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Synopsis

One of the most beautiful of all Japanese films, Conflagration is based on a best-selling novel by Yukio Mishima. “Ichikawa was Mishima’s favorite director,” James Quandt notes, “and from this adaptation, it is easy to see why.” Mishima based his story on an actual incident, the burning of Kyoto’s celebrated Golden Pavilion. A young man, Mizoguchi (Raizo Ichikawa), disgusted by his mother’s promiscuity and disenchanted with his weak father, becomes a Buddhist acolyte. But the obsessive, stuttering youth finds his temple school to be sullied by sexual hypocrisy. In despair, he deliberately sets fire to the temple, symbol of pure beauty, and a national treasure, causing a conflagration that for him is a holocaust. Ichikawa’s interpretation of Mishima’s already highly conceptual novel was profoundly original, using Toshiro Mayuzumi’s avant-garde music and Kazuo Miyagawa’s “architectonic” widescreen cinematography to chilling effect. Donald Richie noted, “The textures captured in black and white were-even for Japan-beyond comparison.” —BAM/PFA

Director

Original

Kon Ichikawa

Kon Ichikawa was considered one of the masters of the immediate postwar generation of Japanese filmmakers, a generation often overshadowed by the titanic presence of Akira Kurosawa. Unlike Kurosawa, Ichikawa imbued his films with a sense of irony that swings from the sardonic to the compassionate. Born in 1915 in southern Mie Prefecture, Ichikawa grew up a sickly child and spent much of his childhood drawing. Like Kurosawa, he aspired to be a painter. He also grew to be an enthusiastic movie fan, seeing most of the early samurai epics by Daisuke Ito and Masahiro Makino while marveling at Charles Chaplin films. Yet it was Walt Disney’s Silly Symphonies series that proved to be a revelation for Ichikawa, as he realized that animation could combine his passions for art and for movies. After finishing technical school in Osaka in the 1930s, he got a job at the animation department of J.O. studios just as it was expanding from a rental film house to a full-fledged production company. As… read more

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Displaying 4 wall posts.
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Howard Orr

19May12

A gallery of human obsession and pain, the story is very typical of Mishima's yearning for perfection and the disilluionment with impossible ideals that leads -either directly or indirectly- to catastrophe. Beautifully made by Ichikawa, utilising Toshiro Mayazumi's music and grandmaster Kazuo Miyagawa's cinematography to great effect.

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M Klein

20Nov11

Raizo Ichikawa plays his first damaged and self-immolating Mishima; Tatsuya Nakadai walks off with every scene.

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trolley freak

9Jul11

A troubled young man training to be a Buddhist priest becomes disillusioned and sets fire to a sacred temple... Based on a novel by Yukio Mishima who later committed seppuku and was the subject of a biographical film by Paul Schrader, Ichikawa's drama also possesses some typically majestic cinematography from Master Director of Photography Kazuo Miyagawa and features soon-to-be superstar Tatsuya Nakadai in support...

Howard Orr likes this

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Alexander Peacock

7Apr11

Anyone know who has the US right to this? Was it an ATG title?

Ben likes this

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