MELODY IN GREY
Japan, 1977, 116 minutes, Colour.
Shima Awashita, Yoshio Harada.
Directed by Mashiro Shinoda
A very sombre Japanese film. It is outstanding in the beauty of its photography, landscapes and seascapes, towns and countryside. This is important for the audience for the heroine is blind. An orphan girl, she belongs to a group of wandering singers known as The Goze. She is expelled and then wanders alone. She forms a bond, brother and sister, with a clog maker who is a deserter from the Japanese army. For some time they are happy but disaster falls and the ending is grim and tragic. The film throws light on the sombre attitudes of the Japanese and their interpretation of their history. The film, slow moving and solemn, is yet an emotional film for a western audience.
1. The overall impact of the film, the humanity and tragedy of its plot, the visual beauty? An emotional experience?
2. The film reflecting the qualities of the Japanese film industry, the beautiful photography, the editing, the creation of atmosphere and tone? Japanese songs and music? The overall appeal of the film and its edge of sadness, especially with the significance of the title?
3. Audience response to the variety of landscapes, the seasons, the tableaux and the striking compositions of various frames, especially as The Goze group move through the countryside. Exteriors, interiors? An environment for the story of the heroine? The atmosphere of Japan in 1917?
4. The complexity of the structure and audience interest and involvement ? the heroine telling the story? The response of the hero? The insertion of the flashbacks and Orin and her being orphaned, joining The Goze group, the plight of her blindness, her growing up, her expulsion and personal wandering? The brief flashbacks of the hero and his experience with his mother? The interplay of past and present? How did this engage audience sympathies and understanding? 5. The moral view point of the film ? the strict rules of The Goze group, celibacy, the fascination of sexuality for the Goze singers? Orin and her inability to live by the code? Her expulsion for lewdness? The temptation travelling the countryside and entertaining? Orin recounting the facts of her experience, her feelings? Her judgment on herself? Her explanation and the judgment of Heitro? Of the audience? Within the standards of Japanese society, culture, religion and morality?
6. The impact of Orin's blindness? The consequences for her as a little girl, belonging to The Goze group, the different blind Goze and their community life, happiness, jealousies? The woman in charge? Blindness as an affliction? The later encounter of Orin with the expelled blind girl? Comparisons? The irony that the audience could see the beautiful landscapes through which The Goze group moved?
7. Audience sympathy for Orin abandoned as a little girl, the kind man who found her a place, her moving around the countryside, accepting the rules of The Goze? Her memories, associations of sounds and places? How important was this in her later quest for her mother and the discovery that her mother had died?
8. The atmosphere of Goze entertainment ? the songs, the fights, the lewd propositions of the men, Orin's reaction? Her frank explanation of herself, a nymphomania? The effect on her being expelled? Audience seeing the police visit the head of the Goze group later and her understanding of Orin?
9. The travelling with Heitro, her entertaining? The importance of the rape? Heitro's escape and his vengeance for her?
10. The response to Heitro's kindness, the brother and sister relationship, the mutual respect, their life together? The arrest, the danger for Heitro, Orin's not understanding it? Her fleeing?
11. The old man in the town, his curiosity, his lies to Orin, the rape, Heitro's pursuit of him and the murder? The later flashbacks? Audience sympathy, themes of justice?
12. The character of Heitro, attracted towards Orin, his memories especially of his mother, his story? His happiness, his having to escape? The hope that he and Orin would meet again? The irony of the way they met, the police pursuit? The brutality of his arrest and torture? The truth and information about his being a deserter, his confessing to the murder? His final words and farewell to Orin? The tragedy of his death?
13. Orin wandering lonely, meeting the mother and daughter and their throwing themselves over the cliff? Her mother's death? The visual transition to the workers in the railway tunnel, the red material, the starkness of their finding the skeleton w*x and the audience being left with this image of/the end of Orin's life?
14. The film as a study of human beings, individuals and their fate, the cruelty of environment and life? Society? The role of various groups such as the Goze, the soldiers, the police? Themes of integrity, fidelity, love, survival? The pessimism of the end of the film?
