Kaneto Shindo - 1960
Visually and narratively simple, this is a fine movie. We have slow, long (though not too), meditative takes of the gently moving sea and the environs, with pans calmly reframing. Thematic links are made as much as narrative ones. The whites and blakcs come out sharply in a fine-grained print, with contrast further gained by low-angle framings of characters against the sky.
This film has no dialogue, just a little singing, but wonderful sounds. Along with literal correspondences, sound, especially of water, bleeds from scene to scene across non-contiguos locales. A smooth pace adds to this very much 'poetic' cinema, whatever that means.
As in 'Man Of Aran' (visually different as that is, in respects), nature is at once beautiful but hard, tough, deadly, with possibilities of danger. So is the whole of life; the shocking husband's reaction. This, combined with the crossing with the modern, make the film more than a simple paen. Sentimental as it can be, it looks both charming and true.
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