Eclipse Series 21: Oshima's Outlaw Sixties

Discuss releases in the Janus Contemporaries, Eclipse, and Essential Art House lines and the films on them.
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Michael Kerpan
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Re: Eclipse Series 21: Oshima's Outlaw Sixties

#76 Post by Michael Kerpan » Wed Jun 02, 2010 9:57 pm

> DVDVerdict review

Why do they bother?

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Steven H
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Re: Eclipse Series 21: Oshima's Outlaw Sixties

#77 Post by Steven H » Wed Jun 02, 2010 10:52 pm

There are a lot of howlers in that DVDverdict review. It's also kind of telling / funny that they talk about Violence at Noon and Sing a Song of Sex as being such great titles when those are two of the worst offenders of Japanese film title translation in the Criterion collection.

Great post on etsuraku, zedz! I've held off on that DVD til the end (tonight or tomorrow). I've only seen this one in less than great condition before.

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Re: Eclipse Series 21: Oshima's Outlaw Sixties

#78 Post by Michael Kerpan » Wed Jun 02, 2010 11:53 pm

Steven H wrote:There are a lot of howlers in that DVDverdict review. It's also kind of telling / funny that they talk about Violence at Noon and Sing a Song of Sex as being such great titles when those are two of the worst offenders of Japanese film title translation in the Criterion collection.
How would you translate "Hakuchuu no torima"? I come up with something like "mid-day assailant" -- not too far off from "violence at noon".

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Re: Eclipse Series 21: Oshima's Outlaw Sixties

#79 Post by zedz » Thu Jun 03, 2010 12:01 am

Michael Kerpan wrote:
Steven H wrote:There are a lot of howlers in that DVDverdict review. It's also kind of telling / funny that they talk about Violence at Noon and Sing a Song of Sex as being such great titles when those are two of the worst offenders of Japanese film title translation in the Criterion collection.
How would you translate "Hakuchuu no torima"? I come up with something like "mid-day assailant" -- not too far off from "violence at noon".
It has one of my all-time favourite Englished film titles, but it's an alternate translation that never really caught on: Floating Ghost in Broad Daylight - which sounds like Japanese pulp by way of Duchamp, and that seems sort of appropriate.

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Re: Eclipse Series 21: Oshima's Outlaw Sixties

#80 Post by Yojimbo » Thu Jun 03, 2010 12:08 am

Michael Kerpan wrote:
Steven H wrote:There are a lot of howlers in that DVDverdict review. It's also kind of telling / funny that they talk about Violence at Noon and Sing a Song of Sex as being such great titles when those are two of the worst offenders of Japanese film title translation in the Criterion collection.
How would you translate "Hakuchuu no torima"? I come up with something like "mid-day assailant" -- not too far off from "violence at noon".
would make a great triple-bill with "Death In The Afternoon" and 'From Noon Til Three"

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Re: Eclipse Series 21: Oshima's Outlaw Sixties

#81 Post by Yojimbo » Thu Jun 03, 2010 12:15 am

Steven H wrote:Sato is perfect in all these Oshima films. He has the ability to just look around, flash a half-grin and be unforgettably creepy. He was a memorable presence in a lot of the ATG films, especially Kuroki Kazuo's Evil Spirits of Japan where he played both lead roles, a yakuza and a police officer (they switch places / lives, social commentary ensues). Here's the somewhat painful to watch trailer (Not safe for work: featuring nudity and horrible music).

Has anyone enjoyed Japanese Summer: Double Suicide? Despite Sato and some nice imagery here and there, I thought it was pretty difficult to get through and like. I can see some examination of Japan's war culture, or at least I *think* I can (the ground "shadow" reminds me of the outlines of people on buildings from atomic blasts, I'm guessing they're digging into the stomach of this shadow and finding guns?) It all kind of stuck me as a big abstract in-joke that I was just not getting, unless the film is a broad stroke about futile student revolts, war guilt and everyone being responsible for the resurgence of militarism (AMPO?) except for women, who just want to have sex.
zedz wrote:Their absence from the post-hiatus films is another marker of 'not the same Oshima' for me.
I couldn't agree more.
When 'Barnes & Noble''s couriers finally delivers the package to my door, - assuming its not some obscure Claudette Colbert film, or some other poor unfortunate's 'Blu-Ray' order, Japanese Summer: Double Suicide will be the one I watch first.
It may be partly my French not being quite up to the scratch required to translate the entire French-subbed text, or it may be that the text will be pretty obscure but the combination of my translation and the visuals has made me eagerly look forward to making more sense of it.
And perhaps it was the inspiration for the Cyndi Lauper song?

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Re: Eclipse Series 21: Oshima's Outlaw Sixties

#82 Post by eljacko » Thu Jun 03, 2010 2:57 am

I am watching these films in chronological order, and I just finished Sing a Song of Sex, which might be my favorite film so far. I have to admit that I am still unpacking it, but as disturbing as the film was at times I found the interplay between the high schoolers very interesting, while then on the next level the generational conflict as seen between Tanigawa and the high school students, which seems to be at the same time a gendered conflict as well. Like I said, a lot of levels that I haven't completely figured out yet.

I think what I really love is that Otake (played by Itami Juzo!) sings these silly little songs about having sex, which he interprets as being powerful art about the people, whereas the students, upon hearing them, take the song for its sexual content and not much else, considering how they spend their time in the film. Although, I do have a little difficulty completely relating these sexual exploits with Japanese origins, and the National Foundation Day. Maybe since they choose to ignore the issue of Japanese origins to focus on their sexual exploits? While that must be a part of the connection I don't think it is that simple.

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Re: Eclipse Series 21: Oshima's Outlaw Sixties

#83 Post by Michael Kerpan » Thu Jun 03, 2010 8:03 am

zedz wrote:It has one of my all-time favourite Englished film titles, but it's an alternate translation that never really caught on: Floating Ghost in Broad Daylight - which sounds like Japanese pulp by way of Duchamp, and that seems sort of appropriate.
That alternate title translation is pretty "free". ;~} "Torima" fully defined is something like "a person who commits random acts of violence and operates in a stealthy and mysterious fashion". However, "hakuchuu" can be used to indicate "in broad daylight".

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Re: Eclipse Series 21: Oshima's Outlaw Sixties

#84 Post by Steven H » Thu Jun 03, 2010 9:27 am

Torima can also be defined as a phantom killer or demon. Surely the double meaning did not escape Oshima's attention.

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Re: Eclipse Series 21: Oshima's Outlaw Sixties

#85 Post by zedz » Thu Jun 03, 2010 4:48 pm

Another interesting feature of Pleasures of the Flesh: Even though it might be Oshima's most coventional narrative film of the period, its narrative is driven by compulsive repetition, which would be the dominant structural / narrative trope of Oshima's other, more radically organised films. In this film the compulsion is psychological, and can be attributed to the protagonist (as in, say, Violence at Noon and In the Realm of the Senses, two other films that deal with addictive seriality), at other times (Three Resurrected Drunkards) the repetition is imposed on the characters by the film's structure. In Death by Hanging, compulsive repetition is imposed on R by 'society', in the form of his tormentors. Society is also the culprit, in a completely different way, for the recurrent rituals of The Ceremony. And then there are the reiterated scams of Cruel Story of Youth and Boy. Maybe most interesting in this respect are films like Night and Fog in Japan and The Man Who Left His Will on Film, where the compulsive repetitions are both internal and external - characters go through the same routines, sometimes painfully consciously, as in the deliberate re-enactments of The Man Who Left His Will on Film, but the structure of the film also fixes them into patterns of repetition over which they have little or no control.

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Re: Eclipse Series 21: Oshima's Outlaw Sixties

#86 Post by jojo » Fri Jun 04, 2010 11:08 am

Steven H wrote: Has anyone enjoyed Japanese Summer: Double Suicide? Despite Sato and some nice imagery here and there, I thought it was pretty difficult to get through and like. I can see some examination of Japan's war culture, or at least I *think* I can (the ground "shadow" reminds me of the outlines of people on buildings from atomic blasts, I'm guessing they're digging into the stomach of this shadow and finding guns?) It all kind of stuck me as a big abstract in-joke that I was just not getting, unless the film is a broad stroke about futile student revolts, war guilt and everyone being responsible for the resurgence of militarism (AMPO?) except for women, who just want to have sex.
.
On a purely straightforward level, I rather liked it. Yes, it's abstract on the surface, but only if you think about the story in "realistic" terms. Much of it functions for me on a kind of fantastical level in terms of setting. It seems to be occurring in some apocalyptic landscape in the middle of nowhere, with the connection to the "real" world being only seen on TV or heard on megaphone (do you ever really see specific shots of the police in the end? They seem to be almost invisible vehicles for gunplay and cop rhetoric)

The story itself is pretty straightforward for me. Two people--one who wants to die and one who wants to have sex--get wrapped up in a vaguely delineated gang war, and senseless violence occurs from there, wrapping up in a big outdoor action final act.

I'm not the best at picking out political context and the like, but to me it's almost as if the detail elements are supposed to be vague and abstract to the point of cynicism. What logical reason is there, Oshima seems to be asking, for violence in general? He lists all the elements involved with violence as it is defined in Japan, and basically gives us an ironic take of the typical "action exploitation" film. Yes, that's rather broad and sweeping, but if you were to look at it on that level, it does sort of work. But as something specific...

To me, the weakest part of the film is the flabby middle, right before the "white guy" subplot springs into action.

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Re: Eclipse Series 21: Oshima's Outlaw Sixties

#87 Post by Steven H » Fri Jun 04, 2010 11:42 am

jojo wrote:I'm not the best at picking out political context and the like, but to me it's almost as if the detail elements are supposed to be vague and abstract to the point of cynicism. What logical reason is there, Oshima seems to be asking, for violence in general? He lists all the elements involved with violence as it is defined in Japan, and basically gives us an ironic take of the typical "action exploitation" film. Yes, that's rather broad and sweeping, but if you were to look at it on that level, it does sort of work. But as something specific...
Thanks. I think I was thinking of it as more in line with his later sixties films (student revolt, radicalism) than his earlier stuff which poked holes in genres like what you're talking about. I feel there are some seeds of those late 60s films there, but yeah, I see where you're coming from. All the yakuza / sun tribe action archetypes are there, but they're robbed of detail or endearing charisma.

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Re: Eclipse Series 21: Oshima's Outlaw Sixties

#88 Post by jojo » Fri Jun 04, 2010 12:24 pm

Yes, yes, the yakuza/sub tribe reference is a good one. I think in many ways Japanese Summer... doesn't even "feel" that different, essentially, from typical nikkatsu-period Seijun Suzuki films, which were a combination of abstract and genre as well. The political elements and drive as you mentioned give it that Oshima touch, but I do consider it more of a genre film like Pleasuresof the Flesh than some of the other non-genre specific Oshima films of the same period (or even the other 3 in this collection).

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Re: Eclipse Series 21: Oshima's Outlaw Sixties

#89 Post by mfunk9786 » Fri Jun 04, 2010 12:39 pm

Question: would an Eclipse set released on Blu-Ray negate the purpose of the Eclipse line, or do you think it's an eventual possibility? As I watched Pleasures of the Flesh, I couldn't help but think about how great it'd look at a higher resolution.

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Re: Eclipse Series 21: Oshima's Outlaw Sixties

#90 Post by knives » Fri Jun 04, 2010 1:31 pm

I wouldn't start seriously asking that question until they do a mainline boxset on blu. That said, eventually they will probably start to issue them on Blu or simply leave the can't release on blus be the deciding factor. That answer probably won't come for at least a half decade though.

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Re: Eclipse Series 21: Oshima's Outlaw Sixties

#91 Post by Yojimbo » Fri Jun 04, 2010 4:13 pm

jojo wrote:Yes, yes, the yakuza/sub tribe reference is a good one. I think in many ways Japanese Summer... doesn't even "feel" that different, essentially, from typical nikkatsu-period Seijun Suzuki films, which were a combination of abstract and genre as well. The political elements and drive as you mentioned give it that Oshima touch, but I do consider it more of a genre film like Pleasuresof the Flesh than some of the other non-genre specific Oshima films of the same period (or even the other 3 in this collection).
It has certainly many of the elements of the 'Nikkatsu Noirs', but even if I wasn't immediately able to identify it as Oshima, its certainly a class apart from those genre films
(at least the Eclipse ones I've watched to date)

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Re: Eclipse Series 21: Oshima's Outlaw Sixties

#92 Post by knives » Sun Jun 06, 2010 1:00 am

...And now for something completely different.
I honestly can't tell if Sing a Song of Sex, I so prefer but forget the other title, is Oshima's best or worst film. An in between is impossible. There are so many layers to everything that I honestly don't know were to begin. The cinematography is so delicate and intricate and insane. It starts off looking like how Rohmer described the colour version of My Night at Maud's with the occasional splash of colour forcing the background into the foreground. By the end though everything's turned to a black fire. I'm not entirely sure what it is, but that image towards the end of a girl in the water left me dry of blood and physically ill.
This isn't even going into the content which is confuses me to no end.
SpoilerShow
I'm not sure if the rape fantasies and where Oshima goes with them help or hurt the film. At first I thought he was telling a story of stupid teenagers, most repetitive statement I could find, which caused me to be confused by the active hatred he seemed to have for the four. I don't think I have ever seen a movie, read a book, or heard a song were the creator spits as much poison as here on his creations. Of course by the time I reached those rape fantasies I understood why he had this hatred, but now I'm confused why he turned these otherwise normal kids into such sick people.
I'm truly at a loss.
That's not to say there isn't more to the film, and I don't want it to seem like I focused in on that exclusively during my viewing. I was standing up shocked all through the night protest. A completely audacious scene worthy of the greatest respect. I could say more, but I think this movie has wasted all of my energy, both physical and mental.

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Re: Eclipse Series 21: Oshima's Outlaw Sixties

#93 Post by Michael Kerpan » Sun Jun 06, 2010 11:25 am

Japanese title translates to something like "a treatise on Japanese (traditional) bawdy songs".

Rather a puzzler -- virtually a musical, too.

I wondered what Oshima's attitude was to American"protest songs" -- my guess was "not favorable".

This had a high degree of unrealness throughout -- so one never could be certain what was real and what was not (even including the end).

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Re: Eclipse Series 21: Oshima's Outlaw Sixties

#94 Post by zedz » Mon Jun 07, 2010 7:32 pm

Sing a Song of Sex

This was my first time seeing this film, and it does seem like a transitional work (but aren’t they all? I don’t think Oshima ever stood still as a filmmaker, even when I didn’t much like where he went). He’s really starting to move away from naturalistic narrative in earnest, and you can see the seeds for Death by Hanging in certain scenes – particularly when the boy and girl re-enact his discovery of the teacher’s body (his “crime”). Over all, it seems an awful lot like a dry run for Diary of a Shinjuku Thief – the songs, the sex, the layers of artificiality, the night walks, the slippage into ‘documentary’ – albeit one that’s straighter and a lot less ambitious.

I’ll need to see it a few more times before I have a better idea of just what Oshima’s trying to do (for instance, whether I’m projecting my own general annoyance at the smugness of the 60s protest song movement onto the film, or if Oshima’s also skewering the protestors’ thoroughly colonised, sanitised hollowness), but I have to say I loved the audacity of the opening sequence.

He starts with a negative parody of the Japanese flag (Oshima loves to play with this icon, from The Sun’s Burial through Boy – and is it The Man Who Left His Will on Film that begins with a reversed flag image?) – a black ink sun on a red ground – then brutally restricts his palette to the three colours of the flag and its parody, white, red and black, for the next ten minutes. It is indeed like Rohmer’s idea for Ma nuit chez Maud, as knives notes, or a White Stripes video. When he finally introduces a fourth colour (yellow) it’s in a shot that reiterates the source of the film’s initial colour scheme, with protestors marching along waving altered Japanese flags (black sun on white ground), and the fourth colour is thematically relevant as well (a ‘corrected’ sun colour). Once we enter the subway, brown appears, and in the next sequence we finally get a full palette, introduced through a particularly garish and self-referential means: a cavalcade of pulpy film posters. Beautiful stuff.

And another word on Violence at Noon, since I watched that as well.

The real revelation of this film is not how many shots Oshima uses, but how he uses them. I find his experiments with montage in this film absolutely exhilarating. He’s not just breaking rules, but forging new ones, creating a dynamic, emotional montage with its own internal logic, not just a disruption of conventional logic. And, as others have noted, the film doesn’t ‘read’ as frantically edited: there are bursts of percussion, but there are also slower, slinkier passages, and you rarely get the sense that Oshima’s cutting just for the sake of it.

A good example of how he’s using montage effects in a creative way is the final scene on the train between the two women, when he intertwines their fates through contrapuntal montage. We start out with static shots of Shino intercut with grazing pans of Matsuko, then partway through the pattern shifts so that grazing pans of Shino are intercut with static shots of Matsuko, then they’re both implicated in the strikingly odd shot format (all the more striking because the film generally avoids flashy camera movement). And after this scene, they’re bound together both figuratively and literally.

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Re: Eclipse Series 21: Oshima's Outlaw Sixties

#95 Post by Michael Kerpan » Mon Jun 07, 2010 10:11 pm

zedz -- were you around during the 60s?

I feel no hostility to the songs or the people who sang them (in real life) -- but I think Oshima was creating a contrast between "authentic Japanese music" and superficially-appropriated American music.

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Re: Eclipse Series 21: Oshima's Outlaw Sixties

#96 Post by zedz » Mon Jun 07, 2010 10:54 pm

Michael Kerpan wrote:zedz -- were you around during the 60s?
Not consciously.
I feel no hostility to the songs or the people who sang them (in real life) -- but I think Oshima was creating a contrast between "authentic Japanese music" and superficially-appropriated American music.
My own aversion is more to the perpetual self-congratulatory white middle-class celebration of the protest song movement that came in its wake, when the real, far more lasting and significant, musical revolution(s) of the era were happening right under their noses. Unfortunately, the agents of those revolutions were black, not white. It's probably an age thing, though: when I was going to university the only nod the Music department gave to popular music was the folk movement - by the some wild coincidence the only pop music movement that revolved around people exactly like the faculty teaching the course. Sing a Song of Sex does seem to me to skewer the ridiculousness of considering a well-scrubbed whitebread singalong of "Michael Row the Boat Ashore" as a viable anti-Vietnam protest, but as I say, I may be projecting. I suspect Oshima's specific critique is more along the lines of what you suggest, namely that the folk songs they're singing are just more easily-swallowed American imperialism, while authentic, indigenous, proletarian folk music is reviled as 'offensive' or 'embarrassing'.

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Re: Eclipse Series 21: Oshima's Outlaw Sixties

#97 Post by eljacko » Mon Jun 07, 2010 11:18 pm

As much as I would like to avoid the "Oshima = Japanese Godard" schtick, I'm starting to think of those protesters in a similar way to how I interpret the main characters of masculin feminin. They view themselves as "purveyors of change" when in reality they are simply digesting, as you say, the same western imperialism as before. But then again, when Sachiko sings the "girl's folk song" to the protesters, they absorb it into their collection, singing it without any kind of context or knowledge of its origin (asking if it was an African song).

EDIT: I would like to add that I definitely think Oshima is exposing the hollowness of the protest movement - they actually commit what the four students only dream about! It could be in direct comparison to the professor's own work.
SpoilerShow
Maybe his death symbolizes the death of a conscious "indigenous" Japan? Tanigawa describing the origins of the Japanese people as an attempt to stop the rape of Mayuko seems to be placing the youth of Japan in a precarious position, whereby losing the knowledge of their past they seek to destroy themselves in shallow appropriation of American values (and violence?)
maybe I am overstating things. obviously, though, I like this movie quite a bit. It's my favorite of the set so far.

EDIT2: I just wrote this. Spoilers abound, but it helped clear up a lot of thoughts I had about the film.

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Re: Eclipse Series 21: Oshima's Outlaw Sixties

#98 Post by zedz » Tue Jun 08, 2010 10:28 pm

Steven H wrote:Has anyone enjoyed Japanese Summer: Double Suicide? Despite Sato and some nice imagery here and there, I thought it was pretty difficult to get through and like. I can see some examination of Japan's war culture, or at least I *think* I can (the ground "shadow" reminds me of the outlines of people on buildings from atomic blasts, I'm guessing they're digging into the stomach of this shadow and finding guns?) It all kind of stuck me as a big abstract in-joke that I was just not getting, unless the film is a broad stroke about futile student revolts, war guilt and everyone being responsible for the resurgence of militarism (AMPO?) except for women, who just want to have sex.
It's an interesting film but, again, I’ll need to see it a few more times to get a better idea of what Oshima was going for. I can understand Steven H’s reaction, and the film does seem uncommonly flippant, even for a great iconoclast like Oshima, but the film is so formally striking so often (great images and careful sound design) that I’m definitely giving him the benefit of the doubt.

Initial thoughts:

It seems pretty obvious that Oshima’s toying with unformed protagonists (she gives her age as zero), expressing their desires in stripped-down primal forms (the girl is preoccupied with sex and going to the toilet; the guys are preoccupied with violence): sex and death as disaffected play.

When the girl and the (second) boy finally get to fulfil their respective desires, they’re disappointed. There’s a theme of frustration – an inability to satisfactorlly copulate or excrete or kill, promised narrative events that don’t eventuate, a television being broken and repaired – and this is embodied in the language of the film, with a large number of unanswered questions (particularly those asked by the girl) and non sequiturs.

The visual motif of the shadow forms refers back to Hiroshima, but these can also be seen as potential adoptive identities. The boy and girl start out by lying down in the male and female forms drawn on the ground, then they try to fill out together the much larger human form dug out of the ground.

Given the frustrated nature of the film’s text and the frequent eloquence of its images, I wonder whether Oshima was attempting with this film to express complex ideas about Japanese identity and specifically the plight of contemporary youth trying to come to terms with variant and contradictory models of it (the patriotic rally, the samurai legacy, student protest, gangsters, soldiers) in primarily visual terms. For me, the first section of the film works extremely well in these terms, with some really rich imagery carrying a lot of thematic weight: the girl with the hands-over-her-eyes sunglasses (representing both see-no-evil wilful blindness and shielding oneself from an atomic blast); the couple fitting themselves up for Hiroshima shadows (Hiroshima being perhaps Ground Zero for modern Japanese identity); the gigantic human outline from whose genital region the gangsters excavate a ‘coffin’ containing guns.

The visual invention flags once everybody and everything gets stalled in the ‘bunker’ but livens up again when they get out, so the film seemed a little uneven to me, with a stodgy midsection, and I don’t know if I’d account the ‘experiment’ a success. Maybe it was a necessary preliminary workout for the works that followed, where he’d build image and text together rather than pitting them against one another.

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Re: Eclipse Series 21: Oshima's Outlaw Sixties

#99 Post by Steven H » Wed Jun 09, 2010 6:40 pm

Thank you zedz. The film is starting to fatten up in retrospect. Like most Oshimas, repeated viewings are in order!

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Re: Eclipse Series 21: Oshima's Outlaw Sixties

#100 Post by knives » Fri Jun 11, 2010 3:34 pm

And I thought Japanese Bawdy Songs was weird.
I'm going to have to disagree with you Zedz on one small thing. I really think Double Suicide ratcheted up and became as good as it could starting around the bunker scenes which so fully use the screen that Toland would be jealous. My feelings in this regard though may come from the fact that I found the yankii to be terribly obnoxious and pointless. She just works as comic relief and a way to inform the others of plot. This film really didn't need her and was really above the whole character. Oshima had already done a few takes on failed romanticism before causing that aspect of the movie to feel like a superfluous retread to me. I suppose the other examinations could be described that way to, but Oshima pulls them off well with the real shape of the film coming from them. I'm not ready to call this my least favorite Oshima as that would suggest that it's bad, but it is for me the most flawed.

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