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Reviewed by:
  • Mizoguchi and Japan
  • Darrell William Davis (bio)
Mizoguchi and Japan. By Mark Le Fanu. British Film Institute, London, 2005. xii, 218 pages. $80.00, cloth; $25.50, paper.

This grandly titled book is an engrossing look at the films of Mizoguchi Kenji, one of Japan's most gifted filmmakers. The author cautions that his [End Page 259] work is an appreciation or an "interpretative reading" more akin to journalism than complete biography. While the result introduces Mizoguchi to readers with little or no background, its arguments are quite impressionistic; handling such a formidable corpus in its native context might require more ambitious theoretical structure than the book is able to provide.

Mizoguchi and Japan is a useful collection of biographical details and critical notations on Mizoguchi, but it strongly inclines toward exoticism, especially its assumptions about Japanese history and culture. These come into view as something alien, "unavoidably strange, even off-putting" (p. 120). Le Fanu is forthright in his impressions of Mizoguchi's Japan as "enigmatic," "bizarre," even "weird." It is possible this is because of the author's use of primarily French sources, instead of fully engaging with the wide range of scholarship available in Japanese and English. He says he avoided consulting major authorities on Japanese film such as Noel Burch, David Bordwell, and David Desser, relying instead on dossiers from Cahiers du cinema, Positif, and more general studies such as The Japanese Film (by Joseph Anderson and Donald Richie [Princeton University Press, 1982]) and Kenji Mizoguchi: A Guide to References and Resources (by Dudley Andrew and Paul Andrew [G. K. Hall, 1981]). This is a pity: putting his observations into play with those of Mizoguchi experts, particularly Francophile Burch, would have provided greater conceptual and historical substance.

Japan, or the author's version of it, is concentrated in the first three chapters. "Why Mizoguchi?" gives reasons for offering a sustained reflection on Mizoguchi's films: the director's consistent stylistic mastery, uniquely revealing of personality (especially that of his actresses) and of a particular refinement in cinematic renderings of the Japanese screen (drawing on its complicity with Japanese prints and paintings, as well as spatial design in general). This connects in turn to key issues in Japanese history and to an important strand of European film theory exemplified by Andre Bazin, whose philosophical premises privileged the very aesthetic effects concentrated in the films of Mizoguchi. Thus, Mizoguchi spans Japan and Europe, aesthetics, film criticism, and historical material in his approach and working methods. These propositions are followed by a useful chapter, "Mizoguchi at Work," which covers Mizoguchi's script-writing process, art direction, his handling of actors, and technical matters of cinematography and sound—all areas in which the director was notoriously fastidious. A revealing aside sketches the imperious director on the set of Zangiku monogatari (The story of late chrysanthemums, 1939), railing at an inexperienced actress who was unused to his habit of shooting extended takes. After ten tries, Mizoguchi explodes: "This isn't a second rate chambara [swordplay] film! . . . You're not in an acting academy—you're on a film set!" and at the end of the day, the actress was sacked. [End Page 260]

"The Japanese Context" gives a potted historical summary, with curious speculations on the nature of Japanese "national character"; is it xenophobic or modernizing? Democratic or militarist barbarism? Within this essentializing discourse Le Fanu locates the main events of Mizoguchi's life, including his place in the film industry and involvement with Tanaka Kinuyo, who appeared in many of Mizoguchi's greatest films. Le Fanu takes a page to describe the early twentieth-century cultural scene, followed by material on Mizoguchi's contemporaries within Japan and directors from abroad, such as Charlie Chaplin, Ernst Lubitsch, Rene Clair, and Joseph von Sternberg. All this material is abridged for relevance to the more detailed thematic chapters to follow, centering directly on the films.

"The Great Triptych," chapter three, is Saikaku ichidai onna (The life of Oharu, 1952), Ugetsu monogatari (1953), and Sansho daiyu (Sansho the bailiff, 1954)—each film a masterpiece demonstrating Mizoguchi's seriousness of purpose and dedication. Oharu, a tragic recasting of Saikaku's...

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