• Individuals crashed with the weight of family -
  image of claustrophobia in Ceremony
• Pursuit of total pleasure and happiness at the
  time of the Sino-Japanese War in In the Realm of
  Senses.

25
Powerful and Subversive Images

• Pursuit of pleasure and the price to pay for it -
  image of uncontrollable passion and guilt in
  Empire of Passion
• Homosexual passion and its guilt in Merry
  Christmas, Mr. Lawrence

26
Powerful and Subversive Images

• Forbidden love with an animal in Max, mon amour
• Ephemeral homosexual love like cherry blossoms in
  Taboo

27
Style in Cruel Story of Youth

• Jagged camerawork with deliberately unstable
  hand-held camera ? French nouvelle vague.
• Bold wide-screen composition
• Frequent uses of exaggerated, sensuous raw colours

28
Style in Burial of the Sun

• Photography of exaggerated colours - particularly
  orange - the hue created by the setting sun.
• The symbolic use of monuments in Osaka -
  dominating Osaka Castle (political) and
  Tsutenkaku (economic)

29
Style in Night and Fog in Japan

• The film is made of only 43 shots (c.f. 2,000 in
  Violence at Noon)
• Even more jagged camerawork with hand-held camera
• Format of chamber drama, discussion drama shot
  in sets - 1 2/1 hour debate on the left-wing
  politics in 1960.

30
Style in Violence at Noon

• Mise-en-scène constructed by close-ups and
  extreme close-ups.
• Overexposed, whitewashed photography
• Frenetic pace of editing (2,000 shots)
• Godard-like jagged jump cuts
• Complicated flashbacks

31
Styles in Death by Hanging

• Shifting styles - in the beginning the film is
  shot in somber instruction film - later, it
  adopts more self-reflexive avant-garde style
  (characters and Oshima speaking to the
  spectator).
• Early realism is replaced by theatre-of-absurd
  narrative and Brechtian performance.
• http//www.youtube.com/watch?vPfhgmCwob6s

32
Style in Diary of a Shinjuku Thief

• Shot as a cinematic collage
• (Collage a picture made by sticking other
  pictures, photographs, cloth etc.)
• Collage of documentary film, (avant-garde)
  theatrical performance, words and the cameo
  appearance of cultural icons of the 1960s (Yokoo
  Dadanori, Tanabe Moichi, Kara Juro, etc.)

33
Style in Boy

• Entirely shot on location from Kochi to Hokkaido.
• Cinema-véritè like realism shot with long lens
  and hand-held camera.
• Shot with available, natural light
• Fidelity to landscape and figures in it.
• Boy did not have previous acting experience.
• http//www.youtube.com/watch?v39mFUW3urSA
  http//www.youtube.com/watch?vhwBY477pe7w

34
Style in Ceremony

• A grandiose set was constructed by the art
  department of Daiei Kyoto Studios
• Solemn photography and stylized mise-en-scène
• Events are shown in bold flashbacks.
• Conventional representation with Brechitian
  detours.
• http//www.youtube.com/watch?v_R7k9pPquiU

35
Style in In the Realm of Senses

• Its mise-en-scene creates claustrophobic
  atmosphere.
• Strong and deep colours with low-key lighting
  (Eastmancolor).
• No demarcation between spiritual and physical
  love - solemnity and gravity of love-making
  images
• http//www.youtube.com/watch?vbk_aOjfkCrY

36
Styles in Empire of Passion

• Underlit - dominated by deep green and brown
  colours.
• Styles closely associated with genre movies -
  film noir, ghost film and historic drama.
• The same motif but a lot less intense than In the
  Realm of Senses

37
Style in Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence

• Mixture of stylistic and impressive images and
  conventional visualization.
• Mixture of sloppiness and sophistication
• Star vehicle David Bowie, Ryuichi Sakamoto and
  Beat Takeshi

38
Changing Styles Max, mon amour

• Scripted by Jean-Claude Carrière (Louis Buñuels
  screenwriter).
• Sensational motif - some of the visual styles are
  borrowed from Luis Buñuel - cool and detached
  revelation of hypocritical bourgeois life-style.

39
Style in Taboo

• Highly aesthetic historical drama
• Beautiful and stylized set design
• Audacious costumes designed by Wada Emi
• Mesmerizing sword play
• Deep and strong colours