Nagisa Oshima’s film “The Boy” is shown by Film Club of Patras on November 6.
Directed by: Nagisa Oshima
Screenplay: Tsoutomou Tamoura
Actors: Fumio Watanabe, Akiko Koyama, Tetsuo Abe.
Photography: Yasuhiro Yostoka, Seijo Shengen
Music: Hikaru Hayashi
Country: Japan (Color)
Duration: 105′
Awards: 4 Awards
Valladolid International Film Festival 1971, Best Film Award.
Kinema Junpo Awards 1970, Screenplay Award.
Mainichi Film Concours 1970, 2 Awards, B! Female Role and Screenplay.
“Boy”, Nagisa Oshima’s unknown humanitarian film re-released with digitally restored copies, returns to theaters. A special moment in the filmography of the director of “Empire of the Senses”.
Nagisa Oshima radiates with dramatic intensity and semiotic richness the cultural changes of an entire nation in one of the leading moments of modern Japanese cinema.
Ten-year-old Tosio lives a life with his family on the street. He is forced to participate in the fraud of his parents, who stage car accidents and, pretending to be injured, blackmail the drivers so that they do not report them to the police.
Gripping from the first minute, perhaps Nagisa Oshima’s best moment, 1969’s true story of poor parents forcing their little boy to fall into passing cars to collect compensation—masterpiece (Danikas)
Osima points out the general (and national) dimension of the story, and the juvenile boy, although a representative of the new generation, functions as a symbol of innocence and the morally superior Eastern tradition, while the parents represent the moral rot of “change”. Thus the moral duty is identified with nature, as the minor has not yet learned the ways of adults and, especially, that of the westernized new age. Although Oshima’s cinema usually focuses on the worst side of human nature, here we understand the parents, sympathize with them, even if they often adopt abhorrent behavior towards the boy. Even when tragedy strikes, it forgives them and tries to prevent their condemnation. In the epilogue, when the narrative mode turns into reportage, this proves to be a genius creative conception. The news is about a satanic family that set up accidents and took advantage of innocent citizens, causing a tragic event. We, however, know the whole truth, as we watched it through the boy’s eyes, that is, through the gaze of an observer equipped with an indispensable human tool: that of understanding. NEW STAR
Nagisa Oshima (“Empire of the Senses”, “Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence”) is the leading exponent of the Japanese new wave, an informal movement of filmmakers, who in the 60s moved against strong national traditions (political, social, patriotic and cultural). The collective trauma of this change is captured with dramatic intensity and semiotic richness in the story of ten-year-old Tosios. By staging car accidents, he and his family pose as the injured, blackmailing the drivers into not reporting them to the police.
Dreamlike outbursts interrupt an orderly realism, while the end of innocence is combined with an emotional revolt against the institutionalized and fundamental lie of a microcosm. As the Japanese miracle crumbles, one of the great films of modern Asian cinema is born.
Christos Mitsis
Nagisa Oshima(1932-2013)
Japanese Director, Screenwriter and Writer. His career spans from the New Wave (1950-1960) to contemporary cinema and expresses the paradoxes and tensions in post-war Japanese society. Around 1960, he left traditional film studios and created his own production company Sozosha, in 1965. Filmography: Taboo 1999, Century of cinema TV Series 1995, Kyoto, My Mother’s Birthplace TV Movie 1991, Max, My Love (as Nagisa Oshima) 1986, Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence 1983, Empire of Passion 1978, Kokyumento: Jinsei no gekijo TV Series 1977, Shirarezaru sekai TV Series 1975–1976, Denki Mo Takuto TV Movie 1976, Empire of the Senses 1976, Ikite iru ningen ryoko TV Series 1972–1973, Summer’s Little Sister 1972, Subarashii sekai ryoko TV Series 1966–1972, Kayo supersharu TV Series 1972, The Ceremony 1971, Died After the War 1970, The Boy 1969, 20 seiki awa TV Series 1968– 1969, Diary of a Thief 1969, The Return of the Three Bekris 1968, The Hanging 1968, Muri shinju:Nihon no natsu 1967, For Obscene Japanese Songs 1967, Ninja bugei-cho 1967, The Demon of Noon 1966, Diary of Yunbogi Short 1965, Gyosen sonansu TV Movie 1965, Etsuraku 1965, Ajia no akebono TV Series 1964–1965, Terebi geijutsuza TV Series 1964, Watashi wa Beretto Short 1964, Non-fikushon gekijo TV Series 1962–1964, Musume no kekkon TV Series 1964, Chiisan boken ryoko Short 1963, Amakusa Shiro Tokisada 1962, Shiiku 1961, Night and Darkness in Japan 1960, Burial of the Sun 1960, Cruel Story of Youth 1960, Ai to kibo no machi 1959, Asu no taiyo Short 1959.
