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Kon
Ichikawa si dedicò fin da piccolo al
disegno; quando un rovescio finanziario lo costrinse a cercarsi un lavoro, si impiegò presso una
casa cinematografica nel settore dei cartoni animati, allora (1937) pressochè inesistente.
Organizzata la produzione, Ichikawa diresse anche Mosume dojoji (1947). Nel
dopoguerra, data la scarsa fortuna del cinema d'animazione, passò al genere leggero della
commedia satirica. Con Pu-san (1953) Ichikawa conquistò il pubblico e la critica;
è un capolavoro di tenue umorismo che ne fa il Frank Capra giapponese. l'autentica ispirazione
del regista è però di segno diametralmente opposto e riesce ad emergere soltanto con
l'ondata di film pacifisti degli anni Cinquanta che rievocavano gli orrori della guerra. I suoi film bellici si
distinguono per l'afflato universale che esalta o condanna tutti gli uomini, unificati nei loro istinti
primordiali dal cataclisma della guerra; interessato più all'uomo che all'azione, Ichikawa
partecipa allo sconforto dei perdenti., figure negative che compiono o sono costretti a compiere una
rinuncia.
Beruma no Tategoto/ The Burmese Harp (1956) is another odyssey of a
desperate soul through a devastated human landscape.
The Japanese are losing World War II and their situation in occupied Burma is
becoming desperate. The only consolation of one of the units is a harp player,
Mizushima.
He plays for the pleasure of the soldiers and he also scouts for them, playing
tunes that tell them if there is any danger ahead. One day they enter a Burmese
village and they realize too late that it's a trap. They are surrounded by
British troops. However, Mizushima intones a song on his harp and the British
soldiers start singing it. The Japanese soldiers join in. That night they learn
that the war has ended: Japan has surrendered and they are prisoners.
They are treated well in the prison camp. Some Japanese soldiers refuse to
surrender and Mizushima volunteers to mediate. The British commander gives him
30 minutes to convince the soldiers to surrender. The soldiers refuse to
surrender and accuse Mizushima of being a traitor and a coward. Time's up and
the British bomb the place killing everybody except Mizushima.
The action moves to a village where the Japanese are working to rebuild a
bridge. They are desperate to find out what happened to their beloved Mizushima.
One day they see a Buddhist monk who looks just like him but he does not reply
to his name. An old lady tells them that Mizushima did not survive the
slaughter. She also tells them that the Buddhist monk got a parrot from her
husband, and the captain of the Japanese buys the brother of that parrot.
A flashback shows what happened after the bombing.
Mizushima was saved by a Buddhist monk who cured him in a cave.
Then he started wandering dressed in a white robe. Thinking him a Buddhist
monk, the farmers and the fishermen gave him food.
He was horrified to find unburied Japanese skeletons everywhere.
One day he met a child playing the harp for the British and taught him
how to play it better.
He then met his old unit on the bridge (the scene before the flashback began)
but he felt that he could not go back to them.
The flashback is over. The Japanese soldiers hear the child play the harp
just like Mizushima used to play it. It's another sign that he might be alive.
Mizushima is busy burying all the unburied corpses. Villagers help him.
He finds a big ruby by the river, that he takes to be the spirit of the dead.
The Japanese soldiers see him again during a Buddhist procession.
The captain notices that the monk is carrying a white box. He later finds it
and opens it: it contains just the ruby.
The captain is convinced that the monk is Mizushima and tries to "resurrect"
him by bringing a choir of both Japanese and British soldiers to sing one of
his favorite tunes in front of a giant Buddha.
Mizushima, who lives inside the Buddha, responds by intoning the tune on his
harp, but then hides when the soldiers look for him.
Permission comes to repatriate the Japanese prisoners. They regret they are
leaving without Mizushima. The captain has trained the parrot to deliver
a message to Mizushima and entrusts the parrot to the old lady. It works:
the Buddhist monk shows up. They are inside the fence of the prison camp, he
is outside, a little distance from the fence. He is not moving and not talking.
They start singing. He starts playing. Then he leaves, without a word.
The following day the old lady brings them two things: his parrot (he kept
theirs and gave them his) and a letter. The captain refuses to read the letter:
it won't make any difference. Only after they boarded the ship to Japan does
the captain read the letter to his soldiers. In the letter he explains that he
has a mission to complete: burying all the dead.
Un caporale si è conquistato la simpatia del suo reparto suonando l'arpa birmana.
Un giorno non ritorna dalla sua missione e i compagni si disperano.
Il caporale in effetti è sopravvissuto
miracolosamente a un presidio che ha preferito farsi massacrare piuttosto che arrendersi.
Dopo aver vagato per giorni in mezzo ai cadaveri, incontra un prete Buddista
che lo cura e lo conforta.
Traumatizzato
dall'orrore della morte, decide di farsi bonzo e di dedicare la vita a seppellire i cadaveri dei soldati.
Quando incontra gli ex-commilitoni che, prigionieri, stanno per ritornare in patria, non risponde al loro
saluto, ma poi invia loro un pappagallo e una lettera ove spiega i motivi della sua conversione.
Erijo (1958) mette in luce un'altra caratteristica dei
film della maturità, l'erotismo perverso:
l'allievo di un bonzo scopre che l'austero maestro si trastulla
con una donna e vende i tesori del tempio; la rinuncia in questo caso consiste nella distruzione: dà
fuoco a un padiglione e distrugge il tempio stesso.
Lo stile di Ichikawa si rapprende mano mano in un figurativismo
pittorico molto suggestivo. Ma il gusto per il macabro e l'erotico unito a questa tendenza lo porta a
scadere qualche volta nel sensazionalismo più gratuito.
Nobi/ Fires on the Plain (1959) riesce invece a miscelare tutto in un'atmosfera tesa
e angosciosa: lo sterminio di massa e perfino il cannibalismo, la follia, la barbarie più turpe. L'Odissea di un soldato comune diventa un affresco
della turpitudine della civilta` umana.
World War II has been all but lost by Japan. Nevertheless the Japanese keep
fighting in the occupied territories.
Tamura, who was dismissed prematurely by the hospital, is told by
his commander to report back to the hospital; if not admitted, he is to commit
suicide. The squadron doesn't have food, tools or weapons, and cannot afford
to keep sick men.
He walks alone and with no food through the forest until he finds the hospital.
At the hospital, though, they don't want him because they only have two doctors
and much more serious patients.
From the hospital he can see that his squadron is being shelled by the enemy.
As the bombs get closer, Tamura runs into the jungle again. He is missed
narrowly and manages to survive. When he reaches his old camp, he only finds
an expanse full of dead bodies. Some of them might still be alive but he
does not want to help them. He starts walking towards a huge cross. He gets
to a deserted village. Under the cross he finds the skeletons of Japanese
soldiers
who have been massacred in front of the church
(presumably killed by the villagers).
He sees two villagers enter a house and follows them. He kills the woman because
she starts screaming. Then he would also kill the man but his gun fails.
The man runs away. Tamura walks out of the village and throws away his useless
gun. Then he meets three Japanese soldiers who are the only survivors of their
unit and they take him with them. They see black stains in the fields: Tamura
thinks they were left by smoke signals of the guerrilla groups, while the others
think they were left by farmers burning their crops.
Later they stumble into a unit that is
withdrawing: most of the soldiers have no food and walk like zombies.
An old acquaintance of Tamura, Yasuda, has a bad leg and cannot move.
He has lots of tobacco and sends his younger friend Nagamatsu to trade it for
food. Tamura's shoes are so bad that he decides to walk barefoot in the rain.
In order to reach the Japanese positions, the retreating soldiers need to cross
a road that is controlled by the enemy. It is the first time that Tamura
actually sees the USA enemy: he has only seen their bombs and heard their guns.
The Japanese soldiers try to cross the road at night but are spotted by
enemy tanks that massacre them. Tamura is one of the few who survives.
The following morning he sees the USA soldiers inspecting the dead bodies.
One Japanese survivor tries to surrender but a female guerrilla who is with
the USA troops kills him. Tamura gets the shoes of a dead soldier and starts
walking again. He meets a soldiers who has gone mad: this soldier sits under
a tree thinking that he is now a Buddha and offers his arm for Tamura to eat.
Tamura is about to collapse. When he sees a hand that was blown away from a
soldier's body, he almost eats it. Just then
Nagamatsu shows up and rescues him. He and
Yasuda, whose leg is getting worse, have been surviving on monkey meat.
Tamura still has his grenade, that was given to him to commit suicide, but
Yasuda steals it from him. Nagamatsu does not trust Yasuda and decides that
it's better to kill him before he can kill them. The confrontation lasts three
days.
Nagamatsu gets so hungry that now he's planning to eat Yasuda when they manage
to kill him. Finally Yasuda comes out and Nagamatsu shoots him dead.
Yasuda doesn't waste a second: he pulls out his knife and starts eating the
dead body. Tamura runs to get the gun and aims it at the cannibal.
The cannibal tries to take the gun from him and Tamura shoots.
Now Tamura just wants to surrender: he raises his arms and starts walking towards the smoke of
another mysterious fire, still not knowing if it's farmers or guerrilla who
light those fires in the prairie. A few shots kill him before he can reach
the fires.
Uno sbandato vaga in un'isola delle Filippine fra le cataste di
morti e fra gli altri sbandati come lui in preda al delirio (è costretto a ucciderne uno che si
è dato al cannibalismo); questi soldati sono ridotti dalla fame e dalla paura al rango di bestie; ma
il piccolo soldato lotta strenuamente per conservare la propria dignità di uomo (soltanto per un
attimo perde il controllo e uccide un'indigena inerme), mentre si dirige faticosamente verso i misteriosi
fuochi della pianura. Ma quei fuochi dall'aspetto ospitale sono una trappola mortale.
Anche il claustrofobico Kagi (1960), sul versante
erotico, riesce a contenere il compiacimento (e a sfoderare una magistrale tecnica cromatica);
due vecchi e due giovani (padre, madre, figlia e genero) si
autodistruggono sotto l'azione degli impulsi erotici, soprattutto quelli senili;
un film di crudeltà psicologiche che affonda inesorabilmente
nell'"enryo" borghese. Per alcuni anni questa diventa la direzione preferenziale del cinema
oscuro di Ichikawa. La paranoia dell'olocausto è ridotta ai termini individuali, nella vita
quotidiana di persone normali, che distruggono meticolosamente la propria esistenza.
Nel 1964, licenziato dalla sua casa, si dedica a doucmentari su commessa, fra i
quali spicca il colossale Tokyo Orimpikku (1965), della durata di settanta ore; in
questo caso il soggetto ben si prestava agli ideali umanitari, universali e di dignità, propugnati dal
regista.
Pur relegato fra i documentaristi, l'eclettico Ichikawa è riuscito a
dirigere ancora un film a soggetto nel 1973, Matatabi, storia tragicomica delle avventure
di un gruppo di ladruncoli, il cui codice d'onore impone loro di proteggere chi li ospita, giuramento che si
ritorce sanguinosamente contro di loro.
Attraverso le diverse stagioni della sua carriera di regista (l'animazione, la
commedia, il film di guerra, l'erotismo, il documentario), Ichikawa si è segnalato come uno dei
primi registi internazionali del Giappone, deciso assertore di un cinema che parli a tutti i popoli del
mondo e non soltanto al suo.
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