Mad, Bad, and Dangerous: Woman of the Lake

A pretty young wife and an older, well-heeled husband are usually a recipe for trouble on the big screen. Indeed, adultery is a frequent occurrence in the Japanese New Wave films of actress-producer Mariko Okada directed by her collaborator-husband Kiju Yoshida. True to form, infidelity and betrayal drive Yoshida’s Woman of the Lake, which screens this Sunday as part of the Japan Society’s Mad, Bad, and Dangerous to Know: Three Untamed Beauties, a fascinating retrospective of three bold postwar actresses whose films defied traditional cultural stereotypes for Japanese women.

Miyako Mizuki does not love her husband. Bored, she finds distraction, but not satisfaction in the arms of another man. One fateful night, she allows him to take compromising photos of her, but insists on handling the development herself. Unfortunately, on her way home she is accosted by a strange man, who steals her purse with the negatives inside. Soon enough, the thief turns blackmailer, using the negatives to lure Mizuki to the Katayamazu resort town. However, his ultimate motives remain obscure.

Often seen in a waifish white dress, Okada’s Mizuki looks like a vision of purity. Yet, she is far more complicated than she might appear. It should not be giving much away to say she is indeed dangerous to know, given the title of the film series. Manipulative and vulnerable in equal measure, Okada perfectly calibrates her portrayal, keeping viewers consistently off-balance. It is exactly the kind of challenging performance the Mad, Bad series is all about.

Based on a novel by Nobel Prize winner Yasunari Kawabata, Lake incorporates elements of film noir and the intimately observed relationship drama, addressing very adult themes with a frankness that still seems provocative over forty years later. Tatsuo Suzuki’s gorgeous black-and-white cinematography is visually striking, following well within the noir tradition, while Sei Ikeno’s sparse flute themes create a disconcerting sense of apprehension. It is an example of masterful filmmaking.

Like Ayako Wakao whose films launched the Mad, Bad series, Okada was a beautiful and challenging actress, whose roles defied social norms, remaining enormously influential to this day. Having a rare opportunity to see great films like Lake that are not currently available on DVD here in America has been a gift to cineastes. Lake screens at the Japan Society this Sunday (4/18), followed by the series closer, Yasuzo Masumura’s Two Wives, starring both Okada and Wakao.

(Photos © Shochi Co. Ltd.)

Mad, Bad, and Dangerous: Impasse

A sweet-tempered little boy, Takashi will hopefully never know the trouble he caused. He is the product of the then (1967) unheard of process of artificial insemination, and his mother will not let his ostensive father forget it. Indeed, stereotypes of the nobly suffering mother are turned on their head in Kiju Yoshida’s Impasse, which screens as part of the Japan Society’s, Bad, and Dangerous to Know: Three Untamed Beauties, their continuing retrospective of three Japanese actresses whose work pointedly challenged traditional cinematic roles for Japanese women.

Originally, it was Ibuki’s idea to try artificial insemination. With the arrival of Takashi, everything initially seemed to work out just fine. However, his mother Ritsuko is haunted by the notion that she knows the donor-father and was in some sense intimate with him (either physically or metaphorically. The tension between her and Ibuki only gets worse when their supposed friends the Sakaguchis visit.

In many ways, Impasse (a.k.a. Flame and Woman) suggests Godard at his more restrained. Through the lens of cinematographer Yuji Okumura, their house resembles a weird collaboration between Frank Lloyd Wright and M.C. Esher, with its constant play of light and shadows cast at striking angles. For long stretches, Yoshida eschews dialogues, lovingly capturing the ambient outside noises. At other times, the background noise drops out in favor of dialogue rendered through eerie voice-overs. Yet despite the bold stylistic elements, it is the couple’s increasingly bitter drama that really leaves a mark.

Even in translation, the gist of what Ritsuko says is scaldingly clear. Her contempt and resentment is palpable. Like Ayako Wakao and Yasuzo Masumura, Mariko Okada and Yoshida had a long and fruitful collaborator as leaders of the so-called Japanese “New Wave” movement. Projecting inner turmoil while maintaining an icy, severe demeanor, she is a withering presence in Impasse. Yet, Mayumi Ogawa’s Shina Sakaguchi might be even madder, badder, and more dangerous to know. Capricious and maybe a bit insane, she is a viscerally disconcerting presence throughout the film.

While at times visually gorgeous, Impasse cuts like a knife. These are people who know exactly what to say to hurt each other. Fascinating and engrossing, it is a surprisingly frank film even by contemporary standards. Genuine art-cinema featuring a searing lead performance from Okada, Impasse is highly recommended. The first of three Okada-Yoshida collaborations programmed during Mad, Bad, it screens at the Japan Society this coming Wednesday (4/14).

Mad, Bad, and Dangerous: Seisaku’s Wife

The village refers to Seisaku as their "role model soldier." They have much ruder terms for Okane, a former kept woman. Much to everyone’s displeasure, an intimate relationship develops between the fallen woman and the village paragon in Yasuzo Masumura’s Seisaku’s Wife, one of four films starring Ayako Wakao selected for the Japan Society’s Mad, Bad, and Dangerous to Know: Three Untamed Beauties retrospective of great femme fatales in Japanese cinema, which screens this Friday.

Marriage has not been good to Okane. Her first was more of a commercial transaction that culminated with her inheritance of a modest nest egg. When she returns to her old family home with her elderly mother, the gossipy villagers shun her, knowing full well her checkered past. However, the straight-arrow Seisaku finds her interesting, which she most certainly is indeed.

Seisaku marries Okane, but since his family refuses to acknowledge it, they have what we might think of as a common-law relationship. Yet, they are happy for a while. Of course, there are storm clouds on the horizon, including a brewing war with Russia and the enormous social pressures Okane must endure.

Never a director to shy away from controversial material, Masumura mixes a robust cocktail in Wife, incorporating the fallen woman drama, a scathing depiction of small town narrow-mindedness, a protest against gender-based double standards, and a pointed critique of Imperial Japanese militarism (set in this case during the Russo-Japanese War). Yet it is Wakao’s film, body and soul.

Okane is definitely a femme fatale. Emotionally overwrought and unpredictable, she represents a dangerous presence throughout the film. Yet, she is also deeply human and painfully vulnerable. She is after all, the sum product of her hardscrabble environment and exploitative relationships. In a powerful and richly nuanced performance, Wakao is absolutely enthralling as the defiant but insecure Okane. (Truly, nobody could keep up with her in Masumura’s audacious films.)

Layering passionate heat atop a story of high tragedy, Wife is compulsively watchable art cinema. It is also another fine example of the perfectly attuned collaborations between Wakao and Masumura. Currently not available on DVD in America, Wife should not be missed when it screens at the Japan Society this Friday (4/2) as part of their enormously entertaining (and challenging) Mad, Bad, and Dangerous retrospective.

Photos © Kadokawa Pictures, Inc.

Mad, Bad, and Dangerous: Red Angel

In 1996, an ailing Michelangelo Antonioni willed himself out of bed to attend a retrospective of Yasuzo Masumura’s work. Of course, they would not have been the same films without his frequent muse, the great Ayako Wakao, one of three actresses featured in the Japan Society’s new film series, Mad, Bad, and Dangerous to Know: Three Untamed Beauties. Though perhaps their best known collaboration internationally, Masumura’s Red Angel might be something the outlier of the series when it screens this Thursday.

Nurse Nishi is not bad, and frankly she is entitled to be a lot madder than she is. However, knowing her, or anyone else on the Sino-Japanese frontlines during WWII, is certainly dangerous. For Nishi, even her patients represent a clear and present danger. Still, she does her duty faithfully, but is wracked with guilt none the less. Two cases especially trouble her conscience: a wounded soldier who had once attacked her and the multiple-amputee she had shared brief intimate moments with out of compassion.

Despite all the gore and suffering around her, Nishi falls in love with her senior officer, Dr. Akabe. Once a skilled surgeon, he has become little more than an amputator, making triage decisions as quickly as possible. Now addicted to morphine to dull his conscience, Nishi struggles to reawaken his emotions.

While the nurse-doctor relationship might sound like the stuff of weepy melodrama, Angel is a starkly realistic depiction of the staggering human cost of war. Indeed, the sight of severed limbs is relatively common throughout the film. Though not as epic Kobayashi’s Human Condition film cycle, it is far more graphic, perhaps surpassing its revisionist depiction of the Imperial Japanese military’s brutality.

When considering Wakao’s body of work, Angel is an indispensible film. Though she considers herself a murderess, Nishi is really a sympathetic figure, suffering from massive survivor’s guilt and multiple other traumas. Still, she is something of a cinematic survivor in the Scarlett O’Hara tradition. It is an achingly compelling performance, nicely matched by Shinsuke Ashida’s understated turn as Akabe.

Though Masumura’s visuals shockingly illustrate the horrors of war, he handles the personal dramas with extraordinary sensitivity. It is in fact, quite a humanistic film that resists condemning the often brutish Japanese soldiers, blaming instead the nature of war for their specific crimes (in some cases to an extent that is actually problematic).

Over forty years after its initial release, Angel is still a viscerally powerful anti-war film. While it takes a bit of shoehorning to get it into a film series devoted to wicked femme fatales and action rebels, it is worth the stretch. A classic collaboration between Wakao and Masumura, Angel screens at the Japan Society this Thursday (4/1) as the Mad, Bad, and Dangerous series continues.

Mad, Bad, and Dangerous: Tattoo

Yes, Otsuya is a geisha, but if you expect her to be passive and meek, you would assume incorrectly. One can tell just by looking at her that Otsuya is serious trouble, yet it is equally clear why men keep falling for her in Yasuzo Masumura’s Tattoo (trailer here), which fittingly launches Mad, Bad, and Dangerous to Know: Three Untamed Beauties (series trailer here), the Japan Society’s retrospective of three actresses whose films subvert and contradict the prevailing screen stereotypes of Japanese women. Think of it as the anti-geisha series, notwithstanding Ayako Wakao’s Otsuya.

Her father’s apprentice does not seem like much, but Otsuya convinces Shinsuke to run away with her anyway. Unfortunately, they seek shelter from the wrong person. While Otsuya is sold into servitude as a geisha, Shinsuke finds himself a murderer on the run, having killed his own would-be assassin.

Not surprisingly, Otsuya demonstrates a remarkable aptitude for the seductive geisha business. She does not have much choice though. Having been branded with a man-eating geisha-spider tattoo by her purchaser, Otsuya carries the permanent mark of her new life. Though she claims her tattoo has an eerie power over her, it is hard to tell just how different the new Otsuya truly is from the old. Perhaps only her social context has changed. It hardly matters for the men in orbit around her though. Slowly but surely, her fugitive lover, the man who betrayed them, her former master, and the artist who tattooed her, all become enmeshed in her web.

Much like the celebrated collaborations between Setsuko Hara and Yasujiro Ozu, Wakao was a frequent muse-like presence in Masumura’s films, including all four of her selections in the Mad, Bad series. Clearly not intimidated by edgy subject matter, Masumura was considered the forerunner of the so-called Japanese “New Wave.” Yet he apprenticed under master filmmakers Kenji Mizoguchi and Kon Ichikawa. Just as Masumura defies easy classification, so does Tattoo, a film distinguished by the richly elegant look and feel of Japanese art cinema, despite its often sensational storyline.

Characters frequently make decisions in Tattoo that are both morally and logically indefensible, but as melodrama, it is all great fun. Sultry and severe, Wakao’s performance as Otsuya ranks with Gene Tierney in Leave Her to Heaven as one of the all-time great screen femme fatales. With an emasculating gaze, she reduces the rest of the cast to sniveling children. She is indeed dangerous to know.

Tattoo is one of those films in which the audience never develops a true rooting interest per se. Instead, most viewers will watch in rapt fascination to see what amoral depths the characters will sink to. Yet, Masumura’s visual sense and Wakao’s riveting performance are so compelling it is ultimately a thoroughly entertaining, highly recommended cinematic experience. Not currently available on DVD in America, the Japan Society’s screening will be a rare opportunity to see it. A perfect choice to open the retrospective, Tattoo kicks off Mad, Bad this Wednesday (3/31).

Photos © Kadokawa Pictures, Inc.