Figures Traced in Light: On Cinematic Staging

[1] Introduction

[2] Revising Our Sense of Feuillade

[3] Mizoguchi the Inexhaustible

[4] Cheerful Staging: Hou’s Early Films

[5] Staging and Stylistics: Some Further Business

[6] Misprints, Mistakes, and Missed Opportunities

Misprints, Mistakes, and Missed Opportunities

[p. 21] : I claim that Kuleshov completed The Revolutionary after Bauer’s death. That’s an error. Bauer lived to complete The Revolutionary. After his death Kuleshov completed The King of Paris (1917). Thanks to Yuri Tsivian for noticing the slip.

[p. 83] : I attribute The Cuckoo (Hototogisu, 1922) to Makino Shozo. It was actually directed by Ikeda Yoshinobu. Thanks to Alexander Jacoby for pointing this out.

[p. 92] : I discuss a scene from The Life of Oharu (Saikaku ichidai onna, 1952). Oharu receives a farewell letter from her lover Katsunosuke, who has been executed. Grabbing a knife, she runs out into a bamboo glade, followed by her mother. Before Oharu can kill herself, her mother wrestles the knife from her and both collapse sobbing in extreme long shot.

Fig. 1

Fig. 2

I should have mentioned is that this scene carries over a motif from an earlier scene in a garden, when Oharu fainted at Katsunosuke’s declaration of love. That scene ended with his carrying her into the inn, and it marks the beginning of their affair (Fig. 1). At the close of the scene, Mizoguchi’s camera gently tilts down to reframe two small stupas, traditional Buddhist symbols of earth’s elements and of spiritual enlightenment (Fig. 2).

Fig. 3The stupa motif reappears in the bamboo-glade scene. Trying to wriggle away from her mother, Oharu crawls toward a pair of stupas in the distance. Evidently she had planned to kill herself there. So far away is Mizoguchi’s camera position that the stupas are just barely visible in my frame enlargements on p. 93, but they are definitely there in the original film, and perhaps they can be seen more clearly in this frame, just to right of center (Fig. 3). In effect Mizoguchi gives the love of Oharu and Katsunosuke a spiritual validation, in sharp contrast to the social oppression that divides them.

[p. 94] : I claim that Naruse Mikio arranges five figures in various zones of a shot from The Whole Family Works (Hataratu ikka, 1939). After seeing the film again in a good print, I find that he actually includes seven figures in the shot. All of them are dimly visible in my still on p. 95.

© David Bordwell 2006.

[1] Introduction

[2] Revising Our Sense of Feuillade

[3] Mizoguchi the Inexhaustible

[4] Cheerful Staging: Hou’s Early Films

[5] Staging and Stylistics: Some Further Business

[6] Misprints, Mistakes, and Missed Opportunities