Eclipse Series 26: Silent Naruse

Discuss releases in the Janus Contemporaries, Eclipse, and Essential Art House lines and the films on them.
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Lemmy Caution
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Bold No Blood

#101 Post by Lemmy Caution » Sat Mar 21, 2015 4:11 pm

Well, I'm a little late to the Film Club discussion, but the FC got me to finally pop this disc in.
I really enjoyed No Blood Relation.
It had a dynamic feel to it and quite nice pacing.
I liked all of the supporting characters, from the selfish grandmother to the hoodlum brother and his goofy accomplice. I thought they were mixed in quite nicely, breaking up and supporting the simple main storyline.
I thought the sympathy with the stepmother was bold, but the biological mother isn't just a villain, but somebody who wants to belong and wants to recapture her life and place in society.

I also enjoyed the comedy of Flunky, Work Hard.
Again Naruse matches a little fella with a bigger guy, borrowing straight from early Hollywood comedies.
A lot of the physical gags were well done.
I liked when the boy explains his injury saying the other kid beat him up, but as the father starts heading over to the other kid's house to chastise the parents, he sees the other boy all beaten up approaching with his mother. So the father quickly hides. I got a kick out of the boy beating up the other kids by conking them on the heads with his clogs. The leap frog game has a few good moments. And it's a bitter humor just how desperate these men are for a little business/money. And finally, the grief montage was pretty impressive. I went back and watched that a few times.

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Michael Kerpan
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Re: Eclipse Series 26: Silent Naruse

#102 Post by Michael Kerpan » Sun Mar 22, 2015 8:54 pm

Naruse made one last buddy comedy (with big guy and little guy) right after WW2, "Ore mo Omae mo" (which I call "You and Me, Pal" and IMDB calls "Between You and Me"). It really evokes the feel of the 1930s silent comedies of this sort made by Naruse and Ozu. Not one of his most sophisticated films, but enjoyable.

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Mr Sausage
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Flunky, Work Hard! (Mikio Naruse, 1931)

#103 Post by Mr Sausage » Mon Jun 06, 2022 7:47 am

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Michael Kerpan
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Re: Flunky, Work Hard! (Mikio Naruse, 1931)

#104 Post by Michael Kerpan » Wed Jun 08, 2022 9:11 pm

First observation -- this little film certainly feels far longer than its 28 minute length would cause one to expect. Not because it is uninteresting, but because it seems to have too much content to fit its length, despite its leisurely pacing. Next -- even when it is superficially funny, it has a persistent tone of stress and sadness. One can never escape seeing the tangible evidence that the family at the center of this movie is desperately poor.

One rarely sees the even a hint of optical effects that are so prominent in this first surviving Naruse film in his other early surviving films (I can recall only one small instance -- which had none of the "flashiness" we see here). One wonders whether the studio head disapproved of such tomfoolery. We have little clue as to what Naruse did next -- as there were 8 or so films made before the next one that survives (No Blood Relation). His style by the time of that next surviving film was quite different -- but when the transformation occurred over the course of a year and a half or so, we can't even guess.

When I first watched this film, I got a bit annoyed at the wife/mother's "nastiness" and frustrated at the husband/father's "foolishness". But I guess I've mellowed over the past 20 or so years. Now I sense the characters sadness (and even despair). I'm glad this has a "happy ending" -- but can't help thinking of how the family will probably never be able to afford to pay the hospital bill. How will the family survive. I have a feeling contemporary audiences may have had the same "worry" -- and I begin to see why Mr, Kido (studio boss) wasn't the biggest fan of Naruse. Not the sort of light-hearted, optimistic sort of story he wanted Shochiku to be known for.

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Re: Flunky, Work Hard! (Mikio Naruse, 1931)

#105 Post by therewillbeblus » Mon Jun 13, 2022 8:49 pm

I thought this was absolutely hysterical and one of the most visually clever silents I've ever seen. Think Buster Keaton making a narrative feature touching on Parasite-leaning warring family and class dynamics). Its quietly manic mile-a-second gag runoff rivals Wes Anderson in Moonrise Kingdom mode, and I had to rewind the film halfway through just to ensure I grasped every little nugget of gold Naruse was offering (spoiler: I hadn't, and caught at least twice as many more - who knows what a full revisit or two will bring!) Some of the less explicable optical effects didn't necessarily make sense within the film's visual internal logic (i.e. a funhouse mirror bit that seems to be reflecting the husband's fuzzy memory around the stirring conversation between he and his wife earlier), so I can see why a studio boss might get frustrated there, but they're still welcome and entertaining inserts.

I don't know if I agree with Michael about the film containing an underlying tone of sadness, but there's definitely stress, though Naruse admirably manipulates the eclectic possibilities of 'stress' towards pathos from destitution when appropriate, or to incite flavorful stakes to boost a transparency of value in the adults' cartoonish behavior. I don't think that choice makes the silly moments stressful, but our understanding that every adult's choice is driven by stress allows for both the devastating bits be relatable, and the funny parts to be funny because we can identify with stress' unfortunately pathetic impact on our mental processing and behavior. As adults, we all have experience becoming stupider and acting impulsively due to stress, as it's a more broadly universal response than specifics pertaining to socioeconomic needs, and I respect Naruse's willingness to not treat all the action as sublimations of a sad core.

The moments with the young boys are especially significant in counteracting such a reading because even their conflicts are sourced in developmentally-appropriate boyish social antagonism and appreciated within such inconsequential safe spaces, rather than burdened by the stress of adult responsibilities. However, the interaction between these worlds in a pivotal scene with the father and son is crucial to examine under the umbrella of family systems theory and the effects parents can have on their children. The father disrupts the safety of his son's 'safe space' not out of necessity in teaching his son a lesson to assist his maturation, but immaturely as a result of stress for self-gain from a perceived survivalist need. That is sad to some degree, but it's also a humbling lesson that as adults we're imperfect, and accordingly will have a spectrum of positive to negative influences on our children. There's a relief in how Naruse exposes that truth, and gives the father an opportunity to face himself and choose to grow towards love rather than fear, which may emulate that transfiguration for his son in his next developmental phase.

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Re: Flunky, Work Hard! (Mikio Naruse, 1931)

#106 Post by Michael Kerpan » Mon Jun 13, 2022 9:55 pm

I love the "tangibility" of these early Japanese films. Not only the realism of the settings -- but also the extent of implied sound encoded in the visual images.

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Re: Flunky, Work Hard! (Mikio Naruse, 1931)

#107 Post by therewillbeblus » Mon Jun 13, 2022 10:55 pm

Yeah, that’s an interesting point because it works twofold across seemingly opposing purposes, but only deceptively so. This “tangibility” you describe grounds us to the action and characters’ multidimensional plights and general circumstances, but it also evokes fanciful exhilaration via animated responses and perceptions bordering on dislocated absurdism. Both feed the feeling of ‘being alive’- only to heightened realistic and surrealistic margins; tangibility giving way to different surface-tones but with a common ingrained tonal denominator toward the same thematic endpoint.

Going by your explanation of what is and isn’t ‘found’ and thus available for Naruse, am I right to assume this is the only film of his that rests on this kind of hyper-comic wavelength? I’ve seen a number of his films and never come across anything even remotely like this

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Re: Flunky, Work Hard! (Mikio Naruse, 1931)

#108 Post by Michael Kerpan » Tue Jun 14, 2022 10:19 am

All the films that could document the transition from Naruse's early "wild" style to his more recognizable "mature" (phase 1) style are missing. I don't know if scenarios even exist for these -- at most a few production stills.

In terms of (closest to) thorough-going comedy (maybe with surrealism. maybe not) -- the greatest films are Morning's Tree-Lined Streets, Traveling Actors and Hideko the Bus Conductor. There is also Five Men in the Circus and Ore mo omae mo (which I think of as "Just You and Me, Pal"). I suppose Sudden Rain (which I love) might count -- but it is more like a set of mostly low-key shaggy dog stories (in one section, literally). This Happy Life and Descendant of Taro Urashima are rather odd sort-of-surrealist, sort of comic (and probably not all that successful). Lots of other films, that are more serious overall, offer tiny glimpses of long-ago Naruse -- for example, some of the scenes in Floating Clouds depicting the heroine's involvement with the phony religious cult. And Hideko Takamine having to stand up to finish eating her future landlady's very long noodles in Lightning. And there are some remarkable unhinged moments in Untamed. But in terms of sustained hyper-comic (or hyper-manic, when not being "funny") energy, I can't think of any other surviving film that compares.

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Re: Flunky, Work Hard! (Mikio Naruse, 1931)

#109 Post by therewillbeblus » Tue Jun 14, 2022 1:54 pm

I appreciate those recs, Michael! Morning's Tree-Lined Street is my (now-second) favorite Naruse, so clearly one speed of his works for me more than another- though I've at least 'liked' everything I've seen by him

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Michael Kerpan
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Re: Flunky, Work Hard! (Mikio Naruse, 1931)

#110 Post by Michael Kerpan » Tue Jun 14, 2022 2:22 pm

I've seen everything still in existence but two (fragmentary remnants only -- seemingly totally not accessible at all anymore) war era films. Only a very few I didn't at least "like". And I don't regret seeing any of them. I think "reading" his films is probably harder than those of any of his eminent contemporaries.

Morning's Tree-Lined Street is perhaps the only film I know of that I think can be spoiled by describing anything beyond the initial set-up scenes. It's a problem -- it really can only properly be discussed by people who have already seen it while under the "cone of silence".

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