Shinoda Masahiro

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Shinoda Masahiro

• Nihilist Style

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Shinoda Masahiro

• Born in 1931, entered Waseda University and
  passed the exam at Shochiku. Imamura Shohei and
  Oshima Nagisa were his colleagues. He retired
  from filmmaking after Spy Sorge (2003)

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Early Shinoda

• The success of Oshima Nagisas Cruel Story of
  Youth (1960)
• A series of youth films labeled as Shochiku
  Nouvelle Vague films by young filmmakers.
• Most of them are poor imitations of Oshimas.
• Exceptions are

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Early Shinoda

• Shinoda Masahiro (1931- ) and Yoshishige Yoshida
  (1933 - )s films.
• Auteur and filmmakers with self-conscious styles

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Early Shinoda

• The debut film
• One-Way Ticket for Love (1960)
• About rockn rollers and their nihilistic life
  styles with sensual imagery.
• Commercial failure demoted him to assistant
  director.

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Early Shinoda

• Dry Lake (1960) - caricature of college students
  who are infatuated with the idea of revolution
  and subversive actions, and looking forward to a
  social turmoil that their terrorist activities
  might cause.

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Early Shinoda

• My Face Red in the Sunset (1961) - cartoon-like
  stories about alienated assassins. A corrupt
  construction company owner commission them to
  assassinate a journalist who is about to expose
  his ill-doings, but things get complicated when
  an assassin falls in love with the journalist.

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Early Shinoda

• Shochiku discontinued Shochiku Nouvelle Vague
  and returned to the former production policy
  which targeted the female audience - family
  drama, humanist drama, melodrama and other genre
  films.
• Yoshida and Shinoda remained in Shochiku unlike
  Oshima and Imamura.
• Ideas, subjects, themes, scripts forced upon him.
  
• Though working in compliance with the demands of
  the studio, Shinoda was no longer innocent
  follower of the Shochiku tradition.

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Early Shinoda

• After the renovation in filmmaking through
  Shochiku nouvelle vague, which was previously
  influenced by French nouvelle vague, American
  film noir and European art cinema, there was no
  turn back to the former Shochiku style.
• Loss of stylistic innocence and more
  self-conscious stylization

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Early Shinoda
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Early Shinoda

• Sharpening of aesthetic sensitivity,
  sophistication of representation methods and
  attempt of bold experimentation
• Sensuous modernism

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Painterly aesthetic composition in a widescreen
(cinemascope) format
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Painterly aesthetic composition in a widescreen
(cinemascope) format
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Symmetrical composition
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Over the shoulder, off-screen composition
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Chiaro-scruro (low-key lighting, high contrast)
images
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Symmetrical composition and chiaro-scuro lighting
combined mise-en-scène
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Chiaro-scuro lighting and wide-screen composition
with empty space on the right
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Chiaro-scuro lighting and wide-screen composition
with empty space on the top of the screen
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Chiaro-scuro lighting and selective focus in
deepish space
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Reflected shadow
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Extrem camera angles (particularly high angle)
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Framing
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Silhouetting
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Frontal and profile shots
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Frontal and profile shots
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Telephoto shot (disappearance of depth)
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Surrealistic and easthetic image
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Swish pan (camera movement)
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Middle Shinoda

• Montage (editing)
• Jagged jump cuts
• Ignoring the 180 degree rule
• Theatrical long cut and cinematic rapid cut

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Middle Shinoda

• Pale Flower (1963) - A hard-boiled Yakuza returns
  to the Tokyo underworld after three years in
  prison. He meets a mysterious, wealthy woman who
  hangs out in illegal gambling houses for
  excitement. They fall in love but their
  relationship is doomed.

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Middle Shinoda

• Assassination (1964) - At the closing stage of
  the Tokugawa Shogunate, assassination became a
  disturbing political tool, a masterless samurai
  tries to prevent the outbreak of civil war,
  changing allegiances between the Shogunate and
  the Emperor.

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Middle Shinoda

• Samurai Spy (1965) - odd (unusual) samurai film
  about three spy rings which are involved in
  mutual betrayals and bloodsheds. Empty in
  content but displays Shinodas visual bravura.

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Shinoda after Shochiku

• Double Suicide (1969) - extremely stylistic
  adaptation of Chikamatsus play, The Love
  Suicide at Amijima. Jihei, the merchant, is
  married and has two children, but is desperately
  in love with an up-market courtesan, Oharu.

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Shinoda after Shochiku

• Jiheis infatuation brings to him and his family
  financial, marital and social ruin. Koharu is
  out of his reach when she was bought out by a
  wealthy merchant. This eventually leads to the
  double suicide.

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Shinoda after Shochiku

• Mixture of traditional theatre (bunraku / kabuki)
  and cinema avant-garde theatre (Awazu Kiyoshis
  set design) ukiyo-e and cinema

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Shinoda after Shochiku

• Scandalous Adventures of Buraikan (1970) - at the
  time of the great social reform led by the
  Tokugawa Shogun, a group of outlaws, actors of a
  banned theatre troupe, and a corrupt monk rebel
  against the rigidity of the Shogunate.

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Shinoda after Shochiku

• The film is set during the time of puritan Tempo
  Reform in which everything pleasurable was
  banned - the theatre, ukiyoe, novels, expensive
  meals, dolls, sweets, etc. Six actors from a
  theatre troupe, an eccentric monk and a useless
  fortune teller fight for the freedom of
  expression.

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Shinoda after Shochiku

• Silence (1971) - adapted from Endo Shusakus
  novel, the film is about a Portuguese Jesuit
  missionary and the Japanese peasant converts, who
  were persecuted and forced to renounce their
  faith. Shot by Miyagawa Kazuo with rich pastel
  colours.

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Shinoda after Shochiku

• Under the Blossoming Cherry Trees (1975) - a
  story about a ghost woman who puts under her
  spell the man who abducted her and dominates him
  by the use of her sexual power.

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Shinoda after Shochiku

• The Ballad of Orin (1977) - Goze is a blind
  female itinerant shamisen player and storyteller.
  Orin is a goze though she was expelled from a
  group for breaking its rules and having an affair
  with a customer. Traveling alone, she is a
  popular entertainer, but men are after not only
  her music but also her body.

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Shinodas Subjects

• Japanese History
• Historical incidents and situation
• Radical changes and shifts in history
• Peoples reactions and responses to them.

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Shinodas Subjects

• Dry Lake - the 1960s and political movements
• Assassination - the arrival of Perrys fleet in
  Japan and the ensuing political and social
  upheaval
• Samurai Spy - 1600 the victory of the Tokugawas
  and the last phase of civil wars
• The Scandalous Adventures of Buraikan - the
  Tempo Reform
• The Silence - the time of persecution of
  Christians
• McArthurs Children - the aftermath of the defeat
  in the second world war

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Shinodas Subjects

• Reaction to such changes
• People who find it difficult to cope with them.
• Often disillusionment with radical shifts in
  value, ideology, and political and social system.
• Nihilistic rather than ethical response to
  drastic shifts
• Violence and subversion
• Strong images of death and corruption