More on Ozu

[Michael Raine]

 I'm pretty sure that Yamamoto Kikuo says this too. Sometimes I wish he
would specify a bit more precisely what he means by "eikyo" (influence)
instead of just piling up synonyms. Hon'an eiga may be the most common but
there are plenty of others. I just found another in my notes: tsugihagi -
the Japanese film as a "patch and mend" version of the original! 

By the way, Tom Lamarre has an interesting reading of Tanizaki on film as a
challenge to the Platonic distinction between original and copy in his
recent Shadows on the Screen. Has anyone else read it? It might be
interesting to look at that while thinking about remakes. Tanizaki wasn't
the first, of course; I think you can find a tension between ontological
substitution and parodic iteration in the earliest understandings of
mimesis. It seems to me that a similarly paradoxical "cultural mimesis" is a
common response to geopolitical unevenness. Anyway...

Michael

-----Original Message-----
From: Michael E Kerpan [mailto:kerpan at attglobal.net] 
Sent: Wednesday, July 12, 2006 6:57 PM
To: KineJapan at lists.acs.ohio-state.edu
Subject: Re: More on Ozu

Although Desser linked "Make Way for Tomorrow" with "Tokyo Story" (probably
correctly), I would suggest that it is linked at least as closely with an
earlier Ozu film -- "Brothers and Sisters of the Toda Family".  While this
involves a widowed mother and a younger sister (instead of a mother and
father), the tone of Todas (a bit one-sided and sometimes sarcastic) and its
plot structure are much more like McCarey's film than those of "Tokyo
Story".

Michael Kerpan
Boston