Original Post: Banka.Northern Elegy.1957.Heinosuke GOSHO(Custom Subs).mp4
Banka
(Northern Elegy)
1957
Heinosuke Gosho
IMDB LinkIMDB rating: 7.0
Banka (Northern Elegy)
DIRECTOR: Heinosuke Gosho
COUNTRY: Japan
YEAR: 1957
RUNTIME: 01:57
GENRE: Shomin-geki, Romance, Psychological Drama.
LANGUAGE: Japanese
SUBTITLES: English srt (custom)
CAST: Yoshiko Kuga (Reiko), Masayuki Mori (Katsuragi), Mieko Takamine (Mrs. Katsuragi), Tatsuo Saito (Reiko’s father)
SYNOPSIS/REVIEW:"It’s a psychologically turbulent tale, of a young woman, Reiko, in her early 20s, who has lived with an elbow deformity that means she essentially just uses her right arm. She’s grown up with a cynical, forthright view of the world, but also doesn’t care about the consequences of her actions. When she meets a middle-aged man, Katsuragi, after his dog bites her, she sets out to win him, not caring about his marriage which, she finds out, is to a woman who has been unfaithful with a toyboy. She and Katsuragi do begin an affair, but then she starts to intrude into his wife’s life and comes to befriend her when the wife helps her recover from pneumonia, not knowing who she was.
The flashback structure which unfolds, and the melancholy score, tell us this isn’t going to end up rosy. What is unexpected is the callousness of its heroine. She sees no problem in befriending a woman whose husband she’s sleeping with and feels no remorse when the truth becomes known. Yet it’s more disturbing still, in that Reiko begins to call Mrs. Katsuragi, mother, as if to replace her own deceased mother, thus bringing an incestuous angle into proceedings with her lover thus becoming a surrogate father. And if that is not disconcerting enough, there’s Reiko’s almost pleading for punishment and scolding that verges on masochism."
EXCERPT FROM: Allan Fish at Wonders In The Dark.
Read the rest of Allan Fish's article at the link below.
LINK:
http://wondersinthedark.wordpress.com/2013/12/10/banka-1957-heinosuke-gosho/Donald Richie on Heinosuke Gosho:
Gosho has said: "The purpose of a film director's life is to describe the real life around him and create works which express the true feelings of human beings . . . and only if we love our fellow human beings can we create."
This generosity of impulse is constantly reflected in his best films. When the hero is finally transferred to Tokyo at the end of An Inn at Osaka, he says: "None of us can say he is happy or fortunate, yet things still seem promising ... we are able to laugh at our own misfortunes, and so long as we can laugh we still have the strength and courage to build a new future."
And so it always is in Gosho's films. In contradistinction to those of Ozu and Naruse, even those of Mizoguchi, there is a sense of release. Something has happened: the circumstances remain the same but the outlook has changed and there is room for optimism.
From: "Japanese Cinema - Film Style and National Character" by Donald Richie.
A copy of this interesting book is available to read online here:LinkSOURCE AND UPLOADERS NOTES:Credit goes to MieMie at Allzine.org for posting the ED2K link for the original avi file. It was a VHS rip of a TV broadcast recorded by VCR. She credits Marcos for helping with the rip and Mario Vitale and Marcos for the Spanish subs.
I translated and created the English subtitles from the Spanish ones and spent quite a while trying to re-master the original .avi into a nice, full-greyscale print. Some extraneous frames of the recording setup were cut and the screen was cropped to remove tracking lines from the bottom. DAR was fixed to 4:3. The screen shots below will provide a good idea of how good the re-master is. Any of you who have the original .avi, feel free to compare and comment.
TECH NOTES:General
Complete name : Banka.Northern
Elegy.1957.Heinosuke GOSHO(Custom Subs).mp4
Format : MPEG-4
Format profile : Base Media / Version 2
Codec ID : mp42
File size : 1.80 GiB
Duration : 1h 57mn
Overall bit rate mode : Variable
Overall bit rate : 2 195 Kbps
Writing application : TMPGEnc Video
Mastering Works 5 Version. 5.0.5.32
Video
ID : 2
Format : AVC
Format/Info : Advanced Video Codec
Format profile : High@L3.0
Format settings, CABAC : Yes
Format settings, ReFrames : 3 frames
Codec ID : avc1
Codec ID/Info : Advanced Video Coding
Duration : 1h 57mn
Bit rate mode : Variable
Bit rate : 2000 Kbps
Maximum bit rate : 8000 Kbps
Width : 720 pixels
Height : 480 pixels
Display aspect ratio : 4:3
Original display aspect ratio : 4:3
Frame rate mode : Constant
Frame rate : 23.976 fps
Standard : NTSC
Color space : YUV
Chroma subsampling : 4:2:0
Bit depth : 8 bits
Scan type : Progressive
Bits/(Pixel*Frame) : 0.241
Stream size : 1.64 GiB (91%)
Writing library : x264 core 112
Encoding settings : cabac=1 / ref=3 / deblock=1:0:0 / analyse=0x3:0x133 / me=umh / subme=9 / psy=1 / psy_rd=1.00:0.00 / mixed_ref=1 / me_range=24 / chroma_me=1 / trellis=2 / 8x8dct=1 / cqm=2 / deadzone=21,11 / fast_pskip=1 / chroma_qp_offset=-4 / threads=9 / sliced_threads=0 / slices=1 / nr=0 / decimate=1 / interlaced=0 / constrained_intra=0 / bframes=3 / b_pyramid=0 / b_adapt=2 / b_bias=0 / direct=3 / weightb=1 / open_gop=0 / weightp=2 / eyint=250 / keyint_min=23 / scenecut=40 / intra_refresh=0 / rc_lookahead=60 / rc=2pass / mbtree=1 / bitrate=2000 / ratetol=1.0 / qcomp=0.60 / qpmin=5 / qpmax=51 / qpstep=4 / cplxblur=20.0 / qblur=0.5 / vbv_maxrate=8000 / vbv_bufsize=7995 / nal_hrd=vbr / frame-packing=0 / ip_ratio=1.40 / aq=1:1.00
Color primaries : BT.601 NTSC
Transfer characteristics : BT.601
Matrix coefficients : BT.601
Audio
ID : 1
Format : AAC
Format/Info : Advanced Audio Codec
Format profile : Main
Codec ID : 40
Duration : 1h 57mn
Bit rate mode : Variable
Bit rate : 192 Kbps
Maximum bit rate : 576 Kbps
Channel count : 2 channels
Channel positions : Front: L R
Sampling rate : 48.0 KHz
Compression mode : Lossy
Stream size : 161 MiB (9%)
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