HOUSE Nobuhiko Obayashi, 1977

HOUSE (Nobuhiko Obayashi, 1977)

Finally watched HOUSE tonight is has been on my watch list forever. It was a delight for me speaking some rudimentary Japanese. I loved the experimental film techniques and editing. In a later documentary they say that they all had so much fun on this set and it shows. It is a fun film, limbs are flying off and it's just a spectacular in how it happens and the insane visuals. 

On the Criterion Channel I get the great extra features that come with DVDs. I'm watching the documentary extra called  Nobuhiko Obayashi and Crew on HOUSE (Criterion, 2010).

Just wanted to jot down a few thoughts from his... cinema was die-ing (sp?) in the 60's because everyone was watching tv (same as in the U.S. before the Hollywood rebirth). The film Jaws (Steven Spielberg, 1975 ) made a big impression in Japan and TOHO asked Obayashi to make a similar horror film. They green-lit his idea for HOUSE, but it was stalled two years because no one wanted to direct it. It is very experimental. 

As I was watching Obayashi talk about how happy he was that they tried all tried of new experimental techniques, that they wanted cinema to have magic that it used to have. Create a magical world. I thought about George Méliès. How he was literally a magician but brought that to filmmaking and also unlike a lot of others of his time, had his films inked with colors. He also used ghost and witch plots themes.  It was a true feast to be at the cinema. 

Obayashi also talked about how the critics were so shocked by the film that they didn't know how to review it and called it trash. It became a huge hit in Japan especially with lines around the block with children under fifteen. I can't believe they would let young kids see this...not now a days with the violence and nudity.  He said that many of the kids that were fifteen at that time were so moved by that film that they have became a generation of filmmakers inspired by that that groundbreaking film. 

It also reminded me of the Czech experimental film Daisies (Věra Chytilová, 1966) with the cut out pieces of film, spliced back in - the mirror - the cut fingers playing piano - the cut out lips...