2007. Dir: Hou Hsiao-Hsien.
"From its distance, Hou’s camera shows a long and wide view, panning when needed but maintaining its original placement. Rather than motionless landscapes, his shots are like eyes gazing intently at a painting, seeing it in full yet scanning across the canvas to the forms within. The final scene of his most recent (and most mobile) film, Flight of the Red Balloon, literalizes this, his camera roving within Félix Vallotton's disquieting painting “The Ball” to contemplate a young boy scampering, a red ball looming, and ambiguous forms huddling. Overheard are school kids talking about the painting, their free-flowing conjectures synchronized with the camera’s movement, eyes and imaginations unbound despite the fact of the frame."
"Introduced enacting multiple voices for a live children’s puppet show and adorned with a wonderfully unkempt mass of horribly dyed-blonde hair, Binoche has never been like this onscreen; with Kieslowski and Malle she’s been porcelain and morose, with Haneke intense but mostly reactive. Here, Binoche is a flibbertigibbet, unpredictable, given to fits and starts of frustration towards the clutter of her life (especially regarding her unwanted tenant Marc, a friend of her distant boyfriend who’s been slack on paying rent) and intense adoration for her son. As in Caché, she’s surrounded by shelves of books, but this time they’re lovingly mismatched and tossed about, the belongings of a dedicated treasurer rather than the calcified status symbols of a thoughtless collector. She proudly wears sparkly, lumpy dresses over jeans and red track-suit jackets next to clashing leopard-print shirts, and Hou films her with admiration, never condescension."
Monday, 29 February 2016
Tuesday, 23 February 2016
Good Men, Good Women (Film)
1995. Dir: Hou Hsiao-Hsien.
Context:
Radical formal change: For the first time the majority of the shots use a mobile camera, including some elaborate plan-sequences, something which Hou had not done previously since most of his long takes had been (unusually for long-take directors) static. [See Udden chapter in Cinema Taiwan.]
Liang Jing is unresponsive to the excerpts of her own diary and cannot deal with a personal trauma in much the same way Taiwan as a whole cannot face up to the public traumas of its suppressed history,
"As with Three Times, some have misconstrued Good Men, Good Women as a simplistic excoriation of contemporary life (of malaise, disconnection, apoliticism) especially since its depiction of such is buffeted up against a more politically engaged moment in history. Yet Hou doesn’t retroactively honor activism; he’s interested in those people caught in the spokes of history rather than those who make grandiose gestures."
"The device of the faxes (one of the more forced allegorical gambits Hou’s ever offered), though reminiscent in some ways of the mysterious, accusatory videotapes arriving on Daniel Auteuil’s doorstep in Caché, doesn’t launch anything like Haneke’s wild goose chase investigation; the question here isn’t of motive. The silent thief who’s been harassing Liang remains anonymous right to the end, but Hou doesn’t seem to have much interest in teasing out his identity."
"For Liang to fully inhabit Chiang Bi-Yu and to understand Taiwan’s tumultuous legacy, need she come to terms with her own past? This isn’t a question Hou poses for his character, but for himself, it seems. There’s no such thing as reconciliation here, but there is doubtlessly a reckoning. In trying to find a way to adequately represent Taiwanese national identity, Hou discovers he might as well be asking the same of Taiwanese individual identity. That Liang Ching seems too fragile to withstand such scrutiny only makes her all the more appropriate as an avatar."
"As the camera roves around her dimly lit apartment (it could be early morning or mid afternoon, judging by the harsh light coming in through the drawn window shades), not following her exactly but catching her in crucial parts of the frame, we’re already treated to a slew of contradictory personality markers: Isabella Rossellini’s face peers out from a huge, framed Blue Velvet poster propped against the wall, certainly not foregrounded, but conspicuously there; the camera pans past Rossellini’s single, haunted eye and over to the television, which is playing a deceptively sunny scene from Ozu’s Late Spring, Setsuko Hara joyously riding her bicycle down a country street. Dichotomous images of actresses to be sure: which one represents Liang’s persona, if either? Hou would never be so gauche as to explicitly ask this, but as the film continues, and Liang’s identity is constantly split open and reframed (she’s a haunted actress in the present, in and out of period costume; a troubled, bar hostess and junkie in the recent past; a stoic medical student and political prisoner in the film within the film), we’re constantly searching for glimpses of individuality. Is she Rossellini’s bad-omen femme fatale or Hara’s good-natured, devoted daughter?" [http://reverseshot.org/archive/entry/585/good_men_good_women]
Context:
Radical formal change: For the first time the majority of the shots use a mobile camera, including some elaborate plan-sequences, something which Hou had not done previously since most of his long takes had been (unusually for long-take directors) static. [See Udden chapter in Cinema Taiwan.]
Liang Jing is unresponsive to the excerpts of her own diary and cannot deal with a personal trauma in much the same way Taiwan as a whole cannot face up to the public traumas of its suppressed history,
"As with Three Times, some have misconstrued Good Men, Good Women as a simplistic excoriation of contemporary life (of malaise, disconnection, apoliticism) especially since its depiction of such is buffeted up against a more politically engaged moment in history. Yet Hou doesn’t retroactively honor activism; he’s interested in those people caught in the spokes of history rather than those who make grandiose gestures."
"The device of the faxes (one of the more forced allegorical gambits Hou’s ever offered), though reminiscent in some ways of the mysterious, accusatory videotapes arriving on Daniel Auteuil’s doorstep in Caché, doesn’t launch anything like Haneke’s wild goose chase investigation; the question here isn’t of motive. The silent thief who’s been harassing Liang remains anonymous right to the end, but Hou doesn’t seem to have much interest in teasing out his identity."
"For Liang to fully inhabit Chiang Bi-Yu and to understand Taiwan’s tumultuous legacy, need she come to terms with her own past? This isn’t a question Hou poses for his character, but for himself, it seems. There’s no such thing as reconciliation here, but there is doubtlessly a reckoning. In trying to find a way to adequately represent Taiwanese national identity, Hou discovers he might as well be asking the same of Taiwanese individual identity. That Liang Ching seems too fragile to withstand such scrutiny only makes her all the more appropriate as an avatar."
"As the camera roves around her dimly lit apartment (it could be early morning or mid afternoon, judging by the harsh light coming in through the drawn window shades), not following her exactly but catching her in crucial parts of the frame, we’re already treated to a slew of contradictory personality markers: Isabella Rossellini’s face peers out from a huge, framed Blue Velvet poster propped against the wall, certainly not foregrounded, but conspicuously there; the camera pans past Rossellini’s single, haunted eye and over to the television, which is playing a deceptively sunny scene from Ozu’s Late Spring, Setsuko Hara joyously riding her bicycle down a country street. Dichotomous images of actresses to be sure: which one represents Liang’s persona, if either? Hou would never be so gauche as to explicitly ask this, but as the film continues, and Liang’s identity is constantly split open and reframed (she’s a haunted actress in the present, in and out of period costume; a troubled, bar hostess and junkie in the recent past; a stoic medical student and political prisoner in the film within the film), we’re constantly searching for glimpses of individuality. Is she Rossellini’s bad-omen femme fatale or Hara’s good-natured, devoted daughter?" [http://reverseshot.org/archive/entry/585/good_men_good_women]
Sunday, 21 February 2016
The Puppetmaster (Film)
1993. Dir: Hou Hsiao-Hsien.
Context:
First of Hou's films to be shot in mainland China, as this had become a possibility politically, and pre-1945 settings could better be realised there. However there were difficulties organisation-wise and delays in shooting.
The Film:
Historical setting: The film ends (with the defeat of Japan and the end of the war and the colonial era) exactly where City of Sadness had started. It begins with Li Tianlu's birth at the beginning of the Japanese colonial era, and thus covers most of the years of Japanese rule.
Once again major events are elided or just alluded to in the background, and are viewed as incidental and temporary against the wider background of life and nature --- suggested by the numerous landscape shots.
Consists of three 'modes': Li Tianlu himself recounting his life, sometimes just heard on the soundtrack, but then leading to shots of him talking directly to camera; acted reconstructions of events from his life; the insertion of puppet shows, performed (in the acted narrative) by the young Li Tianlu, and operas.
Fiction-documentary shifts made smooth by cuts to the real Li in the same setting, and from the same axis, as the previous (fiction) shot, as well as by the sound bridges (of Li's narrating voice first off-screen then on-screen), which are crucial.
"It’s just that “greatness” is not quite the right word to ascribe to such a self-effacing movie. It’s long but not big, complex but not epic, morally committed but not given to proselytizing, and offers no grand spittle in the face of the cruelty of colonization."
"He’s on the wrong side of the law from the very beginning, with covert actions required to give him a family name (his parents’ choice of naming him matrilineally contravenes Japanese custom)" This motif (reflective of Taiwan's identity crisis?) also featured in Growing Up, and Dust in the Wind --- where Li Tien-lu himself spoke about it in the dream/flashback scene, hinting that this element was added in that film to suit Li's (autobiographical) performance.
" while Hou is careful never to let us forget that oppressive ideology, through the humiliations of official reprimands and ceremonies and the final insult of using his puppetry for propaganda, there’s also no countermovement in the form of angry rhetoric or even elaboration on a theme. Instead, Li carries on regardless. The important point is not the clash of civilizations but the measures to which one victimized civilization must go to accommodate another when it expands its borders and invades."
"If there is a valid point in stating that Hou has erased activism and resistance (and it’s a hard charge to dismiss completely), there is also the sense that the converse is true, that reducing everything to The Struggle tends to obliterate the very mundane existence that politics are supposed to secure."
Preservationist: a film aimed at "exploring the values of traditional culture which we have lost, particularly at this [materialist and technological] juncture of our existence," [Hou interview, quoted Suchenski 87.]
Reception:
First Taiwan film to compete in main competition at Cannes where it won the Jury Prize. This, according to Udden, was in large part due to the determined backing from Kiarostami on the jury.
Shigehiko Hasumi wrote that with this film Hou is able to 'reinvent cinema', and J. Hoberman in Village Voice described it as 'more like the rebirth of cinema itself' [Udden 116]
Context:
First of Hou's films to be shot in mainland China, as this had become a possibility politically, and pre-1945 settings could better be realised there. However there were difficulties organisation-wise and delays in shooting.
The Film:
Historical setting: The film ends (with the defeat of Japan and the end of the war and the colonial era) exactly where City of Sadness had started. It begins with Li Tianlu's birth at the beginning of the Japanese colonial era, and thus covers most of the years of Japanese rule.
Once again major events are elided or just alluded to in the background, and are viewed as incidental and temporary against the wider background of life and nature --- suggested by the numerous landscape shots.
Consists of three 'modes': Li Tianlu himself recounting his life, sometimes just heard on the soundtrack, but then leading to shots of him talking directly to camera; acted reconstructions of events from his life; the insertion of puppet shows, performed (in the acted narrative) by the young Li Tianlu, and operas.
Fiction-documentary shifts made smooth by cuts to the real Li in the same setting, and from the same axis, as the previous (fiction) shot, as well as by the sound bridges (of Li's narrating voice first off-screen then on-screen), which are crucial.
"It’s just that “greatness” is not quite the right word to ascribe to such a self-effacing movie. It’s long but not big, complex but not epic, morally committed but not given to proselytizing, and offers no grand spittle in the face of the cruelty of colonization."
"He’s on the wrong side of the law from the very beginning, with covert actions required to give him a family name (his parents’ choice of naming him matrilineally contravenes Japanese custom)" This motif (reflective of Taiwan's identity crisis?) also featured in Growing Up, and Dust in the Wind --- where Li Tien-lu himself spoke about it in the dream/flashback scene, hinting that this element was added in that film to suit Li's (autobiographical) performance.
" while Hou is careful never to let us forget that oppressive ideology, through the humiliations of official reprimands and ceremonies and the final insult of using his puppetry for propaganda, there’s also no countermovement in the form of angry rhetoric or even elaboration on a theme. Instead, Li carries on regardless. The important point is not the clash of civilizations but the measures to which one victimized civilization must go to accommodate another when it expands its borders and invades."
"If there is a valid point in stating that Hou has erased activism and resistance (and it’s a hard charge to dismiss completely), there is also the sense that the converse is true, that reducing everything to The Struggle tends to obliterate the very mundane existence that politics are supposed to secure."
Preservationist: a film aimed at "exploring the values of traditional culture which we have lost, particularly at this [materialist and technological] juncture of our existence," [Hou interview, quoted Suchenski 87.]
Reception:
First Taiwan film to compete in main competition at Cannes where it won the Jury Prize. This, according to Udden, was in large part due to the determined backing from Kiarostami on the jury.
Shigehiko Hasumi wrote that with this film Hou is able to 'reinvent cinema', and J. Hoberman in Village Voice described it as 'more like the rebirth of cinema itself' [Udden 116]
Friday, 19 February 2016
Huang Chunming (Culture/History)
Key proponent of Nativist literature, and influential for the New Cinema. The Sandwich Man is adapted from three of his stories.
Quotes:
"Why do we need to have foreigners with their noses in the air tell us what is good? art must grow from the soil itself" [Udden. 51]
Quotes:
"Why do we need to have foreigners with their noses in the air tell us what is good? art must grow from the soil itself" [Udden. 51]
Thursday, 17 December 2015
Cafe Lumiere (Film)
2003. Dir: Hou Hsiao-Hsien.
Context:
Initiation: Made for the centenary of Yasujiro Ozu. Project was brought to Hou via his connections with Shochiku studio and this ended up being his fourth film co-produced by that studio. The only condition was that he had to film in Japan. The film ended up subtly entering into dialogue with Ozu's style but also showing the difference between it and Hou's own style.
Context:
Initiation: Made for the centenary of Yasujiro Ozu. Project was brought to Hou via his connections with Shochiku studio and this ended up being his fourth film co-produced by that studio. The only condition was that he had to film in Japan. The film ended up subtly entering into dialogue with Ozu's style but also showing the difference between it and Hou's own style.
Millenium Mambo (Film)
2001. Dir: Hou Hsiao-Hsien.
Context:
Transition for Hou to contemporary themes: This film marked a return (after the tentative effort of Daughter of the Nile) for Hou to dealing with modern, urban Taiwan, and came after some failed projects for multi-stranded films (including a project to make films distributed online which the viewer could edit however they choose), one of which involved the magician who ends up in this film. Hou had also experienced for himself the techno scene in Taipei and been impressed by it and its atmosphere and energy. He tries to translate this into the nightclub scenes of this movie.
First film with Shu Qi: Shu Qi previously had only acted in mainstream comedies and sex comedies, but when Hou saw something in her and decided to work with her, she was introduced to a very different kind of cinema. She was made to act in ways that were wholly new to her experience, and in ways that perhaps she had not even previously thought herself capable of. The collaboration would be beneficial for her, as for Hou, and this was the first of their to-date three films together.
The Film:
Narration from 'future': Vicky narrates from 10 years later, as if she is not herself anymore, a different person, standing outside of her own self, of her own body, of her story, narrating her own story as is it were someone else's. (Hence fitting with Hou's detached distanced style).
"Hou and screenwriter Chu T'ien-wen, who has written or co-written thirteen of Hou's films, diffuse whatever dramatic tension might be found in this narrative through their circuitous and elliptical storytelling. Vicky’s voiceover sometimes relays plot information before events are depicted onscreen; in other moments, the voiceover takes the place of dramatization altogether, while individual scenes appear to have no narrative consequence."
Dichotomy between Taipei and Yubari, snowy landscapes of Northern Japan.
Context:
Transition for Hou to contemporary themes: This film marked a return (after the tentative effort of Daughter of the Nile) for Hou to dealing with modern, urban Taiwan, and came after some failed projects for multi-stranded films (including a project to make films distributed online which the viewer could edit however they choose), one of which involved the magician who ends up in this film. Hou had also experienced for himself the techno scene in Taipei and been impressed by it and its atmosphere and energy. He tries to translate this into the nightclub scenes of this movie.
First film with Shu Qi: Shu Qi previously had only acted in mainstream comedies and sex comedies, but when Hou saw something in her and decided to work with her, she was introduced to a very different kind of cinema. She was made to act in ways that were wholly new to her experience, and in ways that perhaps she had not even previously thought herself capable of. The collaboration would be beneficial for her, as for Hou, and this was the first of their to-date three films together.
The Film:
Narration from 'future': Vicky narrates from 10 years later, as if she is not herself anymore, a different person, standing outside of her own self, of her own body, of her story, narrating her own story as is it were someone else's. (Hence fitting with Hou's detached distanced style).
"Hou and screenwriter Chu T'ien-wen, who has written or co-written thirteen of Hou's films, diffuse whatever dramatic tension might be found in this narrative through their circuitous and elliptical storytelling. Vicky’s voiceover sometimes relays plot information before events are depicted onscreen; in other moments, the voiceover takes the place of dramatization altogether, while individual scenes appear to have no narrative consequence."
Dichotomy between Taipei and Yubari, snowy landscapes of Northern Japan.
Daughter of the Nile (Film)
1987. Dir: Hou Hsiao-Hsien.
First Hou film to take place in Taipei.
"Hou does everything to make the film as far from a disposable, star-geared, impersonal commodity as possible. Employing his trademark long shots and long takes, Hou disinvests the viewer of comfortable, familiar entryways into the emotional and psychological lives of his characters even as he tailors the “teen” movie to his social and cultural concerns."
"the motorcycle ride points to those of Goodbye South Goodbye, while a brutal crime perpetrated in front of a static-camera long take would be expanded upon just a film later in City of Sadness"
"Kasman believes Hou’s shift from male protagonists in films set in the past to female protagonists in those taking place in the present comes from a clear “line of thought”: “the opportunities missed by the socially empowered males in the mid-twentieth century have given way to modern, contemporary opportunities similarly being missed by Taiwan’s women. . . . Hou sees these new women—strong-willed, romantic, partially socially conscious and vaguely looking for something to do with their lives—as the hope for dragging Taiwanese society out of the qualms of the modern life.” That Hou associates women with contemporary urban settings isn’t surprising—he’s commented that he believes that the virile, tough men of his youth have slowly died out, and that attitude is reflected in the decentralizing of Hou’s gangsters to the margins of narrative."
First Hou film to take place in Taipei.
"Hou does everything to make the film as far from a disposable, star-geared, impersonal commodity as possible. Employing his trademark long shots and long takes, Hou disinvests the viewer of comfortable, familiar entryways into the emotional and psychological lives of his characters even as he tailors the “teen” movie to his social and cultural concerns."
"the motorcycle ride points to those of Goodbye South Goodbye, while a brutal crime perpetrated in front of a static-camera long take would be expanded upon just a film later in City of Sadness"
"Kasman believes Hou’s shift from male protagonists in films set in the past to female protagonists in those taking place in the present comes from a clear “line of thought”: “the opportunities missed by the socially empowered males in the mid-twentieth century have given way to modern, contemporary opportunities similarly being missed by Taiwan’s women. . . . Hou sees these new women—strong-willed, romantic, partially socially conscious and vaguely looking for something to do with their lives—as the hope for dragging Taiwanese society out of the qualms of the modern life.” That Hou associates women with contemporary urban settings isn’t surprising—he’s commented that he believes that the virile, tough men of his youth have slowly died out, and that attitude is reflected in the decentralizing of Hou’s gangsters to the margins of narrative."
Wednesday, 16 December 2015
Goodbye South, Goodbye (Film)
1996. Dir: Hou Hsiao-Hsien.
Context:
A tale of modern Taiwan: The 'south' of the title refers to Taiwan, defined and labelled as the south in relation to some colonial other, China or Japan, but now independent on its own. Yet the characters of this film still seem somewhat lost, meandering aimlessly. This connects with what Hou has described as Taiwan's struggle to assumes its new status as independent and affluent nation-state. Even though all characters in this film wish to leave Taiwan or think about it at some point, in the end none of them can go ahead with it as they are still too tied to their homeland, stuck there with this impossible desire to leave 'the south'.
Connection to previous Hou films: the film GSG most closely connects back to is The Boys from Fengkuei, in its depiction of the languorous lazy days of a group of petty hoodlums wasting the time away.
Shochiku co-production: for the second time, Hou worked with Japanese producer Shozo Ichiyama, then of Shochiku studio.
"Without affectation, without visible effort, he transforms a staple of pulp fiction—the gangster trying to go straight—into a melancholy meditation on time, place, subjectivity, and Taiwan."
"One of his more languorous movies, Goodbye South, Goodbye is almost too successful in conveying the stagnated, going-nowhere lives of layabouts. Like all Hou movies, Goodbye South, Goodbye is uninflected and detached, demands active engagement, perhaps more so than most of his other films. (It’s probably the most uneventful movie about gangsters ever.) Like all of Hou’s works, it is also rich, lustrous, profound, and affecting."
"There are shots of car rides through crowded city streets, idylls on lush country roads, trains snaking into the mountains. These moments are invariably gorgeous, graceful, swoony—they’re as beautiful as anything Hou has committed to film. The most transfixing is a motorcycle jaunt in the countryside, a lovely, wending tour through rural, overgrown Taiwan."
"Throughout Goodbye South, Goodbye are unexpected cuts to strange angles and puzzling perspectives. In one, there is a close up of snowglobe, with a man’s tattoos in the blurry background beyond it. In another, the camera tracks into a restaurant dining room, except everything is in an orange tint and the soundtrack is silent. Each time, Hou pulls back, revealing that those images were seen through someone’s eyes—in the former, Gao’s girlfriend dawdling in bed, in the latter, Flat Head dishing out orders while wearing orange sunglasses and a walkman."
Context:
A tale of modern Taiwan: The 'south' of the title refers to Taiwan, defined and labelled as the south in relation to some colonial other, China or Japan, but now independent on its own. Yet the characters of this film still seem somewhat lost, meandering aimlessly. This connects with what Hou has described as Taiwan's struggle to assumes its new status as independent and affluent nation-state. Even though all characters in this film wish to leave Taiwan or think about it at some point, in the end none of them can go ahead with it as they are still too tied to their homeland, stuck there with this impossible desire to leave 'the south'.
Connection to previous Hou films: the film GSG most closely connects back to is The Boys from Fengkuei, in its depiction of the languorous lazy days of a group of petty hoodlums wasting the time away.
Shochiku co-production: for the second time, Hou worked with Japanese producer Shozo Ichiyama, then of Shochiku studio.
"Without affectation, without visible effort, he transforms a staple of pulp fiction—the gangster trying to go straight—into a melancholy meditation on time, place, subjectivity, and Taiwan."
"One of his more languorous movies, Goodbye South, Goodbye is almost too successful in conveying the stagnated, going-nowhere lives of layabouts. Like all Hou movies, Goodbye South, Goodbye is uninflected and detached, demands active engagement, perhaps more so than most of his other films. (It’s probably the most uneventful movie about gangsters ever.) Like all of Hou’s works, it is also rich, lustrous, profound, and affecting."
"There are shots of car rides through crowded city streets, idylls on lush country roads, trains snaking into the mountains. These moments are invariably gorgeous, graceful, swoony—they’re as beautiful as anything Hou has committed to film. The most transfixing is a motorcycle jaunt in the countryside, a lovely, wending tour through rural, overgrown Taiwan."
"Throughout Goodbye South, Goodbye are unexpected cuts to strange angles and puzzling perspectives. In one, there is a close up of snowglobe, with a man’s tattoos in the blurry background beyond it. In another, the camera tracks into a restaurant dining room, except everything is in an orange tint and the soundtrack is silent. Each time, Hou pulls back, revealing that those images were seen through someone’s eyes—in the former, Gao’s girlfriend dawdling in bed, in the latter, Flat Head dishing out orders while wearing orange sunglasses and a walkman."
Thursday, 15 October 2015
A Summer at Grandpa's (Film)
1984. Dir: Hou Hsiao-hsien. Scr: Chu Tien-wen. Cin: Chen Kun-hou.Context:
Biographical element: The film's story is based on a childhood memory of Chu Tien-wen's, which she offered up to Hou as a potential subject for a film after their collaboration on Growing Up. The shoot actually took place in the setting where Chu really lived for a period as a child, for greater authenticity, much like Hou would next film A Time to Live, A Time to Die in his actual childhood home. The exception was Dust in the Wind, which could not be film in Wu Nien-jen's hometown because it had changed too much since his childhood.
The Film:
The continuation of Hou's stylistic evolution: Still under the influence of his TNC cohorts and of new cinematic inspirations, Hou was now asking himself questions about how to make films which he had not previously wondered about. He came up with ingenious and often surprising answers --- for example he has repeatedly claimed Pasolini's Oedipus Rex as providing him the answer for editing a specific scene in this film, the one with children outdoors on trees, over Beethoven music (about 35 mins into the film).
Mode of narrative: We learn about the often serious problems of the adult characters through Hou's style of indirect narration, focalized through Tung-tung's innocent perspective.
Reception:
The film, once again, won the Golden Montgolfiere award at the Nantes 3 Continents festival.
References/Resources:
http://altscreen.com/08/08/2011/tuesday-editors-pick-summer-at-grandpas-1984/
Sunday, 27 September 2015
The Boys from Fengkuei (Film)
1983. Dir: Hou Hsiao-hsien. Scr: Chu Tien-wen. Cin: Chen Kunhou.Context:
- Place within the TNC: The film is one of the first and most important early films of the New Cinema, coming shortly after the two omnibus films that set it off as a movement. In these early years, there was a sense of collectiveness and camaraderie among the group of filmmakers and screenwriters, who collaborated and influenced each other (e.g. the ideas board at Edward Yang's house which all could write on and take inspiration from). It was at this time that Edward Yang, Chang Yi, Ko I-chen, and the other young filmmakers who, unlike Hou, had been trained abraod in the USA and were more theoretically-minded, opened Hou's cinematic horizons. Together they watched many classic European art films, and Hou could not help be affected by these strange 'new' films he was experiencing for the first time. He has spoken of how they forced him to question his way of filmmaking, which previously had been more instinctive and empirical for him. Boys from Fengkuei is therefore in part a response to the influences and theoretical possibilities Hou observed and absorbed from this sudden widening of his cinematic scope, which he translated into a film that is clearly a new direction for him, but still deeply personal.
- Transition film for Hou: Regarded as the breakthrough film marking Hou's transition from the early commercial musical comedies to a more ambitious and personal cinema, with this stylised social realism.
- Production info: After having worked at CMPC, original breeding ground of the New Cinema, on The Sandwich Man, Hou decided to take the opportunity to work independently. The film was produced by Evergreen Films Ltd (Hou's own? Self-financed? Find out)
- Origin of project: Hou's mind had clearly by now been opened to cinema's potential for highlighting social reality, after his segment on The Sandwich Man, and the issue of internal migration was obviously of relevance during Taiwan's economic boom. The three youths move from Fengkuei in the Penghu islands (aka the Pescadores) to Taiwan's major southern city, Kaohsiung. Hou had visited Fengkuei some time before making the film and was struck by the landscapes and the people, partly inspiring him to make a film about it.
- Autobiographical elements and future connections: The four delinquent youths' idle lifestyle in Fengkuei, passing by the time playing snooker and getting into fights clearly has some resonance with Hou's own teenage years (which he'd later directly turn into a film in A Time to Live, A Time to Die). This film therefore perhaps represents Hou's first meeting with the potential of memory and autobiography to be fruitful sources for cinema/art. The languorous idle way of life the youths enjoy in the first part of the film also slightly prefigures Goodbye South, Goodbye. The pool halls of this lazy coastal town (as does similarly the impending military service conscription) will also serve as a hallmark of a past, perhaps of Hou's youth, in the 1960s, when it reemerges in Dust in the Wind and the 1960s section of Three Times.
The Film:
- .
- Clip from Rocco and his Brothers at cinema: When the boys sneak into a cinema in the hope of seeing something erotic (they're soon disappointed), the film showing is Luchino Visconti's 1960 Rocco and his Brothers. The choice of film is an interesting one, presumably one that was really shown in Taiwanese cinemas, and links Hou's film to Italian Neo-realism, at least in its second wave (1960 being a transitional year for Italian cinema, with Rocco, L'avventura and La dolce vita.) Rocco is a film about internal Italian migration from the south to the north, during the period of rapid economic expansion in post-war Italy, hence clearly having resonance with the primary subject of Boys from Fengkuei. (Other films 'quoted' withing Hou's films: Drunken Master (1978, Yuen Woo-ping) in this one, Beautiful Duckling (1965, Li Hsing) and a King Hu film (Dragon Inn or Touch of Zen?) in Dust in the Wind. Others?)
- The same scene also has an innovative use of a memory-flashback (a rare or unique? example of subjective interiority in Hou's mature oeuvre.), within the shot-countershot structure of Ah-ching watching Rocco on screen, as the guilt of having wanted to see sex in the movie induces within him another kind of guilt, that towards his father. The scene goes from Ah-ching (S) to Rocco (CS) back to Ah-ching (back to S) and then, with the soundtrack of Rocco still audible, into a memory-flashback of Ah-ching's father being hit by the baseball on the head, an accident we know has left him paralysed. All this is done unostentatiously but highlights Hou's relationship to seeing, POV and his own take on S/CS structures. The scene also recalls a scene in the later Dust in the Wind, where Ah-yuan's memory/dream/flashback is triggered by shots of a miner on TV.
- The open-wall in abandoned building scene: After the boys, freshly arrived in Kaohsiung and naive as country hicks, are tricked into paying for and going up to an 11th floor 'screening' where the only 'screen' they find is the open wall of this concrete shell of an unfinished building, which has the dimensions of a widescreen aspect ratio, as one of the boys ironically remarks himself when realising their gullible mistake. It frames the city into a screen, which the boys, having paid, now take the time to watch. On a meta-cinematic level, it opens onto the city and hence the real life, symbolising how Hou's films and the TNC was bringing 'real' Taiwanese life onto the screen. It fits also within Hou's burgeoning aesthetic of 'frames-within-frames', and of showing characters looking. It is also a visual joke, and Jia Zhangke, who was greatly moved when he first watched this film. would pay homage to it in Still Life (2006), as would Wang Xiaoshuai in Beijing Bicycle.
- Pan blending past and present in one take: Scene of Ah-ching's homecoming with a pan that incorporates both the present (his father incapacitated and sitting on his chair) and the memory-past (a family meal before the accident...), a scene sort of like the ending of Mizoguchi's Ugetsu.
- Hou's evolving style: Boys from Fengkuei, even more than the segment he directed in The Sandwich Man, begins to show elements of Hou's trademark style: long takes, long shots (in a BFI Q&A he spoke of wanting to always move the camera further back from the characters, in the Fengkuei scenes, in order to take in more of their environment and hence their relationship to it, within the frame --- a tactic which even his cinematographer Chen Kunhou was dubious about) and compositions with blocking and frames-within-frames (doors, windows, etc). It signals the start of his more 'objective' approach to story-telling, wanting to remain at a distance while still allowing a deep empathy for his characters.
- Use of classical music: For the first time Hou uses Western classical music on the soundtrack (e.g. Vivaldi), as he would use Beethoven in his next film, A Summer at Grandpa's. This came about after a suggestion from Edward Yang, as this period (1983-85) marks perhaps the height of the Taiwan New Cinema as a collective movement with ideas being shared communally. As a soundtrack choice it perhaps helps with Hou's desired objective approach, as the music would feel distanced and not immediately relatable to a Taiwanese audience less used to it.
- Hou's cameo: For the first time Hou gave himself a small acting role, as the mahjong-playing perm-haired boyfriend of the sister, living in Kaohsiung.
Reception:
- Won the Golden Montgolfiere (tied with Tunisian film El-haimoune) at the Nantes 3 Continents Festival.
Resources:
http://sensesofcinema.com/2003/cteq/boys_from_fengkuei/
The Green Green Grass of Home (Film)
1982. Dir: Hou Hsiao-hsien. Cin: Chen Kun-hou.
Context:
It is perhaps important to note that Hou would never again utilize as wide an aspect ratio as he did in his first three films, allowing for the intensity and purity of perception you find in the mature work.
The Film:
"Perhaps the most noteworthy of the three, Green, Green Grass casts Bee and a new ingénue, Jiang Ling (who gets almost no dialogue), as schoolteachers in the countryside. Where the first two films were built on the universal romantic-comedy set-up in which a woman must choose between the cold intelligence of one suitor and the open-hearted spontaneity of another, Green, Green Grass finds Hou loosening up and departing from strict genre templates, rooting his film in the particularities of his setting, and willfully distracting himself with anecdotes from the extended family of his colorful supporting cast. While the female characters are far more marginalized here than they are in Cute Girl or Cheerful Wind, his portrayal of the emotional lives of children—which would become so central in his most autobiographical films—gains a new sophistication. But even in spite of these developments, the film is of a piece with the breezy sentimentality of its predecessors and, like them, ends with a social and moral message: where Cute Girl warns against urban encroachment, and Cheerful Wind encourages patience, charity, and loyalty, Green, Green Grass teaches grade-school lessons of environmental responsibility and conflict resolution."
Reception:
Resources:
http://reverseshot.org/symposiums/entry/602/cute_girl_cheerful_wind_green_green_grass_home
Context:
It is perhaps important to note that Hou would never again utilize as wide an aspect ratio as he did in his first three films, allowing for the intensity and purity of perception you find in the mature work.
The Film:
"Perhaps the most noteworthy of the three, Green, Green Grass casts Bee and a new ingénue, Jiang Ling (who gets almost no dialogue), as schoolteachers in the countryside. Where the first two films were built on the universal romantic-comedy set-up in which a woman must choose between the cold intelligence of one suitor and the open-hearted spontaneity of another, Green, Green Grass finds Hou loosening up and departing from strict genre templates, rooting his film in the particularities of his setting, and willfully distracting himself with anecdotes from the extended family of his colorful supporting cast. While the female characters are far more marginalized here than they are in Cute Girl or Cheerful Wind, his portrayal of the emotional lives of children—which would become so central in his most autobiographical films—gains a new sophistication. But even in spite of these developments, the film is of a piece with the breezy sentimentality of its predecessors and, like them, ends with a social and moral message: where Cute Girl warns against urban encroachment, and Cheerful Wind encourages patience, charity, and loyalty, Green, Green Grass teaches grade-school lessons of environmental responsibility and conflict resolution."
Reception:
Resources:
http://reverseshot.org/symposiums/entry/602/cute_girl_cheerful_wind_green_green_grass_home
Friday, 24 July 2015
Sunday, 28 June 2015
Flowers of Shanghai (Film)
1998. Dir: Hou Hsiao-Hsien.
Context:
Hou's career: A shift towards added formalism (choreographed near-constant pans, fades-to-black). For the first time a move to a setting beyond living memory. His third film made in co-production with Shochiki studio, with again Shozo Ichiyama at the helm.
Origins: Based on Han Ziyun (Han Bangqing) novel, written in 1892 and in Wu dialect, and Eileen Chang's 1970s (Mandarin) translation of it (which Hou read). Initially Hou had been planning and researching for a film about Zheng Chenggung, 'Father of Taiwan', who drove away the Dutch in the 17th century, but as part of the research read Flowers of Shanghai. He was so drawn to it that he abandoned the initial project to film this book instead.
Imagined China: The first Hou film fully set in Mainland China (not even any mention of Taiwan) --- although it was all filmed on sets built in Taiwan. Bergala notes that for the first time Hou has to visualise a world from his imagination, closing his eyes to the world in front of him to penetrate a Classical China.
The Film:
Structure: Three strands, each one centered on a different woman. ... an emotional cold war.... four banquet scenes... scenes of meals or pipes being prepared, drinking games, negotiations and particularly conversations, revolving around gossip.
Setting: Set in the English concession of 1890s (Qing dynasty era) Shanghai.... the men are elite affluent Han, the women are trapped as 'high-class prostitutes' within gilded prisons...
The film has exquisite decors, costumes and sets, low-key lighting (oil lanterns, candles etc). Note the one close-up insert shot (very rare for Hou) of the whole film, is to a golden hairpin (?)
Style: Slow fluid arcing camera movements. Little action or drama or conflict, which are mostly elided, and in fact the most dramatic events take place offscreen during narrative ellipses, and are then only made known to the audience by asides in conversation between other characters. The film is far more about atmosphere, of a lazy-rhythmed leisurely world, than plot.
Soundtrack: slow, simple electronic droning, almost ever-present, composed by Yoshimiro Hanno, adds to the lazy, leisurely pace and opiate feel of the rhythm and the pans...
" Because Hou's cinematic syntax is so different from the mainstream (long, slow takes; dearth of close-ups), the range of his style tends to get overlooked, but this is a film that's visually quite distinct from anything else he ever did. Every shot is languorous and opiated, with a drifting camera nodding in and out of consciousness: every single shot begins with a fade in from black and ends with a fade out, even when action between them is continuous, and more than that, the fades to and from black seem to be orchestrated on the set, not in post-production, as the onscreen light sources (candles and lanterns) are the first to appear and last to vanish in the gloom - a beautiful effect derived from Welles. It's also entirely confined to opulent interiors, with characters almost always in medium shot. In the world of this film, the kinetic travelling shots of Goodbye, South, Goodbye (my favourite of Hou's 90s films) are as unthinkable as its extreme long-shots. Of course, these aesthetic choices are absolutely appropriate for a film that's all about social confinement and mannered, moderated intimacy.
Hou's narrative obliqueness is also strongly in evidence, though in a different manner than most of his films. The film is quite talky, and most of the talk is gossip. And that gossip is where the action takes place. In a world in which women are obliged to be preoccupied about their social standing but are largely excluded from social interaction and discourse, gossip is their lifeblood, and reputations and self-respect stand or fall on what their more socially mobile acquaintances (the men) are saying about people the women may never have met. When major plot actions finally do occur on screen in the final act, it's quite shocking, but not really any less shocking than when what we assume to be the film's major plot thread (Master Wang's relationships with Crimson and Jasmin) is wrapped up in an aside between two other characters." - http://www.criterionforum.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=24&t=13398&start=225#p507045
Power relationships: Those controlled (the women) try to wrest control through the restrictions of their limitations, behind the scenes, and through influence and circuitous machinations... Gossip, a key currency in this world. Gossip, information, can be power, such that the 'flower girls' can act as power brokers by revealing news etc.
"The “flowers” are doubly bound: first to their madams (or "aunties"), and then to their primary callers, who are expected to support the flowers’ households. Hou then layers on further complexities: women who’ve grown old within the system and see no need to escape it; another who looks for a way to buy her freedom; yet another who lucks into a marriage with a witless young caller and another, more dubious, kind of freedom. All of the women strive toward different lives, different options, but all of these possibilities are thoroughly and oppressively mediated by prevailing historical conditions. For all the men’s obvious economic and physical power over the women, Hou seems generally unconcerned with explicating the male perspective here—in this liminal space the bound women have an odd kind of upper hand. Even the film is divided thusly, with recurring chapters named for each of the main women, yet the movie never feels like a collection of short stories. Hou’s formalism irons their disparate stories into a unified whole."
The brothel as metaphor for Taiwan, its location within the foreign concessions of Shanghai affording it an independent status.
Frustrates promises of exoticised orientalism?
Context:
Hou's career: A shift towards added formalism (choreographed near-constant pans, fades-to-black). For the first time a move to a setting beyond living memory. His third film made in co-production with Shochiki studio, with again Shozo Ichiyama at the helm.
Origins: Based on Han Ziyun (Han Bangqing) novel, written in 1892 and in Wu dialect, and Eileen Chang's 1970s (Mandarin) translation of it (which Hou read). Initially Hou had been planning and researching for a film about Zheng Chenggung, 'Father of Taiwan', who drove away the Dutch in the 17th century, but as part of the research read Flowers of Shanghai. He was so drawn to it that he abandoned the initial project to film this book instead.
Imagined China: The first Hou film fully set in Mainland China (not even any mention of Taiwan) --- although it was all filmed on sets built in Taiwan. Bergala notes that for the first time Hou has to visualise a world from his imagination, closing his eyes to the world in front of him to penetrate a Classical China.
The Film:
Structure: Three strands, each one centered on a different woman. ... an emotional cold war.... four banquet scenes... scenes of meals or pipes being prepared, drinking games, negotiations and particularly conversations, revolving around gossip.
Setting: Set in the English concession of 1890s (Qing dynasty era) Shanghai.... the men are elite affluent Han, the women are trapped as 'high-class prostitutes' within gilded prisons...
The film has exquisite decors, costumes and sets, low-key lighting (oil lanterns, candles etc). Note the one close-up insert shot (very rare for Hou) of the whole film, is to a golden hairpin (?)
Style: Slow fluid arcing camera movements. Little action or drama or conflict, which are mostly elided, and in fact the most dramatic events take place offscreen during narrative ellipses, and are then only made known to the audience by asides in conversation between other characters. The film is far more about atmosphere, of a lazy-rhythmed leisurely world, than plot.
Soundtrack: slow, simple electronic droning, almost ever-present, composed by Yoshimiro Hanno, adds to the lazy, leisurely pace and opiate feel of the rhythm and the pans...
" Because Hou's cinematic syntax is so different from the mainstream (long, slow takes; dearth of close-ups), the range of his style tends to get overlooked, but this is a film that's visually quite distinct from anything else he ever did. Every shot is languorous and opiated, with a drifting camera nodding in and out of consciousness: every single shot begins with a fade in from black and ends with a fade out, even when action between them is continuous, and more than that, the fades to and from black seem to be orchestrated on the set, not in post-production, as the onscreen light sources (candles and lanterns) are the first to appear and last to vanish in the gloom - a beautiful effect derived from Welles. It's also entirely confined to opulent interiors, with characters almost always in medium shot. In the world of this film, the kinetic travelling shots of Goodbye, South, Goodbye (my favourite of Hou's 90s films) are as unthinkable as its extreme long-shots. Of course, these aesthetic choices are absolutely appropriate for a film that's all about social confinement and mannered, moderated intimacy.
Hou's narrative obliqueness is also strongly in evidence, though in a different manner than most of his films. The film is quite talky, and most of the talk is gossip. And that gossip is where the action takes place. In a world in which women are obliged to be preoccupied about their social standing but are largely excluded from social interaction and discourse, gossip is their lifeblood, and reputations and self-respect stand or fall on what their more socially mobile acquaintances (the men) are saying about people the women may never have met. When major plot actions finally do occur on screen in the final act, it's quite shocking, but not really any less shocking than when what we assume to be the film's major plot thread (Master Wang's relationships with Crimson and Jasmin) is wrapped up in an aside between two other characters." - http://www.criterionforum.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=24&t=13398&start=225#p507045
Power relationships: Those controlled (the women) try to wrest control through the restrictions of their limitations, behind the scenes, and through influence and circuitous machinations... Gossip, a key currency in this world. Gossip, information, can be power, such that the 'flower girls' can act as power brokers by revealing news etc.
"The “flowers” are doubly bound: first to their madams (or "aunties"), and then to their primary callers, who are expected to support the flowers’ households. Hou then layers on further complexities: women who’ve grown old within the system and see no need to escape it; another who looks for a way to buy her freedom; yet another who lucks into a marriage with a witless young caller and another, more dubious, kind of freedom. All of the women strive toward different lives, different options, but all of these possibilities are thoroughly and oppressively mediated by prevailing historical conditions. For all the men’s obvious economic and physical power over the women, Hou seems generally unconcerned with explicating the male perspective here—in this liminal space the bound women have an odd kind of upper hand. Even the film is divided thusly, with recurring chapters named for each of the main women, yet the movie never feels like a collection of short stories. Hou’s formalism irons their disparate stories into a unified whole."
The brothel as metaphor for Taiwan, its location within the foreign concessions of Shanghai affording it an independent status.
Frustrates promises of exoticised orientalism?
Friday, 10 April 2015
Growing Up (Film)
1983. Dir: Chen Kunhou. Scr: Chu Tien-wen, Hou Hsiao-hsien.
"Zhu Tianwen came into the film industry as a result of publishing a prize-winning piece, “Growing Up” (Xiaobi de gushi, “The story of little Bi,” published in the United Daily News, 1982). Hou Hsiao-hsien and Chen Kunhou were interested in the story of Xiaobi and arranged to meet Zhu in a coffee shop. Thus began a rich creative partnership that continues to this day."
"However, within a sclerotic institution this took a certain amount of guile. To pass the studio’s conservative line of ideology, these assistants would prepare “creative” proposals that disguised the real intent of the films. For instance, Growing Up is about a boy who turns to juvenile delinquency and drives his mother to suicide. He fails to live up to her ambition for him to go to college, and goes to military school instead. Xiao Ye wrote this up as a pitch that promotes the military academy
as a place to straighten out wayward boys..."
"Take Chu Tienwen’s first screenplay, Growing Up, as an example. Zhu’s title of the source, “The Story of Little Bi,” suggests a strong biographical and autobiographical inclination. Here Zhu was interested in documenting the true life of an ordinary boy growing up in a small township with a stepfather old enough to be his grandfather. The boy is sensitive and energetic, but the fact that he was born a bastard and adopted as a stepson of a military man predestines his troubled childhood. As the title indicates, it is a “story,” the fictionalization of an ordinary life that makes it extraordinary. If Zhu were a regular biographer, she might have taken the precaution of observing the codes of biographical writing to keep her story objective, true to the life of her real-life subjects. But in the poetics of auto/biography, the story is written in the first-person point of view of a grown woman remembering her childhood. This textual device repeats itself in the film. On many occasions, the otherwise omniscient narration is accompanied by the voice-over of the neighbor girl, to inform the spectator of her own reflections on the troubled boy next door."
Growing Up, to the surprise of the filmmakers (including the scriptwriter herself), was a commercial success.
"Zhu Tianwen came into the film industry as a result of publishing a prize-winning piece, “Growing Up” (Xiaobi de gushi, “The story of little Bi,” published in the United Daily News, 1982). Hou Hsiao-hsien and Chen Kunhou were interested in the story of Xiaobi and arranged to meet Zhu in a coffee shop. Thus began a rich creative partnership that continues to this day."
"However, within a sclerotic institution this took a certain amount of guile. To pass the studio’s conservative line of ideology, these assistants would prepare “creative” proposals that disguised the real intent of the films. For instance, Growing Up is about a boy who turns to juvenile delinquency and drives his mother to suicide. He fails to live up to her ambition for him to go to college, and goes to military school instead. Xiao Ye wrote this up as a pitch that promotes the military academy
as a place to straighten out wayward boys..."
"Take Chu Tienwen’s first screenplay, Growing Up, as an example. Zhu’s title of the source, “The Story of Little Bi,” suggests a strong biographical and autobiographical inclination. Here Zhu was interested in documenting the true life of an ordinary boy growing up in a small township with a stepfather old enough to be his grandfather. The boy is sensitive and energetic, but the fact that he was born a bastard and adopted as a stepson of a military man predestines his troubled childhood. As the title indicates, it is a “story,” the fictionalization of an ordinary life that makes it extraordinary. If Zhu were a regular biographer, she might have taken the precaution of observing the codes of biographical writing to keep her story objective, true to the life of her real-life subjects. But in the poetics of auto/biography, the story is written in the first-person point of view of a grown woman remembering her childhood. This textual device repeats itself in the film. On many occasions, the otherwise omniscient narration is accompanied by the voice-over of the neighbor girl, to inform the spectator of her own reflections on the troubled boy next door."
Growing Up, to the surprise of the filmmakers (including the scriptwriter herself), was a commercial success.
Tuesday, 7 April 2015
A City of Sadness (Film)
1989. Dir: Hou Hsiao-Hsien. Scr: Hou Hsiao-Hsien, Chu Tianwen, Wu Nianzhen.
Music composed by Naoki Tachikawa, who also composed music for Raise the Red Lantern. (which was also produced by ERA International)
Context:
The first film to make allusion to February 28 Incident (aka 228 or 'ererba') and the massacre of tens of thousands (estimated 18,000 to 28,000 casualties) by the KMT in 1947. Martial law had been lifted in 1987, and historical topics which had been suppressed and taboo to even mention, could now finally be researched and discussed.
First film in Taiwan to be fully recorded with synchronised sound (no post-production dubbing).
Much research was carried out by Hou and his writers, including first-hand testimonies. Part of the film's narrative was based on a piece of reportage by Lan Bozhou, 'The song of the covered wagon', published in 1988 and documenting the lives of the socialist underground during the colonialist period [More info in Island on the Edge, 55-56.]
Billed as 'The saga of a family, the saga of a nation'. (In Taiwan?)
The Film:
'Private history': as opposed to another Big History. History told from below, from perspective of those affected, even indirectly. Use of diary entries and family photographs.
Official vs. Unofficial History
The Lin family as microcosm of the nation.
Family tree:
Initial optimism at rejoining China at the beginning (a new birth, the light after the blackout) later foiled and deflated.
The oldest brother's line about Taiwanese 'mistreated by all, pitied by none'... also the name of the Lins' restaurant Little Shanghai -> ironic as Shanghai gangsters will be responsible for much of their troubles.
Use and meaning of traditional songs in the film (see Chiao essay in Suchenski).
"While listening to Beethoven, Kuanmei explains to Wenqing in writing that the music is based on a legend in which several fishermen, intoxicated by the beautiful voice of a siren, perish in their sinking boat. Like the fishermen in the legend, these intellectuals devote their lives to a beautiful but intangible ideal, which will seductively lead them to destruction"
Reception:
Winner of the 1989 Golden Lion at Venice.
"Later Hou instigated another, even bigger, cultural debate with the first film of his Taiwan trilogy. The criticism of City of Sadness (1989) culminated in the 1991 anthology Death of the New Cinema (Xin dianying zhi si). Contributors from various disciplines and backgrounds were not happy with Hou’s distant photography and obscure storytelling in his depiction of the regime’s brutality toward Taiwanese in the February 28 Incident, a major uprising against the Nationalists’ neocolonial rule. As the most horrific incident in Taiwan’s modern history, the February 28 Incident was then a collective trauma and has become a national scar. People were waiting to see some justice done in the film. But they did not. As a result, Hou was seen as a complacent, conservative artist who had yet to see the political light. The troubled local reception of Hou’s City of Sadness manifests the difficulty of coming to terms with history and historical representation of Taiwan’s scarred past."
Resources:
Berenice Reynaud BFI Classics
Peggy Chiao essay in Suchenski
Music composed by Naoki Tachikawa, who also composed music for Raise the Red Lantern. (which was also produced by ERA International)
Context:
The first film to make allusion to February 28 Incident (aka 228 or 'ererba') and the massacre of tens of thousands (estimated 18,000 to 28,000 casualties) by the KMT in 1947. Martial law had been lifted in 1987, and historical topics which had been suppressed and taboo to even mention, could now finally be researched and discussed.
First film in Taiwan to be fully recorded with synchronised sound (no post-production dubbing).
Much research was carried out by Hou and his writers, including first-hand testimonies. Part of the film's narrative was based on a piece of reportage by Lan Bozhou, 'The song of the covered wagon', published in 1988 and documenting the lives of the socialist underground during the colonialist period [More info in Island on the Edge, 55-56.]
Billed as 'The saga of a family, the saga of a nation'. (In Taiwan?)
The Film:
'Private history': as opposed to another Big History. History told from below, from perspective of those affected, even indirectly. Use of diary entries and family photographs.
Official vs. Unofficial History
The Lin family as microcosm of the nation.
Family tree:
Initial optimism at rejoining China at the beginning (a new birth, the light after the blackout) later foiled and deflated.
The oldest brother's line about Taiwanese 'mistreated by all, pitied by none'... also the name of the Lins' restaurant Little Shanghai -> ironic as Shanghai gangsters will be responsible for much of their troubles.
Use and meaning of traditional songs in the film (see Chiao essay in Suchenski).
"While listening to Beethoven, Kuanmei explains to Wenqing in writing that the music is based on a legend in which several fishermen, intoxicated by the beautiful voice of a siren, perish in their sinking boat. Like the fishermen in the legend, these intellectuals devote their lives to a beautiful but intangible ideal, which will seductively lead them to destruction"
Reception:
Winner of the 1989 Golden Lion at Venice.
"Later Hou instigated another, even bigger, cultural debate with the first film of his Taiwan trilogy. The criticism of City of Sadness (1989) culminated in the 1991 anthology Death of the New Cinema (Xin dianying zhi si). Contributors from various disciplines and backgrounds were not happy with Hou’s distant photography and obscure storytelling in his depiction of the regime’s brutality toward Taiwanese in the February 28 Incident, a major uprising against the Nationalists’ neocolonial rule. As the most horrific incident in Taiwan’s modern history, the February 28 Incident was then a collective trauma and has become a national scar. People were waiting to see some justice done in the film. But they did not. As a result, Hou was seen as a complacent, conservative artist who had yet to see the political light. The troubled local reception of Hou’s City of Sadness manifests the difficulty of coming to terms with history and historical representation of Taiwan’s scarred past."
Resources:
Berenice Reynaud BFI Classics
Peggy Chiao essay in Suchenski
Chu Tien-wen (Industry)
Aka Zhu Tianwen. Born: 1956, Taipei.Best known as a key writer within the Taiwanese New Cinema, and particularly a key collaborator of Hou Hsiao-Hsien's.
"Zhu Tianwen (b. 1956) comes from “the most noted literary family” in Taiwanese literature; her father Zhu Xi’ning (1926–1998), a Christian mainlander, is a celebrated novelist and a cultural officer, and her Hakka mother, Liu Musha, is a respected translator of Japanese fiction. Growing up in a congenial literary circle and raised in Confucianism, Christianity, Chinese and Japanese literature, Zhu Tianwen began to publish in various newspapers’ literary supplements when she was still in high school."
Zhu Tianwen came into the film industry as a result of publishing a prize-winning piece, Growing Up ( published in the United Daily News, 1982). Hou and Chen Kunhou were interested in the story of Xiaobi and arranged to meet Zhu in a coffee shop. Thus began a rich creative partnership that continues to this day. They worked together on the screenplay of Growing Up, which Chen would end up directing. From then on she and Hou would form a close artistic connection and collaboration. It was she who first introduced him to mainland Chinese literature, such as the autobiography of Shen Congwen, that would be so influential for his desire of an 'objective camera' --- leading to long takes and long shots.
That same year Chu wrote the screenplay for Hou's semi-autobiographical The Boys from Fengkuei. She then offered up an incident from her own childhood as the basis for Hou's next film, A Summer at Grandpa's, which she also wrote. She worked on several of his following films.. She also wrote, along with Hou, Edward Yang's 1985 film Taipei Story.. For A City of Sadness, she, Hou and Wu Nianzhen worked together, gathering tremendous amounts of research into the 1945-49 period of Taiwanese history.
She describes her working collaboration with Hou as rooting in words the great quantity of visual ideas Hou threw at her. She also developed and fleshed out his female characters, giving a stronger insight into their internal worlds.
Friday, 27 March 2015
Wan Ren (Director)
aka Wan Jen. Born: 1950, Taiwan.
Wan is perhaps the most explicitly political and the least auteurist of the New Cinema directors. Political, because Wan directly exposes social problems and, hence, has constantly run into trouble with censorship. Because Wan’s work crosses a wide range of topics, genres, and styles, he cannot be easily accommodated within the auteur pattern.
He made the 'Taste of Apples' segment of the foundational New Cinema film The Sandwich Man, which had created some controversy. After making the family melodrama Ah Fei (You ma cai zi, 1983), Wan, with his third film Super Citizen (Chaoji shimin, 1985), again faced state censorship. Super Citizen begins with a young man in search of his missing sister in the capital. In his relentless search, the man from the country encounters characters living on the fringes of the city—a con artist, a prostitute, a punk girl, and a lunatic bum. The film thus unfolds a decoupage of poverty, corruption, crime, and disillusionment with modern development and urban prosperity. The brother never finds his sister, but he decides to stay in Taipei in the end. By following his sister’s path, he, too, is engulfed by the metropolis’s black, underground economy. Motifs of “search” and “rescue” remind us of the famous captivity narratives in John Ford’s The Searchers and Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver, and perhaps even Lino Brocka's Manila in the Claws of Light.
Like Wang Tong, Wan chose a middle-way approach in making his films palatable to local audiences. Other new directors failed the high expectations of producers and exhibitors in their second or third films. Hou Hsiao-hsien’s The Boys from Fengkuei (1983) and Summer at Grandpa’s (1984), Edward Yang’s embarrassing 1984 box office flop Taipei Story, and Zeng Zhuangxiang’s Nature Is Quite Beautiful (Wu li de disheng, 1984) were all major disappointments. In comparison, Wan’s Ah Fei and Super Citizen both achieved modest commercial success. According to Wan, his approach in the New Cinema was different from the main paradigm. Beginning with 'The Taste of Apples', he wanted to make films that were accessible to the audience but at the same time allowed him to make strong social commentary.
Super Citizen was a joint production by Long Shong and New Cinema City’s Taipei office, chaired by none other than John Woo. Woo was not only the film’s executive producer, he also edited the trailer for the film. Certainly this Hong Kong connection meant Wan no longer could stay on the middle ground. He was expected to follow suit behind the Hong Kong New Wave and transform elements of Taiwan New Cinema into more commercial ingredients. Wan Ren was not fully ready for this. Problems arose when Tsui Hark produced his next film, 'The Farewell Coast' (Xibie hai’an, 1987). Wan intended to maintain his critical edge and, as a sequel to Super Citizen, wanted to make another topical film about youth crime. Meanwhile, Tsui wanted to push for a Taiwan version of A Better Tomorrow, an action thriller about the most wanted gunman on the island. Tsui hoped to add more gunfights to sensationalize Wan’s cool depictions of the teenager-cum-fugitive. Wan refused to reshoot and insisted on making the film as a social exposé rather than a pure genre picture.
Wan is perhaps the most explicitly political and the least auteurist of the New Cinema directors. Political, because Wan directly exposes social problems and, hence, has constantly run into trouble with censorship. Because Wan’s work crosses a wide range of topics, genres, and styles, he cannot be easily accommodated within the auteur pattern.
He made the 'Taste of Apples' segment of the foundational New Cinema film The Sandwich Man, which had created some controversy. After making the family melodrama Ah Fei (You ma cai zi, 1983), Wan, with his third film Super Citizen (Chaoji shimin, 1985), again faced state censorship. Super Citizen begins with a young man in search of his missing sister in the capital. In his relentless search, the man from the country encounters characters living on the fringes of the city—a con artist, a prostitute, a punk girl, and a lunatic bum. The film thus unfolds a decoupage of poverty, corruption, crime, and disillusionment with modern development and urban prosperity. The brother never finds his sister, but he decides to stay in Taipei in the end. By following his sister’s path, he, too, is engulfed by the metropolis’s black, underground economy. Motifs of “search” and “rescue” remind us of the famous captivity narratives in John Ford’s The Searchers and Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver, and perhaps even Lino Brocka's Manila in the Claws of Light.
Like Wang Tong, Wan chose a middle-way approach in making his films palatable to local audiences. Other new directors failed the high expectations of producers and exhibitors in their second or third films. Hou Hsiao-hsien’s The Boys from Fengkuei (1983) and Summer at Grandpa’s (1984), Edward Yang’s embarrassing 1984 box office flop Taipei Story, and Zeng Zhuangxiang’s Nature Is Quite Beautiful (Wu li de disheng, 1984) were all major disappointments. In comparison, Wan’s Ah Fei and Super Citizen both achieved modest commercial success. According to Wan, his approach in the New Cinema was different from the main paradigm. Beginning with 'The Taste of Apples', he wanted to make films that were accessible to the audience but at the same time allowed him to make strong social commentary.
Super Citizen was a joint production by Long Shong and New Cinema City’s Taipei office, chaired by none other than John Woo. Woo was not only the film’s executive producer, he also edited the trailer for the film. Certainly this Hong Kong connection meant Wan no longer could stay on the middle ground. He was expected to follow suit behind the Hong Kong New Wave and transform elements of Taiwan New Cinema into more commercial ingredients. Wan Ren was not fully ready for this. Problems arose when Tsui Hark produced his next film, 'The Farewell Coast' (Xibie hai’an, 1987). Wan intended to maintain his critical edge and, as a sequel to Super Citizen, wanted to make another topical film about youth crime. Meanwhile, Tsui wanted to push for a Taiwan version of A Better Tomorrow, an action thriller about the most wanted gunman on the island. Tsui hoped to add more gunfights to sensationalize Wan’s cool depictions of the teenager-cum-fugitive. Wan refused to reshoot and insisted on making the film as a social exposé rather than a pure genre picture.
Thursday, 26 March 2015
Wang Tung (Director)
Born: 1942, China.Director, and initially an art director/set designer.
Upon graduation from the National College of Arts in the mid-1960s, Wang entered CMPC as a set designer, drawing models, props, and costumes. Since then, he has worked with almost every major director, across many different genres and different styles. He was involved in more than one hundred films, including healthy realism, propaganda policy films, war epics, martial arts, kung fu, comedies, and Qiong Yao romantic melodramas. Wang worked with famous directors of the 1960s and 1970s such as King Hu, Li Hanxiang, Li Jia, Bai Jingrui, and Li Xing.
Wang was already a veteran when he joined the New Cinema. Well before Edward Yang, Wan Ren, or other new directors entered the trade, Wang had already established himself as a known director.
Like other New Cinema proponents, he re-invented popular genres by adding a nativist approach to them, starting from his first entry into the New Cinema canon, A Flower in the Rainy Night (which was not however his first film), based on a work by Huang Chunming, and continuing into his so-called 'nativist trilogy'.
A Flower in the Rainy Night was Wang’s entry into the New Cinema, and was shown at the 1983 Chicago International Film Festival where it won an award. It exemplifies Wang as an old school director in a new age, striving to balance the demands of studio affiliation and the emerging social consciousness of nativism. 'A Flower in the Rainy Night' was one of the most desired literary properties by many directors when the novel was first published in 1967, but its subject was considered taboo by the censorship standards of the era. It tells the story of an aging prostitute and her will to begin a new life by becoming a mother. The film outperformed other New Cinema films of the same year, like Growing Up and The Sandwich Man, with a box office record of NT$ 23 million (US$ 600,000) in Taipei alone.[Taiwan Treasure Island, 76] It was however dismissed by critical champions of the New Cinema as 'mediocre'.
Wang already had a liability because of his old school background. In addition, his ethnic and class background may have been another problem. For directors who want to work on nativist themes, their ethnicity and class matters. Born on the mainland, son of a KMT general, Wang had a comfortable, if not privileged, upbringing. This is well represented in Wang’s 1999 autobiographical film, The Red Persimmon (Hong shizi, CMPC). He grew up principally under the influence of his mother, a Chinese ink painter. This specific kind of mainland, Chinese upbringing would cast doubt on Wang Tong’s ability to sympathetically render local experience and expressions, essential to such a film as Flower in the Rainy Night.
His next film, 'Run Away', was a studio-ordered martial arts film, despite the fact he already had plans for a nativist comedy (Strawman which he would make in 1987). Wang thus never managed to fully become an auteur, remaining more of a studio journeyman director who alternated between studio-dictated projects, nativist films and more personal efforts.
'Strawman' would become the first of his 'nativist trilogy'. The story centres on peasants during the final days of World War II. Japanese military officers requisition all their valuables, crops, and animals. People are desperate for food as they watch the birds pick over their fields. Banana Paradise (Xiangjiao tiantang, 1989), and Hill of No Return (Wuyan de shanqiu, 1992) completed Wang Tong’s nativist trilogy. Wang’s preference for comedy may have prevented his trilogy from receiving sufficient critical attention, while it also lacks the formal rigour and invention of Hou and Yang.
Hou Hsiao-hsien’s trilogy focuses on extraordinary Taiwanese: artists, gangsters, leftist elites, and writers who were purged by right-wing regimes, both Japanese and KMT. Wang Tong, on the other hand, leans toward hungry farmers, disabled farmwives, foot soldiers, refugees, prostitutes, and deranged Japanese officers. Hou treats the issue of identity as a matter of conscience, of choosing sides; but in the final analysis he acknowledges the norm of Chinese nationality. Wang’s view of identity politics is more pragmatic and contingent; it is no less than a matter of food and lodging. To these wretched people, identity is simply a mechanism for survival.
When Shohei Imamura went to Taiwan to film parts of his wartime prostitute story Zegen (1987),
Wang was there to help as his art director.
Filmography (as director):
- A Flower in the Rainy Night (1983)
- Strawman (1987)
References/Resources:
Sunday, 22 March 2015
Xiao Ye (Industry)
Born: 1951.
Writer and key member of the early days of the New Cinema at CMPC studios. His most famous screenplay is that for Edward Yang's The Terrrorisers.
Before joining CMPC, he had established himself as a prominent writer. His work was very popular among college and high school students, and he remained one of the best-selling writers in the mid-1970s. The veteran director of youth stories, Bai Jingrui, took an interest in Xiao Ye’s collection of stories, Birth of a Moth (Yong zhi sheng). In 1977, Xiao Ye adapted his story “The War of the Sexes” (Nanhai yu nühai de zhanzheng) into a script that was produced by Young Sun. Hou Hsiao-hsien served as the assistant director for this film. After graduation, Xiao Ye continued to work on the fringes of the film world by coordinating a column on film criticism for the United Daily News.
After a year’s stint in New York, Xiao Ye returned to Taiwan and entered CMPC as a scriptwriter and production manager in 1982, and immediately set to co-writing a script with another new production assistant, Wu Nianzhen, for an anti-Communist film, 'Portrait of a Fanatic' (Kulian, 1982; dir. Wang Tong).
In 1989, he left CMPC, as did Wu Nianzhen.
Writer and key member of the early days of the New Cinema at CMPC studios. His most famous screenplay is that for Edward Yang's The Terrrorisers.
Before joining CMPC, he had established himself as a prominent writer. His work was very popular among college and high school students, and he remained one of the best-selling writers in the mid-1970s. The veteran director of youth stories, Bai Jingrui, took an interest in Xiao Ye’s collection of stories, Birth of a Moth (Yong zhi sheng). In 1977, Xiao Ye adapted his story “The War of the Sexes” (Nanhai yu nühai de zhanzheng) into a script that was produced by Young Sun. Hou Hsiao-hsien served as the assistant director for this film. After graduation, Xiao Ye continued to work on the fringes of the film world by coordinating a column on film criticism for the United Daily News.
After a year’s stint in New York, Xiao Ye returned to Taiwan and entered CMPC as a scriptwriter and production manager in 1982, and immediately set to co-writing a script with another new production assistant, Wu Nianzhen, for an anti-Communist film, 'Portrait of a Fanatic' (Kulian, 1982; dir. Wang Tong).
In 1989, he left CMPC, as did Wu Nianzhen.
The 'Formosa' Incident (Culture/History)
The KMT’s top-down political and social control finally faced a crisis in 1979 with the famous “Formosa incident” (Meilidao shijian). Formosa (“beautiful island,’’ a name given to Taiwan by Portuguese traders in the sixteenth century) was a magazine published by leading political dissidents, most of whom identified themselves as ethnic Taiwanese, not Chinese. Formosa was founded as a direct means to spread oppositional views. The dissidents assembled a rally in Kaohsiung, Taiwan’s second city, away from the political center of Taipei, to voice their demands for democracy.
The rally ended with a brutal crackdown and the arrest of almost all the elite members of the opposition. Evidence of police brutality was quickly and neatly suppressed. The rally was officially characterized as a “political disturbance and subversion of national security.” Yet the Formosa incident led intellectuals and middle-class cultural elites to reconsider issues of political and cultural legitimacy as represented by the KMT and its ideological foundations.
Anachronistic sinocentrism was under pressure and Taiwan nativism was upheld as a new direction for cultural production in an increasingly modernized, open society. Government’s brutal suppression of oppositional voices galvanized artists and writers to react in their own fields. If political liberation was premature and couldn’t be tolerated by the ruling regime, then perhaps milder reforms could be achieved in less threatening areas such as art, culture, and the cinema. Xiao Ye was in New York City when he discovered the uncensored reports of the Formosa incident. He decided to drop everything and returned home, starting a “revolution” from within. Upon his return, he entered CMPC to “work on the cinema and within the institution that I despised the most.”
[Taiwan, Treasure Island, 64-65]
See aldo Udden p49-50.
The rally ended with a brutal crackdown and the arrest of almost all the elite members of the opposition. Evidence of police brutality was quickly and neatly suppressed. The rally was officially characterized as a “political disturbance and subversion of national security.” Yet the Formosa incident led intellectuals and middle-class cultural elites to reconsider issues of political and cultural legitimacy as represented by the KMT and its ideological foundations.
Anachronistic sinocentrism was under pressure and Taiwan nativism was upheld as a new direction for cultural production in an increasingly modernized, open society. Government’s brutal suppression of oppositional voices galvanized artists and writers to react in their own fields. If political liberation was premature and couldn’t be tolerated by the ruling regime, then perhaps milder reforms could be achieved in less threatening areas such as art, culture, and the cinema. Xiao Ye was in New York City when he discovered the uncensored reports of the Formosa incident. He decided to drop everything and returned home, starting a “revolution” from within. Upon his return, he entered CMPC to “work on the cinema and within the institution that I despised the most.”
[Taiwan, Treasure Island, 64-65]
See aldo Udden p49-50.
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