Nihon shunka-ko

Sing a Song of Sex. JP 1967. PC: Sozosha. P: Takuji Yamaguchi. D: Nagisa Oshima. SC: Tsutomu Tamura, Mamoru Sasaki, Toshio Tajima, Nagisa Oshima. DP: Akira Takada - Shochiku Grandscope 2,35:1 - colour. AD: Jusho Toda. M: Hikaru Hayashi. ED: Keiichi Uraoka. GRADUATE BOYS: Ichiro Araki (Toyoaki Nakamura), Koji Iwabuchi (Hideo Ueda), Kazumi Kushida (Katsumi Hiro), Hiroshi Sato (Koji Maruyama). GRADUATE GIRLS: Nobuko Miyamoto (Sanae Satomi), Hiroko Masuda (Tomoko Ikeda), Hideko Yoshida (Sachido Kaneda, Korean). - Ichimo Itami (Professor Otake), Akiko Koyama (Takako Tanigawa), Kazuko Tajima (Mayuko Fujiwara, 69). 103 min. Print: Japan Foundation, with English subtitles. Viewed at Cinema Orion, Helsinki, 29 Aug 2009. - The colour print looks great to begin with, but the definition of light is uneven. - One of Oshima's most disturbing films. - It is winter in Tokyo. Graduates from the countryside want to enter Tokyo University. Their mentor, Professor Otake, invites them to a pub and they sing together old Japanese bawdy songs. The professor is killed at night in an inn in a gas oven accident. - Akiko Koyama plays the late professor's long-term lady friend. - The story takes place on the resurrection of the Emperor's Day, the celebration of which had been banned during the U.S. occupation. There is a demonstration against it, where workers' songs, the Warsawjanka, "This Land Is Our Land", "We Shall Overcome", etc. are sung along. - The film is almost a musical. - The protagonists interrupt the rebellious singing with bawdy songs, male and female. But the bawdy songs have also a strong dimension of social protest. - Also here there is a Korean theme: the origin of the Japanese is in Korea. - The film is deeply nihilistic and pessimistic. The boy students' sexual fantasies are violent, about raping and humiliation. The young generation does not seem better than the old one. - The girls' fantasies seem to be about being dominated, humiliated and raped, willingly. - Despite the title, there is hardly any sex and only fleeting nudity in this film. - It's more about extreme awkwardness and shyness in sexual matters.

Hakuchu no torima

Violence at Noon / [Keskipäivän demoni] / [Demonen mitt på dagen]. JP 1966. PC: Sozosha. P: Masayuki Nakajima. D: Nagisa Oshima. SC: Tsuton Tamura – based on a short story by Taijun Takeda. DP: Akira Takada - b&w - Shochiku Grandscope 2,35:1. AD: Jusho Toda. M: Hikaru Hayashi. ED: Keiichi Uraoka. CAST: Kei Sato (Eisuke), Saeda Kawaguchi (Shino), Akiko Koyama (Matsuko), Mutsuhiro Toura (Genji Hiuga), Hosei Komatsu (Shino's father), Hideko Kawaguchi (Matsuko's mother), Teruko Kishi (Shino's grandmother), Taiji Tonoyama (schoolmaster), Sen Yano (village counsel), Hideo Kanze (Inagaki), Fumio Watanabe (inspector Haraguchi), Ryoko Takahara (the woman in the hospital), Shigemi Kayashima (teacher). 99 min. A Janus Films print with English subtitles. Viewed at Cinema Orion, Helsinki, 28 Aug 2009. - A clean, intact print of a film with an extremely original definition of light. The definition of light in the print is not perfect but pays justice to the concept. - One of Oshima's seminal films. - Based on a true story of a serial killer, a rapist and a murderer in the 1950s, who became the "High Noon Killer" of the headlines. He is not insane, but devoid of conscience. - The film is a hard look at brutal crime, which has no rational explanation, not even insanity. - The reality of the crime is strange and complex in itself, but Oshima also builds his film as a jigsaw puzzle which starts to make sense first after the screening. - The setting is a mountain village in the Shinshu district in the north of Honshu. A group of young people establish a collective farm, but the experiment is a grave disappointment, which leads to the suicide of Genji, the son of the village chairman, and the suicide attempt of his girlfriend, Shino. Eisuke, who had followed them with the assignment to prevent the suicide attemps, is married to the teacher Matsuko. The double suicide scene triggers in him a strange reaction: he rapes what he thinks is the corpse of Shino. But Shino is revived. Eisuke starts his rapist-homicidal spree with 35 victims. In the end Matsuko and Shino try to repeat the double suicide, but again, Shino survives. - This film demands repeated viewings to be fully appreciated. - Uniquely original cinematography, montage, and a brilliant jazz-like score in counterpoint to the subject.

Etsuraku

Pleasures of the Flesh / [Lihan ilot] / [Köttets lust]. JP 1965. PC: Sozosha. P: Masayuki Nakajima. D+SC: Nagisa Oshima – based on the novel Kan no naka no Etsuraku by Futuro Yamada. DP: Akira Takada - Shochiku Grandscope 2,35:1 - Eastmancolor. AD: Yasutaro Kon. M: Joji Yuasa. The theme song "Etsuraku". ED: Keiichi Uraoka. CAST: Ketsuo Nakamura (Atsushi Wakisaka), Mariko Kaga (Shoko Inaba), Yumiko Nogawa (Hitomi), Masako Yagi (Shizuko), Toshiko Higuchi (Keiko), Hiroko Shimizu (Mari), Shoichi Ozawa (Hayami), Shoji Kobayashi (the rapist), Masahiko Naruse (Shoko's father), Daigo Kusano (Kudo), Mutsuhiro Toura (Sakurai), Hosei Komatsu (Eshiro), Shinko Ujie (Shoko's mother), Kei Sato (inspector Keji), Akira Hamada, Toru Emori, Fumio Watanabe (Hitomi's goons). 104 min. A Janus Films print with English subtitles. Viewed at Cinema Orion, Helsinki, 27 Aug 2009. - A delicious print with a beautiful photochemical colour quality. - My favourite Nagisa Oshima film so far. - He made it after a three year silence as a cinema director. The approach is completely different, still bold, daring and original, but more assured than before. - The story has affinities with La Chienne, Vertigo and Peeping Tom, but there is no imitation there. - There is a strong dream feeling. - A subjective first-person story. The first-person-viewpoint is unreliable, but the hallucinations are immediately revealed as such. - It is a nightmarish story of a decent man drawn to crime and promiscuity. - Having made a great sacrifice to his beloved Shoko and having lost her to another man, Atsushi has access to a stash of 30 million Yen of embezzled public funds. In his desperation, he decides to spend it all to women and then die. - But because of his basic decency Atsushi is not able to be as cynical as he would like. The women he buys emerge as real human beings, whom he is unable to objectify as paid playthings. The first woman is a married showgirl connected with the yakuza, the second woman is a poor married countrywoman whose child is sick, the third woman is a doctor who has left her job in a hospital because of sexual harassment, the fourth woman to whom Atsushi spends his last yens is a promiscuous mute prostitute Mari under the protection of a petty gangster. - The gangster wants to employ Atsushi to find out about a hidden stash of money, because its owner has died in prison... And finally Shoko appears, impoverished, wanting to borrow a large amount of money... - Despite the title, there is hardly any sex in the film, and no nudity. - It is an ironic crime story of a pathologically shy man who is afraid to live. Among the women in the film, the repressed woman doctor is most closely his soulmate. - The final revelation is that Shoko has never really loved Atsushi, nor has she ever been worthy of him. - Excellent cinematography, profoundly cinematic storytelling, a haunting score and soundtrack. - The Ibsenian concept "livslögn" (life-lie, life-deception, life-illusion) is the keyword here.