I found Noel Burch's study of Japanese cinema, To The Distant Observer: Form and Meaning in the Japanese Cinema (1979), a curious book for several reasons. He is well-known for coining the phrase "pillow shot" for Yasujiro Ozu's use of still life shots in his films (which was subsequently refuted by David Bordwell in his comprehensive book on Ozu-Ozu and the Poetics of Cinema). I get the impression that Burch has bitten off more than he can chew with short overviews and summaries of Japanese history and cultural traditions. The films that Burch chooses to discuss seem somewhat arbitrary to me and he insists that the golden age of Japanese cinema took place from the late 20s and ended somewhere during the war or early post war era. Perhaps, he should have limited his book to the analysis of films from that era alone. That being said, he has some interesting observations to make about the films that he deigns to discuss, including several from Akira Kurosawa. However, I find it difficult to take him seriously since he practically dismisses all late period films by Ozu, Mikio Naruse, and Kenji Mizoguchi. Not to mention he fails to mention Shohei Imamura Masahiko Shinoda-two masters of the New Wave period at all.
The book is divided into Six sections. The first, "Part 1: Grounds, Premises," consists of 1. A System of Contradictions, 2. A System of Signs, and 3. A Boundless Text. This is followed by "Part 2: A Frozen Stream?" which consists of 4. A Machine Appears, 5. A Parenthesis on Film History, 6. A Rule and its Ubiquity, and 7. Bulwark of Traditions. "Part 3: Cross-Currents" has: 8. Transformed Modules, Lines and Space, 10. The Fate of Alien Modes, 11. Displacements and Condensations, 12. Surface and Depth, and the first chapter devoted to a single director, 13. Kinugasa Teinosuke. In the fourth section, "Part 4: Iron Trees, Golden Flowers," he discusses the films and period that he feels is the golden age of Japanese cinema with the following: 14. The Weight of History and Technology, 15. Some Remarks on the Genre Syndrome, 16. Ozu Yasujiro, 17. Naruse Mikio and Yamanaka Sadao, 18. On Architecture, 19. Ishida Tamizo, 20. Mizoguchi Kenji, 21. Shimizu Hiroshi and Some Others, ending with 22. Epilogue to a Golden Age. "Part 5. A Chain is Broken": 23. Film and 'Democracy,' has a discussion of important humanist directors (Keisuke Kinoshita, Masaki Kobayashi, and Kon Ichikawa) and other directors such as the postwar films of Mizoguchi, Daisuke Ito, and Shindo Kaneto. The next section, 24. Kurosawa Akira, makes some interesting observations about Kurosawa's films, but can not be taken seriously as he omits any discussion of Rashomon or Seven Samurai, meanwhile, he calls They Live in Fear "Kurosawa's first full-blown masterwork and the most perfect statement of his dramatic geometry." (It is one of my least favorites Kurosawa films, known as one of his least successful films among critics). I sometimes wonder if he is specifically contradicting and avoiding films championed by Donald Richie who at the time of Burch's writing was the foremost western critic of Japanese film. In "Part 6. Post-Scriptum" there are two chapters: 25. Oshima Nagisa and 26. Independence: it's Rewards and Punishments. It's not surprising that Burch is a big fan of Oshima, as are most academics, however, I find that most of his films leave me cold-save those in his late European stage and some of the others. But he is more concerned with ideas, theory, and making a statement rather than making an entertaining film. In the last chapter he states that the best films since Kurosawa's prime were: Matsumoto Toshio's Pandemonium (1971)[?!], Oshima's Death by Hanging (1968) [a well regarded film by many others], Sasumu Hani's Eros Plus Massacre (1970) [also a well-respected New Wave classic], and Koji Wakamatsu's two films: Violated Angels (1967) [a well-respected soft porn film] and People of the Second Fortress [not even sure which film this refers to an out-of-date title and probably also soft porn]-no Imamura, Shinoda, Seijun Suzuki, or Hiroshi Teshigahara?!
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