Since so few of Shimizu’s films are available to us, it is very interesting to browse the internet and read what fellow explorers of his work have to say. Here is a thread on criterionforum where some of Shimizu’s films are discussed that have been released on DVD. What strikes me is the general passion for his work and the longing to see more. It seems Shochiku had announced three years ago that five box sets containing pre-war Shimizu films were to be released, but so far only two have seen the light of day and there seems to be no further information available if the additional three dvd sets are to be released in the near future. Apparently, there are VHS copies floating around of Shimizu silent films that were broadcast on TV at some point, as well as some of his later work and I will try to get my hands on them. I find that the obscurity of Shimizu’s work also contributes to his appeal and I’m excited to see where my exploration might lead me. So far, the consensus seems to be that his defining stylistic features are his reliance on tracking shots, his use of depth of field and his “spontaneous” camera placement. All of these characteristics are well present in The Masseurs and a Woman, a delightful leisurely ensemble piece, that Shimizu also wrote.
The story is rather incidental and loosely follows two blind masseurs, Toku and Fuku, who work at a mountain retreat for the season. Toku is attracted to a woman from Tokyo who might or might not be involved in mysterious thefts that are occurring at different inns at the retreat. Another guest from Tokyo makes friends with her and postpones leaving the inn as he gets more and more intrigued by her. Ultimately, nothing substantial happens, but we learn why the woman is there and what her secret is. At its core, The Masseurs and a Woman is a comedy of manners, and most character beats are based on reversals of situations. In the first scene of the movie, the masseurs ascend a hill and are passed by young students. Later, Toku and Fuku massage the students. But they do it so hard, that the students are unable to hike the next day. To add insult to injury, some female students make fun of them because of that. In another scene, the son of the guest from Tokyo tickles Toku’s nose with a shrub and makes him sneeze. The boy laughs. Later, he holds a fan in front of Toku’s face, but this time the blind man grabs it. The boy cries. The most obvious reversal occurs when the son’s father meets the woman from Tokyo. Prior to that, he tells his son to pack his things to go home. But the son wants to stay. Once the father meets the woman, he tells his son that they will stay longer, but by then the boy is bored of the place and wants to go home.
Much of the film’s conflict, so to speak, is achieved in this way and it is at times amusing, at other times more upsetting to see how Shimizu turns the situations on their heads. He frequently does it in an elliptic manner, contributing to the humor. In one instance, Toku gets into a physical fight with the students who outnumber him severely. We fade to black. Fade in to reveal the students limping along with bruises and band-aids on their faces. The reveal of the woman’s secret is also achieved by reversal of situation. Toku learns by chance that the police is raiding the inns in order to find the person stealing from the guests. Suspecting her to be the thief, Toku grabs the woman and runs away with her. When she finally finds out what’s going on, she comes clean with him. And reveals that she is not the thief. Strangely, The Masseurs and a Woman is mostly apolitical, which is remarkable if one takes into account that it was written and shot in 1938. There are some passing remarks about a longing for an urban environment that translates into Toku’s fascination with the woman, specifically since she is from Tokyo. Talking to other masseurs, Toku expresses his ambivalence with the city when he remarks wonderingly that “women are working in Tokyo!” Attraction and repulsion with the modern lifestyle are thus expressed by the characters, but only tangentially.
Shimizu shoots all of this in his own idiosyncratic style. I was amazed by the amount of tracking shots, and how differently he uses them throughout the movie. We open with Toku and Fuku ascending the mountain. Shimizu films this with an extended “walk-and-talk” tracking shot. The characters walk towards the camera on a vertical axis in the middle of the frame, and the camera simply tracks back. The director uses this procedure for all the outdoor hiking scenes, as well as when the characters walk through the mountain retreat. Another variety of the tracking shot is used for indoor scenes. Shimizu follows his characters in profile, usually filming them from a certain distance with various objects, doors or walls blocking our view intermittently. Furthermore, there are several instances when Shimizu uses the tracking shots to reveal different characters performing different tasks independently from one another within the same shot. One last curious occurrence of a tracking shot happens at the very end of the film. The woman from Tokyo leaves the retreat and Toku tries to catch up with the wagon that takes her away. He is unsuccessful. We cut from her face looking back at the retreat, to Toku’s disappointed visage. Then, the camera shakily tracks forward and around a bend to catch one last glimpse of the wagon in the distance. Fade out, the end.
Again, Shimizu is more interested in shooting his subjects from different distances than in following the 180 rule all of the time. This is especially the case in outdoor scenes when two characters are simply talking, or in a scene where Toku crosses paths for the first time with the woman from Tokyo, scents her smell and tries to follow her (shown above). Shimizu cuts from vivid close-ups to medium shots, to long shots in seemingly random order. The characters walk towards or from the camera (again on a vertical axis) in a lot of instances, contributing to a rather disorienting sequence. But with almost each shot, Shimizu reveals a new piece of information that is vital to our understanding of the scene. Shimizu might play around gleefully with camera positioning, but he never forgets that he is directing a movie.
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