Hippodrome Festival of Silent Cinema 2014 TOUR Dragnet Girl (Hijôsen No Onna) with live accompaniment by Jane Gardner (piano), Roddy Long (violin), Hazel Morrison (percussion) Dir. Yasujiro Ozu | Japan | 1933 | b/w | 1h 36m | cert PG

Yasujiro Ozu’s silent films reveal not just his early mastery of the Ozu holds off as long as possible getting specific about Joji’s medium but also the popular basis of his art. One of the greatest criminal activities and has little interest in violent action (a of Ozu’s silent films, Dragnet Girl (1933) is a vigorous and stylish fight between Joji and three enemies takes place off-screen; work that feels almost casual yet heartfelt. Ozu spins his little another fight is obscured by foreground figures). Like Josef von story (concocted by himself) of crime, love and redemption with Sternberg in his landmark gangster films (which Ozu surely had skill while staying close to the concerns of the mass audience of seen), Ozu uses the gangland trappings of his plot to render early-1930s Japan, hungry for up-to-date thrills but ambivalent the story more exotic, unreal, and abstract, so as to give the about the changes modernity had brought to the society. audience untrammelled access to the characters’ emotions. He For a 21st-century audience that knows Ozu mainly for his later is well served by his cast. Joji Oka’s freezing narcissism suits masterworks such as Late Spring (1949), Early Summer (1951) the mood of the film; Hideo Mitsui, making the first of many and Tokyo Story (1953), the subject matter of Dragnet Girl may appearances in Ozu films, is forthright and appealing; and come as a shock. No doubt this melodrama of the criminal Sumiko Mizukubo, who was called “Japan’s Sylvia Sidney,” cuts underworld appears aberrant in the career of a filmmaker a striking figure in one of the handful of her films that have renowned for his elegiac films about middle-class families. survived. Above all, Kinuyo Tanaka, one of the greatest Japanese The late Donald Richie, a pioneer in Western appreciation of film stars, is at her early peak in Dragnet Girl, giving a vibrant Japanese cinema, mentions Dragnet Girl only fleetingly in his and moving performance that Ozu places at the centre of every book on Ozu. Even the director himself wrote in his diary that he scene. felt ill at ease working on the film. Programme notes by Chris Fujiwara, Artistic Director, Edinburgh Ozu has been famously called “the most Japanese of directors,” International Film Festival. but Dragnet Girl takes place in a universe that denies Japanese- ness. At the office where the heroine, Tokiko (Kinuyo Tanaka), The score for ‘Dragnet Girl’ was premiered at the Hippodrome works during the day, typists use Remington typewriters; at the Festival of Silent Cinema March 2014 and tours Scotland this boxing gym where Tokiko’s boyfriend, Joji (Joji Oka), hangs out summer. The score and tour are supported by Film Hub Scotland, and in the apartment the couple share, the walls are covered part of BFI’s Film Audience Network. with posters for American boxing matches and Hollywood films (The Champ and All Quiet on the Western Front); the dance club where Tokiko and Joji spend their nights is conspicuously Western-style. (Ozu’s cool modernism in Dragnet Girl anticipates by at least three decades the ironic appropriation of American attitudes and genres by Jean-Luc Godard in the 1960s and Rainer Werner Fassbinder in the 1970s.) Of the characters in Dragnet Girl, only young aspiring gangster Hiroshi (Hideo Mitsui) and his sister, Kazuko (Sumiko Mizukubo), live in a world that is recognisably, if vestigially, Japanese: Kazuko wears kimonos, Hiroshi wears, sometimes, a school uniform. Yet Kazuko also Tour details: works in a music shop dominated by the figure of RCA Victor Glasgow Film Theatre Sunday 1 June 8pm (and HMV) advertising icon Nipper the dog. Filmhouse, Edinburgh Friday 13 June 6.30pm Eden Court Theatre, Inverness Saturday 14 June 7.15pm The struggle over a Japanese national soul in thrall to Western Dundee Contemporary Arts Sunday 22 June 3pm images is a subtext of Dragnet Girl, and the traditional values Birks Cinema, Aberfeldy Thursday 28 August 7.30pm embodied by Kazuko influence the moral reawakening of For details of other tour venues and news on Hippodrome Tokiko and Joji. But Ozu is no nationalist, and in filming this Festival of Silent Cinema visit www.hippfest.co.uk romantic triangle, he is less interested in cultural symbols than in emotions. By the way, not just Joji, but Tokiko, too, is drawn to Kazuko; this same-sex attraction becomes all but explicit when Tokiko walks toward Kazuko on a sidewalk, apparently to kiss her (though because the camera is close to street level, both women’s faces are cut off by the top of the frame).

DragNet GIRL ON TOUR ‘Dragnet Girl’ Synopsis Musicians (please note the following contains spoilers) The musical director of the group is Composer/Pianist Jane Dragnet Girl is set in Yokohama – a Japanese port city known Gardner. She holds a PhD in Composition from Goldsmiths for the prevalence of prostitution and vice – and concerns a College, London University. Her works have also been performed young couple Joji and Tokiko who are charmingly described as by groups such as the Scottish Chamber Orchestra (SCO) and “delinquents”. the Royal Scottish National Orchestra (RSNO). She has worked extensively in theatre, cinema and dance and composed for Joji is a former boxer, turned hood; Tokiko, his squeeze, keeps a the Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre, acrobatic string group The day-job as a straight-laced office worker. Their nights are spent Gogmagogs and Disney Pixar’s ‘Brave’ soundtrack. As a silent in revel, with booze and presumably sex in vast supply…. A film accompanist for many years, she has played to cinema student , Hiroshi, joins the gang. When Joji begins to fall for audiences around the UK. She performed together with regular Hiroshi’s sister Kazuko, Tokiko decides to scare her rival away, collaborator Hazel Morrison and Scottish Chamber Orchestra however Tokiko takes a liking to Kazuko and decides to reform. co-principle cellist Su-a Lee her specially-commissioned score Joji throws Tokiko out but she soon returns and convinces him to for ‘The Goose Woman’ at Hippfest 2013 Closing Night Gala give up his life of crime. performance, to great acclaim.

Meanwhile Hiroshi has stolen money from the shop where his Hazel Morrison studied Timpani and Percussion at the RSAMD sister works. Joji and Tokiko rob Tokiko’s boss and give the (Royal Conservatoire) in the early 1990s. She now teaches young money to Hiroshi so that he can pay back the money he stole. percussionists for Edinburgh City Council. A versatile musician Pursued by the police, Tokiko entreats Joji to surrender. When she has played with the RSNO, Orchestra Scotland/Brazil, he refuses, she shoots him, Police officers close in as the couple folk rock band Cantara, and with PJ Moore (The Blue Nile) at embrace. Celtic Connections. She has recently been awarded funding by Creative Scotland to create a new solo album.

Roderick Long was awarded an Associated Board Scholarship to study at the Royal College of Music with Jaroslav Vanecek and subsequently awarded a Lincoln Centre Scholarship to study at the Juilliard School of Music in New York. He has appeared regularly as a soloist and chamber musician working with many ensembles in the UK including the SCO, Scottish Ensemble, Edinburgh Quartet, Northern Ballet, Northern Sinfonia and the Halle. He coaches for the National Youth Orchestra of Scotland and is Head of Strings at St. George’s School in Edinburgh.

DragNet GIRL ON TOUR