Masumura Yasuzo (1924-1986, 増村保造) first caught my attention thanks to the several movies he made based on novels by Tanizaki and Kawabata. He was an older contemporary of Oshima Nagisa and is considered an iconoclastic forerunner of the New Wave in Japan.
Born in Kofu, Masumura was interested in film from an early age. As a high school student, he saw Kurosawa's Sanshiro Sugata three times. He studied law at Tokyo University, but dropped out to become an assistant director at Daiei Studios because he needed money - he would return to college and graduate in philosophy in 1949. He then won a scholarship to a famous film school in Rome (the Centro sperimentale di cinematografia), and after graduating worked on the Italian-Japanese co-production of Madame Butterfly. In 1953 he returned to Japan.
From 1955, Masumura worked at Daiei for Mizoguchi Kenji (assisting on the last three films of this great director) and then on three films for Ichikawa Kon. Although Masumura was later critical of Ichikawa's films, his work shows a considerable debt to the older director - if only in the frequent choice of literary sources. Masumura made his first movie, Kisses, in 1957. He stayed with Daiei until the company's demise, making about three films a year, for a total of 58 films.
Masumura's films are characterized by visual inventiveness and dark satire, often a strong indictment of social injustice and an unsentimental look at what it means to be human. You could say that his films, usually borrowing the vocabulary of genre film, show the cruel beauty of life. Social realism, which he learned in Italy, was not suitable for Japan, with its regimented society and lack of individual freedom, he says, so he opted for exaggeration. If I had to characterize his work in one word, I would choose "obsession. The fact that he often used literary sources, from Saikaku and Chikamatsu to Tanizaki and Kawabata, reveals a classical streak that links him to his "teacher", Ichikawa Kon.
Some of his most important films are
- Kisses (Kuchizuke, 1957)
Known for its handheld, fluid camerawork, this first film is a cruel story of youth as Oshima would also make a few years later. A boy and girl meet in prison where they happen to visit their respective fathers. They decide to spend the day together and, after successfully gambling on a bicycle race, head for the beach. - Giants and Toys (Kyojin to Gangu, 1958)
A critique of the Economic Miracle and more vicious than the "Company President" films made around the same time by Morishige Hisaya. Still, there is no lack of humor in the endeavor of a sweets company to make an unknown girl with bad teeth into the star of their new commercial campaign. After a story by Kaiko Takeshi. - Afraid to Die (Karakkaze-yaro, 1960)
A mean yakuza film in the first place remarkable for having author Mishima Yukio in the main role. He plays a yakuza who has wounded the boss of another gang, and whatever he does, can't escape revenge. As befitting for Mishima, the death scene is the highlight of the film. - Passion (Manji, 1964)
This is a famous story by Tanizaki Junichiro, translated into English as "Quicksand." A bored middle-aged housewife (Kishida Kyoko of The Woman in the Dunes) falls obsessively in love with a young model (Wakao Ayako). When her husband and the fiance of the model also join the fray, we have the four arms of the Buddhist swastika and an emotional quicksand. By far the best among various films based on Manji. - The Hoodlum Soldier (Heitai Yakuza, 1965)
A cynical look at life in the barracks of the Japanese army in Manchuria as a miniature version of Japan itself with its suffocating hierarchies. The cruelty that characterized certain divisions of the Imperial Army leaps off the screen in the continual beatings that small-time sergeants enforce on their inferiors. The hoodlum soldier of the title is played by Katsu Shintaro, his good-willing mentor Akira by Tamura Takahiro. In the end, when told they will be sent to the killing fields of Leyte, they desert by stealing a train. - The Red Angel (Akai Tenshi, 1966)
A young angelic nurse played by Wakao Ayako serves in China during the war years. She is raped by her patients and when she complains, sent to the front lines. It is like a gruesome version of MASH. Amid the carnage, she falls in love with a morphine-addicted surgeon (Ashida Shinsuke). She also provides comfort to a soldier whose arms have both been amputated. A strange, but very human and engrossing film, perhaps Masumura's masterwork. - The Wife of Seishu Hanaoka (Hanaoka Seishu no Tsuma, 1967).
Based on a novel by Ariyoshi Sawako ("The Doctor's Wife"), this is a period film about the first doctor (played by Ichikawa Raizo) who performs surgery using general anesthesia. His loving but neglected wife (Wakao Ayako) offers herself as a guinea pig for his experiments. Another study in obsession. - A Fool's Love (Chijin no Ai, 1967)
Based on the 1924 novel of the same name by Tanizaki Junichiro (translated as "Naomi"). Naomi is a modern girl, a "moga," who defies Japanese tradition in the way she dresses and behaves. She bobs her hair, prefers Western clothes, and tries to look like Hollywood star Mary Pickford. There is something "Eurasian" about her, and even her name, Naomi, is tantalizingly "Western". Joji, a thirty-something engineer, decides to take the fifteen-year-old barmaid of obscure origin into his home and train her to become his future "dream woman. Of course, the whole setup is just a transaction for Naomi, and she conquers Joji through a consciously calculated performance of Westerness. She continues to enslave Joji after he makes her his mistress (and becomes totally obsessed with her) - from a seemingly shy and naive young woman, Naomi transforms herself into a perfect monster, a kind of femme fatale who keeps the abjectly submissive Joji on a tight leash, guaranteeing her sexual freedom while Joji becomes totally enslaved.
P.S. The translation of the title as "Love for an Idiot" given in Wikipedia is wrong. Joji is the idiot who loves Naomi, not the other way around. - Blind Beast (Moju, 1969)
A blind sculptor kidnaps a young fashion model and keeps her in his Dali-esque warehouse filled with huge sculptures of female body parts. His dream is to sculpt the perfect female form. Visually inventive, this is another tale of madness and obsession, after an original story by Edogawa Ranpo. - Love Suicides at Sonezaki (Sonezaki Shinju, 1978)
Based on the classic Joruri play by Chikamatsu, with Kaji Meiko ("Lady Snowblood") in the main role. A period piece that is lurid, bloody and gorgeous at the same time.