Author: Jonathan Rosenbaum
Translator: csh
This article is a speech prepared by Rosenbaum for the Tokyo Seminar "Ozu of the World" (December 11, 1998)
I would like to quote a moment in Ozu Yasujiro's "I was born, but..." (1932) as an opening remark. It has a particularly important meaning to me. It is at the critical juncture of the film’s transition from comedy to tragedy, before the father played the clown in front of the boss. When the father's two sons were watching a family movie, there was a dispute over the "zebra" that appeared on the screen-is it a black stripe covering white or a white stripe covering black? This created a riot and caused the screening to be temporarily suspended. A deceptive, distracting, and equally naive debate about Ozu has been going on in the same way for many years: "Is he a realist or a formalist?" In this debate It’s a pity that people don’t realize that in Ozu’s world, film forms and social forms are not at odds with each other. They are two sides of the same coin, so you can’t just discuss one of them. I think this fact is the basis of my argument, and I hope I can prove it in the following discussion.
Recently, I went to one of my favorite Chinese restaurants in Chicago for dinner. The waiter there happened to be an avid movie fan. While helping me order food, he confided his enthusiasm for Cai Mingliang. When I mentioned that I would give a short speech about Ozu in Tokyo, he said to me: "I don't know much about Ozu, his movies are too slow." The following discussion is mainly in response to this kind of talk about Ozu. comment of.
My first reaction was that some of Ozu’s silent movies—especially "I was Born, But...", which is one of my favorite movies—are not slow at all. This is a symptom of today's global film culture: silent films are often excluded first before discussion. But my second reaction is that I want to ask the question: What do we mean when we call a movie "slow"? This adjective often has a derogatory meaning, even if it is used to describe Robert Bresson, Carl Dreyer, Hou Xiaoxian, Abbas Kiarostami, F.W. Moenau, Ozu Yasujiro, Jacques Rivet, Jean-Marie Straub and Danielle Huyer, André Tarkovsky or Jacques Tati. In order to answer this question in connection with Japanese culture, I want to make some assumptions.
One of these assumptions comes from a provocative essay by Karlheinz Stockhausen, whose name is "Ritual Japan." I read this article for the first time in the literary supplement of The Times 25 years ago (October 25, 1974, pages 1189 & 1191). In order to explore his fascination with various Japanese rituals-Noh, Torch Festival, Sumo and Tea Ceremony-Stockhausen analyzed his views on what he called "Japanese Timekeeping":
From the perspective of time, Europeans are absolutely mediocre. They have settled down in a certain potential time frame. The Japanese are different. They can react extremely fast at one moment and extremely slow at another moment. Compared with such a wide range, Europeans live in an extremely narrow range. Compared with Europeans, Japanese stay in the middle area less frequently.
Stockhausen also hinted that the Westernization and Americanization of Japan may dilute and erode this distinction. This is a delicate question. Hasumi Shigehiko once put forward a convincing argument in his Ozu treatise "Director Ozu Yasujiro". He pointed out that Ozu's work also reflects the United States to Japanese culture to a certain extent. Influence. However, since he is a Japanese critic who thinks about American influence, and I am an American critic who thinks about Japanese elements, so in terms of emphasis, we see different things. But in any case, what I want to put forward is—this is my second hypothesis—in Ozu’s creative practice, there seems to be a notion that the rapid response of a Japanese viewpoint often corresponds to standing and walking. The slow response often corresponds to sitting down.
What am I referring to? The elements in "I'm Born, But..." that I consider to be "fast"—especially the short fixed shots in certain places, or the moving speed of certain shots—can be related to implicit, standing or It is the walking audience that connects together. When the movement of the camera follows the walking character, the speed of the character is obviously the same as the speed of the implied viewer. In addition, the elements that I identified as "slow" in the film mainly appeared in the scenes where the characters were sitting.
Obviously, most of us now sit and watch movies, but that doesn’t mean we don’t need to reflect on this. It is worth mentioning that reflection is also an activity suitable for sitting. However, in contemporary commercial films (especially American commercial films), speeding cars and sudden explosions, as well as what we call "action", all have extremely fast speeds, not to mention the frequency of many TV edits. NS. All this will make Ozu appear "conservative" and "old-fashioned." When watching such movies, we seem to be watching while running, without any chance for reflection.
In my opinion, Ozu's real "consciousness" is that when we sit and watch movies, this seems to be a basic dimension in his style. In his images, many of the things that are considered difficult, problematic, or merely "slow" are actually based on this basic fact. Generally speaking, the characters in Ozu’s movies sit while eating and talking. In "I was Born, But...", the two little boys who are the central characters are mainly standing. But in the early days of the film, when they had breakfast, before they put on their shoes and left the house, and when they decided to skip school to have lunch in the field, they were all sitting. When they went to school the next day, they were also sitting. They would also sit when watching a family movie at the father's boss's house, and of course when they later quarreled with their father and refused to eat. It can be said that these passages are relatively introspective moments.
However, in this film, social behavior and social adjustment are at least as important as self-regulation. The issue of "speed" is related to these three aspects. In the early stages of the film, the boys play truant for fear of being beaten. After having lunch in the field, one of the boys reminded his brother: "We deserve an A for today's homework." Soon after, they all stood up and finished their lunch. This action is the same as other actions in the film, implying that to get ahead in this world, what you need is tact and "movement", these two things are easier to obtain when standing.
To show this, the film was edited once: We saw other boys in the school standing in the playground attentively, following the instructions of the instructor, turning around, and then marching in a military posture. For most of the time, this series of activities were filmed in a fixed lens. However, when the boys quickly walked past the camera from right to left, the camera began to move quickly in the opposite direction from left to right. Then, in the office where the boys’ father worked, there was another same editing, which led us to a fast-moving shot from left to right-it was a famous shot, and we could see that the shot was higher. With a speed of passing by the workers in front of the rows of desks. When the camera passes by every worker, they will yawn-with one exception. So, the camera went back to him, stopped and waited for him to yawn too. After he finishes yawning, the camera will continue to move at the same speed, and the workers will continue to yawn. In Ozu’s creative sequence, this is a period of quite modernism, because it compares the power of directors with the power of the state—specifically, the power of the state here is the power of schools and offices. In the film, apart from the two uncertain power areas of the field (ruled by the boys) and the family (ruled by the father), these are the two main areas of power. It is worth noting that the place where the conflict erupted in the film was the field and the family, not the school and the office. Because in schools and offices, the rules of conduct are relatively absolute. Based on speed and movement, Ozu drew a parallel line between the school and the office, and focused on those who did not follow the rules in these two places in a comic manner. And he will also provide a specific background for conflicts in other places.
In addition, by juxtaposing the authority exerted by the camera and the authority exerted by the office, Ozu clearly presents the important relationship between the film form and the social form, which runs through his works and plays an important role.
"Tokyo Story" (1953) is different from "I was born, but...", it can be definitely regarded as a "slow movie". This is not because Ozu imposes a certain external form structure on his materials, but because his focus is on an elderly couple. Their movements are slow, and they sit more often than when they stand. Of course, there are some faster actions in the film, but it has to do with their children in Tokyo, who are too busy to spend too much time on their parents. However, in general, this is still a work dominated by the actions of parents, not the actions of young people. It is worth noting that the most reminiscent of speed in the film-yes, that is, the train, they took the parents from Onomichi to Tokyo, from Tokyo to Atami (and then back), from Tokyo to Osaka , And then return to Onomichi from Osaka-almost never appeared. When we understand the "moving train", we often see the details in the landscape shots, which are similar to other idle scenes, such as the boat driving in Onomichi Port, or the moth flapping before the mother's death. The sight of fire. They are like accents in music, which constitute a symbol of speed and movement, and they can relax a relatively static atmosphere.
The most appropriate example appears at the end of the film, when the parents’ daughter-in-law, Kiko, rides the train from Onomichi back to Tokyo. We first examined the train from the outside in two consecutive shots. It was not until the third shot that we saw Kiko sitting in the car. She was checking her mother's watch, which was a souvenir from her father. Time is the core theme of "Tokyo Monogatari". This argument can explain many passages, including the tick of the clock at the end of the soundtrack, and the train and watch that are emphasized towards the end. In "I was Born, But...", speed is often associated with struggle and despair, because it runs counter to the slowness of recognition and reflection. In "Tokyo Monogatari", the speed is connected with the hope of the character Kiko. This can only be because this work leads us to believe that this character represents a certain possibility to change the future.
According to David Podwell’s quantitative analysis of Ozu’s films (see the appendix of "Ozu and the Poetics of Film" [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988, p.377]), "Tokyo Story" may not be Ozu’s best " "Slow" movie. From this table, we can see that there are 1371 shots in "I was born, but...", "Tokyo Monogatari" has 786 shots, and "When Father Was Alive" (1942), which I am not familiar with, is Ozu The film with the fewest shots in existence is only 353. In addition, the average lens length of "I was born, but..." is 4 seconds, while the average lens length of "Dad is alive" is more than 2.5 times that of 10.2 seconds. What I am a little puzzled about is how much conclusions can be drawn through this quantitative analysis, especially since this analysis involves both silent and sound movies, and the existence of subtitles has also changed our perception. However, we can at least speculate from these figures of Bourdwell that "Tokyo Monogatari" is a typical late Ozu style, but it does not necessarily represent a certain extreme.
However, at the same time, another relatively late film, "Good Morning" (1959), has changed the way we think about speed so far. This film contains 819 shots with an average shot length of 7 seconds, which seems to make it slower than "I was born, but..." and faster than "Tokyo Monogatari". But in fact, Ozu's processing of editing and shots in "Good Morning" cannot really fall into the range of the "intermediate area" described by Stockhausen. He believes that Japanese audiences are not very comfortable with this range.
If in a broad sense, "I was born, but..." can be characterized as fast and "Tokyo Monogatari" can be characterized as slow, then "Good Morning" may not be properly defined as either of the two. One side. Compared with conflict and separation, Good Morning pays more attention to coexistence and interaction. In fact, in terms of rhythm and rhythm, this is actually the most complicated of Ozu's works. In most scenes, people will find both standing and sitting characters at the same time. In fact, in many “static” location shots, there will be some characters walking by. The "action" of this film may be as little as that of "Tokyo Story", but the overall texture of this work is very lively, whether it is the characters or the scenes. Although I don't have any authoritative statement about the Japanese sitcoms of the 1950s, I think they have certain similarities with the American sitcoms of the same period. If I am not mistaken, I think Ozu consciously borrowed this form. In other words, "TV" is not only the core of the plot of Good Morning, but also the core of its narrative structure.
Although "Good Morning" and "I was Born, But..." there are many thematic echoes, but in fact, the two movies are completely different. In many ways, the structure of "Good Morning" combines "fast" and "slow" together. It juxtaposes many different elements and explores their equivalence on the dual aspects of form and society: we can see To elementary school students’ fart competitions, quiet conversations between couples, and greetings between neighbors. The coordination of "Good Morning" lies not only in the overall narrative progress, but also in many specific details, such as the image of the younger brother playing a hula hoop. He stood still, but at the same time shook his hips quickly.
We can draw the conclusion that speed is relative-this is especially true in a film with coexistence and relativity as its core style and theme. "Is Ozu slow?" As we have already discussed, we cannot answer this question with a single answer, because his works are too rich and diverse, so such questions have no meaning. In fact, one of the functions of the greatest artist is to resolve such problems, or at least to transform them into other problems. Because when admiring Ozu, the most important issue is not his speed, but our speed to keep up with him.
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