I have seen 14 of the sets so far. They contain some of the most outstanding films in the Criterion Collection. As a rule, the Japanese sets are easy to recommend. All the sets I have seen are excellent.
- Eclipse 11: Larisa Shepitko (my favorite, see below)
- Eclipse 13: Kenji Mizoguchi's Fallen Women (contains two of the best films in the Criterion Collection - Women of the Night and, especially, Street of Shame)
- Eclipse 17: Nikkatsu Noir
- Eclipse 12: Aki Kaurismaki's Proletariat Trilogy
- Eclipse 32: Pearls of the Czech New Wave
But I also highly recommend:
Eclipse 4: Raymond Bernard
Eclipse 28: The Warped World of Koreyoshi Kurahara
Eclipse 5: The First Films of Samuel Fuller
Eclipse 15: Travels with Hiroshi Shimizu
Eclipse 21: Oshima's Outlaw Sixties - not for everyone, but I absolutely love it and consider it essential.
If you are interested, here are some thoughts I had previously posted on some of these sets two years ago:
Eclipse 11: Larisa Shepitko -
[Show spoiler]This is an outstanding pair of films. No one explores WWII themes consistently as good as the Russians. Shepitko is tops on my list of directors who died before they had a chance to really break onto the world stage (she was killed in a car accident after making only four films).
The Ascent is her final and most acclaimed film; it is brilliant and powerful. A story about two Russian soldiers-turned-partisans who find themselves trapped in a very bad situation and the choices each man must make. It is a very realistic look at the risks and terrors of being a partisan behind German lines in Belorussia (most were former Red Army soldiers cut-off by the German advance in 1941). The film explores the fragility of the human psyche and has some well done allegorical elements that elevate the story beyond the standard war movie. The ending is truly unforgettable. Another plus is the terrific musical score. It is one of my favorite pieces of music in a film; used sparingly, it builds at just the right moments to underline events with dramatic impact.
Wings is an under-appreciated gem of Russian cinema. A character drama, it explores the post-war frustrations and sorrows of a former female fighter pilot who, a decade after the war, is now head of a provincial school. She can't help but compare her present condition with her past. She realizes that the highlight of her life, the time when she felt the most alive, was the war. Now all she has to look forward to is a dreary bureaucratic job assigned to her by the state as a reward for being a war hero. She is in charge of mostly unappreciative and troublesome students who don't care about the war or its effects on Soviet society. But most of all she is conscious that she is growing older, and that she is haunted by memories from her past of a lost love. Very good stuff.
Eclipse 13: Kenji Mizoguchi's Fallen Women -
[Show spoiler]The four films in the set feel very real and identifiable. Like many of the characters in the Oshima and Kurahara sets, the characters in the Mizoguchi set are living on the edges or the underbelly of society. There are two pre-war and two post-war films in the set. As the title suggests, the subject matter is fallen women, how they got there, how their lives play out, and how they are viewed by others. Mizoguchi does a masterful job of exposing some of the darker aspects of Japanese society, where geishas, consorts, and prostitutes are both revered and reviled, an element of the culture that is closer to the surface and more an accepted part of everyday life than in many Western countries.
One theme persistent through all four films is that many of these women got to be who and where they are through the callous actions of inconsiderate and selfishly manipulative men. With a few exceptions, the men involved are not consciously cruel or violent; in fact, none of them is exceptional in any way, which makes these films all the more hard hitting and socially enlightening. The men portrayed are ordinary, basically acting out their traditional roles in Japanese society. I can imagine that in the time these films were made, for a film maker to take on these subjects must have been daring.
Osaka Elegy and Sisters of the Gion (1936) - Both of these pre-war films are well done with engaging stories. One memorable character from Osaka Elegy is the father of one of the women, an oafish man whose bad financial decisions have led his daughter to support him any way she can, including compromising herself in a destructive relationship as the mistress of her boss. Despite the degradations she endures, the father shows no remorse or even recognition of his role in the whole mess. He despises her, as does her sister and brother.
One thing I liked is that both films offer time capsule views of Osaka before the war. Vibrant neon nights portrayed in black and white, details of the city streets, shops, and homes, music and puppetry performances, people interacting in every day exchanges, all of it has an intimacy to it similar to what I felt watching People on Sunday. There is no hint that Japan was in the death grip of militancy at that time, just richly detailed human stories set in urban environments.
PQ for Osaka Elegy and Sisters of the Gion is rough, as might be expected for their age. Both need restoration and I would be interested in hearing how the Artificial Eye blu-rays of these two films look.
Women of the Night (1948) – This is a terrific and memorable hard-luck tale of two sisters trying to survive in the aftermath of Japan’s defeat in WWII. The film immediately establishes itself as noticeably darker in theme than the pre-war films. The story begins soon after the surrender, when soldiers and civilians posted in Korea and China are demobilizing and being repatriated home, many of them mental wrecks. One of the sisters is living with her in-laws while her husband is away overseas. She is caring for her own sick baby while helping to support her husband’s family, including a wastrel brother-in-law who is an ex-soldier drinking away bad memories instead of looking for work. About twenty minutes into the movie an event occurs that is immensely sad and moving, and the story shifts ahead a couple of years. I found Mizoguchi’s direction superb; he establishes so much human detail in the first minutes of the film that the viewer is swept away by unfolding events and plunged into the emotional turmoil that follows. This is an exceptional film, really well done.
Filmed a few years after the war, Women of the Night has little of the urban vibrancy of the 1936 films. Dilapidated buildings and bombed-out rubble are the backdrop. Life is recovering, the Japanese are rebuilding, businesses are struggling and attempting to grow, but the economy is precarious. It would not be until the Korean War (1950-1953) that Japan roared back, and this film shows life on the ground in Osaka a couple of years before.
Street of Shame (1956) - Absolutely brilliant!! A masterpiece of Japanese cinema. Street of Shame has no one main character, but instead focuses on five prostitutes working in the same brothel during a time when Japanese society is changing in its views toward prostitution, becoming less accepting and even debating laws to close the “comfort” houses. The debate is part morality campaign and part attempt to improve the standing of women in Japanese society by making prostitutes seek more useful and what is seen as less degrading employment. Mizoguchi's subtle direction shows how misguided these attempts are, that while seemingly well intentioned they are in fact causing misery and even greater despair and hardship in the lives of the women.
Mizoguchi also shows us a theme of social consciousness driven by a male point of view, and that not much will change in these women’s prospects even if the law passes. The women themselves recognize they have no skills that can gain them employment that pays anything close to prostitution, and yet they are trapped in a world of exploitation, perpetually in debt to men, whether it is the brothel owner, a husband who is unable to work, or a father who has enormous financial burdens.
There is so much depth of character in this film that each of the women stands on her own. One is a she-devil who uses her customers for financial gain to the point of ruining their lives, yet she is coldly calculating and perhaps the smartest of them all. Another is older, aware of her fading looks, and trying to maintain a relationship with a teenage son who cannot understand what she has gone through in life and hates her for being a prostitute despite all she has sacrificed for him. Another is a loving mother and wife, forced to make as much money as she can with her limited job prospects to support an unemployed husband and their baby. The husband is mentally defeated in his outlook on life, suicidal, and suffering from a sickness requiring expensive medicine. His problems are not specifically diagnosed, but he appears to be a war veteran suffering from malaria and post-traumatic stress.
The ending of Street of Shame is one of the greatest I have ever seen in a film. Simply devastating in its quiet, dramatic impact.
Eclipse 21: Oshima's Outlaw Sixties -
[Show spoiler]In my opinion, the films in this set are some of the most complex and least straght forward of the Japanese Eclipse sets. They are filled with symbolism and frequent absurdities, and some of the story constructs can make parts of them difficult to grasp, but if you make the attempt to take hold, the rewards are there in spades.
One thing I find striking about Oshima is that in many of his films he questions and raises awareness about the darker side of the Japanese psyche. He often acknowledges the postwar implications of the death-obsessed nature of many in Japanese society during the militaristic period before and during WWII, including its cultural impacts and carryover into a rebuilt and thriving Japan. He was doing this at a time when few others dared such a thing. The films in this set were all made barely 20 years after Japan's surrender, and only 10 years after the signing of a final peace treaty with the US.
Each film in the Eclipse set is unique, not just in plot, but also in overall look and "feel", even while re-using some of the same actors (who are invariably great in each role they play). In a way, Oshima's Outlaw Sixties is like a Japanese BBS set, all directed by Oshima. Pleasures of the Flesh and Japanese Summer: Double Suicide are probably my favorites.
The most complex and memorable film in the set by far, in my opinion, is Sing a Song of Sex. At its core, Sing a Song of Sex chronicles the actions of four disillusioned and frequently callous Japanese youths who seem only interested in pursuing a good time while remaining disinterested in the social activism swirling around them. Parts of the film are laugh-out-loud funny in the antics of the four students, making it both the most humorous and the most darkly serious film in the Eclipse set. It has multiple layers and subtexts involving, among other things, getting laid, forced sex fantasies, the poor treatment of Koreans in Japanese society, the clash of traditions vs 1960s modernism in post-war Japan, and even the deeper social and political meanings in bawdy pub songs sung by working class Japanese (hence, the title of the film). Ironically, the bawdy nature of these songs is why the young men enjoy them; singing these songs becomes the student's only real connection to the social activism surrounding them.
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