The Architecture of the Screen

by Graham Cairns

  It seems self-evident from such shots and Ozu’s positioning of the camera, his use of fixed filming and his long static takes are intended to be read as direct replicas of the real perception of somebody using the house, and therefore sitting on the floor.42 However, as Donald Richie has pointed out, the cinematographer of Tokyo Story (Yushun Atsuta) emphasises something quite different when questioned on this. Eschewing the standard and long-standing interpretation of Ozu’s filming in these terms, Yushun Atsuta argues that there was another issue also being dealt with, that is, an attempt by the director to avoid the visual sense of depth that results from a higher point of view.43

  It is inevitable that a more elevated eye level augments the optical effect of perspective in any spatial context. However, in the traditional Japanese house, there is another factor – the black lined borders of tatami mats – that reinforces this and thus forced Ozu to use a low-level camera. As a result of their colour contrast and their linearity, these borders tend to emphasise the effect of foreshortening when visible on screen. In order to avoid this, argues Atsuta, Ozu positioned his camera near the floor, but also strategically distributed props so as to cover them up. What this indicates is that although the relationship between the architecture of the Japanese house and the filming of Ozu is easy to understand at first glance, it is in fact more subtle than it would initially seem.

  Although the issues raised thus far are fairly simple to identify in even quite cursory examinations of Ozu’s work, this last point of Atsuta’s begins to indicate the subtlety of Ozu’s spatial thinking: a thinking intrinsically linked to conceptual notions such as wabi, sabi and ma. In his treatise The Japanese House, Heidrich Engel lays out the artistic concepts of wabi and sabi in the architectural context. In aesthetic terms, he underlines that sabi emphasises the importance of solitude and emptiness whilst wabi involves notions of simplicity, crudeness and the elimination of all superficial detail.44 More importantly however, Engel identifies that these concepts come from the tradition of Zen Buddhism and thus begins to draw out a link with ideas concerning the representation of intangible spirits, ethereal forces and, by extension, the very notion of space itself.

  Most clearly seen in the pictorial tradition of Japanese landscapes, these ideas revolve around the cultural reading of natural elements such as trees, rivers and mountains as physical manifestations of deeper spirits and natural-mystical forces. On the basis of such a reading, any landscape painting for example, is actually a painting of spiritual forces and not simply a representation of the natural environment. Consequently, an artist dealing with this subject matter is actually trying to represent or insinuate the “presence of intangible and ephemeral spirits” rather than realistically representing the physical entities of landscape. What this results in is a deliberately ambiguous representation of physical features in which they are not shown in all their detail. Rather, they are insinuated in light brush strokes, referenced in generalised lines and presented in almost abstract terms.45

  This deliberate abstraction, or ambiguity, can thus be seen as an incomplete physical representation that viewers are invited to complete for themselves. However, the aim is not that the viewer completes the physical image in their mind, but rather, that they use the ambiguous physical representation as a vehicle through which to intuitively “feel” the intangible forces or spirits beyond. Engel describes this as a tradition of artistic representation that invites the spectator to engage in an “active process of interpretation”. Understood in this way, the role of artists is to avoid showing subjects in all their detail. The representation of the intangible would be seen to be of far greater value than a detailed optical representation of physical reality.46 Consequently, what we have is an aesthetic tradition intrinsically linked to an aim that Engel defines as “leaving space for the intuition of the spectator”, a notion known as empathy.

  Clearly, this goes against the grain of much of the Western representative tradition developed since the Renaissance, according to which the artist attempts to reproduce the reality of the world as seen with the greatest fidelity possible.47 It certainly goes against the grain of continuity cinema which, in accordance with its Western bias, is focused on the presentation of events in a way that corresponds to our ideas of reality and truth, and which avoids any possible discrepancy in our reading of a film’s basic narrative line.48 Indeed, the Western continuity tradition deliberately tries to avoid the need for interpretation (or intuition) on the part of the viewer and can thus be read as diametrically as opposed to the notion of empathy.

  Engel discusses empathy in comments centred on the traditional Japanese house and, although the houses used by Ozu are not necessarily of the same generation, they share virtually all the main characteristics identified. Aesthetically, this architecture tends to use materials that have a rustic quality and whose surface treatment tends to be simple and even rough.49 In spatial terms, it is an architecture whose modular organisation, combined with its use of moveable screens, allows each space to open out onto, and into, a contiguous one. Thus, it is an architecture that takes on a certain flexibility that is both complex and potentially in continual flux. Eschewing a single privileged point of view around which the entire design revolves, it celebrates asymmetry and fragmentary views. It is an architecture that creates a spatial experience that is unstable, partial and ambiguous.

  Taking these inherent spatial characteristics of the architecture he employs, Ozu developed a type of cinematography that not only used its modular spatial organisation to direct the movements of the camera and frame his actions, but also used it to introduce a certain ambiguity in his spatial representation on screen that would reflect ideas of empathy and intuition. For example, it is quite common for Ozu not to begin a scene with a typical establishing shot.50 Consequently, certain visual clues that normally help orientate the spectator as the scene progresses are absent. The relative positions of protagonists is not always clear, the size of the room in which the scene develops is often unknown and many of its important furniture and decorative features are sometimes concealed until later in the sequence.51

  This deliberate ambiguity is magnified even further by the internal appearance of an architecture whose interiors tend to be aesthetically homogenous, a characteristic that makes the identification of the camera’s position even more difficult to establish in its often complex spatial sequences. It is a spatial ambiguity further amplified through Ozu’s technique of reorganising the disposition of the dividing screens between shots; the result being that two images filmed from exactly the same spot can appear to be images filmed in very different locations.52 When all of these factors coincide, the lack of an establishing shot, a restriction of visual information, the employment of spatial tricks and the inevitable aesthetic similarity of the architecture, we see a perfect example of a cinematographic representation of space that goes against some basic norms found in “traditional” Western art. They are, however, completely in tune with the notion of wabi, sabi and ma; a reading of space as an intangible, temporal phenomena that can never be wholly captured.

  Some examples of this are seen in the series of images reproduced here, which, as is typical of Ozu, do not deal with any great narrative moments. The family is preparing to leave the house for a day visit to the city (Figs. 17–21). The sequence begins with an image of the parents and the grandchildren getting dressed in the same room. It is an image that shows all the typical compositional features of Ozu: a low-level fixed camera, a balanced composition weighted towards its lower section and the framing of the protagonists by architectural elements.53 The scene is filmed in a continuous take until the parents tell their eldest son to see if the grandparents are ready. At this point, a cut is introduced and the camera repositions itself in an empty corridor. Subsequently, the child walks past the camera and, after another cut, the scene passes to the room in which we find the grandparents. The child again enters the scene and briefly exchanges a few words with his grandparents
. Turning to leave the shot screen-right, the child exits and another cut is introduced. The following shot takes us back to the empty corridor through which we see the child walk again, before the final cut positions us once more in the original room.

  In the shot of the corridor we see the child enter the frame, turn 90 degrees and disappear behind a screen, later reappearing in what would seem to be an adjoining room in the following shot. However, the room in which the child reappears is, in reality, a room on the second floor; something that the director disguises by eliminating a shot of the child going up the stairs. Although Ozu does not completely conceal this spatial information, he presents it in such a subtle way that it is almost imperceptible; as the child turns and disappears behind the screen, an attentive audience can discern a movement of his foot that indicates he is beginning to walk upstairs. This movement is so discreet that it is very difficult to notice in a general viewing of the film. Entirely in line with concepts of ambiguity and subtlety in artistic representation it produces a “suggestive” rather than a “definitive” understanding of the space.

  Figure 17: Movement sequence 1.

  Figure 18: Movement sequence 2.

  Figure 19: Movement sequence 3.

  Figure 20: Movement sequence 4.

  Figure 21: Movement sequence 5.

  Another slightly clearer example of this type of spatial ambiguity is seen in the shot in which the child enters the parent’s room for the second time. Although he actually enters the room seen at the beginning of the sequence, the father is now positioned to the left, the mother is not clearly visible and the child himself is seen from behind (Fig. 21). The background to the shot also appears to have completely changed, suggesting that we may be in a different room. This spatial distribution is due to various factors: some of the protagonists appear to have left the shot, there is a temporal distance between the first and last images and, above all, there is a very clear transgression of some of the continuity system’s basic rules.

  According to the rules of continuity, in the scene in which the boy moves through the house and goes upstairs, Ozu should have shown a shot of the stairs, thus eliminating any possible misreading of the space and the actions presented. Similarly, in the latter scene, he should have shown a shot of any changes occurring in the room, such as the mother leaving the space or the father changing position. What Ozu does, however, is very subtly break such continuity laws so as to introduce a certain level of ambiguity into shots that have been described as “eiga” or “descriptive pictures”.54 Spatially, what he is doing is complex and echoes the notions of “ma” and “empathy”. He creates a perception of space that links it with time and unseen actions, and which thus requires an intuitive effort on the part of the viewer to understand it. All is not revealed in the clearest way possible, thus allowing the viewer to “participate in the reading” of the space.

  This space is presented in momentary, incomplete fragments as something intangible, as something only graspable through the mind of the viewer rather than the lens of the camera. These filming and editing characteristics combine with Ozu’s static filming, preference for empty spaces and his approach to framing compositions. The result is a body of filmic work that is accessible to a Western eye, but which is clearly distinct from what is expected from Western continuity film. In addition, when one compares the Western narrative and goal-focused tradition of Hollywood to the slow, apparently simple and open-ended stories of Ozu, his films can feel narratively strange as well. Consequently, in Ozu we have a director whose films give us various insights into the sometimes detailed mutual relationship that can exist between space and filming. However, his films also give insights into the spatial and cultural traditions in which he operates. They present us with a cinematographic space imbued not only with the formal, but also the philosophical, characteristics of the culture from which they emerged; a culture in sometimes stark contrast to the realistic concepts underlying “traditional” Western architecture and conventional film.

  Conclusion

  In Tokyo Story and La Grande Illusion, we are presented with two apparently different narratives. In Ozu’s case it is centred on the family life, whilst in Renoir’s it revolves around one of the most traumatic political events of the twentieth century. In reality, however, both films use their respective contexts as little more than a backdrop for close, intimate studies of human relationships. For Ozu, it is the relationships between generations in the culturally shifting environment of post-war Japan, whilst for Renoir it is the subtle and similarly shifting relationships between social classes in pre–Second World War Europe. Sharing the period around the Second World War these two directors offer contemporaneous examinations of the social tendencies and tensions in the East and the West, respectively. In doing so, they may also give us an indication of the relationship and tensions between the arts and architecture of the period.

  In the first half of the twentieth century, many Japanese architects were sent to study in the United States and Western Europe, whilst, simultaneously, significant Western architects were invited to design buildings in Japan: for example, Le Corbusier, Bruno Taut, Frank Lloyd Wright and Richard Neutra, all completing major Japanese projects in the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s.55 Taut was a particularly significant figure as he brought the West’s attention to the qualities of Japanese architecture and its sense of space in his exhibitions and essays on The Fundamentals of Japanese Architecture in the 1930s.56 Le Corbusier’s contribution to this interchange of ideas was very different. He constructed the Tokyo Cultural Museum at the invitation of a number of young Japanese modernists in 1954 and thus cemented the influence of Western Modernism in Japan. Both events, however, underlined the potential relationship between the modernist fragmented space of the post-cubist era and the asymmetry of the Japanese spatial tradition in formal terms.57

  However, it is the work of the Americans Frank Lloyd Wright and Richard Neutra that perhaps showed the closest relationship between Western modernist and traditional Japanese arrangements of space; the work of both men taking on an ever more abstracted, fragmented spatial sense in the years subsequent to their experience in Japan.58 The two films discussed here were both made during this historical period of architectural cross-fertilisation and thus could have become historical architectural reference points in the development of the contemporary architectural notion of space. Rather than show the similarities that would come to characterise avant-garde architecture in both the West and the East however, they underline the different cultural traditions from which the Japanese and European architects of the time were approaching one another.

  In Renoir’s case, despite his interest in the new possibilities offered by the visual language of cinema, the cultural traditions he reveals are to be found in the Renaissance. Steeped in the tradition of realism, with its origins in perspective, he saw film as a medium through which this tradition could, and indeed should, be advanced. In technical terms, he reduced this conception to a direct analogy between the camera and the eye; the camera offering, for the first time in the history of art, the opportunity to reproduce the optical experience of a real subject for a viewer or spectator. Transposed to the direct analogy between optical vision and the long take, this underlying conceptual argument led him down a path which, in terms of spatial organisation and composition, had very specific formal consequences.

  In order to facilitate the temporal nature of narrative film, he resorted to the use of deep space compositions designed to present multiple actions to a static viewer, or in his case, to a static camera. Often obliged to either demarcate or unite those actions in receding depth planes through the strategic placement of architectural elements, he constructed compositions that directly echoed the iconic perspective images of the early Renaissance. Far from unaware or shy of these references, Renoir cultivated his filming and editing style to create what may be described as “perspective images on celluloid”. In these celluloid perspectives, different spaces are
presented with utmost clarity as visually linked homogenous realms in which actions take place in a simultaneous and unified way.

  However, the cinematic perspective realism of Renoir is not simply operative on a formal level. For Panofsky, the narrative pictorial devices of the perspective tradition were to be considered as a symbolic reflection of the Renaissance psyche and its focus of reason, logic and the mathematical explanation of, amongst other things, space. Consequently, the clarity with which Renaissance perspective represents actions and allows an unhindered interpretation of the events and space is thus read as a reflection of the clarity of mathematical humanist thought. In returning to the spatial traits that underlie Western humanist art in his creation of a “realistic” cinema, Renoir not only revealed a fascination for the technical possibilities of film and an interest in the history of Western art. He was also revealing that tradition’s fundamental values, values that are evident in the optical fidelity and clarity of his filming, and the reasoned, logical and detailed control of his actions, narratives and dialogue.

  By way of contrast, what we find in the work of Yasujiro Ozu is an approach to film in which optical reality, spatial clarity, mathematical logic and reason are of little or no importance to the director’s oeuvre. As with the work of Renoir however, his approach to spatial representation can also be explained by reference to the aesthetic, formal and philosophical characteristics of the culture in which he operated. On the aesthetic level, we see an interest in a simple cinematic style of cuts and fixed camera positions. Their simplicity repeats the basic aesthetic traits that characterise traditional Japanese art and architecture, characteristics that can be associated with the ideas of wabi.

  In addition, we see an approach to composition that takes as its formal guidelines the modular nature of the architecture in which it is filmed and the compositional traits of Edo period woodblock prints. The asymmetrical and flexible nature of the architecture in question here, however, carries with it a different and deeper set of connotations as well. It is representative of the notion of sabi and its celebration of the “incomplete” and the “ambiguous”. Intrinsically linked to this is the Japanese understanding of space-time, ma, and its interest in the intangible and the ephemeral. Thus, what we find in Ozu’s work is an approach to film that alludes to multiple aspects of Japanese artistic traditions but which also resonates with its spiritual undercurrents.