Two or three things about Yasujiro Ozu and Hou Hsiao-Hsien
YING HSU-KU BRUCE
Japanese order of his name should be: Ozu Yasujiro) from our
university's library two weeks ago.
The book title is _Ozu and the Poetics of Cinema_, which is written
by Mr. David Bordwell at Univ. of Wisconsin- Madison. It is published
by Princeton University Press in 1988.
To the movie-buffs in Taiwan, Ozu is not as well-known as Akira Kurosawa
(again, should be Kurosawa Akira in Japanese order). In 1983, a movie-
buff friend of mine recommended Ozu's _the Flavor of Mackerel Pike_
to me when it was shown in an underground "movie hut" (in fact it was
an apartment, whose host re-arranged it as a place to show video tapes
of the cinema virtuoso's work for the movie-buffs in Taipei, Taiwan,)
(and the title _the Flavor of Mackerel Pike_ is a literal translation
from the Chinese title of that film. I cannot find a similar title in
Bordwell's listing of Ozu's films except _The Flavor of Green Tea Over
Rice_ -- the flavor must be very strange, anyway :-).)
It must be a blunder for me for not going to see that film (and I have
always been looking forward to redeeming the chance to seeing it).
However, I got a chance to see Ozu's _Floating Weeds_ in the form of
Beta video tape. I love this film. Later, I got a book on Ozu from
a Taipei's bookstore. It's the bible on Ozu- Donald Richie's _Ozu_
(1974, University of Berkeley press). It is a translated version
in Chinese. A nightmare occurred to me when I read that book:
I dauntedly found that Ozu was a soldier for the Japanese warlord
and participated in the Nanking Massacre during 1937 - 1945's
Sino-Japanese war ! I avoid all his films after I knew that cruel
fact.
In July 7, 1986, I attended a Taiwanese-Chinese writer Chen Ying-Zhen
and a Japanese drama group's presentation about Japanese warlords'
brutal acts in China; I don't dare to imagine that Ozu was one of
the animals. Shortly later I read an article on China Times (an
island-wide newspapers in Taiwan) praising Ozu's films, and I
immediately wrote a letter to that newspapers to "disclose" that
Ozu was a POW and should be responsible for the Nanking Massacre.
In 1983, one of Taiwan's best film-makers, Hou Hsiao-Hsien (the
director of _A City of Sadness_, the best-film-award winner in
1989's Venice Film Festival. And again, his full-name is arranged
in Chinese order) emerged on Taiwan's cinema industry.
His films are extensively compared to Ozu's and regarded as a
successor to Ozu (however, it is very interesting that Hou says
that he had never seen any one of Ozu's films before he heard of
the comparison of their films). Now Hou is one of my favorite
film-makers, and I have become more and more admiring to Hou's
characteristics as an artist as well as Ozu's.
I was gotten to tears when I read the following citation of Ozu's
words by Ozu's cameraman Yuharu Atsuta: "I was still an assistant
when I heard him (the author's note: Ozu) say: `Someday, I'm sure,
foreigners will understand my films.' Then he added with a modest
smile: `Then again, no. They will say, like everybody else, that
my films aren't much of anything.' "
Thanks to Donald Richie's "single-handedly introducing Ozu to the
Westerners (and the movie-buffs in Taiwan as a chain effect)",
now foreigners understand Ozu's films. I have always been worried
about: How can foreigners understand Hou Hsiao-Hsien's films
since they are supposed to know so much background about Taiwan-
e.g., the various dialects in Taiwan. I don't have Richie's ability
to single-handedly introduce Hou to the people world-wide. But
like Ozu said, someday, I believe, Hou will be well-known to more
people in the world.
Ozu is thought as "the most Japanese" film-maker. And I would like
to point out that Hou Hsiao-Hsien is the *most Chinese* film-maker (
at least in Taiwan). His portrait of the life of immigrants from
Fu-Jien and Guang-Dong of mainland China is unprecedentedly exquisite,
IMO. His work is one of the most successful examples of why
the 3rd world's "national films" are the promising stars in today's
and tommorrow's platform of cinema in the world (just look at how
anemic the Hollywood and European cinema industry are).
Hou said: "I want to make a movie of Chinese people's."
Yes, he has been making A Chinese movie since 1983.
In 1987, a movie-buff told me that he was dissapointed about Hou
because all of his films are alike. I told him: "Yes, you are
right, because he has been making A movie- a movie about the life
of the Chinese people."
Before 1983 I had hardly seen any Chinese movies except King Hu's
ancient martial-art movies and HongKong's New Wavers' movies.
In August 1983, I saw a Taiwan-made portmanteau movie, _Sandwitchman_,
in which Hou directed 1/3 of the film- the first section.
It is a good job, but I like the 3rd section more- it is titled
_the Flavor of Apples_ which is directed by Wan Ren.
I was really attracted by Hou's another film in 1983, _the Boys from
Fengteng_ (aka, _All the Youthful Days_), when I got the first weekend
break from my reserve-army-officer military training on the Success
Ridge, a military base in Taiwan of the Republic of China.
I watched the film twice contiguously because I had nothing else to
do and staying in a movie-house is the safest way to avoid being
bothered by Taiwan's MPs. I was "stoned" by that film because it
is so close to my way of how a movie shall be made (at that time
I had been intoxicated by only some European and American virtuosos
like Bergman, Resnais, Fellini, Antonioni, Scorsese, etc.
I hadn't seen any of Wenders' and I scorned Hollywood's movies).
Later, Hou's succeeding films- _A Summer at Grandpa's_, _The Time to
Live and the Time to Die_, _Dust In the Wind_, and _A City of Sadness_
- have established his status as being the most important film-maker
in Taiwan. But yet he has also been the most misappreciated film-maker
in Taiwan. I have seen numerous "film reviews" (most of them are
written by the gate-keepers for the editorial columns of the government's
mouthpiece) attack and maliciously degrade his work.
Fortunately, as a Chinese proverb says: "Real gold outlives the fire."
Best regards to Hou Hsiao-Hsien.
H. Ying
Duncan Smith
you find out that he had been a soldier. You produced precisely no
evidence whatever in your over-long post as to what it was that Ozu
was supposed to have done. Being a soldier - conscripted for all I
know - does not make Ozu morally responsible for the actions of the
entire Japanese army during WW2.
Duncan