Shōhei Imamura | エロ事師たち”より 人類学入門 (Erogotoshi-tachi yori: Jinrulgaku nyūmori) (The Pornographers) / 1966

the carp leaps out of its tank

by Douglas Messerli

 

Shōhei Imamura and Koji Numata (screenplay, based on a novel by Akiyuki Nosaka), Shōhei Imamura (director)エロ事師たち”より 人類学入門(Erogotoshi-tachi yori: Jinrulgaku nyūmori) (The Pornographers) / 1966

 

 Loving companion to an ailing woman, Haru Masuda (Sumiko Sakamoto), and a kind of adoptive father to her two children, Koichi (Masaomil Kondo) and Keiko (Kelko Sagawa), Yoshimoto Ogata (Shōichi Ozawa) desperately tries to make ends meet by leading a kind of double life: pretending to be a salesman—to keep both police and the mob off the track—while shooting two pornographic movies each day, selling them (much like a salesman) to wealthy businessmen. To justify his occupation, Ogata declares that he is only serving a social cause, giving men what they need in order to survive—as important as food and finances. The problem, of course, is that in the post-World War II Japanese society in which he lives, the blue films he makes are illegal and the mob is only too ready to demand their share of any meager profits. Despite some few successes, accordingly, by film’s end we see just how much of a failure Ogata is at his strange profession.

 

     More importantly is the effect of his skewed perspective of the world on his own family. The woman he lives with, Hara, refuses to marry him, having been warned by her husband—who inhabits the body, she believes, of a large carp she keeps in a bedroom tank—despite the sexual thrill she feels by his attentions. The family history—revealed in out of sequence, cuts, each further cut revealing more than the one that proceeded it—also demonstrates the resentment of the two children for their mother’s sexual involvement with Ogata. Even as a young child, Keiko reacts to the “stranger’s” intrusion upon their lives, rushing away from his arms into the path of a bus. The elder son, Koichi shows his detestation of the “father” by demanding money to get into college; he is a poor student, and so must pay his way in with a bribe.

     Despite the relatively restrained sexuality of Ogata’s earliest films, in his own home life, things are 

much more suggestive, as Koichi jumps into bed with his mother, declaring he is cold, and, later, demands her gentle ministrations (a mix of hugs and leg-rubbings) for the same reason. Ogata, attracted to the school-girl Keiko, plays out one of his film scenarios with a retarded girl dressed in Keiko’s own school uniform, and simultaneously demonstrates a sexual interest in his “daughter.” Becoming pregnant, Haru grows ill and is hospitalized, during which time she suggests that if she were to die, Ogata should marry Keiko.  

     All of this, moreover, is represented by Imamura in a series of scenes shot through cracks in the wall, peeking in through windows, peering into crevices, and, as in the discussion with Ogata and Haru in the hospital, with others overhearing. If Ogata’s films are rather straight-forward, giving his customers what they desire, his and his family’s lives are lived out in a much more prurient way, belonging more to pornography than his blue movies. Keiko even participates in a large group orgy.

     At an even uglier level, moreover, is the way the entire society, sweeping up both Koichi and Keiko, perceives everything it terms of money. With everyone he knows, his friends, even some of his clients, the mob, and his “family” constantly demanding money, there is no way Ogata could ever succeed no matter which avocation he might have chosen. In a strange way, Ogata, despite his abuse of actors and his literal rape of Keiko, is the most innocent figure in this darkly satiric work. At moments it is almost as if Ogata, in perceiving his films as being of social value, thinks of his work as an art, not unlike that of the director of this film, Imamura. But in such a greedy and selfish world in which he lives, he will never be able to develop or better his “art.” He is born to failure.

     Working throughout with a cinematic partner, a misogynist who eschews all women, a man who declares they are dangerous and even unclean, Ogata finally comes to a new perspective: instead of dealing with “real” members of the opposite sex, he will create a machine to salve his sexual needs. A bit like Tommaso Landolfi’s character in his story, “Gogol’s Wife,” Ogata, after Haru’s death and Keiko’s rejection, moves to a small houseboat works to create a latex doll to fulfill his sexual desires, shifting from a kind of filmmaker to a kind of sculptor. With his work nearly completed, Ogata, in a sense, is freed from the restrictions of his previous world—is released from the confining sexual mores, the financial demands, and the greedy and selfish ploys of other beings. The boat breaks loose from its moorings and is quickly taken out to sea. Film-critic Donald Richie describes it as, “a scene of mysterious beauty, he sails, all unknowing, through the canals of Osaka and out into the Pacific Ocean—presumably never to be heard of again.” Perhaps one might rather say, however, Ogata sails into a world where he will never again have to hear from the closed and truly pornographic society in which he has previously lived.

 

Los Angeles, March 21, 2013

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (March 2013).

 

Marius Gabriel Stancu | È solo nella mia testa (It's Just in My Head) / 2020

friends and lovers

by Douglas Messerli

 

Marius Gabriel Stancu (screenwriter and director) È solo nella mia testa (It's Just in My Head) / 2020 [17 minutes]

 

Andreas (Claudio Segaluscio) and Alessandro (Carmine Fabbricatore) have known each other from childhood, and now every year they summer together as friends at a seaside resort, swimming, sunning themselves, and just hanging out with one another. But now the summer is nearly over and Andreas, in particular, is in a funk, the mood he often gets each year when its time to return to his college studies and exams.

 

    Alessandro can stay on with his girlfriend for another week and then he must return to write his dissertation. His friend is so irritated by the situation that he leaves without even sharing in another swim with Alessandro.

     But we so recognize, if we haven’t been alerted by our gaydar, that Andreas is in love with Alessandro, and his irritation is not just because his vacation has come an end, but the fact that yet another year has passed without his friend even hinting that he might be homosexual.

    Andreas returns to his room, takes out a package of new snapshots he’s taken of himself and Alessandro, and chooses one to bring to bed with him as he masturbates.

    So far, the film has seemed far too familiar, yet another example of the inevitable breakup of best friends when the straight boy discovers that for all this time the other has been gay and secretly in love with him.

     Fortunately, Italian director Marius Gabriel Stancu surprises us. Some time seems to have passed, when Alessandro, now home again, checks his mailbox to find an envelope containing the very photos that we’ve just seen Andreas peruse. To some of these photos he’s attached notes telling his friend, after all these years, the real reasons for what he has long described as Andreas’ moods of “nostalgia.” He admits that all these years that he’s been in love with his Alessandro, waiting for a sign which never came.

      Alessandro attempts to call his old buddy to assure him that his feelings have not been such a secret, and that he has shares his sentiments. It appears that Andreas has gone to the beach; Alessandro follows, the two of them meeting up in the water with the romantic Palolo Baltaro ditty “Minha mente, somente” playing in the background.

     Instead of the standard breakup of old friends, these long-time besties realize that their friendship has turned into love. Unfortunately, however, this short film’s conceit is even more irritating than the predictability of the other. Although it’s lovely that the two may now be beginning a relationship, since we know absolutely nothing about them, its difficult to care about what happens in the end.

 

Los Angeles, May 30, 2024

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (May 2024).

Gary Halvorson and Anthony Minghella | Madama Butterfly / 2009 [The Metropolitan Opera Live-HD production]

the blindfold

by Douglas Messerli

 

Giacomo Puccini (composer), Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa (libretto, based on the play by David Belasco and the story by John Luther Long), Anthony Minghella (director), Gary Halvorson (film director) Madama Butterfly / 2009 [The Metropolitan Opera Live-HD production]

 

Nearly anyone who has seen an opera knows the story of Puccini's Madama Butterfly. Having fallen in love with the dashing American Navy Lieutenant Pinkerton, the fifteen-year-old Cio-Cio San marries him, despite the fact that in doing so she must give up her own family and friends. With Yankee haughtiness and a sense of superiority, Pinkerton scoffs at the American consul's advice that Cio-Cio San is taking the marriage seriously and, soon after, leaves her behind as he sails off to America and, ultimately, a "real" wife.

 

       Meanwhile, Cio-Cio San trusts that eventually he will return, singing her famed aria "Un bel di," in which she describes one beautiful day when a ship will sail into the harbor, returning Pinkerton to her. Meanwhile, Cio-Cio, courted by local men such as the wealthy Goro, refuses to give up her so-called "American" marriage and ardently denies their insistence that Pinkerton has left her for good.

      The consul, Sharpless, has been given the difficult task of reading a letter from Pinkerton to Cio-Cio, reporting that he has been married and will not return, but she, so delighted to hear any word from her husband, cannot comprehend what he is attempting to tell her, and when Sharpless tries to explain the facts in a more outright manner, she produces her and Pinkerton's son who she is sure will draw Pinkerton back to her.

      Pinkerton, in fact, has already returned to Nagasaki, and has no intention of visiting Cio-Cio. When he does hear of the child's existence, he, his wife, and Sharpless convince Cio-Cio's servant Suzuki to break the news that Pinkerton and his new wife will adopt the son.

     Finally, Cio-Cio, who has been blinded throughout the entire opera to the truth, has her eyes opened, realizing, in horror, her delusional condition. She asks Pinkerton, a man so selfish that he has refused even to face her himself, to return so that she may offer up the child. But we also know that she intends to leave him her own body, committing ritual suicide. Who could not be moved by Patricia Racette's dramatically convincing performance? The Lithuanian-born American next to us—who had never before attended a Met video performance—was in tears, as were Howard and I.

 

     Belasco, the original playwright, along with storyteller John Luther Long, upon whose work Puccini based his opera, was quite prescient in his fin de siècle piece, establishing a type, the ugly American, which has remained in place for all those years since, particularly in the context of the Korean, Viet Nam, Afghanistan and Iraq wars. In Puccini's hands, the dichotomy between the all-consuming Yankee and the self-sacrificing Japanese maiden could not have been made clearer.

       Yet, one can only recognize that it Cio-Cio San's propensity for self-sacrifice is as much a problem in this relationship as has been Pinkerton's greed and disdain of her life. In her absurd innocence, she has been blinded not only to the impossibility that she could be recognized as an American wife, but also has forgotten who she herself is and how her traditions and behavior conspire to permit the Pinkertons of the world to prey upon such youths.

       Puccini poignantly points up this fact by having her son, whom she has sent out to play, wander into sight just as she is about to draw the knife. To protect him, she blindfolds the child, sending him on his way. But in doing this she merely reiterates her own condition all along. Singing of her hope that her son will remember her at the very moment that she is about to disappear from his life, we can only perceive that, were he to do so, it could only bring him great pain for the rest of his days. In Anthony Minghella's Metropolitan Opera production Howard and I saw, the child, "Sorrow"/"Trouble," was played by a Bunraku-like puppet manipulated by three hooded assistants, which visually restated the child's future sense of emptiness, his destiny, perhaps, to join in the world of hollow bodies.

       Accordingly, although the opera ends with a corpse upon the stage, we know that it is already a disappearing thing, representing as it does a way of living that will inevitably be replaced by the avaricious gluttony of the survivors.

 

Los Angeles, March 28, 2009

Reprinted from Green Integer Blog (March 2009).

Aki Kaurismäki | Le Havre / 2011

release

by Douglas Messerli

 

Aki Kaurismäki (screenwriter and director) Le Havre / 2011

 

Aki Kaurismäki’s 2011 film, Le Havre is an agreeable if slightly sentimental tale about a former author (André Wilms), who inexplicably has given up his bohemian life to become a shoeshiner in the famed French port. At one point the character mutters something about his line of work as bringing him closer to the people, but that does not sufficiently explain why this figure, Marcel Marx, who was featured also in Kaurismäki’s La Vie de Bohème named after the great Socialist thinker. But then the director also names several of his characters after famed French film figures. Marcel’s wife (the wonderful Kati Outinen) is named Arletty, after the music hall singer and actress in several of another Marcel Carné’s pictures, the director who also set his La Quai des brumes in La Havre. A doctor in this movie, played by the French comic director Pierre Étaix, is named Becker after French film director Jacques Becker, who in his youth worked as head of a baggage service for a shipping line operating between Le Havre and New York. The film’s detective, Monet, somewhat similar to the detective of Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment, also reminds us that the artist Monet painted a series of Le Havre scenes (several of them in the US, one in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, across the street from my home), portraying the same foggy atmosphere of Carné’s. While several of these references, accordingly, do play a role in this film, it also appears that Kaurismäki simply enjoys the referential ricochets of these names. 

      Strangely, while in the director’s earlier film Paris was portrayed as foggy, shabby town akin to Carné’s view of Le Harvre, Kaurismäki’s Le Havre is beautifully lit and, although a little shabby at the edges, is portrayed as a basically friendly city where Marx and fellow shoeshiner Chang (Quoc Cung Nguyen) stand placidly together as they greet train passengers who might desire a shine. Although he certainly does not make much money, Marx is rewarded free drinks by neighborhood bartender and the local grocer grudgingly allows him open credit. Spending only a small amount of his earnings, Marx returns home to the protective arms of Arletty and to his faithful dog, Laika (named presumably after the famed Russian dog in orbit), where he hands over his daily wages to his wife and is served up a restorative meal. When Arletty suffers what appears to be a heart attack, all neighbors come together in support.

 

    Similarly, when Marx encounters a young African boy, who has escaped police capture upon the discovery of several African would-be immigrants hiding in a cargo container, the old man feeds the boy and takes him in, again with the open support of his friends—despite the newspaper headlines demanding the boy’s arrest. Marx even goes to the length of traveling to Calais to find a relative of the boy, and despite his wife’s illness, which necessitates regular visits to the hospital, he is able put together a concert in order to raise money to secretly ship the boy on to London, where his mother apparently lives. Even the nosey detective Monet helps Marx to get the boy out of the country. In short, while in Carné’s Le Havre there is “no escape,” in Kaurismäki’s port city everyone helps the characters to be free themselves from the predicaments and limitations of their lives.

      At film’s end, even Arletty returns home, miraculously cured from what she has been previously told was an inoperable condition. As fleeting as joy was in Carné’s world, here it is almost contagious. If neither Carné’s tragic vision nor Kaurismäki’s primarily positive presentation of life is very realistic, who cares? Such is the stuff of films and books!

       

Los Angeles, February 14, 2013

Reprinted from Nth Position (March 2013).     

Shōhei Imamura | 豚と軍艦 (Buta to gunkan) (Pigs and Battleships) / 1961, USA 1963

live like pigs

by Douglas Messerli

Hisashi Yamauchi (screenplay), Shōhei Imamura (director) 豚と軍艦 (Buta to gunkan) (Pigs and Battleships) / 1961, USA 1963

I've never seen nor read the John Arden play whose title I have borrowed for this short essay, but I cannot imagine a more appropriate phrase since Shōhei Imamura's 1961 film is not only literally about pigs and battleships, but is, metaphorically speaking, a work in which all the characters more or less live like pigs within the post-war Japanese society of the port Yokosuka. Although the Allied occupation of Japan has seemingly brought some sense of industry to the democratized city, it is still a world of slums and darkness where nearly every individual—Japanese, Americans, and other outsiders—are on the take, each preying on one another in the form of everything from sex to pig slop, from, as the title suggest, pigs to battleships—or, at least, what comes with the latter.

     Like Kurosawa in Drunken Angel, Imamura takes the viewer through a world of thriving backstreets and alleys, all lit up with neon and filled with sailors, prostitutes, petty thieves, hoodlums, members of the Shore Patrol and Japanese police. At times his camera is so frenetic in its chase of figures through his set, that audience members might almost lose their breaths. But for Imamura this energized chaos is as comical as it is dangerous, each layer of the social structure using the others to sell and buy, the body being the most saleable commodity, or, as the local Yakuza describe it, to rake in "contributions."

     At the center of this fomenting world is the likeable but slightly dumb-witted Kinta (Hiroyuki Nagato) and his pretty girlfriend, Huruko (Jitsuko Yoshimura), who works in a nearby bar. In large, this couple stands apart from the rest of the community in their simple desire to marry and find a way to eke out a living. But in this dark world there is no easy escape. Kinta stupidly thinks he is rising in society as he moves from a position of a ringer who brings American sailors into the underground brothels to a role in the local gang as a pig farmer, a capital venture of gangster Tetsu and his friends, who use black market slops to feed the profitable beasts.

     Huruko faces daily pressure from her mother to leave her job at the bar and become a high class prostitute, like her older sister, serving the American sailors under the tutelage of the slightly mysterious American, Mr. George, who is suddenly replaced by a similarly opportunistic figure. And, at least twice in the film, the young girl, penniless and fed up with the actions of her lover, is drawn into this dark sexual underworld, at one point being gang-raped by three American sailors—an event which quite literally sets her mind and Imamura's camera spinning—and, after she attempts to steal cash from one of them, is arrested.

     Despite this, however, Huruko and Kinta's elderly father are the only ones presented who seem to have moral values. Throughout the film Huruko's major role is her attempt to try to convince Kinta to leave the Yakuza and travel with her to a neighboring city where they can find employment in a factory.

     Factory wages, however, are notoriously low, and Kinta has dreams of either owning a band that might play every night on the American base or working as a high-class pimp. Despite his own involvement with gang shakedowns of nearly everyone, it never seems to dawn on him that no matter what money he might make, it would be taken. Because of these ridiculous aspirations and his blind belief in his gang future, the Yakuza make exaggerated demands of him, forcing him to agree, after they kill an aging gangster, that if the body is found he will admit to the crime.

     Imamura's work soon swings into full motion, lurching back and forth over more and more absurd events, sometimes without a great deal of narrative coherency. But the result is as lively story-telling as are his hilarious types. The handsome head of the gang, Tetsu, like Kurosawa's Matsunaga, is a dying man, or, at least, he is convinced he is (in fact, he has only a stomach ulcer). And the others betray one another as they struggle to make payments to the American for the outdated rations to feed the pigs. When they cannot come up with the money, both sides attempt to sell the animals, which leads to a free-wheeling street chase between big-rig trucks—with Kinta mistakenly thought to having betrayed both. In one of what has to be one of the most ludicrously comic scenes in film history, Imamura places the inexperienced Kinta at the center of a machine- gun battle that shoots up the entire town, ending with a mad release of hundreds of pigs who go trotting up and down streets and into the alleys, ultimately trampling the members of the Yakuza to death. In a mockery of James Cagney-type American movies, Imamura shows Kinta being shot, eventually dying face down in a woman's latrine.

     At film's end, a new battleship has arrived, as the women in the town rush out to meet it and the Americans who will pay for their pleasures. Although she has been finally convinced by her mother to join the others, in the final scene Huruko moves off in the opposite direction toward the train station that will take her away from the pigs and battleships that have destroyed any possibility of true love.

      Imamura's movie is, at times, patently anti-American, but he is no easier on his own countrymen, who in attempting to get their hands on the American dollar, live like pigs on their way to slaughter. In the end, the director transforms Hisashi Yamauchi's sometimes loopy story into a serious and memorable satire.

 

Los Angeles, June 16, 2012

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (June 2012).