Japon Cinema

4     Ozu’s Story of Floating Weeds appears to be a simple tale of a father  

        attempting to reconnect with his son and his son’s mother.  In what ways

        could one argue that the camera treatment (angle, position, distance from

        subject, etc.), frame composition (mise-en-scene), use of props, and its

        editing style and rhythm make this a much more rich and complicated work?

- low angle from far away like a spy and quiet to observe

- comic relief with kids that seems happy and like a band of trump doing what they want.

After being gone for four years, “Kihachi Ichikawa” returns by train with his struggling acting troupe to what appears a small country town.
Soon after their arrival, his current mistress Otaka discovers the lovable loser Kihachi had a college-aged son, Shinkichi, by the local cafe owner Otsune, and the kid thinks the troupe leader is his carefree uncle and that his father is dead.

I found the dialogue extremely well written and “juste” even if I cannot rad Japanese, the scene with several close ups but including the chest between kihachi and his mistress. The way actors play in looking down and asking “ aren’t you lonely” (otaka)  might seemed cliché today but are really efficient to connect . Kihachi answered to her “no use complaining about loneliness”.

_ following a scene where they go fishing as father and son.
What surprised me is that Ozu described a japan in 1930” but the preoccupations are quite the same as today. It shows more or less a middle class happy with the established order “you’re a student, your job is to study”. Using a suite of large frame to show the landscape from behind and a several close ups to their legs yo show what they are doing in this peaceful nature. Where is son is even joking on his book falling to water with no bills in it .

The camerawork show us how waiting is horrible for actors. Because of the rain, they cannot play and ask for cigarettes and even steal some kids money…

So even in Asia comedians is not a well-paid job.

Then The jealous mistress bribes a young pretty actress in the company, Otoki (Yoshiko Tsubouchi), to seduce the innocent Shinkichi. Instead the two fall in love.

When Kihachi discovers this deception because otoki confess, he lectures Otoki and beats his mistress.

• Concerning women the director seems to take their defense as it shows women with major roles, well interpreted and often used a low angle to film them as to make them appear taller and more important.
  Women are also shown smoking and joking in order to illustrate strong, more or less respected and independent women but as the same time Kihachi is extremely macho and even beats his mistress so it still criticize women’s condition. Another thing is that it seems ot me that women are the only smart character and that men are being manipulated or too dunb to realise what is happening and their only force is a macho society or physical force.
• More over when Ozu is not using low angle he films around the belt which appears extremely normal even though I cannot recall seeing something like that before 1932 so this way of filming work really well.

The troupe soon goes bankrupt because it rains steadily and the attendance is decreasing.

- Kihachi calls it quits and disbands the group after paying them off and selling the props. He returns to the cafe to spend some quality time with the mother of his child, while Otoki and Shinkichi continue their love affair. When Shinkichi discovers the truth he yells out that he wants no father.

This argument scene is really contrasting to the beginning of the mvie when both parents were having thoughts on parenthood when one of the actor say “he eats like a horse”  “no wonder were are old” like a pause on their life to appreciate what was done.

The film began on a soft note almost relaxing and calm and ends on something much more sad and chaotic thanks to a dynamic camera work and a lot of montage and Intertitles.

 Kihachi departs and asks Otsune to look after Otoki. At the train station he meets Otaka and the two team up again to form a new troupe in the next town. And end with Kihachi scrathing his behind again as his final joke.

Ozu plays on the metaphor of the Sakamoto character being similar to a floating weed, who is drifting leisurely through life by being carried by the stronger undercurrents just like the floating weed is by the river.

If the story is quite basic but also touching Ozu achieved to enhance it with great camera work and characterizations, making it more special than it should have been.

 Conclusion :

1. German film historian and theorist Siegfried Kracauer argued that one could see in the German films of the 1920s the seeds of the conditions that would allow a dictator figure such as Hitler to rise to power in 1933.  Is Fritz Lang’s Metropolis an entertaining futuristic fantasy, even a science-fiction film?  Or, can it be read as an allegory of real, political, social and economic issues? What does its expressionist style add to answering both questions above?

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1) Is Metropolis mediocre?

- In 1927 H.G. Wells  write "I recently saw the most suptid in the New York Times. Wells is one of the greatest science fiction author with novels like the war of the worlds 1898 or the time machine 1895.

- The film even if loved by Adolf hitler was a tremendous financial failure and hated by art critics in Germany and in the world .

 But A new reconstruction of Metropolis is the first film distinguished

As in in 2001, and the film was inscribed on UNESCO's Memory of the World Register it became of model of architecture (inspired by the art deco movement that fritz observed in New York. It is also the foundation of the future of cinema"

The guardian even ranked metropolis second in the best science fiction movies of all time.
So we can ask ourselves why is it worth watching?

2) Innovative Special effects

• Miniatures of the city that we can obviously notice in the movie but are kind of new and this technique will also be used in the seventies with star wars

• used camera on a swing For example, swing can help achieve sharp focus along the entire length of a picket fence but that is not parallel to the film plane.

• Schüfftan process they use mirrors in the movie to create an illusion that actors are occupying miniature sets. This was widely used in the first half of the 20th century and then replaced by bluescrenen with the rise of computers

• Huge budget especially in Europe 5,100,000 Reichsmarks (estimated) 1.5 initial

3) is it science fiction