Word: rashomonic
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...Impostor (Shochiku; Brandon Films). Three Japanese films shown in the U.S. since the war-Rashomon, Ugetsu, Gate of Hell-were made, and made superbly, to win world prestige for the Japanese product. The Impostor was made for the folks back home who have a yen for the movies. The difference is startling. The other three often had the exquisiteness of Hokusai prints brought to life. The Impostor, far more popular at the Japanese ) box office, has the look of a grade A Hollywood costume adventure that was shot with an almond-eyed camera. The story opens in a geisha house...
...thriller full of blood and thunder but empty of any artistic value, is never exploited deeply for purely emotional impact. Much of the film's restraint springs from the acting of Kazuo Hasegawa as Moritoh and Machiko Kyo, already known to American audiences for her part in Rashomon, as Lady Kesa. They are content merely to suggest love by the slow movement of a hand, and desire by a grimace that lasts only for second. Where a Western actor would shriek, they merely tremble...
While most of Japan's movies are for domestic audiences, the biggest producers, lured by the success of Rashomon and Ugetsu in the U.S., were scrambling last week to release films for the American market. The export pictures are mostly "sword swingers," Oriental versions of the U.S. horse opera, in which Japan's feudal swordsmen are the heroes. Tokyo's Toho (Eastern Treasure) Co. plans to release its $350,000 Seven Samurai, which won a prize at this year's Venice Festival, early in 1955 as "a Japanese western" (33,000 extras, 2,300 horses). Next...
...decided, the romance of French movies would not do, nor would the sexiness of Italian films. "Unfortunately," says Nagata, "we don't have the bosoms, and even if we did, the kimono would hide them." Nagata's formula: a typically Oriental story, plus clever camera work. Rashomon, which has so far grossed $310,000 in the U.S., was the first result; Ugetsu was the second...
Ugetsu is intended not as a story of real life, but as a fateful legend of the soul. Therefore, the actors keep closer than they did in Rashomon to the old symbolic style. If the greedy peasants grunt and draggle their arms like apes, it is not to say that the Japanese ever did so in real life, but rather that they assumed such attitudes in their hearts. In these terms, the painted mincing of the Lady Wakasa (Machiko Kyo, the rape victim in Rashomon), the snuffling animality of the potter (Masayuki Mori, the husband in Rashomon), the abstract dutifulness...