Shimizu Hiroshi Boxsets

[htdm]

Box 2 shipped yesterday.

[esl]

Vol. 2 arrived today. It is still hard for me to believe that I am holding in my hands DVDs of Children in the Wind and The Four Seasons of Children (with English subtitles too)! I never thought I would see the day.

The box set is just as gorgeous as the first set. The booklet, in japanese only, has some wonderful still photos from all four movies.

Sadly, I will only have time to watch one maybe two of the films tonight as I leave early tomorrow morning for vacation and have much to do in preparation of leaving. I want to devote my full attention to whichever movie I choose to watch and not just have it on in the background.

[Michael Kerpan]

My box set also arrived today -- along with the 3 other newly-released Shochiku classics. I agree the set looks lovely. Alas, I noted no hints anywhere in this set as to details about a future Box 3.

I can only watch one Japanese film a day -- as I am currently also in the midst of a Bae Doo-na TV series...

[Morgan Creek]

My box set also arrived today -- along with the 3 other newly-released Shochiku classics. .

Michael, are there any items in the Shochiku group you'd recommend? I haven't been able to find a complete list (in English), but did get Our Neighbor, Miss Yae and Ball at the Anjo House.

[Michael Kerpan]

I think all the other releases, except Shibuya's No Appointments Today, are re-releases. I haven't found a complete English list of this Shochiku series either. I am hoping they will add some additional releases in future months.

None of the three films from this series seem to be restored much, but they seem to be decent transfers of well-worn materials.

First films from box set 2 watched -- Nobuko. I've seen this before (w/o subs). This looked mostly okay, but had very deteriorated sound (esp. in the first reel or so). Some infelicities in this proto-shoujo manga-esque film about a new teacher at a girls' (boarding) high school -- but mostly pretty interesting. Not quite the same level as films from the first set.

Trivia -- I believe Mitsuko Miura (who played the troublesome student) was (in actuality) just a little older than Mieko Takamine (who played the new teacher). I haven't figured out yet what dialect Takamine lapses into (much to the merriment of her students).

[esl]

I watched Children in the Wind last night. Clearly no restoration was done on the print. The sound and image shows deterioration throughout but is still quite watchable. This is probably the best we will ever get.

About the film: there are so many wonderful moments. One scene in particular starting at the 32 minute mark I found really touching.
The boys awake and the tell their mother they have to pee. They instead go outside and into the street in front of their house and look up and comment on the all the stars. The younger brother, Sampei, is wearing his father's geta(wooden sandals) which are quite large for his little feet. There is quiet music of strings and harp very evocative of a still and starry night. The boys start walking down the street in the same direction that their father had been taken early that day. They comment that maybe they will come across their father. At this point their mother comes out and asks them where they are going and to come back home. They tell her they are going to find a fallen star. They turn and go back home.

I took the fallen star as a reference to their father, then realized that in Japanese fallen star may not have the same figurative meaning as it does in english. Those who know japanese please let me know.

[Michael Kerpan]

I have yet to watch this new version of Children in the Wind -- but your comment on it matches my memories.

Alas, I,m not sure of the answer to your "falling star" question. I think it might be, however, that finding a falling star allows you to have a wish granted.

Nobuko addendum -- Shochiku's attempt to convey the fact that the heroine sometimes speaks in a distinctive (less high class) dialect is a bit awkward (and surely exaggerates the character's deviation from Tokyo's upper-middle-class linguistic norms).

[Steven H]

About the film: there are so many wonderful moments.

This post reminded me that Children in the Wind is probably the best introduction to Shimizu, along with Arigato-san, particularly if someone was a fan of the recent Silent Ozu set (precocious kids and Sakamoto Takeshi playing the foil for a good chunk of the film.)

[Michael Kerpan]

Alexander Jacoby praises Shochiku's two Shimizu sets in the Japan Times.

[Andreas]

I just found out about these sets, but for the momen't I can't afford to buy them, do you think there's a risk for them to run OOP before...say december? Any news/images from set 3?

[shirobamba]

...do you think there's a risk for them to run OOP before...say december? Any news/images from set 3?

Given the relative obscurity of Shimizu it's very unlikely that these expensive sets are goin' OOP very soon.

And: No trace of the 3rd box up to now

[DanV]

Any news about the third box-set?

[Michael Kerpan]

Any news about the third box-set?

Nothing that indicates any further sets will be coming out in the immediate future. And no confirmation that additional sets are still on the schedule for even non-imminent release.

[DanV]

Thanks. How strange, though!

[zedz]

Four Seasons of Children

For some reason I’d not got around to this final Shimizu. It’s magnificent: I was completely blown away. I’m not sure that this film is better than his other masterpieces, or if the Shimizu break simply allowed me to see his particular genius afresh, but this is a new personal favourite.

Story-wise, it’s a potentially creaky family melodrama – divided family is reunited but soon hits hard times thanks to the legal machinations of a mustachioed villain. Even the ‘fresh angles’ on offer – viewing these events through the eyes of children and structuring the film around the four seasons – are hardly fresh and don’t have much to offer in the way of angles.

So how does Shimizu manage to transform this material into simply sublime cinema? The basic elements of delivery – plotting and performance – elevate the material from the start. The characterisations and detail of performance are more nuanced than you’d expect: even the stock figure of the conniving villain is afforded some complexity of motivation, and the children, as you’d expect from Shimizu, are a diverse bunch and beautifully observed (though Shimizu is also, typically, brilliant at depicting children as a mass force, a kind of gestalt of childhood unleashed on a particular community). The boilerplate plot is advanced through sophisticated use of ellipsis, with important actions happening while our attention has been focussed on kids’ stuff, or between the chapters / seasons.

But the real greatness of the film is all about form. In the first place, Shimizu here demonstrates the unerring eye for classical composition that characterises Ford at his best. He’ll typically make his characters small in the frame, balanced by architecture or landscape. This gives the film a compositional freedom – lots of possibility for movement within the frame, including movement in depth – but also a gorgeous painterly quality. But wait, there’s more. Shimizu was a master of camera movement, and the film is punctuated and invigorated by several marvellously expressive examples. There are plenty of the backwards dollies and lateral tracks familiar from his earlier films, including eloquent and mysterious shots wherein we explore the interior of a house by trundling from room to open-walled room. There’s also a stunning tracking shot in which we track left along a riverbank, behind a screen of trees, following the progress of the grandfather on the opposite shore, looking for Zenta and Sanpei. It’s a strikingly modern shot with a complicated point-of-view that looks like it belongs in a New Wave film of the 60s (or Andrey Rublyov). At other times, the camera adopts a first-person, exploratory position, winding through the streets of the village.

All of Shimizu’s skills combine in a sequence at the start of the Autumn chapter in which Sanpei wanders around the village in juxtaposition to the gang of kids from which he’s been alienated. This is one of the most exquisite passages of film I’ve seen in years, with Shimizu’s perfectly judged compositions juxtaposing isolation with group dynamics – i.e. expressing the central idea of the sequence in purely visual terms. It’s also a symphony of rhyming camera movements, with curving, inquisitive forward tracks answered by receding ones, again emphasising in visual terms the sly cat-and-mouse game of Sanpei and the other kids. Every element of this sequence – framing of landscape, blocking by architecture, relative height of figures in the frame - contributes to its final effect. Filmmaking of the highest order.

If you’re R1-locked, you’d better hope the first Eclipse Shimizu set sells well enough to justify a port of the second. This film needs to be better known.

[Michael Kerpan]

4 Season of Children was narratively unusual -- most of the seasonal segments ended quite abruptly -- while the next picked up in the middle of a new set of circumstances. It is a wonderful film -- but I think it is not any more wonderful than most of the others in Boxes 1 and 2 (and others seen but not yet "boxed" alas). I suspect your break simply made you hungry for Shimizu's unique vision again.

[zedz]

4 Season of Children was narratively unusual -- most of the seasonal segments ended quite abruptly -- while the next picked up in the middle of a new set of circumstances.

That's another interesting aspect of the film, especially as it extends to the final segment as well - a very condensed resolution to the central conflict that I found quite refreshing.

It is a wonderful film -- but I think it is not any more wonderful than most of the others in Boxes 1 and 2 (and others seen but not yet "boxed" alas). I suspect your break simply made you hungry for Shimizu's unique vision again.

Quite likely, though only Children in the Wind in the second set strikes me as being at this remarkable level. I'd put all but Ornamental Hairpin from the first set up there. But quibbling about quality at this height of creativity is sort of pointless: all of these films are essential viewing. I just hope Shochiku lets some more sneak out.

[Michael Kerpan]

Well, I put Ornamental Hairpin very near the top of MY Shimizu list. I think the films in the first set are a little higher in terms of average greatness, but think all the films in Box 2 are pretty wonderful (except for Introspection Tower, which was interesting but just a bit less successful -- for me, at least).

There are lots more wonderful Shimizu films needing subbed release.. Even the post-war films I've seen have been very fine.

[foggy eyes]

Tremendous Bordwell blog entry on Shimizu, in which he even links to this thread.

[poohbear]

Tremendous Bordwell blog entry on Shimizu, in which he even links to this thread.

Tremendous? Hardly. It reinforces what I've said all along: Bordwell is clueless about most Japanese cinema. His "sources" for his knowledge of Shimizu are laughable. So he watches Criterion's box set and reads a few articles on the net and now he's a Shimizu expert? LOL. His post is littered with errors about Shimizu. Test your knowledge about Shimizu by seeing how many errors you can spot.

[foggy eyes]

Tremendous? Hardly. It reinforces what I've said all along: Bordwell is clueless about most Japanese cinema. His "sources" for his knowledge of Shimizu are laughable. So he watches Criterion's box set and reads a few articles on the net and now he's a Shimizu expert? LOL. His post is littered with errors about Shimizu. Test your knowledge about Shimizu by seeing how many errors you can spot

Well, the entry reads to me like a modest investigation of a director who hasn't yet been written about nearly enough (other than in the print & online pieces that you refer to). Bordwell openly admits that he hasn't seen much Shimizu, and implies that there is an awful lot of work to be done - so, in a constructive manner, he offers some lucid preliminary observations which may or may not provide a solid basis for further thinking/analysis. Nothing wrong with that. Perhaps you should e-mail him about the corrections that you believe are in order, or challenge his "expertise" here or elsewhere on the internet. I'd certainly be interested in reading anything you can contribute beyond borderline trolling.

[Michael Kerpan]

Tremendous? Hardly. It reinforces what I've said all along: Bordwell is clueless about most Japanese cinema. His "sources" for his knowledge of Shimizu are laughable. So he watches Criterion's box set and reads a few articles on the net and now he's a Shimizu expert? LOL. His post is littered with errors about Shimizu. Test your knowledge about Shimizu by seeing how many errors you can spot.

And what are your credentials, Mr Anonymous Badmouther? Your 11 posts here so far do not yet establish you as an expert on anything.

Well, the entry reads to me like a modest investigation of a director who hasn't yet been written about nearly enough (other than in the print & online pieces that you refer to). Bordwell openly admits that he hasn't seen much Shimizu, and implies that there is an awful lot of work to be done - so, in a constructive manner, he offers some lucid preliminary observations which may or may not provide a solid basis for further thinking/analysis. Nothing wrong with that. Perhaps you should e-mail him about the corrections that you believe are in order, or challenge his "expertise" here or elsewhere on the internet. I'd certainly be interested in reading anything you can contribute beyond borderline trolling.

I didn't see any obvious major errors as to Shimizu's career or his basic style -- but did not double-check minor details.

I do think there are more surviving films (or parts of films) than Bordwell seems to think exist. Unfortunately, the Japanese sets (which provided a detailed, near-complete filmography) did not specify which films actually survive.

[Mestes]

Tremendous? Hardly. It reinforces what I've said all along: Bordwell is clueless about most Japanese cinema. His "sources" for his knowledge of Shimizu are laughable. So he watches Criterion's box set and reads a few articles on the net and now he's a Shimizu expert? LOL. His post is littered with errors about Shimizu. Test your knowledge about Shimizu by seeing how many errors you can spot.

And what are your credentials, Mr Anonymous Badmouther? Your 11 posts here so far do not yet establish you as an expert on anything.

I hardly think he needs credentials to criticize a public persona, as there are already enough internet forum users who wave their film degrees in the air to validate their opinions. What he does need are the two things Mr. Bordwell has that he doesn't: A real name, and a proven track record of standing by his opinions.

For the record, the only thing I know about Shimizu comes from the two (wonderful) Japanese sets, two references in Audie Bock's book, five or six brief references to his films in the Anderson and Richie book, and a smattering of biographical information I found, yes, on the internet. Also, for the record, I am willing to provide my name and address to anyone wishing it for any purpose. Just send an email, I'll provide it. Mr. Poohbear, would you mind providing me with more information or point me in the right direction? I mean after you've sent Mr Bordwell a nice note detailing his errors and your evidence.

[Michael Kerpan]

I hardly think he needs credentials to criticize a public persona, as there are already enough internet forum users who wave their film degrees in the air to validate their opinions. What he does need are the two things Mr. Bordwell has that he doesn't: A real name, and a proven track record of standing by his opinions.

Well, I _hoped_ my second sentence showed I was talking mainly about street cred within criterionforum.org itself. (poohbear's sparse history here is one of sporadic hit and run attacks). Sorry if I was insufficiently clear.

For the record, the only thing I know about Shimizu comes from the two (wonderful) Japanese sets, two references in Audie Bock's book, five or six brief references to his films in the Anderson and Richie book, and a smattering of biographical information I found, yes, on the internet.

I wish I had kept a more detailed list of references I've found. I seem to recall that I once found an interesting (fairly recent) dissertation that had some useful information. Mitsuyo Wada-Marciano's Nippon Modern also has some information (as I recollect).

[ptmd]

I wish I had kept a more detailed list of references I've found. I seem to recall that I once found an interesting (fairly recent) dissertation that had some useful information. Mitsuyo Wada-Marciano's Nippon Modern also has some information (as I recollect).

What I'd really like to see is the manuscript of Keiko McDonald's Shimizu book. My understanding is that it was mostly finished before her unfortunate death so maybe it will see the light of day sometime soon.