Film Criticism Current Issue

Hayao Miyazki's animation film Sen to Chihiro no kamikakushi (Spirited Away) became the highest-grossing motion picture of all time in Japan. Many critics compared Sprited Away with western narratives such as Alice in Wonderland or even Harry Potter. Although the influence of western stories, art, architecture is evident, Spirited Away is replete with Japanese folklore, tradition and symbolism. Indeed, the title kamikakushi (hidden by the kami/spirit[s]), itself indicates Japanese folk belief. The film's major characters such as Yubaba (a descendent of yamauba or mountain witch) and Kamajii (reminiscent of tsuchigumo or earth spider) with in the architecture of a bath house are symbolic not only as a representation of yamauba and earth spider respectively but also as a reflection of Japan's vertical society. Situating the film as an exemplary work of the fantastic, the article examines Japanese folk beliefs, imagery, and symbolism, all of which resonate with voices of Japanese past and present.

Home Current Issue Back Issues News & Notes Subscribe Contact Us Editorial Board Archives Links	Noriko T. Reider Spirited Away: Film of the Fantastic and Evolving Japanese Filk Symbols Noriko T. Reider is Associate Professor of Japanese at Miami University, Ohio. She is the author of Tales of the Supernatural in Early Modern Japan: Kaidan, Akinari, Ugetsu monogatari. Her articles and reviews have appeared in such journals as Asian Folklore Studies and International Journals of Asian Studies. Currently she is working on a monograph on Japanese oni (ogre/demon).	Hayao Miyazki's animation film Sen to Chihiro no kamikakushi (Spirited Away) became the highest-grossing motion picture of all time in Japan. Many critics compared Sprited Away with western narratives such as Alice in Wonderland or even Harry Potter. Although the influence of western stories, art, architecture is evident, Spirited Away is replete with Japanese folklore, tradition and symbolism. Indeed, the title kamikakushi (hidden by the kami/spirit[s]), itself indicates Japanese folk belief. The film's major characters such as Yubaba (a descendent of yamauba or mountain witch) and Kamajii (reminiscent of tsuchigumo or earth spider) with in the architecture of a bath house are symbolic not only as a representation of yamauba and earth spider respectively but also as a reflection of Japan's vertical society. Situating the film as an exemplary work of the fantastic, the article examines Japanese folk beliefs, imagery, and symbolism, all of which resonate with voices of Japanese past and present.
	Ewa Mazierska The Autobiographical Effect in the Cinema of Roman Polanski Ewa Mazierska is Reader in Contemporary Cinema at the University of Central Lancashire. She is the author (with Laura Rascaroli) of Dreams and Diaries: The Cinema of Nanni Moretti and From Moscow to Madrid: European Cities and Postmodern Cinema. Her essays appear regularly in a variety of journals.	This article discusses the causes of the unrelenting interest in Polanski as a real person and in the alleged relationship between his life and films, drawing attention to the popularity of his off-screen persona and a wide perception that his life is very unusual, almost like a ready-made film script. It examines three discourses in his films that produce the autobiographical effect: violence (especially towards women and children), travel, and voyeurism. The essay also argues that Polanski's oeuvre reflects the most important events and cultural changes that took place in the last hundred years: the Second World War and the Holocaust; the shift of the dominant lifestyle from stable and settled to a nomadic existence, and, consequently the loss of stable identity; Western sexual liberation and the backlash towards its achievements; and the dominance of the visual media over other types of communication. It could be said the in Polanski's life and films we see not only the director, but a reflection of ourselves and the world as it changes in front of our eyes.
	Arturo Silva Vincente Minnelli's Dream of Tony Hunter's Band Wagon's "Girl Hunt" Arturo Silva teaches film theory and history at the Institute of Architectural Theory at the Technical Institute, Vienna (Austria). He edited The Donald Richie Reader: 50 Years of Writing on Japan (Stonebridge Press, 2001) and has recently compled a book on 2001 A Space Odyssey.	Vincente Minnelli's The Band Wagon (1953) condludes with a sequence of four numbers, plus the famous "The Girl Hunt," all of which appear to have no narrative connection to anything that precedes them, or even with each other. Most accounts of this ending write it off in a casual "that's entertainment!" manner. But a careful reading of the elements of this long concluding section not only clears up the "mystery of the mystery" of "The Girl Hunt," but also gives The Band Wagon a hitherto unperceived coherency and wholeness. This essay looks first at the film's sources and at those four numbers, reading the whole as a bricolage of film musical elements, including various aspects of Minnelli's career. The second part offers a detailed reading of "The Girl Hunt," revealing it to be a dream of the hero's desire for the heroine whos themes and images derive from the main body of The Band Wagon's narrative.
	Book Reviews Kevin Heffernan, Ghouls, Gimmicks, and Gold: Horror Film and the American Movie Business, 1953-1968 by Steffan Hantke Jacqueline Najuma Stewart, Migrating to the Movies: Cinema and Black Urban Modernity by Laura Quinn


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