![Eclipse Series 21: Oshima's Outlaw Sixties (The Criterion Collection) [DVD]](https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/712rBX3LgLL._AC_UL160_SR160,160_.jpg)
Never having seen a film by Hiroshi Shimizu before, I was totally unprepared for these four gems.
Shimizu was a prolific director whose work (a great deal of which seems to have been lost) spanned the silent and sound ages of film, so it is not possible to say whether these are his best or most representative works. The four films here include one silent production and three pre-war sound films. Interestingly, the most recent of them (1941), "Ornamental Hairpin", has survived least well. That's not to say this DVD edition is bad quality - only a few scenes are seriously degraded, and the the film's intrinsic interest overwhelms any such concern. The three earlier films are wonderfully preserved.
All share a similar theme: a character's desire for escape from a social predicament. Shimizu's method is completely fresh: he deftly combines humour with pathos, cinematic artistry with subtle characterisation. The stories flow with no sense whatsoever of premeditated staging. Shimizu was famous for working outside a script and improvising scenes. This leads to some genuine surprises. In "Mr Thank You", for instance, Shimizu and crew came across a group of Korean labourers walking a rural backroad between assignments, and incorporated them into the story. This is consistent with the director's abiding interest in non-mainstream and working class characters, particularly women of the "water trade" (mizu shobai).
"Mr Thank You" possibly best illustrates Shimizu's strengths as a film-maker. He takes a very simple situation - a bus journey through rural Izu (beautifully shot) - and makes it a vehicle for a penetrating study of character and social conditions. The overt lightness of the subject-matter is the enabling means for Shimizu to lead the viewer, almost unawares, into deep sympathy with the bus's disparate group of passengers. It is the nearest thing to a perfect film: wonderful to look at; constantly surprising; and, at the end, leaving the viewer wondering how he came to be so deeply affected.
"Japanese Girls At the Harbour" - the silent offering - is fascinating for several reasons. It includes mixed-race Japanese characters, which is quite unusual. It contains some stunningly beautiful images of Yokohama, just a decade after the Great Kanto Earthquake. And it conveys a strong impression of the social tensions building in Japanese society during the Taisho Era.
"The Masseurs and a Woman" has similarities to "Ornamental Hairpin". Both are set in a mountain hot-spring resort, both use blind masseur characters as a vehicle for social satire, both feature a woman trying to escape from a courtesan relationship, and both play with, but discard, conventions of romance. The former film is the slighter of the two, but perhaps they are best viewed as bookends to the several years separating their production, during which Japan went from war against China to the cusp of war against the Western Allies. Politics and social commentary seem far removed from the settings of these films - the characters are overtly in retreat from the world of action - and yet, as with "Mr Thank You", Shimizu draws themes of unexpected depth and seriousness out of apparently trivial or commonplace situations. His satirical touch is superb and left me gasping at times at its daring.
Highly recommended.
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