Man With A Movie List

Director: Hiroshi Shimizu Year: 1941 Run-time: 1 hr 15 min - Like The Masseurs And A Woman , this takes place in a mountain spa, and is centered on the characters' drive for escapism. From hindsight, this would seem to be the director's desire to escape the war - one of the characters is apparently a soldier (who is injured by the titular object and kept from returning), although it's barely mentioned. It probably isn't far to read too much historicity into this film. Like its predecessor, it's a short and light glimpse into a few lives meeting in this setting defined by transience. It's less than 80 minutes, but takes a glacial pace in which our thoughts will naturally wander. That's not a criticism - in a way, it helps us relate to the characters, whose thoughts are also returning to the "real world", no matter how much they may wish otherwise.

Director: Hiroshi Shimizu Year: 1938 Run-time: 1 hr 6 min - This is the kind of simple, elegant, beautiful, short film that I'm happy that the list sheds some light on. It's a short story told in just over an hour, but fitting in a surprising range of characters, all meeting in a resort town and never quite getting to know each other, but making a lasting impression nonetheless.  We get little glimpses into their lives outside the town, only the details we need.  No one is quite to help anyone else, and feels worse for it.  I found it less overtly melodramatic than the last Shimizu film I watched, Japanese Girls At The Harbor , a sign that Shimizu's style was developing.  Shimizu was an enormously prolific director , with so many of his films lost to the war. - This film fits into an interesting canon of Japanese films set at resorts, a canon that includes all-time greats like Tokyo Story  and Spirited Away .  There's something about the setting that ...

Director: Hiroshi Shimizu Year: 1933 Run-time: 1 hr 8 min Source: The Criterion Channel Notable For : This list would be entirely different had not the great bulk of Japanese films in the 20's and 30's been lost in the destruction of war.  Hiroshi Shimizu was an incredibly prolific director who made over 160 films, and was a great influence on Yasujiro Ozu and Kenji Mizoguchi, but he's relatively unknown today. Verdict :  Japanese Girls at the Harbor  reveals the maturity of his style, with a simple, effective silent melodrama (very Borzage-esque) with few close-ups, but rather some of the most emotional long shots so far yet.  The director conveys a lot with the way that his wonderful actors position themselves in relation to each other, and how they hold their bodies.  As with Mizoguchi's work, the focus is on the women - the male characters are weak-willed, and helpless without the support of these women.  Also, I don't often say this, but the war...