Mizoguchi Film of Rumor, Production Design and Emotional Register
by
Kato Mikiro
from:
Let me begin with a native question: who is Mizoguchi Kenji*1? The auteurist
critics, even Jean-Luc Godard, would not know who he is. Even the biographers
who worked earnestly under the director, such as Shindo Kaneto and Yoda Yoshikata,*2
seem not to tell us who the director really was.
But let me answer the question tentatively: Mizoguchi Kenji is
the name for a filmic existence who had good control of the quintessential elements
in a film. A narrative film consists mainly of light, production design, actors
and script. No other director seems to know better than Mizoguchi Kenji how
these four elements should be integrated onto the silver screen. Indeed in any
Mizoguchi film, a script is precisely translated into a beautiful three-dimensional
set around which an actor moves, and on which light is shed to convey emotional
emphasis. Space, motion and emotion are concisely and symbolically interrelated.
As director, Mizoguchi Kenji accomplished such a filmic interrelation. And he
considered production design to be the most important element. Okamoto ken-ichi,
a lighting director*3 of Mizoguchi's films, once told me that Mizoguchi insisted
on the authenticity of the set. Nevertheless, no critical studies seem to have
ever tried to examine the importance of the set in Mizoguchi's films.
The present essay analyses how the production design in Mizoguchi's films functions
in order to tell an emotional tale effectively. For convenience and economy
of analysis, I mainly discuss Woman of Rumor, which, despite undeniably
superb performance of the actress Tanaka Kinuyo, has enjoyed insufficient critical
attention not only in the United States but also in Japan. Woman of Rumor
is a late film, coming after Sansho the Bailiff and followed by Crucified
Lovers (A Story by Chikamatsu). But Woman of Rumor is not less important
than these two internationally acclaimed films. Indeed Woman of Rumor (1954)
is more passionate than Jacques Doillon's La Pirate (1984) and even more
precisely than Max Ophuls' Letter from an Unknown Woman (1948). Remarkably
astounding is the authenticity and precision of the production design by Mizutani
Hiroshi and the properties supplied by Kozu Shokai Co.,Inc. In the beautiful
okiya (a kind of boarding house for geishas) set, the bustling mistress of the
house (Tanaka Kinuyo) comes into conflict with her younger lover and her own
daughter. The supertechnical combination of Miyagawa Kazuo's camera and Okamoto
Ken-ichi's lighting captures this tense love triangle in an almost documentary-like
style of detachment. Just as in his own Sisters of Gion,
the screenwriter Yoda Yoshikata (whose family name is given as homage to an
Oriental sage appearing in The Empire Strikes Back) vividly depicts women
of firm determination whose attitudes toward life form a striking contrast to
those of indecisive, irresponsible men in Kyoto. Two examples would sffice to
show how Mizoguchi Kenji minutely constructed the emotional aspect of Woman
of Rumor through the production design. As the manager of geishas of the
okiya, Tanaka Kinuyo sits behind the choba (cash desk) is half partitioned by
shoji (a kind of paper screen) from the lobby (Fig.1). The shoji is lit up from
the inside, so that we can faintly see the latticework of the partition through
the fine paper. And this latticework is a basic visual structure of the film.
Woman of Rumor is a narrative film whose events exclusively take place in an
old traditional Kyoto wooden frame house. Therefore cross-stripes reappear again
and again as tatami boarders, coffers, lattice doors and partitions, and even
as tartan checks of kimonos. Among them, the latticework of the shoji which
partitions the cash desk behind which Tanaka Kinuyo sits as the only legitimate
subject is the main persistent sign of the woman of rumor. As a widow, she has
managed the okiya without the economical help of men, but now she dreams of
remarriage with her younger lover, a seemingly promising medical doctor. In
the relatively dark lobby, characteristic of the structure of Kyoto houses,*4
the cash desk in a dim light emerges and asserts itself discreetly. The cash
desk in a dim light, in so far as Tanaka has managed the okiya by herself, is
as it were a small island in a dark sea (Fig 2). On the island, she seems safe
and proud of herself. The cash desk persistently appears in the film; indeed
it appears no less than fifteen times. The partitioned cash desk in a dim light
is a vivid symbol of the independent but undeniably lonely life of a middle-aged
widow, similar to the neon sign outside the restaurant Joan Crawford runs in
Mildred Pierce (1945). Moreover, the fact that we can see the latticework through
the thin paper screen produces a telling metaphor of film viewing: we, as spectators,
see Tanaka's true feeling, her real emotion through the surface.
If Woman of Rumor is a film melodrama, then why do we not take into consideration
a deep emotional register under/behind the surface? A second example, the splendid
sequence where Tanaka realizes the love triangle, will show how the production
design functions as an emotional register in the film. During a Kyogen (Japanese
traditional farce) performance whose theme is a making fun of love in old age,
Tanaka overhears her young lover chatting with her daughter, and realizes that
he seduced her daughter. At the moment she realizes his betrayal, Tanaka shows
us a fearful face rimmed with a crooked stalk arranged for ikebana (Japanese
traditional flower arrangement (Figs 3-4). This is the most astounding shot
in the film, because it is the only shot where a crooked thing is shown to us
emphatically except for the very first title shot of the film (Fig 5). Square
patterns, as I discussed above, are the ruling visual motif in the film. Despite
the rule, however, the film shows the woman of rumor rimmed with the crooked
pattern two times: first, literally the title of Woman of Rumor; second,
the referent (the woman who overhears the rumor) the title referred to at the
very beginning of the narrative. In other words, Tanaka feels crushed at the
betrayal, and the production design registers her emotional crisis through the
prop (crooked stalk).
Before the betrayal, however, she was safe and proud of herself inside the latticework
of the cash desk. Through the striking contrast between the cross and crooked
patterns, we can grasp the emotional shift of the heroine. The total visual
concept of the film is determined by Mizoguchi Kenji in collaboration with the
production designer
Mizutani Hiroshi. A motion picture, by definition, must make visible the invisible,
such as emotion. And Mizoguchi adopts this policy: the mise en scene by Mizoguchi
rightfully includes the visual network throughout the entire film. In the name
of Mizoguchi Kenji, we recognize a director who has a talent to register actors'
emotion through the visible: production design.
NOTES
This paper was originally published in Gerald O'Grady ed., Mizoguchi the
Master (Toronto: Cinematheque Ontario, 1996).
1 Japanese names are written in the standard Japanese form: family name before
given name.
2 Shindo Kaneto, Aru Eiga Kantoku:Mizoguchi Kenji to Nihon Eiga (A Film
Director: Mizoguchi Kenji and Japanese Cinema) (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1976);
Yoda Yoshikata, Mizoguchi Kenji no Hito to Geijutsu (The Life and Art
of Mizoguchi Kenji) (Tokyo: Tabata Shoten, 1970).
3 The position of director of photography does not exist in the Japanese studio
system; instead, the camera operator has almost the same power as the director
of photography except for lighting, which is entrusted to the lighting director.
4 For a fuller discussion of the relationship between Kyoto and cinema, see
Nakajima Sadao, Tsutsui Kiyotada, Kato Mikiro and Iwasaki Kenji, Eiga Roman
Kiko (Kyoto, the Cine-city) (Kyoto: Jinbun Shoin, 1994). This book is written
both in English and in Japanese.