FILM 1701 Lecture Notes - Benshi, Gendai-Geki, Jidaigeki
Document Summary
Ugetsu monogatari (tales of moonlight and rain) (mizoguchi: cultural issues of understanding and interpretation. Tradition of north american film criticism of japanese film which interprets japanese film through western concerns, usually positing a quality of japaneseness or positing a dichotomy: Occidental vs oriental e. g. , noel burch (to the distant observer), finds in japan a parallel with modernist brechtian aesthetics of negation and declares japanese cinema avant-garde using a european model of avant-garde art. Like all critical categories, these terms are only useful insofar as they illuminate and do not obscure the meanings of a film or a culture. What is interesting in reading interviews with japanese directors, and in reading about japanese film history, is how many internal divisions there, just as there are in north america. Mizoguchi calls himself a kyoto director as he feels based there, and not a tokyo director. Different studios in japan, as in hollywood, produced different kinds of film.
