James Fox and Anita Pallenberg, Performance, Donald Cammell and Nicholas Roeg, 1970
Kenji Sawada and Setsuko Karasuma, Mishima, Paul Schrader, 1985
On the commentary track of the new and wonderful Criterion disc of Schrader’s remarkable film, the director himself points out his “petite homage” to the controversial and perhaps even more remarkable Cammell/Roeg film, which he’s also praised in the pages of Film Comment. What’s particularly interesting about this homage is how it’s embedded in an adaptation—a petite adaptation as it were, of Mishima’s 1959 novel Kyoko’s House, which I’m betting didn’t contain the dialogue line “I’ll be your mirror,” either…
Thank you for turning me on to Paul Schrader’s website. I didn’t know he had one or that he had collected his writings there.
The things you learn when hanging with Glenn…
I love Performance so much, and I am anxious to see Mishima (been saving for my Criterion DVD). As a Performance fan, I saw the same image in Hedwig and the Angry Inch, and wondered if it was a conscious reference by John Cameron Mitchell.
I need to pick up “Mishima”, thanks for reminding me!
Yeah, I did not know these, but I knew the similar shot from Hedwig (which rodrigo already mentioned).
http://img103.imageshack.us/img103/9661/pdvd000ml7.jpg
Pleeeaaaasseee tell me they…YES! They brought back Roy Scheider’s narration on the Criterion disc! The former dvd version, sadly, was missing this amazing performance by Mr. Scheider. I have not watched my dvd since that first viewing. Can’t wait to pick up the Criterion disc and listen intently. My VCR broke and my VHS copy has been languishing, unable to be watched.
It is indeed wonderful that Roy Scheider’s voice has been included on the Criterion DVD of “Mishima”. The low-key eloquence of his timbre and delivery has always been integral to the total effect of this magnificent picture. Though I look forward to hearing Ken Ogata’s narration, I can’t imagine that it will surpass Scheider’s terse evocation of Yukio Mishima’s heady, crazy, brave lost-soul eloquence, as detailed in the film and John Nathan’s biography. It seems to me that the contrast between Scheider’s English (representing the writer’s interior world that, for all his prolificacy, he perhaps never could fully express) and Ogata’s Japanese (the public and semi-public Mishima) is part of what generates this effect. This is top-flight work in this category – equal to the achievements of Orson Welles (“The Magnificent Ambersons”), Michel Subor (“Jules and Jim”), and Michael Hordern (“Barry Lyndon”), and it’s good to know that it hasn’t been lost or consigned to some kind of movie limbo.