Sessue Hayakawa: From sex symbol to Oscar nominee

We've been celebrating 1957 for a couple of weeks. Here's one more from Cláudio Alves

In 1957, Miyoshi Umeki became the first and only Asian woman to win an acting Oscar. However, the Best Supporting Actress champion wasn't the only Japanese performer to score an Academy Award nomination that year. Sessue Hayakawa, who played the ruthless Colonel Saito in the Best Picture winner The Bridge on the River Kwai, became the first male actor of Japanese descent to be nominated by the Academy. Unlike Umeki, who had less than a decade of experience in show business by the time she achieved Oscar glory, Hayakawa had a long history with Tinsel Town. Many decades before his nomination, when the American film industry was creating itself and Silent Cinema was entertainment for the masses, Sessue Hayakawa had been one of the first sex symbols… 

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Hara by Ozu

by Cláudio Alves

100 years ago in 1920, Setsuko Hara was born in the city of Yokohama, Japan. Thanks to the powers of nepotism and the influence of her brother-in-law, she got a job at the Nikkatsu Studios at the age of 15. In the next few years, she rose to prominence. By the 1940s, Hara became somewhat of a symbol of new Japanese womanhood. Curiously enough, that's not how she's best remembered today, in part thanks to her most famous directors being ones that cast her in roles typifying the conservative values of a traditional Japan. Despite multiple collaborations with such legendary filmmakers as the master of melodrama Mikio Naruse and Japan's superstar director Akira Kurosawa, it's her work in the films of Yasujiro Ozu that now most define her legacy… 

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Silence vs Silence

by Cláudio Alves

At times Martin Scorsese's filmography looks like a string of projects that took decades before they saw the light of day. These monstrous productions include films like the bloody epic Gangs of New York and last year's mob drama The Irishman, and the 17th century set religious historical drama Silence (2016). 

Silence is near the top of my own list of favourite Scorsese films. There are many reasons for that, not least of which is the fact the original novel, by Japanese author Shûsaku Endô,  is one of my favorite books and it focuses on Portuguese characters. Consider also the empathy Scorsese shows towards every character, along with the willingness to pursuit complex ideas and murky morality when a straightforward approach would have been easier to follow. These qualities are especially evident in Silence (2016) because we can compare Scorsese's adaptation to that of another world-renowned director…

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Mizoguchi's women

by Cláudio Alves

Last time we talked about Japanese cinema, we were looking at the history of the Best Costume Design Oscar. Among the five pictures from Japan nominated for that awards, we find Ugetsu, the only Kenji Mizoguchi film to ever receive any sort of recognition by the Academy. Considering some of the director's best films are currently available online thanks to platforms like the Criterion Channel, Kanopy, and HBO Max, it seems like a good time to highlight more of his cinematic mastery. After all, there's much greatness in Mizoguchi's exquisite cinema beyond the sartorial splendor of Ugetsu…

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Japanese cinema and the Best Costume Design Oscar

by Cláudio Alves

The Academy has always had a certain difficulty in recognizing excellence from films made in any language other than English. When it comes to Asian cinema, that is especially true. Parasite's recent grand victory may be a sign that times are a-changing, but there are still branches of AMPAS that remain quite closed-off and insular.

Thankfully that hasn't been the case with thee design branches. For a long time they were the only place where you could hope to find any sort of honor given to the works of masters like Akira Kurosawa and Kenji Mizoguchi. Japanese cinema, in particular, has found success in the Costume Design category. Overall, five pictures from Japan have been nominated for the prize and two have won. Since all those films are currently available online, most of them streaming on the Criterion Channel, it's a good time to take a look at this peculiarity of Oscar history…

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