Celebrating Shinoda-San: One of Japan's New Wave Masters

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Parent Category: Film Festivals

Category: Previews

Published on Friday, 24 September 2010 19:27

Written by Jack Angstreich

One of this year's New York Film Festival Masterworks at the Walter Reade Theater, the primary retrospective sidebar of the Festival is Elegant Elegies: The Films of Masahiro Shinoda, devoted to the work of the famed 79-year-old Japanese film director. One of the key figures of the Nipponese "New Wave," notably celebrated by film scholar Noël Burch, Shinoda's films break with classical norms. Shinoda began his career at Shochiku 

as did his more famous contemporary Nagisa Oshima and both became directors so they could appeal to the rising “youth market” of the time, one that was tired of conventional Japanese film.

The series runs throughout the length of the Fest -- which opens Friday, Sept. 24th, 2010, until Sun. Oct. 10th -- and includes a rare appearance of the director on Saturday, Sept 25 at the 7:30 pm screening of Pale Flower as well as on Sunday, September 26 at the 5:45 pm screening of Melody in Gray and at the 8:15 pm of Double Suicide.

Born March 9, 1931 in Gifu, Gifu, Japan, Shinoda retired from directing after making the historical epic Spy Sorge. He won the 1991 Japan Academy Prize for Director of the Year for Childhood Days. He is married to the actress Shima Iwashita.

The stylistic unconventionality of this Japanese New Wave is on abundant and exhilarating display in the director's Pale Flower, screening in a glorious, new, black-and-white 35-millimeter widescreen print at the Walter Reade on the 25th, and on September 27th at 4 pm. As the Film Society's literature says, "For Shinoda, the great breakthrough came with Pale Flower (1964), an extraordinarily stylized yakuza film that was so offbeat the studio heads were reluctant at first to release it, yet it powerfully confirmed him as one of the leading talents of his generation."

Also screening is the less remarkable Silence (1971), adapted by author Shusaku Endo from his own interesting novel of the same name about the suppression of Christianity in 16th-century Japan. Martin Scorsese has been preparing an adaptation of this same novel for many years, with a screenplay by Jay Cocks, and the subject would seem to be a promising one for that filmmaker.

The film is frequently powerful and was photographed by the late director Kenji Mizoguchi's great cinematographer, Kazuo Miyagawa whose achievement is well-served by the excellent color print being shown.

However, Silence is not without its flaws, particularly some weaknesses in the casting of the non-Japanese roles -- although it does feature an excellent turn by Eiji Okada, the star of Hiroshima, Mon Amour and Woman of the Dunes. To what degree the director has a consistency of personal vision across his work is difficult to discern on the basis of these two titles but I look forward with great anticipation to the rest of the series. Silence screens only once, on September 30th at 9 pm.

For the full schedule go to: http://www.filmlinc.com/nyff/2010/shinoda

The 48th New York Film Festival
Masterwork
Elegant Elegies: The Films of Masahiro Shinoda
Saturday, Sept 25th - Oct. 10th, 2010
Walter Reade Theater
Lincoln Center
New York, NY

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