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 power and
  subversiveness of images are constant as those of
  themes and narratives are.
• Image of poverty and desperation in crooked
  composition in Town of Love and Hope amoral
  relationship in shocking raw colour in Cruel
  Story of Youth

5
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.

6
Powerful and Subversive Images

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

7
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

8
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

9
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.

10
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

11
Powerful and Subversive Images

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

12
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

13
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)

14
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.

15
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

16
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

17
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.)

18
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

19
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

20
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

21
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

22
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

23
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.

24
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