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 selfreferential 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 consistentely experimental.
• New, unexpected,
unpredictable and the
most importantly
challenging and
subversive (aesthetically
and politically)
• Unconventional and nonrealistic
• 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 selfreflexive 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
• Its mise-en-scene creates
Late Film Making Styles
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_aOjfkC
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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