The Cinema of Naruse Mikio: Women and Japanese Modernity

Abstract

THE CINEMA OF NARUSE MIKIO: WOMEN AND JAPANESE MODERNITY By Catherine Russell Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2008. 485 + xiii pages. Reviewed by William Beard This is an impressive and valuable book. Mikio Naruse (and I hope Russell will forgive me for reverting to the old incorrect patronymic-last order for Japanese names) has for decades been a source of curiosity for cinephiles in the west, especially for those with an interest in Japanese classical cinema. Thanks to Russell's massive efforts, now have a book that will in all likelihood continue to be the standard English-language study of this filmmaker for a long time. The first generation of English-language scholarship on Japanese film summarized the work not only of the big three (Mizoguchi, Kurosawa), but seemed to concur that Naruse was a strong fourth-place finisher in the Japanese classical cinema sweepstakes. Here was a filmmaker who was a contemporary of Mizoguchi and who flourished in the Japanese studio system (mainly at Toho) , whose films figured profusely in the Kinema Jumpo annual lists of critics' choices, and who was reputed to be an artist of great sensitivity in the contemporary home genre where Ozu also dwelt. But for many years not a single Naruse film was generally available in the west, and until quite recently only two, When a Woman Ascends the Stairs and Late Chrysanthemums, were even available on VHS. Then in 2007 the gates opened, and out came six features from the 1950s on two 3-disk DVD sets (one from Eureka Masters of Cinema and the other from the British Film Institute, the former with a hefty booklet containing lengthy extracts from Russell's own work-in-progress). Now there is a full-scale Naruse excavation going on, with various internet sources offering relays of Japanese DVD issues and television broadcasts with English subtitles provided by ultradedicated fans. His films are well worth investigation. Naruse's films, though not without a distinctive style, have a far less consistent and visible formal pattern than those of Mizoguchi or Kurosawa. After what I would call a somewhat modernist (and what David Bordwell in his book on Ozu would call a decorated) period in the early 1930s, featuring lurid camera movements, flurries of almost Soviet avant-garde editing, and startling disruptions of continuity, Naruse moved virtually overnight into a far quieter and more transparent style - transparent, that is, to an eye accustomed to the contemporaneous practice of Hollywood classicism. Here he settled for the remainder of his career (which ended in 1967), although this home base could accommodate many subtle eccentricities in shot disposition and editing, and a few quite radical departures in the handling of flashbacks, along with some unusually elaborate exercises in large-scale parallel montage. Russell is persistent and meticulous in tracing all these distinguishing features, and their description and analysis is one of the many useful aspects of her study. That task required close attention, because after the 1930s one can describe Naruse's technique as being motivated solely by the needs of his scenarios. This is different from saying that the content and meaning of Ozu's or Mizoguchi's cinemas is completely in harmony with their styles, because there is always a sense with, for example, Mizoguchi that the compositional elements, organic spaces, and decorous rhythms of his visual world are elements that can be described in themselves. With Naruse one always wants to describe how the style is handling the requirements of particular scenes or situations - if, indeed, one is noticing the style at all. Shiro Kido, the production head of Shochiku's Tokyo operation, remarked during Naruse's short time at that studio that we don't need another Ozu, and this remark clearly refers to their commonalities of subject matter and sensitive, low-key realism. They are quite different filmmakers, though, as Russell documents conclusively. …