A Post-War Japanese Cinema Primer

By michaelgloversmith

As longtime readers of this blog know, I think Japan has had one of the three consistently
strongest national cinemas in the world (along with France and the United States) from the
silent era through the present day. I already posted a Pre-War Japanese cinema
primer last year. For my money, the richest period in Japanese film history is the Post-War
era, a period lasting from the mid-1940s through the late 1950s; this was a golden age when the
major Japanese studios (Toho, Shochiku, Daiei, etc.) rebuilt themselves during a time of
nationwide economic resurgence. This was also when the best directors who had started
working before and during the war (Yasujiro Ozu, Kenji Mizoguchi, Akira Kurosawa, etc.),
diverse filmmakers whom nonetheless could be said to work in a classical style that was
informed by the censorship requirements of the occupational Allied powers, directed their very
best films. Beginning in the 1960s, there would be a New Wave of Japanese cinema (as their
would be in so many countries all over the world), spearheaded by Nagisa Oshima, Shohei
Imamura and others, that explicitly turned its back on the work of these old masters, making
them seem old-fashioned. Yet the Japanese cinema of the 1950s would influence, and continues
to influence, so much of the great world cinema that has followed, especially outside of Japan.
My two favorite contemporary directors, for instance (Taiwans Hou Hsiao-Hsien and Irans
Abbas Kiarostami), have both dedicated films to Ozu in the 21st century and the influence of
Mizoguchi and Kurosawa has been at least as pervasive.
Here are a bakers dozen of my favorite Japanese films of the Post-War period. Im once again
limiting myself to no more than two films per director. Otherwise, most of the slots would be
taken up by Ozu and Mizoguchi.
Late Spring (Ozu, 1949)

Yasujiro Ozu kickstarted his great late period with this terrific drama about a young woman
named Noriko (Setsuko Hara, playing the first of three Norikos for Ozu) who lives with her
widower father (Chishu Ryu) and is reluctant to get married for fear of leaving him alone. Not
only is this the first of the loose Noriko trilogy (even though Haras characters are different in
each film), it also laid down the template that all of Ozus subsequent films would follow until his
death in 1963: the themes of intergenerational conflict, familial love, loss and regret, wedded to a
precise visual style favoring static, low angle compositions and long shots. The depth of feeling
that arises from this marriage of form and content is simply unparalleled in cinema.
Ikiru (Kurosawa, 1952)

Ive never entirely warmed up to Akira Kurosawa. Most fans of Japanese cinema would put his
1951 breakthrough Rashomon on any short list of essential Japanese films from this period but
Ive always found there to be something facile and overly sentimental about its treatment of the
relativity of truth. Nonetheless, I was fairly blown away by the complexity and power of his
1952 Ikiru after recently re-watching it. A government bureaucrat (Takashi Shimura) realizes hes
dying of cancer and spends his final months on earth struggling against the odds to build a public
playground. Most of the second half of the films unusual two part structure is taken up by a flash-
forward sequence to the bureaucrats funeral where his co-workers debate, and ultimately
misunderstand, the meaning of their colleagues accomplishment. A genuinely poignant reminder
that its not what one thinks or says but what onedoes that matters most in life.
The Life of Oharu (Mizoguchi, 1952)

Kenji Mizoguchis exquisitely brutal ode to female suffering in 17th century Japan tells the story of
the title character, a high-society woman (played by the directors favorite actress Kinuyo Tanaka)
who is exiled from the imperial court at Kyoto after falling in love with a samurai below her
station. Eventually, she ends up a pathetic, middle-aged prostitute. Mizoguchis clear-eyed view of
life as a never-ending series of tragic events is ruthlessly unsentimental but leavened by the
occasional humorous touch. I dont believe any male director understood women as well as
Mizoguchi and the character of Oharu is his most sublime creation. Made in the directors
trademark rigorous style, this implicit critique of patriarchal Japan is one of the quintessential
Japanese movies.
Tokyo Story (Ozu, 1953)

Yasujiro Ozus masterpiece is this formally minimalist work (the camera moves only twice in the
entire film) that chronicles the largely unspoken conflict between an elderly married couple and
their adult children. Like a Japanese version of Make Way for Tomorrow, the children (with the
crucial exception of a stepdaughter played by Setsuko Hara) are largely neglectful of their parents.
Ozu, however, refuses to judge his characters, instead infusing the entire film with the Zen-like
concept of mono no aware, the notion that sadness cannot be avoided in life. This beautiful and
essential film is one of my top ten desert island movies.
Ugetsu (Mizoguchi, 1953)

Kenji Mizoguchis best-loved film is this unique ghost story/war movie/melodrama hybrid. In
feudal wartime Japan, two men (a potter and a farmer) move from their home village to a city,
hoping to become war profiteers, but tragically opt to leave their wives behind; as the men
become wildly successful, one of the wives is murdered and the other is forced into a life of
prostitution. The homecoming finale, which sees the protagonists as sadder but wiser men, is
shattering. Mizoguchis ravishingly photographed fable of greed and ambition uses light, shadow
and fog (not to mention those legendary crane shots) to perfectly complement his view of the
world as a place of impossible moral choices.
Gojira (Honda, 1954)

I know next to nothing about Japanese monster movies but, knowing of their importance in post-
war Japan, I decided to watch the original Gojira (Godzillain the English speaking world) solely
for the purpose of completing this list. To my surprise, I found it to be an uncommonly effective,
well-made and thoughtful horror movie where the fire-breathing title monster clearly functions as
a dark allegory for the nuclear destruction of Japan from a decade earlier. Not nearly as corny as
the endless parodies might lead you to believe (the black and white cinematography is crisp and
inventive and the special effects are quite good), this is also interesting from the human angle: a
love triangle involving a beautiful woman, a naval officer and an eye-patch wearing mad scientist.
Boo-yah!
Seven Samurai (Kurosawa, 1954)

Akira Kurosawas best film and arguably the greatest action movie ever made. A village of poor
farmers learn they are about to be raided by bandits on account of their soon-to-arrive barley
crop. They hire seven samurai to help them defend the village from attack, with nothing to offer in
return but food and board. The first half of this massively influential three and a half
hourchambara extravaganza is devoted to setting up the conflict and introducing the seven
samurai as distinct and memorable personalities (with Takashi Shimura and Toshiro Mifune
deserving special honors for carving out indelible archetypal characters). Then, when the epic,
rain and mud-soaked battle finally does arrive, it is impossible not to care deeply about the
human cost of the outcome. Seven Samurai is to the samurai picture what The Searchers is to the
western: the best film of its kind.
Twenty-Four Eyes (Kinoshita, 1954)

The great Hideko Takamine stars as Miss Oishi, a rural schoolteacher who, as was apparently
customary at the time, teaches the same twelve students (the twenty-four eyes of the title) from
elementary school through high school and thus forms poignant lifelong bonds with them.
Sentimental without being melodramatic, Keisuke Kinoshitas film begins with the teachers first
assignment in the late 1920s and ends with her as a war widow about twenty years later. In
between, he depicts Miss Oishi as a paragon of virtue, both compassionate and dedicated to her
job, which stands in ironic counterpoint to the offscreen, subtextual horrors of the Second World
War. The whole enterprise is deeply moving thanks to Takamines radiant performance,
Kinoshitas graceful direction and the recurring use of the Scottish folk tune Annie Laurie on the
soundtrack.
Floating Clouds (Naruse, 1955)

Mikio Naruse has long been considered one of Japans greatest directors by Japanese critics. Yet
in spite of a prolific body of work (his career began in the silent era and stretched all the way to
the late 1960s) hes never been as well known in the west as his contemporaries. Floating
Clouds is my favorite of the Naruse films Ive seen, a heartbreaking story of a doomed love affair.
Yukiko (Hideko Takamine), an employee of Japans forest service, meets and falls in love with a
co-worker, Kengo (Masayuki Mori), while stationed in French Indochina during WWII. After the
war, they meet up again in Japan where an obsessed Yukiko attempts to resume the affair in the
face of some very bastard-like behavior from her indifferent former lover. Naruses trademark
ability to extend sympathy to all of his characters in a scenario where people cant resist making
terrible decisions left me with a feeling of sadness Ive never quite shaken.
The Samurai Trilogy (Inagaki, 1954-1956)

Not a single film but, as with the Lord of the Rings movies, a trilogy released over a three year
period (1954s Musashi Miyamoto, 1955s Duel at Ichijoji Temple and 1956s Duel at Ganryu
Island) that it is meaningless to see as anything less than a unified whole. Toshiro Mifune, whose
very image is synonymous with the samurai warrior the way John Waynes is with the cowboy,
authoritatively embodies the legendary real life samurai Musashi Miyamoto. Over the course of
these three beautiful Technicolor films, he starts out as a young punk in 17th century Japan who
runs afoul of the law, which leads him on a journey of self-discovery whereupon he masters the
samurai code. Along the way he also romances a couple of babes, helps oppressed villagers and
defeats his arch nemesis in a spectacularly photographed duel on a beach at sunset.
Crazed Fruit (Nakahira, 1956)

Crazed Fruit is the single most important precursor to the Japanese New Wave of the 1960s and
was not coincidentally produced by Nikkatsu, the studio that would soon produce the most
important early films of Shohei Imamura and Seijun Suzuki. The plot concerns two brothers,
young, wealthy and unemployed, who fall for the same beautiful woman, who in turn is married
to an older American man. The emotional powder keg lit by this love triangle leads to an
unforgettably explosive finale. This portrait of modern, disaffected youth is light years away from
anything else that had been seen in Japanese cinema up to that point and, although rooted in
Japans very specific post-war climate, feels closer in spirit to a Hollywood film like Rebel Without
a Cause.
Giants and Toys (Masamura, 1958)

Yasuzo Masamuras colorful, delightfully Tashlin-esque pop satire takes aim at the newly
cutthroat corporate climate of Japans post-war economic boom years. The subject is the rivalry
between three caramel corporations; Nishi, the protagonist, is an ad exec at one company who
attempts to obtain inside information from his girlfriend and an old college buddy, each of whom
works for the other two companies. Masamuras Scope compositions, pop art colors and space
age props are the perfect window dressing for a social satire that feels not only prescient but
prophetic.
Fires on the Plain (Ichikawa, 1959)

Kon Ichikawa is responsible for a number of bona fide classics of Japanese cinema yet he remains
much less highly regarded than many of his contemporaries. This is perhaps because, like a John
Huston or William Wyler, he is more craftsman than artist with few stylistic or thematic traits
to unify his diverse body of work. Most cinephiles would include his sentimental 1956 anti-war
drama The Burmese Harp on a list of essential post-war Japanese films but I prefer his more
ferocious and unpleasant war film Fires on the Plainfrom three years later. In the waning days of
WWII, a starving, demoralized soldier named Tamura wanders through the jungle, cut off from
his command, struggling to survive while still maintaining a shred of humanity. I often say that
the only true anti-war films are those told from the losing side. Fires on the Plain is one of the
best and bleakest movies of this kind. Beware of the monkey meat!











A Classic French Cinema Primer, pt. 1: Beyond the
Tradition of Quality
By michaelgloversmith

The pre-Nouvelle Vague French cinema remains unjustly neglected in a lot of critical and
cinephile quarters today, in part due to the contempt shown for it by the Nouvelle Vague
directors when they were still critics for Cahiers du Cinema in the 1950s. Francois Truffauts
famous dismissal of the French cinemas tradition of quality, which he contrasted with the
more ostensibly personal and cinematic films coming out of Hollywood during the same period,
has given an unfortunate and lasting impression that French cinema in the early sound era was
a barren field. I would argue that, since the birth of the movies, France has consistently been
one of the three greatest film producing nations along with the United States and Japan. This
list, which encompasses the early sound era through the birth of the New Wave (a separate
silent French cinema primer will be posted in the future) is meant to spotlight just a few of the
most essential and exciting French movies made during this period.
The list will be broken into two parts. Todays post encompasses the years 1930 1945. Part
two, to be published later this week, encompasses 1946 1959. As a self-imposed, arbitrary rule,
each half of the list will contain no more than two films by the same director.
Lage dOr (Bunuel, 1930)

Luis Bunuels first feature-length film is this hilarious Surrealist portrait of a man and a woman
who repeatedly attempt to get together and have sex but are continually prevented from doing so
by members of respectable bourgeois society. This is full of famously bizarre images, which still
retain their awesome, funny, unsettling power today: a woman shoos a full grown cow off of the
bed in her upper-class home, a groundskeeper arbitrarily shoots his son, a woman lasciviously
sucks on the toe of a statue, a man throws various objects, including a burning tree, a bishop and
a giraffe, out of a second story window. Like a lot of great works of Surrealist art, this was
deliberately meant to counter the rising tide of fascism that was sweeping across Europe at the
time.
Marius (Korda, 1931)

The first and best installment of Marcel Pagnols Fanny Trilogy (followed byCesar and Fanny)
is a sweet comedy/melodrama about the goings on in a Marseilles port-side bar. Marius is a
young man who manages the bar owned by his father Cesar. He has an affair with local girl Fanny
who, holding out hope for a marriage proposal, turns down the hand of the older, wealthier
Monsieur Panisse. But, alas, like the song says, Marius life, love and lady is the sea. Hungarian
born director Alexander Korda does a wonderful job of opening up Pagnols play, making a deft
use of real Marseilles locations. Charges that the movie is filmed theater are misguided; Pagnol
and Kordas very subject is the theatricality inherent in human nature.
A Nous la Liberte (Clair, 1931)

Mostly known today as the inspiration for Chaplins Modern Times, Rene Clairs classic comedy
follows the exploits of two escaped cons, one of whom becomes a factory owner and one of whom
becomes a worker in the same factory. Is there any real difference, Clair asks, between a prisoner
and a lowly factory worker? The equation between capitalism and criminality is a bit heavy
handed but this is never less than a total visual delight, from the slapstick humor to Lazare
Meersons stunning Expressionist-influenced art direction (which, atypical for a foreign film of
the time, received an Oscar nomination).
Zero de Conduite (Vigo, 1933)

Jean Vigos penultimate film, an unforgettable tribute to the anarchic spirt of youth, documents
the rebellion of four pre-adolescent boarding school students and is based on the directors own
childhood memories. Vigo was way ahead of his time in blending experimental filmmaking
techniques with narrative storytelling (check out the poetic use of slow motion during the pillow
fight scene) and the end result is beautiful, strange, beguiling and unmissable.
Latalante (Vigo, 1934)

Latalante tells the story of a newly married couple, a barge captain and his provincial wife, and
their tumultuous honeymoon-cum-cargo delivery trip along the Seine river. The simple boy-
meets-girl/boy-loses-girl/boy-finds-girl plot is merely an excuse for director Jean Vigo and ace
cinematographer Boris Kaufman to serve up an array of rapturously photographed images, all of
which correspond to the emotions of his protagonists. In a legendary supporting role, Michel
Simons portrayal of a tattooed, cat-loving first mate is as endearing as it is hilarious. Vigos final
film is one of the cinemas transcendental glories endlessly rewatchable, always uplifting.
Grand Illusion (Renoir, 1937)

Grand Illusion is a comedy and a drama, a war movie and a prison break film and, finally, thanks
to an 11th hour appearance by the lovely Dita Parlo, a very touching love story. There is also a
healthy dose of social criticism in the story of an aristocratic German Captain (memorably played
by Erich von Stroheim) who shows favoritism to an upper class French captive, indicating that the
bonds of class can sometimes be tighter than those of nationality. But this is just one of many
examples of Renoir explicating the arbitrary borders made by man in one of the few films that
deserves to be called a true anti-war movie.
The Pearls of the Crown (Guitry)

In this witty, innovative, trilingual take on the history film, three narrators an Italian, an
Englishman and a Frenchman each tell the story of how four pear-shaped pearls ended up in
the British crown. Writer/director Sacha Guitry manages, in a head-spinning hour and forty one
minutes, to trace the pearls from one owner to the next over five hundred years of European
history, allowing hilarious cameos by famous figures like Pope Clement VII, Catherine de Medici,
Henry VIII, Queen Elizabeth, Mary Stuart, Napolean and Queen Victoria. But in a movie whose
real subjects are language and storytelling the pearls themselves are nothing more than a
MacGuffin. Guitry himself plays the French narrator as well as three other characters in the
flashback sequences; as he wryly notes, We always lend our faces to the heroes of the story.
Pepe le Moko (Duvivier, 1937)

One reason why French film critics were so quick to identify and appreciate American film noir in
the 1940s is because it distinctly resembled, tonally and visually, many of the great French crime
films of the late 1930s. One such film is Julien Duviviers fatalistic Pepe le Moko, the story of a
charismatic Parisian gangster (wonderfully played by Jean Gabin) hiding out in the Algiers
Casbah, and the police inspector who attempts to reel him in. Algiers, an equally interesting
Hollywood remake with Charles Boyer and Hedy Lamarr, followed just one year later.
Le Jour se Leve (Carne, 1939)

One of the high water marks of the movement known as Poetic Realism (under which many of the
titles immediately preceding and following it on this list also fall), Le Jour se Leve has it all:
working class characters with Jean Gabin as the doomed hero and Arletty as his love interest,
atmospheric locations, a tragic crime plot, poetic dialogue by Jacques Prevert, and taut direction
by Marcel Carne. Also like a ton of great French films of the era, this was soon banned by the
Vichy government on the grounds that it was demoralizing. Maybe so but sometimes
hopelessness can be romantic too.
The Rules of the Game (Renoir, 1939)

This is Jean Renoirs masterpiece and the grandaddy of all films about an assortment of friends
and couples getting together for a weekend-long party in the country. The rules of the game are
the rules one must abide by in order to get along in society, which involves a considerable amount
of dishonesty. Fittingly, the one character who is incapable of lying, the earnest, heart-on-his-
sleeve aviator Andre, is also the character who dies like an animal in the hunt. Like the best
works of Shakespeare or Chekhov, this humanist tragicomedy captures timeless truths about the
inner workings of the human heart.
Le Corbeau (Clouzot, 1943)

A series of anonymously written poison-pen letters are sent to various prominent citizens of a
small French village. Chief among the targets of The Raven, the mysterious authors
pseudonym, is a doctor who is accused of adultery and performing illegal abortions. Both rumors
and hidden secrets are brought to light by the letters, which threaten to tear the fabric of the
community apart. Director Henri-Georges Clouzot made this for a German production company
during the Nazi occupation of France. Sensing that the movie in some way allegorized them, the
Nazis promptly fired Clouzot and banned the film. When the occupation ended, Clouzot was
prohibited from making movies for an additional two years by the French government because he
had collaborated with the Nazis! The director would go on to achieve much greater fame for The
Wages of Fear and Les Diaboliques in the 1950s but this refreshingly dark and bitter thriller, a
film far nastier than its Hollywood counterparts of the time, remains my personal favorite.
Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne (Bresson, 1945)

Robert Bressons second film features star performances (most notably a ferocious turn by Maria
Cesares), an original diegetic musical score and relatively ornate dialogue written by none other
than Jean Cocteau all elements the director would soon eschew in the major movies for which
he became best known. But Les Dames du Bois de Bolougne is still a terrific and very Bressonian
film about a woman who hatches a revenge plot against her ex-lover that involves arranging a
marriage between him and a prostitute. The timeless, dream-like atmosphere is alluring (the story
takes place in the present but feels as if it could be taking place in the 19th century) and the
ambiguously redemptive ending packs a wallop precisely because of Bressons de-dramatized
treatment.
Les Enfants du Paradis (Carne, 1945)

The pinnacle of the Marcel Carne/Jacques Prevert collaborations is this epic tale of doomed love
set in the world of 19th century Parisian theater. Baptiste is a mime who falls in love with aspiring
actress Garance. His shyness prevents their affair from being consummated and they go their
separate ways until, years later, fate brings them back together for one last shot at romance. Both
the behind the scenes look at theater and the depiction of 19th century France are lovingly
detailed and passionately executed. This is sometimes referred to as a French Gone with the
Wind but its actually much better than even that would suggest. One of the all-time great French
movies.