MERRY CHRISTMAS MR. LAWRENCE: Treading lightly on the homoerotic tensions in a POW camp. |
| “Nagisa Oshima and the Struggle for a Radical Cinema” | Harvard Film Archive: December 7-22 |
Credited as one of the originators of the Japanese "New Wave" alongside Masahiro Shinoda, Kiju Yoshida, and the late Shohei Imamura, director Nagisa Oshima (born 1932) — who's being celebrated at the Harvard Film Archive this month — is among the generation that came of age during wartime and its uncertain aftermath. Working under the aegis of iron-fisted Shochiku Studio head Shiro Kido, Oshima and his contemporaries rejected the slick, Hollywood-inspired productions that Shochiku had been known for turning out month after month in favor of nihilistic films featuring the generation of sex-crazed, violent adolescents known as the "taiyozoku," or the "Sun Tribe."This new genre came of age (and gained its moniker) in 1954 when rival studio Nikkatsu released Takumi Furukawa's Season of the Sun, which was based on Shintaro Ishihara's award-winning novel about youths gone wild. But it was Ko Nakahira's immensely popular tale of depraved delinquents, Crazed Fruit, which Nikkatsu released two years later, that opened Oshima's eyes to a new generation of Japanese film and paved the way for his landmark CRUEL STORY OF YOUTH (1960; December 8 at 7 pm). This widescreen Technicolor shocker was unprecedented in its toxic depiction of sex, violence, and anti-American sentiment. Shot in a free-form, unpolished style with hand-held cameras, it recalls the classic that helped launch the French New Wave, Jean-Luc Godard's Breathless, which was released the same year.
The critical and commercial success that greeted both Cruel Story of Youth and his subsequent taiyozoku-themed picture, THE SUN'S BURIAL (1960; December 8 at 9 pm), were a vindication of Oshima, whose first film for Shochiku, A TOWN OF LOVE AND HOPE (1959; December 7 at 9 pm), received only limited distribution. Kido hated the end result, though perhaps not as much as he disliked Oshima's preferred title: The Boy Who Sold His Pigeon. The story of a thieving schoolboy whose scheme involves selling a homing pigeon that he's trained to return home shortly after he gets paid takes place in a town that offers him neither love nor hope. Still, the film elicited positive reviews.
Tensions with Kido came to a head upon the release of Oshima's fourth film, NIGHT AND FOG IN JAPAN (1960; December 12 at 7 pm), a political essay (and homage to Alain Resnais) that rails against both the right and the left and their inability to forestall the inevitable renewal of the controversial US-Japan Security Pact. Although the 43 highly theatrical extended shots that constitute the film would make Resnais (and even Godard) proud, Kido, who hadn't been aware of the film's secretive shoot, took great offense at the picture's radical political content, pulling the movie from theaters after just three days in limited release.
These early films were rebellious in almost every way. Compared with the previous generation, a golden era populated by such giants as Yasujiro Ozu, Kenji Mizoguchi, and Akira Kurosawa, Oshima was a ready and willing protester of the old ways of making films. That reflected his days as a student activist. And yet it was Kurosawa's No Regrets for Our Youth (1946), which dealt with a Kyoto law professor's trials at the hands of the repressive pre-war government, that helped influence Oshima's choice of school. In 1950, he was admitted to the law school of Kyoto University, becoming president of the Kyoto Prefecture Student Alliance. In 1953, he led a demonstration in which 70 people were injured. Dispirited, he entered his senior year branded a "Red Student" (no doubt his lonely childhood spent devouring his late father's collection of Communist and Socialist texts contributed to this charge), and with limited job prospects.
Although Oshima had no experience in filmmaking, he took the entrance exam at Shochiku, out of sheer desperation — and achieved the highest possible score. Yet after Night and Fog in Japan was shelved, he found himself with no choice but to ride the crest of the Japanese New Wave straight out of Shochiku and into independent production, forming his own company, Sozosha. Liberated from the mirage of freedom that Shochiku had offered, his controversial filmmaking grew more inventive; his narratives fragmented, taking off in bold new directions while remaining as intellectually — and sexually — charged as ever. An added irony? Shochiku would choose to distribute many of Sozosha's features.
Cruel Story of Youth revealed a probing fascination not only with criminal activities but also with the less visible, oppressed members of society that have remained a constant throughout his films. For every theft, there's a rape. For every act of blackmail, there's a murder. Oshima's interests lay with those marginalized members of society — frequently women, delinquents, and members of Japan's oppressed Korean-Japanese minority.
