Different Angle Query on Japanese Film Remakes

Tue Jul 18 03:17:21 EDT 2006

Michael,
I have Sato's book and so I would check what concerns you. I have to thank 
you that you seem to have read
my article on ICONICS about the prewar Japanese maternal melodramas and 
Stella Dallas I expored in terms of
film reviews aqnd feminist criticism.
Minaguchi
----- Original Message ----- 
??? : "Michael McCaskey" <mccaskem at georgetown.edu>
?? : <KineJapan at lists.acs.ohio-state.edu>
???? : 2006?7?12? 23:15
?? : Re: Different Angle Query on Japanese Film Remakes


> 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.) Clich?d 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
>> >> >
>> >>
>> >>
>> >
>>
>>
>
>