Oshima Nagisa 2

Stylistic Self-negation

Changing Styles

• A variety of visual and narrative styles.

• Different visual and narrative styles employed in each film

• Deliberate refusal of relying on a constant and enduring visual (narrative) styles.

Changing Styles • Referential and self-referential style - formal characteristics made of cinematic quotations

• Reference to Brecht Theatre, films of French ‘nouvelle vague’ (Jean-Luc Goddard) and Alain Resnais, British social realist films, etc.

• Self-referential: conscious about his own film styles

Experimental film making

• Style is different in each film but is con-sistentely experimental.

• New, unexpected, unpredictable and the most importantly challenging and subversive (aesthetically and politically)

• Unconventional and non-realistic

• On the verge of being vulgar and offensive

Unconventional film making

• Throughout the film the camera are tilted – crooked, precrious images

• Corresponding to the film’s subject – insecurity of a boy of a single parent

• The Town of Love and Hope Oshima’s first film.

Unconventional film making

• Bold compositions making most of the wide screen format

• Garish, raw and lurid colours in Oshima’s second film, Cruel Story of the Youth

Unconventional film making

• Sexual energy in utter hopelessness and poverty is expressed by the use of symbolic colour - red in Sun’s Burial

• Red of the national flag• Red of blood (hemorrhage)• Red of hot desire

Experimental Film Making

• 100 minutes discussion and debate about the Japanese politics and political betrayal in the setting of a wedding reception.

• Brechtian chamber drama • Night and Fog in Japan, Alain Resnais’ Nuit et

Brouillard (Night and Fog)

Experimental Film Making

• 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.

Powerful and Subversive Images

• Direct expression of sexuality and pleasure in Pleasure of Flesh

• Struggle between sexual repression and liberation in Violence at Noon.

Experimental Film Making

• Reference to soft-porn film genre • Reference to gangster film genre• Avant-garde and surrealistic narrative and images• In Pleasure of Flesh

Experimental Film Making

• 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 in Violence at Noon

Experimental Film Making

• In the format of a typical ‘coming-of-age’ film, Oshima vents his frustration with the apathy of young generation in Japan through this image of frigidity in Sing a Song of Sex

• Oshima created a series of politically subversive images.

Experimental Film Making

• Changes in gender roles - a girl obsessed with sex and a man with death in Japanese Summer: Double Suicide

• Signs – written words and symbols became conspicuous elements of Oshima’s films

Experimental Film Making

• 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).

• Artificial compositions – symmetry, profile, straight-on, and framing

Experimental Film Making

• The Diary of a Shinjuku Thief, one of the most experimental of Oshima’s films

• Reference to Goddard’s La Chinoise

Experimental Film Making

• 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 (Yoko’o Tadanori, Tanabe Moichi, Kara Juro, etc.)

Experimental Film Making

• 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.

Experimental Film Making

• Image of loneliness - a boy denied education and happiness in The Boy

• Long shots against the background of forlorn landscape and indifferent cityscape.

Experimental Film Making

• The 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.

Experimental Film Making

• Stylized and contrived compositions in Ceremony – symmetrical and unsymmetrical, bold compositions

• Metaphor for patriarchal order and disorder

Powerful and Subversive Images

• Individuals crashed with the weight of family - image of claustrophobia in Ceremony

Late Film Making Styles

• Pursuit of total pleasure and happiness at the time of the Sino-Japanese War in In the Realm of Senses.

• Shot in lurid colours and bold composition

Late Film Making Styles• 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?v=bk_aOjfkCrY

Late Film Making Styles

• Pursuit of pleasure and the price to pay for it - image of uncontrollable passion and guilt in Empire of Passion

• Shot in somber and rich pastel colours

Late Film Making Styles

• 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

Late Film Making Styles

• Oshima shifted his film subject from heterosexual to homosexual love

• Shot in more conventional war-film style

Late Film Making Styles • Mixture of stylistic and impressive images and conventional visualization.

• Mixture of sloppiness and sophistication

• Star vehicle: David Bowie, Ryuichi Sakamoto and Beat Takeshi

Late Film Making Styles

• Ideas shocked the viewer – Max, Mon amour• Forbidden love with an animal

Late Film Making Styles

• Highly aesthetic historical drama

• Beautiful and stylized set design

• Audacious costumes designed by Wada Emi

• Mesmerizing sword play

• Deep and strong colours