Why are Japanese films so great?
Growing up and watching the television program At the Movies I always thought that American and French cinema were the greatest but now I realise that it's the Americans and the Japanese who are the undisputed masters of film
Why were the French so highly rated? It just doesn't make much sense to me when you look at the list of the greatest French films and all you find is good films, not truly great ones
Is it their tradition of theatre? The British had a theatre tradition but they don't really compare
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They're disciplined, have wonderful visual good taste and judiciousness and the emotions and themes they approach are often very unique.
What do you think about the complaints about their acting? Personally I don't really see it and in fact I enjoy it a lot
Thanks my friend
Bumping for a genuine post about Japanese film for a change.
https://mubi.com/en/lists/japanese-movies-all-time-best-200-kinejun-readers
Is this any good?
Could be much better
Not him but I always supposed the "bad Japanese acting" is just a meme because that's how Japs act in real life too. Also who tf cares about acting
The fact that Samurai Rebellion isn't even on the list is totally mystifying to me.
Anyway the list suffers from the same species of problem as other such lists (reddit, imdb, here); it's infected by recognition/popularity/how influential the film was or is (both on other films and in conversation)/social biases rather than an attempt at objectivity
I've only seen 41 of the movies on the list, but I am confident that Intentions of Murder and Japan's Longest Day should be higher, and Miyazaki is wholly overrated by everyone
>The fact that Samurai Rebellion isn't even on the list is totally mystifying to me.
Maybe Japanese audiences just don't care for it as much as westerners who've seen it.
it's still weird, since Samurai Rebellion received Kinema Junpo's Best Film, Best Director, and Best Screenplay awards for 1968, and it's a list of Kinema Junpo readers
anyway it still mogs the vast majority of the list, I wouldn't trust anyone who had it outside of their top 25 Japanese films
>and it's a list of Kinema Junpo readers
Yeah, but since this list was made 41 years later, it's almost entirely different people voting.
it's still thoroughly strange, since over a third of the list is older than Samurai Rebellion which suggests that the respondents themselves skew old and would/should be familiar with it
Also Onibaba isn't on the list, which is another weird omission
Seriously overrating Samurai Rebellion. Not even a top 10 samurai film, and not even Kobayashi's best samurai flick.
I agree, but I still prefer it to Kwaidan
Samurai Rebellion is good, but not that special. The bigger Kobayashi omission is Kwaidan.
SR > Kwaidan
>The fact that Samurai Rebellion isn't even on the list is totally mystifying to me.
It has pretty much the same message and theme as Harakiri, and Harakiri does it much better. Samurai Rebellion is probably not on the list because most Kobayashi fans just voted for Harakiri instead.
Some good hidden gems (Take Care, Little Red Riding Hood), some mediocre obscurities (Disciples of Hippocrates), some overrated normie directors (Miyazaki), some glaring omissions (no Yoshida?), some utter trash (Nakashima), some kaiju bullshit, and a lot of canonized stuff (Golden Age and JNW) that is mostly worth watching.
Japan's Longest Day is boring, Okamoto has better movies
Japan's Longest Day is a historical drama about decisions and values and machinations and tradeoffs in a dire situation. It's not exciting in an action-movie sense and it's not supposed to be.
Sure, Sword of Doom is his best movie (and also an omission from the list), but seeing Longest Day below shit like Kiki's Delivery Service or Gamera: Guardian of the Universe hurts me in my soul
when you talk about japanese film, you talk about cinema in spiritual way. Spiritualism is how they approach filmmaking, this resulting in a lot of moral tale and sociocultural stuff scattered throughout the movie.
Lets take a simple example of 'I was born but..' a cinema directed by ozu. This movie predates corporate hierarchy that was combined with asian culture way before corporatism was existed in every asian nation. Everything that you found in this film can be easily found in every asian nation today.
The second example would be 'Sansho the Bailiff', directed by OP pic. Sansho the Bailiff is about motherly love, despite modern critics said it was a political movie about le era in japan history about le slavery, it was actually about a motherly love with a spiritual approach, resulting in a beautiful film, one of my favorites all the time despite me not always agreeing with mizoguchi ideology all the time.
Japan started to change the tide in its filmmaking started from late 60s or early 70s, particularly with pinku genre rising up from the ground. They began to forget about their classic filmmaking way and began to produce cyberpunk film, mafia-delinquent film, pink film, and lots of romance comedies. Both are equally interesting to watch especially japanese cyberpunk.
I don't remember much motherly love in Sansho the Bailiff
Isn't it about Buddhist ethics?
>Isn't it about Buddhist ethics?
yes, but there's also this tale of motherly love delivered throughout the film, by a whisper, a hardship that was endured by the family, a separation, struggle, and melancholy scenes, this aspect exists in almost every single sequence on this film. Just like any other mizoguchi film, there's always this simple kind of moral theme that exist as the core premise of his film
Japanese basically stopped making any good movies four decades ago
The French were more obviously inspired by their contemparies and obviously making movies out of sick archetypical French sadism (still entertaining films mind you) while the nips were seriously divinely inspired to create boundary pushing beauty, all the way up to wong kor wai ffs.
But yeah it was a great realisation when I figured out Asian cinema produced undoubtedly the coolest movies ever, still never found anything as awesome as kwaidan. Japan numba 1 all time
Italian film are far better than French or American film with more soul
Where do I start?
I don't like sex or romance
>I don't like sex or romance
Well then, uh..
Start with Italian Neorealism: for instance Vittorio De Sica's Umberto D. has a simmilar plot to Kurosawa's Ikiru (coincidentially both films were released in the same year).
Rossellini's War Trilogy, Bicycle Thieves, Shoeshine, Europa '51, La Terra Trema
Japs, Americans AND Germanics are the undisputed masters of cinema. Otherwise there's no Bergman, Dreyer, Murnau, Riefenstahl, Lang, etc.
By "Americans" you mean israelites
I mean Griffith and Ford and the like.
They get mogged by Hitchwiener and Hollyjews
Get real. Someone like Kubrick wouldn't even exist without them.
He's better than them
As an artist? maybe. As a director? No way. Even from an artistic perspective he is cold and lacking in genius.
>Why were the French so highly rated? It just doesn't make much sense to me when you look at the list of the greatest French films and all you find is good films, not truly great ones
One word: Gance.
Only Amerimutt thinks that American garbage movies are considered "films". Polish, Czech. Portuguese are infinitely better
French silent period > early French sound period > French new wave > cinéma du look > everything after
The French have only gotten worse over time.
They’re great because all the Japanese directors were influenced by high literature.
Why do people love Ozu so much?
I fricking hate that guy
Tokyo Story is a shit film
It's basically just 'you have a shit and disappointing life and then you die, suck it up b***h'
Mono no aware my fricking ass, I wish I could have given Ozu a smack down for this crime against humanity
Japanese films haven't been "Good" in decades. I've seen recent Chinese films better than almost any Japanese film since the 60's. And Korea destroys both in quality several times over.
Bait
It's true, though.
It isn't though
seriously, what happened to the Japs? they used to have so many highlights and led Asian cinema alongside Hong Kong. nowadays, the output of both those countries is pretty miserable. every noted Jap movie is now either some action or drama with that Hidetoshi dude as a protagonist or the yearly Kore-eda slop. dire...
>seriously, what happened to the Japs?
The popularity of cinema in Japan fell massively, fricking up several of their film studios, and leading to smaller budgets and less creative freedom for filmmakers. Gotta do what sells, and now what sells are anime, romance flicks for women, and live-action manga adaptations.
But it did result in the V-cinema movement though
Which pretty much died 20 years ago, and now there's barely anything. Shit sucks.
Unironically anime. There's no point in throwing together a visual masterpiece when weebs will spend millions fapping to the latest 2d prostitute pretending to be "pure".
Yes I'm salty. The entire Gacha industry is a good reason to chuck an asteroid at humanity.
What? The movie camera was invented by two French people. The format of all modern films was also instigated by the French new wave movement. It's very easy to see why French cinema is highly rated. France has the richest cinema history of all. Whether you like the movies or not is of course a matter of opnion but it is a fact that French film is an extremely important part of the history of the medium.
they're used to non verbal communication
They have a very rich culture to draw from and the Japanese are inherently creative people. Anime was unfortunate though. It's seeped into movies which are basically live action anime even if they aren't based on any. I can't stomach that style, honestly. Hana-bi is one example for me how good their cinema can get.
recommend me japanese kino bros
a list or something
Literally just about anything he did, especially his first few movies. Hana-Bi is his most well regarded I'd say, but I'd say start from the beginning with Violent Cop
>nothing after 2008
>grow up in a rough society
>get fricked by america
>ethics and humanity get put into question
>get suspiciously "miraculous" influx of money to repair economy
>have enough capital to fund projects through 70s-80s
>have enough capital to fund projects through 70s-80s
The 70s and 80s are when the Japanese film industry struggled to even stay alive. Several studios and filmmakers got majorly fricked over due to radically shrinking profits.
The peak of their film industry was from the late 40s to the early 60s.
yeah the 70s are probably the hardest time their industry had to go through, but at least they still managed to produce kino throughout it on smaller budgets
>Why are Japanese films so great?
Akira Kurosawa was asked this in an interview once and he said that just two things allowed the Japanese film industry to produce so many great films: Funding and creative freedom.