Chi wa kawaiteru

No film more clearly shows Yoshida’s difference from the mainstream Japanese cinema of his time than BLOOD IS DRY. In opposition to directors such as Kurosawa Akira and Kinoshita Keisuke, Yoshida rejects the humanist ideology of postwar Japan in its entirety. Kiguchi (Sada Keiji), the hero of BLOOD IS DRY, is a salaryman who, when his fellow employees are faced with the loss of their jobs, intervenes on their behalf by threatening suicide. Yoshida sees Kiguchi not as a heroic symbol of the solidarity of Japan’s hard-working, stoically suffering and fundamentally decent people, but as a monster created by the demand of mass media for such figures.
Yoshida’s critique of the spectacular society of 1960 is, no doubt, caricature, but viewers today may find it more convincing than similar critiques in such roughly contemporary films as Elia Kazan’s A FACE IN THE CROWD and John Boulting’s I’M ALL RIGHT, JACK. Yoshida’s visual style, raw and brutal but also sinuous and richly textured, opens up the satirical realism of the film to the purely cinematic concerns that would increasingly preoccupy Yoshida throughout his career. (Chris Fujiwara)

All retrospective films that will be shown at the Filmmuseum after the Viennale - from 2.11. - can of course also be reserved as usual at filmmuseum.at or by calling 01/533 70 54 and purchased at the box office of the Austrian Film Museum. The prices of the Austrian Film Museum apply.

Yoshida Kijū: GOOD-FOR-NOTHING (1960), BLOOD IS DRY A.K.A BLOODY THIRST (1960), BITTER END OF A SWEET NIGHT (1961), AKITSU SPRING (1962), 18 WHO CAUSE A STORM A.K.A. 18 ROUGHS (1963), A STORY WRITTEN WITH WATER (1965), WOMAN OF THE LAKE (1966), IMPASSE (1967), THE AFFAIR (1967), AFFAIR IN THE SNOW (1968), FAREWELL TO THE SUMMER LIGHT (1968), EROS + MASSACRE (1969), HEROIC PURGATORY (1970), COUP D’ETAT (1973), A PROMISE (1986), WUTHERING HEIGHTS (1988), WOMEN IN THE MIRROR (2002), BEM-VINDO A SÃO PAULO (2004, Episode)