Review of Oshima's Night and Fog in Japan

After seeing an early Japanese silent film at MoMA in New York my enthusiasm for Japanese film has been reinvigorated. I did some light research about Shochiku Studios which together with Toho Studios were the major film studios in Japan. I've seen several films by Ozu and have watched Tokyo Story several times. Yet I felt like the narratives get stale and too domestic. Not that domestic is such a bad term. Throughout the 1950s both in Japan and the United States domestic films were very popular, but, in the words of Hauldin Caulfield, they became "phony." by the end of the fifties. And I think Ozu's films started to become more and more phony as the years progressed. Which leads me to the film I am reviewing for this blog, Night and Fog in Japan by Nagisa Oshima.

Oshima is, perhaps, the best director of the Japanese "new wave." He has been called the Jean luc Godard of Japan. After seeing this film I believe the comparison is justified. Night and Fog is a dense political film about student protesters in 50s Japan. There are is some really excellent writing. The dialogue is very sophisticated as well as the plot and characters.

The film centers on a group of students who are active members of protest groups, some of them are Socialist. They are united in their opposition to numerous laws that the Japanese Diet is going to pass during the movie. Through flashbacks, mostly, we see how the students suffer from the brutality of Japanese police. There is also a severe sense of paranoia which pervades the students activities. This becomes the central conflict of the film. Whether or not someone they caught trying to steal documents was a spy or not and whether or not one of their own was also a spy. The students suspect that Takao, one of their own, helped the spy escape and is really a government agent. It turns out in the end that they were wrong to suspect him and that no one spoke up because it would expose a pre-marital affair between two students. Takao committs suicide and several of the relationships within the group are badly damaged.

Oshima presents a distinct new way of making films. Ozu was from the same studio, Shochiku, as Oshima, but their films are very different. Oshima is much more confrontational. He calls into question Japanese alliance with the United States. He exposes the conflicts that young Japanese had in living their lives; not being sent off to war again, not living in poverty, not living in sin. To have young peoples issues portrayed in all their ugliness was something that Oshima does well. Rather than some film essay about Confucian values, the ills of modernization, or some such thing you would find in an Ozu film, Oshima presents a new era and he was not alone. Godard was doing it in France and Fellini was doing it in Italy. The New Wave broke in Japan with Oshima's three films all released in 1960.

Furthermore, I especially like some of the camera shots and lighting throughout the film. It gave it an avant-garde aspect. It was definitely new and unique; a break with tradition.