was a Japanese
film director
A film director or filmmaker is a person who controls a film's artistic and dramatic aspects and visualizes the screenplay (or script) while guiding the film crew and actors in the fulfillment of that Goal, vision. The director has a key role ...
.
Biography
Masumura was born in
Kōfu, Yamanashi.
After graduating from the law department at the
University of Tokyo
The University of Tokyo (, abbreviated as in Japanese and UTokyo in English) is a public research university in Bunkyō, Tokyo, Japan. Founded in 1877 as the nation's first modern university by the merger of several pre-westernisation era ins ...
, he worked as an assistant director at the
Daiei Film
Daiei Film Co. Ltd. ( Kyūjitai: Shinjitai: ''Daiei Eiga Kabushiki Kaisha'') was a Japanese film studio. Founded in 1942 as Dai Nippon Film Co., Ltd., it was one of the major studios during the postwar Golden Age of Japanese cinema, produci ...
studio.
He later returned to university to study philosophy and graduated in 1951.
The following year, he won a scholarship allowing him to study film in Italy at the
Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia
The (; CSC), also referred to as the (), is an Italian national film school headquartered in Rome, with satellite educational hubs in five other Italian regions.
It was established in 1935 and aims to promote the art and technique of cinemat ...
under
Michelangelo Antonioni
Michelangelo Antonioni ( ; ; 29 September 1912 – 30 July 2007) was an Italian film director, screenwriter, and editor. He is best known for his "trilogy on modernity and its discontents", ''L'Avventura'' (1960), ''La Notte'' (1961), and '' ...
,
Federico Fellini
Federico Fellini (; 20 January 1920 – 31 October 1993) was an Italian film director and screenwriter. He is known for his distinctive style, which blends fantasy and baroque images with earthiness. He is recognized as one of the greatest and ...
and
Luchino Visconti
Luchino Visconti di Modrone, Count of Lonate Pozzolo (; 2 November 1906 – 17 March 1976) was an Italian filmmaker, theatre and opera director, and screenwriter. He was one of the fathers of Italian neorealism, cinematic neorealism, but later ...
.
Masumura returned to Japan in 1953. From 1955, he worked as a second-unit director on films directed by
Kenji Mizoguchi
was a Japanese filmmaker who directed roughly one hundred films during his career between 1923 and 1956. His most acclaimed works include '' The Story of the Last Chrysanthemums'' (1939), '' The Life of Oharu'' (1952), '' Ugetsu'' (1953), and ' ...
,
Kon Ichikawa
was a Japanese film director and screenwriter. His work displays a vast range in genre and style, from the anti-war films '' The Burmese Harp'' (1956) and '' Fires on the Plain'' (1959), to the documentary '' Tokyo Olympiad'' (1965), which won t ...
and
Daisuke Ito.
In 1957, he directed his own first film ''
Kisses
A kiss is the touching or pressing of one's lips against another person, animal or object. Cultural connotations of kissing vary widely; depending on the culture and context, a kiss can express sentiments of love, Passion (emotion), passion ...
'',
which caused film critic (and future director)
Nagisa Ōshima
was a Japanese filmmaker, writer, and left-wing activist who is best known for his fiction films, of which he directed 23 features in a career spanning from 1959 to 1999. He is regarded as one of the greatest Japanese directors of all time, and ...
to note, "a powerful irresistible force has arrived in Japanese Cinema." Over the next three decades, he directed 58 films in a variety of genres.
Legacy
According to film critic
Shigehiko Hasumi
Shigehiko Hasumi (蓮實重彥, aka Hasumi Shiguéhiko; born April 29, 1936 in Tokyo) is a Japanese literary critic, film critic, French literature scholar, and novelist. He was a professor at the University of Tokyo (Cultural Studies, or the "St ...
, filmmaker
Shinji Aoyama
was a Japanese film director, screenwriter, composer, film critic, and novelist. He graduated from Rikkyo University. He won two awards at the 2000 Cannes Film Festival for his film '' Eureka''.
Biography
Shinji Aoyama was born in Kitakyushu, ...
had declared Masumura "the most important filmmaker in the history of postwar Japanese cinema."
Filmography
References
Further reading
*
External links
*
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Masumura, Yasuzo
1924 births
1986 deaths
People from Kōfu, Yamanashi
Japanese film directors
Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia alumni
University of Tokyo alumni