A 1920s playwright meets a beautiful woman who may be the ghost of his patron’s deceased wife.

Ian Johnston, Not Coming to a Theater Near You wrote:
Zigeunerweisen, the first film in Seijun Suzuki’s Taisho trilogy, proved something of a surprise success in Japan, both commercially (this was very definitely unplanned) and critically—it took the Japanese Academy Awards for best picture, director, and supporting actress, and the prestigious Kinema Jumpo awards for best director, film, screenplay, actress, and supporting actress. So, Suzuki teamed up again with producer Genjiro Arato to double the budget for the follow-up Kagero-za.

Again, the setting is the 1920s Japan of the Taisho area, and again a literary work is the source for the screenplay. In this case, the basis is a short story by Kyoka Izumi, a writer most famous now for his idiosyncratic Gothic-flavoured ghost stories, published in the main in the early years of the twentieth century. From this has been fashioned a screenplay which rather resists any attempt at a synopsis—or is it Suzuki’s treatment that deliberately muddies the waters of character and narrative consistency?

The protagonist is playwright Matsuzaki, who one day encounters a mysterious woman, Shinako, on her way to a hospital. This appears to be the (late?) wife of his wealthy patron Tamawaki, and Matsuzaki becomes obsessed with Shinako, pursuing her out of Tokyo into rural Kanazawa, where he is drawn into a love-suicide pact encouraged if not orchestrated by the shotgun-toting Tamawaki. The story is further complicated by the way Matsuzaki’s obsession shifts between Shinako and the blue-eyed, blonde-haired Ine, apparently Tamawaki’s first (also deceased?) wife, and the story reaches its climax — if no great clarification — via a bizarre ceremony whereby dolls are draped in white cloths and hidden sexual organs are viewed and then via a lengthy sequence in a kabuki theatre where performers and audience are all children.

Even this synopsis makes the narrative connections clearer than they actually are. Shinako remains unnamed for almost the first half of the film, as is her identity as Tamawaki’s wife, if Tamawaki’s wife and the “bladder cherry lady” are the same—as they seem to be, except that Matsuzaki tells Tamawaki that Shinako reminds him of a beautiful lady he met long ago: is this the lady from the encounter at the beginning of the film?

So, the details of the story and the precise status of the characters are consistently unclear (as Matsusaki himself is when narrating parts of the story to Tamawaki), which is the point of a film deliberately aiming to replicate a dream-state. This feeling is established right from the start with the film’s second shot (Matsuzaki’s meeting with Shinako), where Shinako is presented frontally, still and facing the audience, standing in the centre of a flight of stone steps. There’s an unreal quality accentuated by the contrast between her pale skin, her light-coloured clothing and the basket of white flowers she is carrying as opposed to the dark greens of the surroundings and Matsuzaki’s dark clothes; and the contrast between her stillness and Matsuzaki’s constant movement. (Although the case on Kino’s DVD claims a 1.66:1 aspect ratio, as with Zigeunerweisen it’s actually full frame, which judging from the composition of this shot, as with the film generally, seems right.)

This is the scene where Shinako asks Matsuzaki to accompany her to the hospital, out of fear of a bladder cherry (whatever they may be!) vendor on the way there. Matsuzaki refuses; but the next sequence shows Matsuzaki at the hospital in conversation with her. We assume he has come looking for her, but in keeping with Suzuki’s general approach neither the connections between sequences nor a character’s motivation are made clear. Furthermore, the construction of the sequence, that is, the matching of one shot to the next, is equally oblique. Consider this series:

A low-angle shot of Matsuzaki searching, interrupted by a strange squelching sound.

A medium-shot from the rear of Shinako turning slightly and sitting down.

A long-shot, a 180°-match on the previous shot, of Shinako facing us in middle distance (the centre of the frame) with Matzusaki looking on from the right.

A medium close-up of Shinako, shot from the side but not from Matsuzaki’s point-of-view.

And so on.

The sum effect is quite disconcerting. Spatial relationships seem awry, or disturbed by such devices as cutting within a conversation from, say, a medium shot to an extreme long shot, both filmed from the same angle. Figures will be placed at the edge of the frame to emphasise the sense of being off-centre, or arrayed flatly in a formal and unrealistic line across the frame. All in all, there’s a fascinating willful aestheticism at play here, but one which works to underpin the dream logic of Kagero-za’s narrative. There are frequent unexplained abrupt shifts from one scene to the next; for example, we see Matzusaki in the alley outside the inn stop, the lighting suddenly brightens unnaturally, and he turns in a circle to the sound of festival drums, at which point there is sudden cut to him standing in a country road with the anarchist, who in fact taps him as if to wake him from one dream state to the next. Or alternatively, a scene never develops, but is simply replaced by a new one.

One brief moment sums up the spirit of the whole film: Tamawaki leaves the kabuki theatre, stands in the alley facing us, his shotgun over one shoulder, and states, “Who talks of realism here?” while laughing gleefully. The bizarre juxtapositions, the lack of narrative consistency, the startling visual tropes are all both the strength and the weakness of Kagero-za. It’s invigorating to allow oneself to be seduced by the flow of images, to give up trying to make logical, intellectual sense of things. But the process ends up being so long drawn-out and frustrating of any true emotional/intellectual investment in the film, that when we finally learn of Tamawaki and Shinako’s double suicide, we’re pretty much unmoved. Matsuzaki may end the film with his declaration that “since I saw my lover in a dream, I have depended on dreams”, but our feeling is more likely to be that in Kagero-za Suzuki himself has depended too much on them.

Kagero-za (1981) BDRIP 4K Restoration 1080p x264 FLAC KJNU.mkv

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Container:  	Matroska
Runtime: 	2 h 19 min
Size: 	15.7 GiB
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https://nitro.download/view/58C1DEB357498BB/Kagero-za_(1981)_BDRIP_4K_Restoration_1080p_x264_FLAC_KJNU.mkv

Language(s):Japanese
Subtitles:English

The post Seijun Suzuki – Kagero-za AKA Heat-Haze Theatre (1981) (HD) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Quote:
Long before the events of the movie Ôki, who was approaching middle age, had a relation to 16-year-old Otoko. She got pregnant, but the child was stillborn. Their relation stopped at the same time. Much later Ôki had become a famous writer, not least because of a novel about this love story. Otoko had become a famous painter. But she had never overcome the double early trauma and had become a Lesbian. Her favourite student and beloved one was the beautiful Keiko. 24 years after the early love Ôki goes from Tokyo to Kyoto to meet Otoko. The meeting is polite with secret emotional shadows. Keiko makes a plan. She intends to seduce Ôki, become pregnant, bear Ôki’s child and give it to Otoko. She hopes that Otoko may thereby get rid of her trauma. But she also wants to take her revenge on the man who had harmed her beloved. Secretly she gets acquainted with Ôki’s son, invites him to Kyoto and seduces him. Then she calls his parents and tells that he had promised to marry her. Horrified they take the first plane to Kyoto. Meanwhile, she takes the son on boating, arranges an accident, and drowns him. It is close that she herself would also die.—Max S., Stockholm, Sweden

Utsukushisa.to.kanashimi.to.1965.1080p.WEB-DL.DDP2.0.H.264-SbR.mkv

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Container:  	Matroska
Runtime: 	1 h 43 min
Size: 	7.36 GiB
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Bit rate: 	10 000 kb/s
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https://nitro.download/view/B9C5BDEBDA8841A/Utsukushisa.to.kanashimi.to.1965.1080p.WEB-DL.DDP2.0.H.264-SbR.mkv

Language(s):Japanese
Subtitles:English, Portuguese, Spanish

The post Masahiro Shinoda – Utsukushisa to kanashimi to AKA With Beauty and Sorrow (1965) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

A man in hospital has a weird and sexy conversation with a woman in the next bed, whom he cannot see. He later discovers she is in her sixties. They meet several more times and, each time, she is younger.

A.Paucity.of.Flying.Dreams.1990.DVDRip.mkv

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Container:  	Matroska
Runtime: 	1 h 44 min
Size: 	3.79 GiB
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Aspect ratio:  	16:9
Frame rate: 	23.976 FPS
Bit rate: 	5 016 kb/s
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#1:  	Japanese 2.0ch  AC-3 @ 192 kb/s

https://nitro.download/view/027D9A68A78DAA8/A.Paucity.of.Flying.Dreams.1990.DVDRip.mkv
https://nitro.download/view/252A23929E1E50C/A.Paucity.of.Flying.Dreams.1990.DVDRip.srt

Language(s):Japanese
Subtitles:English

Many thanks to @Evan for this copy

The post Eizô Sugawa – Tobu yume wo shibaraku minai AKA A Paucity of Flying Dreams (1990) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

A man in hospital has a weird and sexy conversation with a woman in the next bed, whom he cannot see. He later discovers she is in her sixties. They meet several more times and, each time, she is younger.

A.Paucity.of.Flying.Dreams.1990.VHSRip.mkv

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Container:  	Matroska
Runtime: 	1 h 44 min
Size: 	1.81 GiB
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#1:  	Japanese 2.0ch AAC LC @ 221 kb/s

https://nitro.download/view/6873B7661FED181/A.Paucity.of.Flying.Dreams.1990.VHSRip.mkv
https://nitro.download/view/2DA5278C8ED12AA/A.Paucity.of.Flying.Dreams.1990.VHSRip_v2.srt

Language(s):Japanese
Subtitles:English

The post Eizô Sugawa – Tobu yume wo shibaraku minai AKA A Paucity of Flying Dreams (1990) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

One day a company executive learns that his younger brother, whom he recommended, embezzled company funds. To save the situation he withdraws his life savings and gives money to his younger brother. He then suddenly disappears…

his was intended to be the next project of Yasujiro Ozu after “An Autumn Afternoon”
because of his death Shochiku gave it to Shibuya, Ozu’s assistant on “What Did the Lady Forget?” as a memorial to its greatest director

1965 Radishes and Carrots - Shibuya.mkv

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Container:  	Matroska
Runtime: 	1 h 45 min
Size: 	2.27 GiB
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Codec: 	h264
Resolution: 	1440x1080 ~> 1920x1080
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Frame rate: 	59.940 fps
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BPP: 	0.032
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#1:  	Japanese 2.0ch AAC @ 141 kb/s

https://nitro.download/view/1F54B03E92823A9/1965_Radishes_and_Carrots_-_Shibuya.mkv
https://nitro.download/view/C6AFA112A2BC7FD/Radishes_and_Carrots_(1965)_English_02.srt

Language(s):Japanese
Subtitles:English

The post Minoru Shibuya – Daikon to ninjin AKA The Radish and the Carrot (1965) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

A young woman fends off a series of aggressive marriage proposals from a man who committed atrocities during World War II.

Quote:
Using a sort of reverse aesthetic structure to that of Otto Preminger’s Bonjour Tristesse, prolific and wildly diverse Japanese director Keisuke Kinoshita opens his 1963 film A Legend or Was It? in the present, in spectacular color, within an almost archetypically idyll mountain village. He sets us amongst farmers who are pointedly kind, generous, and compassionate towards their neighbors. One man stops what he’s doing to mourn another’s dead horse; one man comments that the weather is too hot, to which his friend replies that they should be thankful, for they’d been fearing a cold front; two women tease each other kindly; a group helps pull a truck out of a rut. This is the absolute ideal of communal living. And then the narration informs us that things weren’t always this way, that less than twenty years ago, a “nightmare” had taken place, one that the farmers have tried desperately to put behind them. – from CriterionCast.

A Legend or Was It (1963) 720p WEB-DL.mkv

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Container:  	Matroska
Runtime: 	1h 23mn
Size: 	1.85 GiB
Video
Codec: 	h264
Resolution: 	1280x720 
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Bit rate: 	
BPP: 	
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#1:  	2.0ch AAC

https://nitro.download/view/E3B5D9FD254D3A2/A_Legend_or_Was_It_(1963)_720p_WEB-DL.mkv

Language(s):Japanese
Subtitles:English (hard-subbed)

The post Keisuke Kinoshita – Shito no densetsu AKA A Legend or Was It? (1963) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

The film is based on a book by Sawako Agawa of the same title and stars Maki Sakai (40)

Sakai plays Rui, a 35-year-old single woman forced to live alone after the aunt who raised her suddenly decides to get married and move out. Through an unexpected set of circumstances, she winds up becoming roommates with an aging ladies’ man named Tony (Tatsuya Fuji) and a timid younger man named Kosuke (Takahiro Nishijima).

2.04GB | 1h 58mn | 714×464 | mkv

https://nitro.download/view/FA21DEEF3D694EB/Soup.Opera.2010.DVDRip.x264-PTer.mkv

Language:Japanese
Subtitles:English

The post Tomoyuki Takimoto – Sûpu opera AKA Soup Opera (2010) first appeared on Cinema of the World.