Apr 18, 2011

24th April 2011; When a Woman Ascends the Stairs

When a Woman Ascends the Stairs
A film by Mikio Naruse
Country : Japan
Year : 1960
Japanese with English sub titles
24th April 2011
Perks Mini Theater

* 13 minutes interview with actor Tatsuya Nakadai
will be shown with the main film.

Mikio Naruse creates an exquisitely realized, somber, and deeply affecting portrait of dignity and perseverance in When a Woman Ascends the Stairs. Using the recurring image of Keiko ascending the stairs that lead to the bar, Naruse reflects Keiko's symbolic transcendence from her increasingly disreputable profession. The dilemma is that she is approaching an age when her looks might be expected to fade, and so she is encouraged either to start her own bar or to get married. Either path seems to involve a sacrifice of independence
At the film’s center is Hideko Takamine, one of Naruse’s favorite actresses and indeed one of the most striking, gifted, and charismatic stars in Japanese cinema. She plays Keiko, a widow who supports herself as a bar madam, the chief attraction in whatever bar she works, by virtue of her beauty and superior refinement.
Every afternoon, Keiko (Hideko Takamine) walks from her modest apartment to her job as a senior hostess in a Ginza bar. Compassionate and courteous, she is affectionately called "mama" by the younger hostesses who see her graciousness and charm as an unattainable ideal..
Naruse’s filming style, never ostentatious, shows exquisite tact. Like Roberto Rossellini, another filmmaker of unfailing intelligence, Naruse directs facts; he constructs the image only enough to get its essential meaning across. There are no bravura 360-degree camera movements, but there are subtle little tracking shots of Keiko walking through Tokyo, with or without company; and when Keiko goes up the stairs to her bar, the camera delicately ascends with her for just two seconds.
Though we cannot but sympathize with Keiko, we are also allowed to judge her dispassionately. She comes across at times as self-righteous, at other times as hard. It is a strength of character that is reflected in her early narrative: "After it gets dark, I have to climb the stairs, and that's what I hate. But once I'm up, I can take whatever happens." Inevitably, the daunting stairs provide a reassuring ritual from crushing disillusionment and personal tragedy - a validation of courage and resilience in facing the unknown - a quiet triumph of the human spirit.
(Source:Internet)

Mikio Naruse

Mikio Naruse, often ranked with Kenji Mizoguchi and Yasujiro Ozu as one of the three master Japanese directors who were at their peak in both the prewar and postwar eras, was born in Tokyo on August 20, 1905. The son of an impoverished embroiderer, Naruse developed a love of literature from an early age. Because of his family’s financial problems, he was unable to continue his education into middle school, attending instead a technical school. Naruse’s father died when he was 15, forcing him to take a job to support the family. Through a friend, he began working as a prop man at the Shochiku film company in Tokyo in 1920. Naruse finally had an opportunity to direct, making his debut with a slapstick comedy, Chambara Fufu . Naruse demonstrated a lyrical style in his second film, Junjo (Pure Love) (1930), a work which won the praise of another Shochiku director, Yasujiro Ozu.
In 1933, Naruse reached his pinnacle in the silent cinema with two masterpieces crystallizing themes that would dominate his work for the rest of his career. In 1937, Naruse married Sachiko Chiba, who had played the heroine of Tsuma yo Bara no yo Ni. The two had a child, although they later divorced, and Naruse resumed his bachelor way of life, residing in a modest apartment and frequenting bars, until his second marriage in later years. Naruse continued to make films throughout the war years. The director recovered from an apparent postwar slump of lesser films with his 1951 drama, Ginza Gesho (Ginza Cosmetics), starring Kinuyo Tanaka.
Naruse that he went on to direct for Toho a series of films in the 1950s and 1960s that rank as the masterpieces of his maturity. Six of these films were adapted from stories by Fumiko Hayashi, a woman writer who had dramatized her own struggles in fiction and whose point of view held enormous appeal for the director.Other classic films Naruse directed in the postwar years include Okasan (Mother) in 1952, Yama no Oto (Sound of the Mountain) in 1954, Nagareru (Flowing) in 1956, and Onna ga Kaidan o Agaru Toki (When a Woman Ascends the Stairs) in 1960.
Naruse continued to direct for most of the 1960s, his final film being Midaregumo (Scattered Clouds), He died on July 2, 1969, at the age of 63. In 37 years of directing, he had made a phenomenal 87 films. Through all those decades, he had maintained a consistent personal vision in most of his work. However, he had modified his cinematic approach since his earliest films. Whereas in many of his silents, he had experimented with a wide variety of techniques, in his talkies, he opted for a more subdued visual style. He now limited camera movement and avoided unusual camera angles and rapid montage in order to place full emphasis on the facial expressions and gestures of the actor. In the years since his death, Naruse’s reputation has continued to grow with retrospectives of his work, and many now recognize him as one of the supreme masters of world cinema.
(Source: Internet)

Apr 11, 2011

17th April 2011; Peter Weir's Picnic at Hanging Rock

Picnic at Hanging Rock
A film by Peter Weir
Year: 1975
Country : Australia
Run time:115 minutes
English with English subtitles
17th April 2011; 5.45pm
Perks Mini Theater

On a drowsy St. Valentine's Day in 1900, a party of girls from a strict boarding school in Australia goes on a day's outing to Hanging Rock, a geological outcropping not far from their school. Three of the girls and one of their teachers disappear into thin air. One of them is found a week or so later, but can remember almost nothing. The others are never found.
On this foundation, Peter Weir's "Picnic at Hanging Rock" (1975) constructs a film of haunting mystery and buried sexual hysteria. It also employs two of the hallmarks of modern Australian films: beautiful cinematography and stories about the chasm between settlers from Europe and the mysteries of their ancient new home.
The movie is based on a 1967 novel by Joan Lindsay, then 71, who presented it as fiction but hinted that it might be based on fact. A cottage industry grew up in Australia about the novel and the movie; old newspapers and other records were searched without success for reports of disappearing schoolgirls.
Did the girls disappear into another time line? Were they raped by two teenage boys who were also on Hanging Rock that day? Did they simply fall into a crevice? What about the girl who was found alive a week later?

"We worked very hard,'' Weir told an interviewer for Sight & Sound, "at creating an hallucinatory, mesmeric rhythm, so that you lost awareness of facts, you stopped adding things up, and got into this enclosed atmosphere. I did everything in my power to hypnotize the audience away from the possibility of solutions.''
Visually it probably is one of the most beautiful picture ever seen, with Australian flora and fauna and wonderful blue skies. Everything has been carefully re-created with loving exactitude.
(Sorce : Internet )




Peter Weir

Peter Weir helped to define the rebirth of Australian cinema, while addressing some of the most pressing concerns of the nation in the 1970s and 1980s. His intriguing images of Australia, evocative and transcendent, made an impact in the international art house scene, eager for compelling visions of geo-political areas and cultures overlooked by mainstream cinema. After achieving international recognition as an emblematic Australian filmmaker, Weir made his transition to Hollywood while maintaining a sense of experimentation and artistic exploration. His films, including his Hollywood ones, cannot be pigeonholed in terms of themes, genres or geographical locals; but they do display an approach to filmmaking, a sensibility, a drive, that amount to one of the most searching trajectories in contemporary cinema.

Weir was born in Sydney. attended The Scots College and Vaucluse Boys' High School before studying art and law at the University of Sydney. His interest in film was sparked by his meeting with fellow students, including Phillip Noyce and the future members of the Sydney filmmaking collective Ubu Films.After leaving university in the mid-1960s he joined Sydney television station ATN-7.Weir then took up a position with the Commonwealth Film Unit (later renamed Film Australia), for which he made several documentaries.After leaving the CFU, Weir made his first major independent film, the short feature Homesdale (1971), an offbeat black omedy.Weir's first full-length feature film was the underground cult classic, The Cars That Ate Paris (1975), a low-budget black comedy about the inhabitants of a small country town who deliberately cause fatal car crashes and live off the proceeds.

Weir's major breakthrough in Australia and internationally was the lush, atmospheric period mystery Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975), made with substantial backing from the state-funded South Australian Film Corporation and filmed on location in South Australia and rural Victoria. Weir's next film, The Last Wave (1977) was a supernatural thriller.Between The Last Wave and his next feature, Weir wrote and directed the offbeat low-budget telemovie The Plumber (1979).Weir scored a major Australian hit and further international praise with his next film Gallipoli (1981). Gallipoli was instrumental in making Mel Gibson (Mad Max) into a major star.The climax of Weir's early career was the $6 million multi-national production The Year of Living Dangerously (1983).On 14 June 1982, Weir was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia (AM) for his service to the film industry.

Weir's first American film was the successful thriller Witness (1985),It was followed by the darker, less commercial The Mosquito Coast (1986), Paul Schrader's adaptation of Paul Theroux's novel. Weir's next film, Dead Poets Society (1989) was a major international success. Next came Green Card and Fearless. After five years, Weir returned to direct his biggest success to date,The Truman Show (1998), a bittersweet fantasy-satire of the media's control of life. In 2003 Weir returned to period drama with Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World, starring Russell Crowe. Weir wrote and directed ‘The Way Back’ which was released in late 2010.
(From Wikipedia)