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(★)(Few of Gosho Heinosuke´s films have been seen in the West. It is no small wonder, then, that the brief references to the director in various encyclopedias and histories are not just incomplete, but often misleading and inaccurate. Thus, even the unfailingly astute David Thomson, in A Biographical Dictionary of Film, erroneously claims that the immense popular success of ´Madamu to nyobo (The Neighbor´s Wife and Mine, 1931)´ ´launched Gosho on carefully acted film adaptations of plays and novels´ and that he belongs to the ´school´ of Mizoguchi. If the first statement is at best a half-truth, the latter is simply wrong. The Oxford Companion to Film makes an even more damaging error when it notes that Gosho ´confine[d] himself to the shomin-geki, the drama of the common people.´ This error is a common misconception, which has led to pigeonholing Gosho and unintentionally denying him his true achievement. As if to make up for this mistake, the Oxford Companion credits Gosho with fifty more films than he actually made. The fullest and most accurate discussions of the director in English are to be found in Anderson and Richie´s The Japanese Film, their 1956 essay in ´Sight and Sound´, and the anonymous profile in Wakeman´s ´World Film Directors : Volume One --1890-1945´. However, these are not intended to be much more than extended introductions to the filmmaker´s work.／ No understanding of Japanese film history can be complete without acknowledging the contribution of Gosho (1902-81). In Japan, Gosho is generally regarded along with Ozu, Mizoguchi, Tasaka Tomotaka, Shimazu Yasujiro, Kumagai Hisatora, and Toyoda Shiro, as one of the key figures in the first Golden Age of Japanese Cinema in the 1930s. He also was a prominent figure in the postwar era, reaching his peak in a series of films in the 1950s that included ´Entotsu no mieru basho (Where Chimneys Are Seen, 1953), ´Osaka no yado (An Inn at Osaka, 1954)´, and ´Takekurabe (Growing Up, 1955)´. Gosho´s long and distinguished career spanned forty-three years, beginning in the silent era with the 1925 love story, ´Nanto no haru (Spring in Southern Islands)´, and ending with the 1968 feature-length puppet film, ´Meiji haru aki (Seasons of the Meiji / A Girl of the Meiji Period)´. ／ During that time, he made nearly one hundred films, of which little more than a third survive. While it is true that he was a major exponent of the ´shomin-geki´, it is equally important to recognize that he worked in a wide range of genres, including ´nansensu (nonsense or slapstick) comedy´,´sarariman (salaryman)´ comedy, romance, melodrama, family drama, social drama, and the ´jidai-geki (period film)´. As one of the most committed humanists of Japanese cinema, Gosho believed that a director´s task was to describe life as it is lived around him, to confront the issues and concerns of his society, and, above all, to express the true and most authentic feelings of human beings. Throughout his life Gosho remained true to this credo. Indeed, his commitment to these beliefs doubtless led him to retain the ´shomin-geki´ as the base of his work, even when he ventured into other genres. In Gosho, one finds none of Kurosawa´s nihilism, Mizoguchi´s determinism, or Naruse´s pessimism. Instead, one finds an indissoluble compassion and affection for character, which reminds one of Ozu, albeit with an occasional sentimentality that Ozu never allowed. Audiences and critics were quick to recognize the special, often lyrical mood of Gosho´s films, ´the warm, subtle, and sentimental depiction of likable people´, the mixture of pathos and humor that makes one want to laugh and cry at the same time. Reminiscent of Chaplin and De Sica at their best, this mood has come to be known simply as ´Goshoism´. ´The Cinema of Gosho Heinosuke : Laughter through Tears´ is the first book in English to examine the work of this renowned director. Since many of Gosho´s films no longer survive, we must obviously proceed with caution in tracing his development. After all, we are unable to see the films that established his reputation in the 1920s. Nor will we probably ever know whether some of the films of that decade, unheralded at the time, may have proved to be seminal or significant in retrospect. In fact, we have nine of Gosho´s most important films of the 1930s (out of a total of thirty-six), five of his six films of the 1940s, plus parts of the missing one, ´Shinsetsu (New Snow, 1942)´, and all of the films from the 1950s and 1960s. All told, there are forty extant films --enough to give us the most complete picture of his career that we are likely to have until hopefully other lost films are discovered. Needless to say, it would be impossible to analyze all of Gosho´s extant films. Thus, in this study I have chosen to concentrate on those films that are most representative of his achievement and most important historically. As it happens, these films --nineteen in all- are also among his best known and highly regarded. [from ´Introduction´] ◆Arthur Nolletti, Jr., is Professor of English at Framingham State College. He is editor of The Films of Fred Zinnemann, co-editor of Reframing Japanese Cinema (Indiana University Press, 1992), and author of numerous articles on film. ▼CONTENTS／ 1.Gosho and Shomin Comedy in the 1930s／ 2.´Dancing Girl of Izu (1933)´ and the ´Junbungaku´ Movement／ 3.´Woman of the Mist (1936)´ : Blending the Shomin-geki, Shitamachi, and Romantic Melodrama／ 4.´Once More (1947)´ and Gosho´s Romanticism in the Early Occupation Period／ 5.´Where Chimneys Are Seen (1953)´ : A New Kind of Shomin-geki／ 6.´An Inn at Osaka (1954)´ : Money, Democracy, and Limited Knowledge／ 7.´Growing Up (1955)´ : Adapting the ´Meiji-mono´, Reconfiguring the Shomin-geki／ 8.The Late 1950s : New Challenges and the Quest to Create／ 9.Gocho in the 1960s : Changing Times, Undiminished Mastery／) |
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