Different Angle Query on Japanese Film Remakes

Wed Jul 12 10:15:18 EDT 2006

Dear Minaguchi-san,

The books I mentioned are by Sato Tadao, rather than Tanaka. Sato traces Ukigusa Monogatari and Ukigusa back to The Barker, and mentions several other remakes. He does not connect Tokyo Monogatari and Make Way for Tomorrow, but a number of others do. There are three instances below.

1)
Article:
"Ozu's Tokyo Story and the 'recasting' of McCarey's Make Way for Tomorrow," by Arthur Nolletti Jr.

in
Ozu's Tokyo Story
Series: Cambridge Film Handbooks
Edited by David Desser
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
ISBN-13: 9780521482042 

2)
Comment:
"However, just as the once dismissed or nervously proffered early films of Robert Bresson (before he arrived at his 'spiritual style') have been the subject of increasing and admiring analysis, those of Ozu have recently received more attention, not so much to tame and taxonomize them for the myth of Ozu as minimalist, but to celebrate their tremendous achievement. In turn, the plotless 'purity' of Ozu’s postwar family dramas has been reconsidered to take into account their strains of satire and melodrama, their often brusque humour, and their continuing debt to American cinema. (TOKYO STORY, it is often noted, was inspired by Leo McCarey’s MAKE WAY FOR TOMORROW.) Clichèd descriptions of Ozu as 'the most Japanese of directors' and a Zen elegist and tragedian have been, if not overturned, inflected and complicated by such studies as Shigehiko Hasumi’s sly reading of Ozu’s 'excess of clarity' and David Bordwell’s magnificent film-by-film traversal of the career."

from:
http://www.e.bell.ca/filmfest/cinematheque/programmes_description.asp?progID=2&subProgID=78&subFlag=1

3)
US university film course syllabus:

"Compare a film made by a Japanese director and the same film made by an American director relative to the differences in the ways the films are handled (e.g. Rashomon/Outrage; Seven Samurai/Magnificent Seven; Ringu/Ringu; Tokyo Monogatari/Make Way for Tomorrow etc.)"

DEPARTMENT OF FILM STUDIES FILM 26 NATIONAL CINEMA: JAPAN 
ASSIGNMENTS JOHN BEATTY 
http://userhome.brooklyn.cuny.edu/anthro/jbeatty/COURSES/JapaneseFilm/assignments.htm

I have ordered more books about Ozu, to learn more, including one by Sato Tadao exclusively about Ozu, to look for more references. The only books I have on hand specifically on Ozu now are two French translations of: Ozu ou l'anti-cinema, by Yoshida Kiju; and Ozu Yasujiro, by Hasumi Shigehiko (Cahiers do Cinema).

With Best Wishes,

Michael McCaskey

----- Original Message -----
From: kiseko minaguchi <kiko at main.teikyo-u.ac.jp>
Date: Wednesday, July 12, 2006 1:01 am
Subject: Re: Different Angle Query on Japanese Film Remakes

> Michael,
> I'll try to scan what you picked up in Tanaka's books, which I 
> need to find 
> in the university library.
> I've never been informed of the Westrern source that could have 
> contributed 
> to the makin g of  Tokyo Monogatari . I wish to have that myself, 
> but I 
> doubt it had any.
> Minaguchi
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> ??? : "Michael McCaskey" <mccaskem at georgetown.edu>
> ?? : <KineJapan at lists.acs.ohio-state.edu>
> ???? : 2006?7?12? 1:19
> ?? : Re: Different Angle Query on Japanese Film Remakes
> 
> 
> > Dear Minaguchi-san,
> >
> > Thank you for your new information on Stella Dallas, and for 
> raising the 
> > Ozu point. According to Sato Tadao, in both Eiga shisoshi and 
> Nihon eiga 
> > shi, Ozu engaged in at least the "remakes" below, but Sato only 
> gives the 
> > titles, and little more information--I followed up in more 
> detail to check 
> > each out a bit more:
> >
> > (1)
> > Ozu Yasujiro’s 1933 film Dekigokoro, “Passing Fancy,” is about 
> the trials 
> > and tribulations in a family where the father becomes involved 
> with 
> > another woman, and this is resented by his son. This film is 
> supposed to 
> > have been inspired by King Vidor’s The Champ, a 1931 American 
> film about a 
> > boxer who encounters a woman his son becomes jealous of – until 
> the son 
> > finds out the woman is actually his mother.
> >
> > (2)
> > Ozu’s 1934 Ukigusa Monogatari, is the story of a father, a 
> traveling 
> > actor, who has a reunion with his illegitimate son after many 
> years of 
> > separation, in a town where the acting troupe is on tour. The 
> son thinks 
> > the man is his uncle, but a female performer in the troupe, 
> emotionally 
> > attached to the father, becomes resentful of this newly revived 
> > relationship, and sets out to try to undermine it. Ozu later 
> remade this 
> > 1934 silent film, in a 1959 version in color with sound, 
> shortening the 
> > title to Ukigusa.
> >
> > Ozu’s Ukigusa plot is supposed to have been based on that of The 
> Barker, a 
> > 1928 American film directed by George Fitzmaurice, who had 
> directed 
> > Rudolph Valentino in Son of the Sheik in 1926, and later 
> directed Greta 
> > Garbo in Mata Hari in 1931. In The Barker, a carnival barker 
> encounters 
> > his long-lost son, but the barker’s current girlfriend becomes 
> resentful 
> > when she discovers the barker has had another family, and the 
> barker tries 
> > to conceal his relationship with her from his son. She then 
> tries to 
> > seduce the son as a sort of revenge. The Barker was remade in 
> 1933, as 
> > Hoopla, with Clara Bow, and again in 1945 as The Diamond 
> Horseshoe, 
> > starring Betty Grable. The Barker surfaced once again, as an 
> early US TV 
> > drama, in the 1952 Broadway Television Theater series, under its 
> original 
> > title.
> >
> > (3)
> > Ozu made a 1936 film, Hitori Musuko (Only Son), his first sound 
> film, 
> > about a self-sacrificing mother who sends her son off to Tokyo, 
> and works 
> > hard to support him so he can have a better life than she has. 
> The son has 
> > his own ideas of what success is, however, and he and his mother 
> clash 
> > when she feels he has disappointed her, even marrying without 
> consulting 
> > her first. 
> (http://www.shochiku.co.jp/video/dvd/2003/da0269_5.html, 
> > accessed July 8, 2006).
> > This Ozu picture is said to have been inspired by Leo McCarey’s 
> Make Way 
> > for Tomorrow, though it’s hard to see how — there must be a 
> different US 
> > picture related to this one, but apparently Make Way for 
> Tomorrow is 
> > actually where Ozu got the idea for
> >
> > (4) Tokyo Story, where two old people also have a sad time 
> traveling.>
> > (5)
> > Ozu’s Chichi Ariki, “There Was a Father,” a 1942 film about a 
> > self-sacrificing widowed father, a teacher, devoted to bettering 
> his own 
> > son’s life, was based on the 1927 American film Sorrell and Son, 
> about a 
> > British father who devotes himself to putting his son through 
> medical 
> > school. This film was directed and scripted by Herbert Brenon, 
> who had 
> > made the first film version of The Great Gatsby the year before. 
> Sorrell 
> > and Son began as a very popular novel by the British writer 
> Warwick 
> > Deeping, and in 1933 it was remade in Britain as a sound film.
> >
> > If I've made any mistakes, please let me know so I can make 
> corrections.>
> > It seems unusual that Sato focused so much on these Ozu films as 
> remakes. 
> > He gives few other specific remake examples by anyone else. I 
> checked 
> > these all from other angles, and they all do seem to be verified 
> remakes. 
> > I have two books on Ozu, but they say nothing about these 
> remakes, so I'm 
> > getting other books on Ozu as well, including the one about Ozu 
> by Sato.
> >
> > I have also followed Aaron Gerow's very good suggestion, and put 
> in an 
> > interlibrary loan request for the Yamamoto Kikuo book, which 
> seems to be 
> > over 600 pages, so I should be able to find more numerous remake 
> examples 
> > by many other directors verified there. I had not planned to 
> write so much 
> > about early Japanese remakes of foreign films, but it seems I 
> need to find 
> > out about and write about more of them.
> >
> > With Many Thanks To All,
> >
> > Michael McCaskey
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > ----- Original Message -----
> > From: kiseko minaguchi <kiko at main.teikyo-u.ac.jp>
> > Date: Monday, July 10, 2006 9:19 pm
> > Subject: Re: Different Angle Query on Japanese Film Remakes
> >
> >> I would say Ozu's films have many which got inspiration from
> >> Hollywood
> >> films, which he intensively saw while stationed abroad. Concerning
> >> women's
> >> films, I mentioned much about the Japanese remaking of Stella 
> Dallas>> in my book CINEMA MATERNITY (sairyusha 2005. language: 
> Japanese)>> Minaguchi
> >> ----- Original Message ----- 
> >> ??? : "Aaron Gerow" <gerowaaron at sbcglobal.net>
> >> ?? : <KineJapan at lists.acs.ohio-state.edu>
> >> ???? : 2006?7?7? 14:33
> >> ?? : Re: Different Angle Query on Japanese Film Remakes
> >>
> >>
> >> >
> >> > On 2006.7.6, at 10:14  AM, Michael McCaskey wrote:
> >> >
> >> >> I also am trying to find some information, as historical
> >> background, on
> >> >> any significant pre-1940 Japanese remakes of any US or European
> >> films.
> >> >> There must have been some, I would think.
> >> >
> >> > The main source, if it has not already been mentioned, is
> >> Yamamoto Kikuo's
> >> > Nihon eiga ni okeru gaikoku eiga no eikyo (Waseda Shuppanbu,
> >> 1983). It
> >> > concentrates on the prewar and, since it focuses on contemporary
> >> reports
> >> > of influence, mentions many films that don't even exist today.
> >> >
> >> >
> >> > Aaron Gerow
> >> > Assistant Professor
> >> > Film Studies Program/East Asian Languages and Literatures
> >> > Yale University
> >> > 53 Wall Street, Room 316
> >> > PO Box 208363
> >> > New Haven, CT 06520-8363
> >> > USA
> >> > Phone: 1-203-432-7082
> >> > Fax: 1-203-432-6764
> >> > e-mail: aaron.gerow at yale.edu
> >> >
> >>
> >>
> > 
> 
> 