Mashiro Shinoda, one of the last remaining Golden Age giants, dies at 94

https://www.bfi.org.uk/features/masahiro-shinoda-obituary-japanese-new-wave-director-pale-flower-silence

List some of your favoites.

Thanks for the link, Christopher! I removed your second post as it seemed to be a copy-paste of the linked article and I have no licence to republish BFI’s content.

I thought that I had seen The Double Suicide sometime in the 90s, but looking into the film, I now doubt if I have! None of his other films seem familiar to me at all, so I’m afraid I’m unable to list favourites. Availability once again seems challenging, although it looks like our North American members might be able to find quite a good collection on The Criterion Channel. Nothing like that here in Europe though, it seems.

I’ve seen quite a few of his films! If you are able to find them, I recommend Himiko (1974), The petrified forest (1973) and The ballad of Orin (1977). The Ballad of Orin has an interesting soundtrack.

The only one of his films I’ve seen is Pale Flower – showing at a festival many years ago. I found it very striking, but I was only just starting my interest in Japanese cinema at the time so I didn’t really have a lot of context. It really is a passing of that generation, only a handful are left I think.

On the subject of Pale Flower, a pet peeve of mine is how so many Japanese films have crudely translated titles. Pale Flower always seemed to me to be an exception. If I’m not mistaken, a more direct translation of its title would be ‘a dry flower’.

The Scandalous Adventures of Buraikan (1970) is a very entertaining film starring Tatsuya Nakadai. There’s a Kurosawa tie-in, since this is the focus of this webiste. Punishment Island (1966) and Under the Blossoming Cherry Trees (1975) are other interesting ones. Toru Takemitsu, who scored two of Kurosawa’s films, was a frequent Shinoda collaborator also. Shinoda’s stunningly beautiful wife Shima Iwashita, who is still living, starred in many of his best films. She was in a few Mifune and Nakadai films as well. Shima Iwashita and fellow actress Kyoko Kagawa (Tokyo Story, Sansho the Bailiff, The Bad Sleep Well, High and Low, and Madadayo) are about all that’s left now from the 50s and 60s.