Oshima Nagisa 2
Stylistic Self-negation
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.
Changing Styles
• Referential and selfreferential style - formal
characteristics made of
cinematic quotations
• The lack of any consistent
style paradoxically
becomes Oshima’s visual
and narrative style as auteur.
• Style negating itself; style
deconstructing itself.
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
•
Powerful and Subversive Images
• Sexual energy in utter hopelessness and poverty
is expressed by the use of symbolic colour - red
in Sun’s Burial
• Images of wedding are turned into those of
conformism and betrayal in Night and Fog in
Japan.
Powerful and Subversive Images
• Direct expression of sexuality and pleasure in
Pleasure of Flesh
• Struggle between sexual repression and liberation
in Violence at Noon.
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
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
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.
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
Powerful and Subversive Images
• Forbidden love with an animal in Max, mon
amour
• Ephemeral homosexual love like cherry blossoms
in Taboo
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
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)
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.
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
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?v=PfhgmCwob6s
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.)
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?v=39mFUW3urSA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hwBY477pe7w
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
Style in In the Realm • Its mise-en-scene creates
claustrophobic
of Senses
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_aOjfkC
rY
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
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
Changing Styles
Max, mon amour • Scripted by Jean-Claude
Carrière (Louis Buñuel’s
screenwriter).
• Sensational motif - some
of the visual styles are
borrowed from Luis
Buñuel - cool and
detached revelation of
hypocritical bourgeois
life-style.
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