As a student of Mizoguchi Kenji, "Black Cat" is full of respect for "Rainy Night Monogatari", and even the story itself is similar to "Rainy Night Monogatari". It not only replaces "snake sex" with "cats". "Return of "," even "Asakusa no Suo" is basically appropriated as it is. The story of "Black Cat" is actually very simple. A mother and daughter were gang-raped and killed by a group of samurai. Afterwards, the souls entangled with the black cat. The mother-daughter alliance vowed to avenge all the warriors in the city and absorb their blood. The daughter’s warrior husband returned from victory. After he was awarded the title of honor, he was asked by the city lord to eradicate the evil spirits. When staying in the enchanted mansion, he found that the so-called evil spirits were very similar to his wife, and the evil spirits also had emotions and vitality. Turn into a lingering time for seven days. In the end, the samurai confronted his mother, and after beheading the mother who had become an evildoer, he also died in madness.
However, such a plot is simple, and the capacity is only equivalent to a story in Kobayashi's "Ghost Talk", but Kanato Shinto has made a long story. Its narrative method and use of lens language are worth studying. At the beginning of the film, the story is explained straightforwardly. With a set of smooth and smooth shots, Kento Nito outlines the process of the samurai's violence: brutally overwhelming the female and inserting it, then quickly followed by the wide-angle lens, and the samurai leaves. Go, the lens didn't move at all, almost exquisite, and thick smoke slowly drifted out of the room, spreading away. After that, the black cat appeared, licking the blood from the neck of the corpse, and the mother and daughter turned into demons.
Then, the film explained the process of revenge for the mother and daughter in an orderly manner. Four samurai were killed in series and almost parallel plots, and the method of revenge was revealed: the samurai who returned to the city was attracted by their daughters and abducted. After spending the night at home, the samurai inevitably aroused lust, and the daughter bit the samurai's neck when the rain was approaching. These four scenes of revenge are almost the same. They always start with the gate that differs from the word "Rashomon". The warrior rides a horse to return at night, and the beautiful women shuttle through the misty gauze, and whenever the clouds and rain are approaching At that time, the mother always danced like a sacrifice in another room, and finally ended with the scene of the corpse on the second day. However, these four revenges are still divided into primary and secondary ones. Shinto first explained the first revenge in a complete and detailed manner, including the details of the dialogue between the samurai and the ghost, and the following three revenges presented a ritual copy, such a combination Very similar to the structure of poetry, parallel and superimposed, compact and stable.
Even so, but as far as it seems, the film still has limitations, not just the steel wire revealed when the banshee jumps. In the plot design, as the mother and daughter of the ghost and resentment, why bother to use such a troublesome way of revenge? Too much trouble? It's better to use force directly to end the murderer. However, judging from other Japanese ghost stories, such as Nobuo Nakagawa’s "Tokaido Yotsuya Kaidan", "Battle Girl Kaidan", etc., especially his "Undead Monster Cat Yashiki" which is also related to cats, it seems that early Japan The magical power of the ghost is far inferior to the current Sadako, and he can't fight humans head-on. Instead, he can only drive people crazy through intimidation and hallucinations, or simply lure them with sex, and then start with the feeding machine. From this perspective, it seems that Japanese doctrine of ghosts and gods is actually deeply influenced by Zen Buddhism, and the idea of "devil born from the heart" is deeply rooted in early Japanese ghost stories.
Then, the actor of the film officially debuted, and Shinto Kanto arranged a hand-to-hand show for him. In the reeds, a moving lens is used to quickly capture the tragedy of the tearing. The camera moves almost in the direction of the weapon, the rhythm is compact and smooth, and the audience seems to be still in the tense fight too late to recover. The tearing is already happening. Termination, simply and neatly. When the wife and husband who are already ghosts meet, the climax of the film officially begins. As a structural symmetry, the plot afterwards is basically similar to the previous one. What the director has to do is to portray the emotions of husband and wife in the details.
From the perspective of the film as a whole, the surreal theme of "Black Cat" did have a considerable impact at the time, especially the way Shinto Kanto expresses fear, not like the American genre movies that emphasize plot and narrative, but Use oriental aesthetics to poetically create an atmosphere of fear. Xinteng pays great attention to structural balance. The narrative structure of the movie can be clearly divided into several paragraphs by the audience, and the connection of each paragraph is smooth and smooth.
Kanto Shinto uses different shooting methods for indoor and outdoor scenes. In outdoor scenes, he uses long lenses, wide-angle lenses, and moving lenses to show the magnificence of the scene. Indoors, the art form of stage performance is often used, and the way of fading in and out is looming to set off the mysterious and strange atmosphere. Japanese traditional stage performances have been widely quoted in similar movies. For example, in Nakagawa Nobuo’s "The Undead Monster Cat Yashiki", the scene of the cat and monster’s revenge and killing is performed in the way of Noh music, and in this film, the mother ritual is like The dance also has the same effect as the same song. But especially, in "Black Cat", in scenes such as shuttles in bamboo forests, clouds and rain in houses, and samurai killing mothers, more reference is made to the use of stage performances and lighting, making these indoor scenes more compact and delicate, attracting audiences eyeball. Especially when the banshee draws the murderer into the demon house, the bamboo forest behind it swings with the wind, while the building is fixed and static, forming a sharp contrast, and is well versed in the essence of "the heart desires to be quiet but the wind keeps". The other bamboo shuttle scene may not be comparable to the grandeur of "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" because of the limitations of black and white film, but its poetry and aesthetics are more than that of "Ambush on Ten Sides".
What is different from Nobuo Nakagawa’s ghost talk movie is that what Kanto Shinto discusses is not simple principles and karma, but shifts the focus to the contradiction between love and human nature (monsters also have human nature that is annihilated). Therefore, in the film, In fact, there are not many descriptions of the former cause and effect, and they are only described in a series of shots. As for the emotional entanglement between the wives who are incarnations of ghosts and the human husbands, they spend a lot of pen and ink to focus on them. From the point of view of the film, what Kanato Shinto wants to express is quite clear. The political intentions of the city lord and the samurai, and the class struggle of the poor are not the main expressions of the director. At the end of the film, there is no obvious position on the retribution of good and evil. This clearly shows that revenge or macroscopic suppression of evil and promotion of good are not the intention of the director, and the portrayal of human nature may also be said to be demon, but the director is interested in it. Whether it is the conflicts and entanglements of the wife, the embarrassing dilemma of the husband, or the lingering passion of the day and night, the director tried his best to portray, but only stopped at the superficial emotional depiction, and did not give answers to the proposition of choice and the final result. , This may also be the philosophy of the Japanese nation.
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