Sadao Yamanaka (4)

Sadao Yamanaka (山中 貞雄 Yamanaka Sadao?, November 7, 1909 – September 17, 1938) was a Japanese film director and screenwriter who directed 26 films between 1932 and 1938. He was a contemporary of Yasujirō Ozu, Mikio Naruse and Kenji Mizoguchi and one of the primary figures in the development of the jidaigeki, or historical film. Yamanaka died of dysentery in Manchuria after being drafted into the Imperial Japanese Army. He is the uncle of the Japanese film director Tai Kato, who once penned a book about Yamanaka, Eiga kantoku Yamanaka Sadao.

Only three of his films survive in nearly complete form. While long considered a master filmmaker in his native Japan, interest in Yamanaka's work redeveloped after the restoration and Japanese DVD release of the three surviving films. His most internationally discussed film, Humanity and Paper Balloons (1937), was given its first non-Japanese DVD release in the UK as a Masters of Cinema release.

Yamanaka began his career in the Japanese film industry at the age of 20 as a writer and assistant director for the Makino company.

In 1932, he began working for Kanjuro Productions, a small, independent film company similar to many others founded during the same period as it was centered around a popular jidaigeki film star, this time Kanjuro Arashi. Here, he began directing his first films, all of which were jidaigeki. During his first year at Kanjuro, he made six films. He was "discovered" by the critic Matsuo Kishi and gained a reputation for creating films that escaped clichés and focused on social injustices. He formed the Narutaki-gumi with his friends, and they wrote under the pseudonym Kimpachi Kajiwara.

During the 1930s he moved between several film companies, eventually settling in Kyoto and working for the Nikkatsu Company. Most of his films were silent films as sound did not gain a prominence in Japan until 1935-36. He worked twice with the Japanese theatre troupe Zenshin-za: first on The Village Tattooed Man (Machi no Irezumi-mono, 1935) and on his final film, Humanity and Paper Balloons.

Humanity and Paper Balloons premiered the same day that Yamanaka was drafted into the Japanese army. He later died in a field hospital in the then-Japanese ruled Manchukuo, known today as Manchuria. The cause of death was inflammation of the intestines.

Style and influences:
Early on, Yamanaka had stated an interest in blurring the lines between several genres: comedy, historical epics, and comedy-dramas focusing on average people. Viewers and critics (notably, Donald Richie and Tadao Sato in pioneering studies of Japanese cinema) note in his surviving films the genesis of ideas later explored by the internationally successful Akira Kurosawa, Kenji Mizoguchi, Yasujirō Ozu and Seijun Suzuki.

Yamanaka has been characterized as a minimalist, one whose style favoured elegance and rhythm. In fact, he was a close friend of Ozu, who is often noted as a minimalist too.

Yamanaka is said to have been inspired by Hollywood films such as Rouben Mamoulian's City Streets, Edmund Goulding's Grand Hotel and Frank Capra's It Happened One Night.

Director Kazuo Kuroki once said of Yamanaka, "Every film he made wonderfully depicted human purity and chastity with a tender, delicate gaze. I was astonished that a young man in his twenties accomplished such perfection. wiki

Director (24 credits)
1937 Humanidad y globos de papel
1937 Mori no Ishimatsu
1936 Uminari kaidô
1936 Kôchiyama Sôshun
1936 Kaitô Shirozukin: Kôhen
1935 Kaitô Shirozukin: Zempen
1935 Machi no irezumi mono
1935 Seki no yatappe
1935 Tange Sazen yowa: Hyakuman ryô no tsubo
1935 Kunisada Chûji
1934 Gantarô kaidô
1934 Ashigaru shusse-tan
1934 Furyû katsujinken
1933 Nezumikozô Jirokichi: Futatabi edo no maki
1933 Nezumikozô Jirokichi: Dôchû no maki
1933 Nezumikozô Jirokichi: Edo no maki
1933 Bangaku no issho
1933 Satsuma-bikyaku: Kenkô aiyoku-hen
1932 Tengu kaijô: Zenpen
1932 Umon torimonochô sanjûban tegara: Obitoke buppô
1932 Kuchibue o fuku bushi
1932 Ogasawara Ikinokami
1932 Koban shigure
1932 Iso no Genta: Dakine no nagawakizashi IMDB

Enlaces completados:
OK Kochiyama Soshun (Sadao Yamanaka, 1936)
OK Takeda Shingen (Sadao Nakajima, 1990)
OK Ninjo kami fusen (Sadao Yamanaka, 1937)
OK Tange Sazen yowa Hyakuman ryo no tsubo (Sadao Yamanaka, 1935)

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