Koshikei

Death by Hanging / [Hirttotuomio] / [Dömd att hängas]. JP 1968. PC: Sozosha, Art Theatre Guild. P: Nagisa Oshima, Masayuki Nakajima, Takuji Yamaguchi. D: Nagisa Oshima. SC: Tsutomu Tamura, Mamoru Sasaiki, Michinori Fukao, Nagisa Oshima. DP: Yasuhiro Yoshioka - b&w - VistaVision. AD: Jusho Toda. M: Hikaru Hayashi. ED: Sueko Shiraishi. CAST: Do-yun Yu / Yun Do Yun (R, the convict on death row, to be hanged), Hosei Komatsu (district attorney), Kei Sato (prison warden), Fumio Watanabe (education officer), Toshiro Ishido (catholic priest), Masao Adachi (chief of guards), Mutsuhiro Toura (doctor), Masao Matsuda (secretary of the D.A.), Akiko Koyama (Korean woman), Shizui Sato (prison guard), Takashi Ueni (prison guard). Commentary read by: Nagisa Oshima. 118 min. Print: New Yorker Films, with English subtitles. Viewed at Cinema Orion, 29 Aug 2009. - A duped print with an uneven quality of definition, from soft to better, but never worthy of the film's VistaVision origins. The subtitles are sharp. - One of three of Oshima's greatest masterpieces, together with Gishiki and Etsuraku. - The brilliant black comedy starts as a thesis film in the tradition of André Cayatte and Fritz Lang, with text and commentary only, but then there is a sharp turn to an original and macabre development. - The execution fails, the convict called R survives, but his personality has changed, and he has lost his memory. He does not even recognize concepts like "family" and "desire". - The desperate officials start to perform an elaborate series of reconstructions to teach R from scratch who he is... what his crime is... and what life is... The boundary between reality and hallucination is blurred, as a simulated woman materializes at least to many of those present. The woman is the most eloquent of them all. - The woman is Korean, and the theme of racism surfaces. In the drunken revel of the officials, their own sexual and violent obsessions surface. - The film is a witty philosophical reflection. What I did? What I am? - R accepts being R for the sake of all the R's. - In the final double execution there is a void at the end of the rope.

Natsu no imoto

Dear Summer Sister / [Kesäsisko] / [Sommarsystern]. JP 1972. PC: Sozosha-ATG. P: Takashi Ueno. D: Nagisa Oshima. SC: Tsutomu Tamura, Mamoru Sasaki, Nagisa Oshima. DP: Yasuhiro Yoshioka - Eastmancolor - 1,37:1. AD: Jusho Toda. M: Toru Takemitsu. ED: Keiichi Uraoka. CAST: Hosei Komatsu (Kosuke Kiguchi, the judge), Hiromi Kurita (Sunaoko, Kosuke's daughter), Lily (Momoko Kotoda, Sunaoko's private teacher), Akiko Koyama (Tsuru Omura), Shoji Ishibashi (Tsuruo Omura, Tsuru's son), Kei Sato (Shinko Kuniyoshi, a policeman), Taiji Tonoyama (Takuzo Sakurada), Mutsuhito Toura (Rintoku Teruya, singer of Okinawa folk songs). 96 min. Print: New Yorker Films, with English subtitles by Noël Burch. Viewed at Cinema Orion, Helsinki, 29 Aug 2009. - The image of the print has a duped look, the colour definition is off, the print has low contrast, but the subtitles are sharp. - Nagisa Oshima's last Japanese cinema film: from then on, his films were international co-productions or tv films. - One of Oshima's strangest and curious films is about the secrets of Japan. The generation that has experienced the war as grown-ups seems to have a general mutual understanding of many things that remain incomprehensible to the younger generations and, of course, for the non-Japanese. - The sense of being puzzled in a company where the others seem to know. - Okinawa is returned to Japan after the end of the U.S. occupation. - Sunaoko, the 14-year-old girl, is in search of a boy that may be her brother. - The key sequence is towards the end of the picture. - Sunaoko and Tsuruo the apparent brother swim in the ocean, in the red sunset. - Tsuru the mother is with Shinko Kuniyoshi the policeman. Rintoku "the killer" is with with the bald drunkard in white suit Takuzo Sakurada, "the victim". Kosuke Kikuchi the judge is with Momoko "the private teacher", his new bride-to-be. Sunaoko and Tsuruo are "the savior" and "the saved one". - No one will know who is the father of Sunaoko and Tsuruo, the candidates being Kosuke or Shinko. - And if Sunaoko is now pregnant, the father can be Tsuruo her possible brother or another guy. - Further strange revelations: the strong sex drive of the Okinawan women. Okinawa as a center of prostitution during the American occupation. - Shinko Kuniyoshi had been to prison as a student rebel. He raped Tsuru Omura when his best friend Kosuke Kiguchi was in prison. Both left only pregnant women behind them. Both confess everything smilingly, and Tsuru Omura smiles, too. - "Your daughter likes mixtures, too". - It would be interesting to hear the interpretation of this film from Donald Richie, for whom this is "essential Oshima".

The Director's Place: Kyoto, My Mother's Place

GB/JP (c) 1991 BBC Scotland. D+SC+Presenter: Nagisa Oshima. DP: Yasuhiro Yoshioka - shot on film - Eastman Kodak. LOC: Kyoto. A documentary film. Format: video. Original in English: Oshima speaks in English, and the interview parts have English subtitles. 50 min. Viewing format: Betacam SP. Viewed at Cinema Orion, Helsinki, 29 Aug 2009. - An affectionate portrait of Nagisa Oshima's mother - she loved flowers in her garden - interviews with two of her childhood friends - Kyoto was traditional, the dress was the kimono - the wife's place was tough and hard - Kyoto was hot in the summer and cold in the winter - her fingers hurt with frostbite - serious, frank, tenacious - the woman's place: impossible to do anything but marry - arranged marriage - I was born in Kyoto, the family moved, but then the father died, the family returned to Kyoto - the history of Kyoto, the capital of Japan until 1868 - a city like a castle, strictly North-South = Up-Down - we lived South - Genji monogatari - Kyoto became the city of commerce - people believed in the spirits of the dead - I was the bespectacled schoolboy in an age that admired physical strength - I was crazy about history - Oshima was a long established samurai warrior family - Genji and Heike the samurai clans - the double power of the Emperor and the Shogun - slowly Kyoto changed into the capital of commerce and manufacture - during wartime, there was no big bombing of Kyoto - we were shocked by the defeat - the shortage of food was very serious - mother had to sell her kimonos for rice - calligraphy - KANNI = PATIENCE - Shingaku philosophy of the heart: don't gossip, don't meddle, careful with fire, patient with everything, clean up carefully - I could not be patient - student movement, student theatre: I was a clumsy actor, and not a promising director - 1954: assistant director at Shochiku Ofuna studios, expelled - Chiomi - graveyeard, husband's family, Japanese cemeteries different from the Western ones, paradise is far away in the West - my mother was not an original Kyoto woman, she was different, a stranger, but she looked like a born Kyoto woman - she kept to that way all her life - when I became a film director in 1959, married an actress and our first son was born I invited my mother to live with us - she devoted the rest of her life to our two sons - she said that she was deceived to become a nursemaid - there was a terrible truth in that joke - only once she left our home, but she returned on the same day, and my wife apologized - she was always cheerful, always with a sense of humour, always joking, never stopped smiling - never free - forced by Kyoto - Kyoto had such power - I hated Kyoto - but my life, my work, my kimono are from Kyoto

Kaette kita yopporai

Three Resurrected Drunkards / Sinner in Paradise [title on screen] / [Kolmen juopon ylösnousemus] / [Tre uppståndna supare]. JP 1968. PC: Sozosha. P: Takuji Yamaguchi. D: Nagisa Oshima. SC: Tsutomu Tamura, Mamoru Sasaki, Masao Adachi, Nagisa Oshima. DP: Yasuhiro Yoshioka – Eastmancolor – Shochiku Grandscope 2,35:1. AD: Jusho Toda. M: Hikaru Hayashi. ED: Keiichi Uraoka. CAST: Kazuhiko Kato ("O-noppo" The Big One), Osamu Kitayama ("Chunoppo" The Smallest One), Norihiko Hashida ("Chibi" The Smallest One) - Kei Sato (I Chong-Iru, Korean soldier), Cha Dei-Dang (Kim Fhua, Korean college student) - Fumio Watanabe (Dokumushi), Mako Midori (The Beautiful One, Dokumushi's adopted daughter and lover) - Taiji Tonoyama (the old lady of the tobacco shop), Hosei Komatsu (fisherman), Masao Adachi (policeman), Takashi Ueno (policeman), Mutsuhiro Toura. 80 min. A Japan Foundation (Tokyo) print with English subtitles. Viewed at Cinema Orion, Helsinki, 28 Aug 2009. - A brilliant print in perfect 1960s pop colour. - A complete change for Oshima: a pop film with affinities with The Beatles, Frank Tashlin and Jean-Luc Godard. - A parodic romp of three young pop boys on the beach. Their clothes are stolen by illegal Korean immigrants, and the boys themselves are taken for Koreans. - Oshima's only real comedy? - Yet with serious thems such as the situation of the Koreans, the Vietnam War, and the generation gap (the oppression of Mako Midori by Fumio Watanabe). - The music, always interesting in Oshima's 1960s films, is funny. - In the middle of the film there is a great narrative surprise for the audience.

Muri-shinjo: Nihon no natsu

Japanese Summer: Double Suicide / [Japanilainen kesä: kaksoisitsemurha] / [Japansk sommar: dubbelsjälvmord]. JP 1967. PC: Sozosha. D: Nagisa Oshima. SC: Tsutomu Tamura, Mamoru Sasaki, Nagisa Oshima. DP: Yasuhiro Yoshioka - b&w - scope. AD: Toda Jusho. M: Hikaru Hayashi. ED: Keiichi Uraoka. CAST: Keiko Sakurai (Nejiko), Kei Sato (Otoko), Mutsushiro Toura (Television), Shunsuke Mizoguchi (Tsukibito, Television's assistant), Taji Tonoyama (Hanging Tree), Masakazu Tamura (Boy). 98 min. Print: Janus Films, with English subtitles. Viewed at Cinema Orion, Helsinki, 17 Aug 2009. - Brilliant definition of light. - Cinema of the absurd in an universe of sex and violence. The leading lady Nejiko wants to find a man to make love to her. The leading man Otoko wants to find someone to kill him. - The yakuza prison milieu does not make sense. - There is a sniper who is being hunted by the police. - In the final shoot-out the desperadoes escaping from the yakuza prison meet the sniper and the police. - This picture is a mad show of the death instinct.