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Ichikawa Kon

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Ichikawa Kon Flamboyant Stylist – PowerPoint PPT presentation

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Title: Ichikawa Kon


1
Ichikawa Kon
  • Flamboyant Stylist

2
Ichikawa Kon
  • Ichikawa made 80 feature films between 1946 and
    2006
  • I dont have any unifying theme. I just make
    pictures I like

3
Ichikawa Kon
  • Born in 1915
  • Entered Kyoto JO Studio as an animator in 1933.
  • When JO was merged with PCL in 1937 and became
    Toho, he became an assistant director.

4
Ichikawa belongs to the generation of the
directors who started career during WWII. He
became a prominent post-war film director along
with Kurosawa Akira and Kinoshita Keisuke.
5
Ichikawa Kon
  • His childhood love of drawing and his dream of
    being an painter.
  • His fascination with chambara and samurai films
  • His love of the Disney animations
  • I am a cartoonist and I think that the greatest
    influence on my films (besides Chaplin)is
    probably Disney.

6
Ichikawa Kon
  • Met Yumiko Nogi (later Wada Natto), a translator,
    at Toho Studios.
  • Wada Natto became a screenwriter for most of
    Ichikawas films.
  • She agreed to marry him after the completion of
    his first film.

7
  • Debuted as director with Musume Dojoji (A Girl at
    Dojoji Temple) in 1945
  • Mainly worked on screwball comedies and satires
    in his early career

8
  • Mr. Pu (1953) is about a school teacher who goes
    paralyzed with the fear of A-bomb and The
    Millionaire (1954) is an absurd comedy on a man
    who is determined to avoid to be a nuclear target
    and moves to a derelict house only to find his
    neighbour making an A-bomb.

9
  • Cold War - fear of the outbreak of a nuclear war
  • Daigo Fukuryu Maru, exposed and contaminated by
    nuclear fallout near Bikini Atoll, 1st March,
    1954
  • Godzilla (1954)

10
Ichikawa from metteur en scène to auteur.
1951 5 films
1952 5 films
1953 4 films
1954 4 films
1955 2 films
1956 3 films
1957 3 films
1958 1 film
1959 3 films
1960 3 films
1961 1 film
11
Ichikawas Films
  • In the later part of the 50s Ichikawa turned to
    more serious subjects.
  • The Burmese Harp (1956) a lyrical epic about a
    Japanese soldier who became a Buddhist monk from
    the guilt of his complicity with killing.

12
Ichikawas Films
  • Enjo (1958) is about a novice monk who sets fire
    on Kinkakuji (the Golden Pavillion) as he does
    not want to watch its purity and beauty being
    tainted by human corruption and greed.

13
Ichikawas Films
  • Fires on the Plain (1959) is about a soldier in
    the retreating army in the Philippines who
    refuses to eat human flesh despite the desperate
    shortage of food.

14
  • Punishment Room (1956) is about a college student
    who has no respect for his hard-working parents.
    He rapes one of his classmates and provoke the
    gang of the youth to criminal actions.

15
Ichikawas Films
  • Odd Obsession (1959) is about a man getting on in
    years who sets out to find a way to resurrect his
    flagging virility and sexual passion by
    deliberately making his own wife flirting with a
    young, handsom doctor.

16
Ichikawa as Auteur
  • Do Ichikawas films have any consistent themes
    and styles which qualify him as auteur?
  • Eclectic motifs, social and personal concerns,
    themes and styles

17
Ichikawa as Auteur
  • Mere illustrator - Oshima Nagisa
  • Elements which may make Ichikawa an auteur the
    total control of filmmaking (he designed sets,
    adjusted the lighting, touched up actresses'
    make-up and went to music school so he could
    write scores

18
Ichikawa as Auteur
  • James Quandt (ed.), Kon Ichikawa, Cinémathèque
    Ontario, Toronto, 2001
  • His abiding concern is with the recent history of
    his country his background and experiences still
    demonstrably shape the abiding concerns of his
    films. A native of the Kansai region, he set many
    films in its major cities of Osaka and Kyoto
  • Alexander Jacoby

19
Ichikawa as Auteur
  • Working in every available genre and turning out
    several films for every major company and
    claiming that he makes the films that he likes,
    he has been the most successful in adapting
    literary works into films.

20
The Burmese Harp ? Takeyama Michios Biruma no
TategotoEnjo ? Mishima Yukios Kinkakuji
21
Odd Obsession, Makioka Sisters ? Tanizaki
Junichiros Kagi and SasameyukiKokoro, I Am a
Cat ? Natsume Sosekis Kokoro and Wagahai wa
Neko de aru
22
Fires on the Plain ? Ooka Shoheis
NobiPunishment Room ? Shintaro Ishiharas Shokei
no Heya
23
Bridge of Japan ? Izumi Kyokas Nihonbashi Hakai
? Shimazaki Tosons Hakai
24
Ichikawas Literary Adaptation
  • Retelling literary stories in effective and
    entertaining ways
  • Require the power to interpret the literary text
    accurately (and originally) and the skill to
    visualize it with Wada Natto

25
Ichikawas Literary Adaptation
  • Wada Natto - Ichikawas scriptwriter since Human
    Patterns (1949) and wife - she provided 34
    scripts, most of which were the adaptations of
    literary works
  • Special talent for adapting non-cinematic
    sources.

26
Ichikawas Literary Adaptation
  • Ichikawas talent to adapting into the film the
    text whose visualization is considered almost
    impossible or extremely difficult, contextually
    and technically
  • He adapt not only literary works but also the
    most well-known and the best loved works.
  • Takeyamas The Burmese Harp (the best seller)
  • Misimas The Temple of Golden Pavilion (based on
    a real and controversial event)
  • Tanizakis Makioka Sisters (epic length
    psychological novel)
  • Sosekis I am a cat and Kokoro (literary
    classics)
  • Ishiharas Punishment Room (youth subjects)

27
Ichikawas Literary Adaptation
  • He is able to etch complex characters
  • The stuttering young monk who burns down Golden
    Pavillion in Enjo
  • The elderly husband who resorts to injections and
    voyeurism in order to remain sexually active in
    Odd Obsession

28
Ichikawas Literary Adaptation
  • The member of a pariah class who tries to deny
    his identity and to pass in regular society in
    Hakai
  • The soldier who survived in a extreme and insane
    condition and kept his sanity in Fires on the
    Plain

29
Ichikawas Literary Adaptation
  • Actions are seen and filmed from the view point
    of a black cat (I am a cat) or a two-years old
    boy (Being two isnt easy)
  • Exaggerated visual styles - stylization

30
Ichikawa as Auteur Style
  • Flamboyant technical tricks
  • Direct address to the audience
  • Stop motions
  • Pale, subdued, sepia colours
  • As seen in Odd Obsession

31
Ichikawa as Auteur Style
  • A cinema character directly speaks to the camera.

32
Ichikawa as Auteur Style
  • Visual repetition the same motif in reversed
    composition. Stop motion

33
Ichikawa as Auteur Style
  • Female sexuality and eroticism
  • Colours of skin like wet porcelain

34
Ichikawa as Auteur Style
  • Frequent close-ups without expression on
    mask-like faces

35
Ichikawa as Auteur Style
  • Deep-space photography

36
Ichikawa as Auteur Style
  • Literary story retold in stylistic photography
  • Miyagawa Kazuos cinematography
  • Wide screen, low-key lighting, pictorial
    composition and deep space
  • As seen in Enjo

37
Ichikawa as Auteur Style
  • Exemplary wide-screen photography
  • Expansive horizontal space
  • A lone figure framed in the temple gate

38
Ichikawa as Auteur Style
  • Psychological distance is represented visually by
    separating the two characters in low-key
    lighting.

39
Ichikawa as Auteur Style
  • Deep space photography and low-key lighting
  • A monk looking on his temple burning down to the
    ground.

40
Ichikawa as Auteur Style
  • Occasional close-ups

41
Ichikawa as Auteur Style
  • Pictorial Composition
  • Decentred widescreen compositions
  • Exaggerated raw colours, composition by colours
  • Chiaro-scuro lighting and high-contrast
    photography
  • As seen in Actors Revenge, 1963

42
Ichikawa as Auteur Style
  • Exaggerated raw colour (blue), dramatic lighting,
    and deep space composition

43
Ichikawa as Auteur Style
  • Frequent extreme close-ups and placing of figures
    to extreme corners in wide screen

44
Ichikawa as Auteur Style
  • Female eroticism in close ups

45
Ichikawa as Auteur Style
  • Dramatic lighting - a shaft of light going across
    the actors face

46
Ichikawa as Auteur Style
  • Dramatic lighting - strong light flood the face
    of the actor

47
Ichikawa as Auteur Style
  • Foreshortening technique creating a sense of depth

48
Ichikawa as Auteur Style
  • The style nurtured and developed in fiction films
    were applied for his documentary visual tricks
    through pictorial composition, multiple cameras,
    telephoto lens, etc.
  • Tokyo Olympiad (1965)

49
Ichikawa as Auteur Style
  • Long telephoto lenses loss of depth, sometimes
    blurred

50
Ichikawa as Auteur Style
  • Telephoto lens can separate athletes from others
    and the setting surrounding them

51
Ichikawa as Auteur Style
  • Blurred silhouette shot with splash reflecting
    light

52
Ichikawa as Auteur Style
  • Close-up shot of the sun with colours reversed
    from those in the national flag

53
Ichikawa as Auteur Style
  • An gymnastic action divided into a sequence of
    motions

54
Ichikawa as Auteur Style
  • Aerial shot directly looking down below

55
Ichikawa as Auteur Style
  • Extreme close-up shots

56
Ichikawa as Auteur Style
  • Insertions of non-diegetic close up shots

57
Ichikawa as Auteur Style
  • The most stylistic documentary film since Leni
    Riefenstahls Fest der Volker and Fest der
    Schönheit (1938)

58
Ichikawa as Auteur Style
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