:: DETAILS

Reg./Dir:. Paul Schrader Con Ken Ogata, Kenji Sawada, Yasosuke Brando. Genere Biografico, colore 120 minuti. - Produzione USA, Giappone 1985.

:: PLOT

The film features original music by Philip Glass with performances by the Kronos Quartet. Ken Ogata stars as Yukio Mishima and Roy Scheider speaks an off-screen English narration, also as Mishima. The film was produced in Japan by Francis Ford Coppola and George Lucas (while they were involved with Akira Kurosawa's Kagemusha). The four chapters are "Beauty", "Art", "Action" and "Fusion of Pen and Sword". Each chapter features flashback scenes from Mishima's life shot in lustrous black and white, intercut with highly-stylized, theatrical scenes from three different Mishima novels and the realistically-shot, docudrama-style story of Mishima's last day and seppuku. The novels depicted in the film are The Temple of the Golden Pavilion (1956) in "Beauty"; Kyoko's House (1959) in "Art"; and Runaway Horses (1968) in "Action". In the final chapter, the protagonists of all three novels are shown achieving their destructive and/or suicidal objectives as Mishima commits suicide. The soundtrack follows the different visual styles, accompanying the black-and-white flashbacks with a string quartet, the theatrical scenes with a string orchestra and synthesizers, and the "docudrama" scenes with a full symphonic orchestra. Schrader has said that he considers Mishima the best film he has directed: "It's the one I'd stand by - as a screenwriter it's Taxi Driver, but as a director it's Mishima." (Schrader on Schrader and Other Writings (2004)

:: BIOGRAPHY

Paul Joseph Schrader (born July 22, 1946 in Grand Rapids, Michigan) is an American screenwriter and film director. His influences include Robert Bresson, Yasujiro Ozu and Carl Dreyer, whose cross-cultural similarities he examined in Transcendental Style in Film: Ozu, Bresson, Dreyer (ISBN 0-306-80335-6) in 1972. Despite his credentials as a director, Schrader has received more recognition for his screenplays directed by others. Schrader is married to the actress Mary Beth Hurt, and they have two children, a daughter named Molly and a son named Sam. He was trained at the AFI Conservatory. His brother was a screenwriter and director Leonard Schrader, with whom he collaborated on the screenplays of Blue Collar and Mishima.

:: FILMOGRAPHY

Tuta blu (Blue Collar) (1978) Hardcore (1978) American Gigolò (1980) Il bacio della pantera (Cat People) (1982) Mishima: una vita in quattro capitoli (Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters) (1985) La luce del giorno (Light of Day) (1987) Patty - La vera storia di Patty Hearst (Patty Hearst) (1988) Cortesie per gli ospiti (The Comfort of Strangers) (1990) Lo spacciatore (Light Sleeper) (1992) Witch Hunt - Caccia alle streghe (Witch Hunt) (1994) Touch (1997) Affliction (1997) Forever Mine (1999) Auto Focus (2002) Dominion: Prequel to the Exorcist (2005) The Walter (2007) Adam Resurrected (2008) (in preproduzione)