men, male-female relations, and the idea that a
man can be saved by a woman’s love. These themes
characterize his greatest postwar movies: The Life
of Oharu (1952), Ugetsu(1953), Sansho the Bailiff
(1954), and Street of Shame(1956).
Of these three directors, the films of Yasujiro
Ozu are considered by the international film com-
munity as the most Japanese in their modes of
expression and values. Like Mizoguchi, he began
his career long before World War II. His best films
are concerned not with the traditional world of the
samurai but with contemporary family life; indeed,
the values of the lower-middle-class families who
are the staple of his movies represent a microcosm
of postwar society. And since most of them take
place within the family home, their look is influ-
enced by Japanese domestic customs and architec-
ture. Because the Japanese often sit on the floor
and thus make eye contact with others at that level,
Ozu placed his camera similarly, pulling Western
audiences immediately into a different world. His
compositions are very formal and his camera sel-
dom moved; his editing consisted primarily of cuts
rather than, say, fades or dissolves. Unlike Kuro-
sawa, he did not seek to create Western-style con-
tinuity. Furthermore, his distinctive style included
the use of offscreen space, meaning that his compo-
sitions force our eyes to consider the world outside
the frame and as a result, heighten our sense of a
movie’s reality. Like Kurosawa, he was an auteur,
infusing his movies with a distinct style unlike any
other. While that style might at first seem austere
or rigid, the subject of his films is anything but.
Many western viewers find them difficult to watch
and understand due to the differences in culture.
Notable among his 54 films are Late Spring(1949),
Early Summer(1951), The Flavor of Green Tea over
Rice(1952), Tokyo Story(1953), Early Spring (1956),
Floating Weeds(1959), and An Autumn Afternoon
(1962).
Between the 1950s and 1970s, there arose an
extreme new movement (Nubero Bagu) that was
significantly influenced by the French New Wave
in its emphasis on upsetting cinematic and social
conventions. Its representative directors were
Hiroshi Teshigahara, Yasuzo Masumura, and Nagisa
Oshima, among others, and their movies are full
of brutality and nihilism. Oshima is, perhaps, the
best known of the group, a provocative filmmaker
whose work is often compared to the work of Jean-
Luc Godard. His movies include Cruel Story of Youth
(1960), full of violent passion, In the Realm of the
Senses(1976), a disturbing exploration of human sex-
uality, and Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence(1983), a
film about intercultural communication in a Japan-
ese prisoner-of-war camp that established Oshima’s
international reputation as a director who could also
communicate across cultures. Also well known in
the United States is the work of the experimental466 CHAPTER 10FILM HISTORY
Kurosawa’s Ran: “A scroll of hell”Ran, Kurosawa’s
adaptation of Shakespeare’s King Lear, pushes the play to
extremes. The word “ran” literally means “turmoil” or
“chaos” and it suggests rebellion, riot, or war. Kurosawa’s Ran
is full of blood, violence, suffering, and death, qualities
depicted in the 12th- and 13th-century Japanese scrolls known
as “scrolls of hell,” the term Kurosawa used to describe the
movie itself. The director has transformed King Lear’s three
daughters into the three sons of powerful warlord Hidetora
Ichimonji. Lady Kaede, the wife of Taro, one of the sons, is a
lethal schemer who wants her husband to become leader of
the clan. She fails, however, and at the end, she is confronted
by a clan loyalist, who tells her, “Vixen... you have
destroyed the house of Ichimonji, now you should know the
shallowness and stupidity of a woman’s wisdom.” But Kaede
has the last word: “It is not shallow or stupid. I wanted to see
this castle burn and the House of Ichimonji ruined by the
long grudge of my family. I wanted to see all this.” We do not
see Kaede beheaded, but in this spectacular image, her
spattered blood is running down the wall. A maid crouches to
the left and the assailant stands at the right; Kaede’s body is
on the floor. The image resembles a Japanese scroll; overall,
it is framed by pots of flowers in the middle ground; in the
background, the gruesome composition is framed by sliding
doors. Ironically, the dripping blood recalls various abstract
modern paintings.