Читать книгу A Critical Handbook of Japanese Film Directors - Alexander Jacoby - Страница 19

(February 1, 1902–May 1, 1981)

五所平之助

One of the outstanding practitioners of shomin-geki, Gosho specialized in the genre after serving as assistant at Shochiku to its pioneer, Yasujirō Shimazu. His twenties films are all lost, but melodramas such as The Village Bride (Mura no hanayome, 1928) and Tricky Girl (Karakuri musume, 1927) apparently focused on themes of illness and physical and mental disability; this concern, rooted in Gosho’s own, and his family’s, experience of poor health, would be carried over into his postwar work. A similar pathos was apparent in some of his thirties films. The Izu Dancer (Izu no odoriko, 1933) was a low-key silent romance based on a Kawabata novella about the love affair between a student and an itinerant actress, which climaxed in a moving scene of separation. Gosho also made realist dramas such as Burden of Life (Jinsei no onimotsu, 1935), in which the most affecting scenes focused on the sadness of a boy neglected by his father.

However, much of the director’s work early in the sound era was more cheerful in tone. The Neighbor’s Wife and Mine (Madamu to nyōbō, 1931), Japan’s first full sound-on-film film, was a diverting comedy about a writer distracted by various noises, a slim plot that nevertheless allowed Gosho to exploit the new medium with creativity and wit. This and the later pair of comedies The Bride Talks in Her Sleep (Hanayome no negoto, 1933) and The Groom Talks in His Sleep (Hanamuko no negoto, 1935) balanced slapstick with satire on contemporary mores. Gosho soon became celebrated for the tension in his work between humor and sadness, and for the expressive editing patterns that earned him a reputation as “the director who uses three shots where others use one.”

Gosho sought to minimize militarist content in his wartime films, and after the war, in Once More (Ima hitotabi no, 1947), produced a melodramatic account of the plight of liberals during the thirties. His postwar films combined social criticism with affecting personal drama. His most famous work, Where Chimneys Are Seen (Entotsu no mieru basho, 1953), though marred slightly by over-explicit symbolism, was an exemplary depiction of the balance between aspiration and despair in a country recovering from war. Dispersing Clouds (Wakaregumo, 1951), a very touching film, studied a selfish woman’s growth into maturity during a holiday in rural Nagano, where she witnesses the sufferings of the poor and sick. Also most affecting was The Yellow Crow (Kiiroi karasu, 1957), shot beautifully in color on location in Kamakura, and recounting a bittersweet story about a boy’s troubled relationship with his father, lately repatriated from China.

Despite the frequent pathos of his stories, Gosho’s worldview in his films from the thirties well into the fifties was a relatively optimistic one. Whereas Ozu’s family dramas tended to conclude with the disintegration of families, Burden of Life, Where Chimneys Are Seen, and The Yellow Crow ended with family reunions, while couples who have been divided by quarrels or political circumstances are reconciled or reunited in The Neighbor’s Wife and Mine, Once More, and Twice on a Certain Night (Aru yo futatabi, 1956). In Where Chimneys Are Seen and The Cock Crows Twice (Niwatori wa futatabi naku, 1954), characters attempt or contemplate suicide, but resolve finally to live on. Gosho’s ideals were tolerance, compromise, and rationality, and his films usually manifested a faith in progress. It is significant that the protagonists of Once More and Dispersing Clouds were doctors; Gosho associated their work with the regeneration of postwar Japanese society, and in both films, the heroines achieve moral integrity through nursing.

From the mid-fifties, however, Gosho’s films began to grow darker in tone. An Inn at Osaka (Ōsaka no yado, 1954), which used an inn in Japan’s commercial capital as a microcosm of society, attacked the materialist values and growing inequality of postwar Japan. Though nominally set in the Meiji period, Growing Up (Takekurabe, 1955) was also a social critique, condemning a purely commercial outlook which overpowers humane feelings. Both films featured women who have no option but to become prostitutes. Twice on a Certain Night, final reconciliation notwithstanding, showed the corruption of family relationships by financial priorities: a wife, believing that she cannot afford to raise a child, has an abortion. The Cock Crows Twice, a bleakly quirky black comedy set in a small coastal town, touched on the unfair lot of the working class as workers drilling for oil strike a hot spring instead, but receive scant payment for a discovery which will bring prosperity to the town.

Elsewhere, Gosho examined unhappy love affairs. Elegy of the North (Banka, 1957), a study in angst set atmospherically against the bleak backdrop of a Hokkaido port town in early spring, and Hunting Rifle (Ryōjū, 1961), a melodrama which in tone and imagery anticipated Chabrol or Fassbinder, were accounts of the misery and suspicion caused by infidelity; both culminated in suicide. An Innocent Witch (Osorezan no onna, 1965) showed the flip side of Gosho’s faith in rationality: a prostitute is believed to be cursed and dies while undergoing a Shinto ceremony of exorcism. Here, Gosho associated superstition with the wider irrationality that fueled militarism in the thirties. Militarist fanaticism, along with its corrosive effect on human relationships, was also the subject of his last major film, Rebellion of Japan (Utage, 1967).

Gosho was both an enquiring dramatist and an intelligent visual stylist, with a subtle montage-based technique designed to highlight significant details and elucidate the nuances of character and the particularities of milieu. His work was distinguished, in Arthur Nolletti’s words, by its “compassion and affection for character” and its “unerring sense of life’s injustices, contradictions, and complexities.” This sense of complexity, and the complementary avoidance of easy answers, gave Gosho’s work its remarkable richness and depth. Its poignancy derived from the humanism that he espoused, believing that “only if we love our fellow human beings can we create.”

1925 Sora wa haretari / The Sky Is Clear

Otokogokoro / Man’s Heart

Seishun / Youth

Tōsei tamatebako / The Magnificent Pearl Box

1926 Machi no hitobito / Town People

Hatsukoi / First Love

Honryū / Rapid Stream

Haha yo koishi / Mother, I Miss You

Musume / Daughter

Kaeranu sasabue / Bamboo Grass Flute of No Return

Itoshi no wagako / My Beloved Child

Kanojo / Girlfriend

1927 Sabishiki ranbōmono / The Lonely Roughneck

Hazukashii yume / Shameful Dream

Karakuri musume / Tricky Girl

Shojo no shi / Death of a Virgin

Okame / Moon-Faced / A Plain Woman

Tōkyō kōshinkyoku / Tokyo March

1928 Suki nareba koso / Because I Love You So

Mura no hanayome / The Village Bride

Dōraku goshinan / Guidance for the Indulgent

Kami e no michi / The Way to God

Hito no yo no sugata / A Daughter of Two Fathers / Appearance of the Human World (lit.)

Gaitō no kishi / Knight of the Street

Haha yo kimi no na o kegasu nakare / Mother, Don’t Sully Your Name

1929 Yoru no mesuneko / Cat of the Night

Shinjoseikan / A New Kind of Woman

Oyaji to sono ko / A Father and His Child

Ukiyoburo / Bath of the Floating World

Jōnetsu no ichiya / One Night of Passion

1930 Dokushinsha goyōjin / Bachelors Beware

Dai Tōkyō no ikkaku / A Corner of Greater Tokyo

Hohoemu jinsei / A Smiling Life

Onna yo kimi no na o kegasu nakare / Woman, Don’t Sully Your Name

Shojo nyūyō / Virgin Wanted

Kinuyo monogatari / Story of Kinuyo

Aiyoku no ki / Record of Love and Desire

1931 Jokyū aishi / Sad Story of a Barmaid

Yoru hiraku / Blooming at Night

Madamu to nyōbō / The Neighbor’s Wife and Mine

Shima no ratai jiken / Island of Naked Scandal

Gutei kenkei / Silly Younger Brother and Clever Older Brother

Wakaki hi no kangeki / Memories of Youthful Days

1932 Nīsan no baka / My Stupid Brother

Ginza no yanagi / Willows of Ginza

Tengoku ni musubu koi / Love Requited in Heaven

Satsueijo romansu: Ren’ai annai / A Studio Romance: Guidance for Love

Hototogisu / The Cuckoo

Koi no Tōkyō / Love in Tokyo

1933 Hanayome no negoto / The Bride Talks in Her Sleep

Izu no odoriko / The Izu Dancer / The Dancing Girls of Izu

Jūkyū no haru / Nineteenth Spring

Shojo yo sayonara / Goodbye, Virgin

Ramūru / L’Amour / Caresses

1934 Onna to umareta kara nya / Since I Was Born a Woman

Sakura ondo / Cherry Blossom Chorus

Ikitoshi ikerumono / Everything that Lives

1935 Hanamuko no negoto / The Groom Talks in His Sleep

Hidari uchiwa / The Easy Life (lit. Left-Handed Fan)

Fukeyo koikaze / Breezes of Love

Akogare / Yearning

Jinsei no onimotsu / Burden of Life

1936 Okusama shakuyōsho / A Married Lady Borrows Money

Oboroyo no onna / Woman of the Mist / Woman of a Misty Night (lit.)

Shindō (Zenpen; Kōhen) / The New Road (Parts 1 and 2)

1937 Hanakago no uta / Song of the Flower Basket

1940 Bokuseki / Wooden Head / Wood and Stone

1942 Shinsetsu / Fresh Snow / New Snow

1944 Gojū no tō / The Five-Storied Pagoda

1945 Izu no musumetachi / The Girls of Izu

1947 Ima hitotabi no / Once More

1948 Omokage / A Face to Remember

1951 Wakaregumo / Dispersing Clouds

1952 Asa no hamon / Morning Conflicts

1953 Entotsu no mieru basho / Where Chimneys Are Seen / Four Chimneys

1954 Ōsaka no yado / An Inn at Osaka

Ai to shi no tanima / The Valley between Love and Death

Niwatori wa futatabi naku / The Cock Crows Twice

1955 Takekurabe / Growing Up

1956 Aru yo futatabi / Twice on a Certain Night

1957 Kiiroi karasu / The Yellow Crow / Behold Thy Son

Banka / Elegy of the North / Dirge

1958 Hotarubi / The Fireflies / Firefly Light (lit.)

Yoku / Avarice

Ari no machi no Maria / Maria of the Ant Village

1959 Karatachi nikki / Journal of the Orange Flower

1960 Waga ai / When a Woman Loves / My Love (lit.)

Shiroi kiba / White Fangs

1961 Ryōjū / Hunting Rifle

Kumo ga chigireru toki / As the Clouds Scatter

Aijō no keifu / Love’s Family Tree

1962 Kāchan kekkon shiroyo / Mother, Get Married

1963 Hyakumannin no musumetachi / A Million Girls

1965 Osorezan no onna / An Innocent Witch / A Woman of Osore-zan (lit.)

1966 Kāchan to jūichinin no kodomo / Our Wonderful Years / Mother and Eleven Children (lit.)

1967 Utage / Rebellion of Japan / Banquet (lit.)

1968 Onna to misoshiru / Woman and Miso Soup

Meiji haru aki / Four Seasons of the Meiji Period

1977 Waga machi Mishima / My Town Mishima (short)