Oshima Nagisa 2

1. Oshima Nagisa 2 Stylistic Self-negation

2. Changing Styles • A variety of visual and narrative styles. • Different visual and narrative styles employed in each film • Deliberate refusal of relying on a constant and enduring visual (narrative) styles.

3. Changing Styles • Referential and self-referential style - formal characteristics made of cinematic quotations • Reference to Brecht Theatre, films of French ‘nouvelle vague’ (Jean-Luc Goddard) and Alain Resnais, British social realist films, etc. • Self-referential: conscious about his own film styles

4. Experimental film making • Style is different in each film but is con-sistentelyexperimental. • New, unexpected, unpredictable and the most importantly challenging and subversive (aesthetically and politically) • Unconventional and non-realistic • On the verge of being vulgar and offensive

5. Unconventional film making • Throughout the film the camera are tilted – crooked, precrious images • Corresponding to the film’s subject – insecurity of a boy of a single parent • The Town of Love and HopeOshima’s first film.

9. Unconventional film making • Bold compositions making most of the wide screen format • Garish, raw and lurid colours in Oshima’s second film, Cruel Story of the Youth

15. Unconventional film making • Sexual energy in utter hopelessness and poverty is expressed by the use of symbolic colour - red in Sun’s Burial • Red of the national flag • Red of blood (hemorrhage) • Red of hot desire

20. Experimental Film Making • 100 minutes discussion and debate about the Japanese politics and political betrayal in the setting of a wedding reception. • Brechtian chamber drama • Night and Fog in Japan, Alain Resnais’ Nuit et Brouillard(Night and Fog)

21. Experimental Film Making • The film is made of only 43 shots (c.f. 2,000 in Violence at Noon) • Even more jagged camerawork with hand-held camera • Format of chamber drama, ‘discussion drama’ shot in sets - 1& 2/1 hour debate on the left-wing politics in 1960.

22. Powerful and Subversive Images • Direct expression of sexuality and pleasure in Pleasure of Flesh • Struggle between sexual repression and liberation in Violence at Noon.

23. Experimental Film Making • Reference to soft-porn film genre • Reference to gangster film genre • Avant-garde and surrealistic narrative and images • In Pleasure of Flesh

30. Experimental Film Making • Mise-en-scène constructed by close-ups and extreme close-ups. • Overexposed, whitewashed photography • Frenetic pace of editing (2,000 shots) • Godard-like jagged jump cuts • Complicated flashbacks in Violence at Noon

33. Experimental Film Making • In the format of a typical ‘coming-of-age’ film, Oshima vents his frustration with the apathy of young generation in Japan through this image of frigidity in Sing a Song of Sex • Oshima created a series of politically subversive images.

37. Experimental Film Making • Changes in gender roles - a girl obsessed with sex and a man with death in Japanese Summer: Double Suicide • Signs – written words and symbols became conspicuous elements of Oshima’s films

40. Experimental Film Making • Shifting styles - in the beginning the film is shot in somber instruction film - later, it adopts more self-reflexive avant-garde style (characters and Oshima speaking to the spectator). • Artificial compositions – symmetry, profile, straight-on, and framing

47. Experimental Film Making • The Diary of a Shinjuku Thief, one of the most experimental of Oshima’s films • Reference to Goddard’s La Chinoise

49. Experimental Film Making • Shot as a cinematic collage • (Collage = a picture made by sticking other pictures, photographs, cloth etc.) • Collage of documentary film, (avant-garde) theatrical performance, words and the cameo appearance of cultural icons of the 1960s (Yoko’o Tadanori, Tanabe Moichi, Kara Juro, etc.)