Left behind by history: complicating narrative, modernity in the mundane, and reading history through womenin "feeling of life films"

Abstract

This dissertation scrutinizes a corpus of films considered to be the stylistic and thematic descendants of Yasujiro Ozu, which I call “feeling of life films.” Focusing upon common themes such as female narrative and the portrayals of the quotidian, this dissertation identifies various methods used in specific films of Ozu, Hou Hsiao Hsien, and Tran Anh Hung that complicate narrative meaning and engage in the discourse of national modernity and history. The female protagonists of these films can be considered “left behind” by the narrative progression of history, serving an allegorical function that critiques standard notions of time and official history. The basis for understanding this phenomenon will be scholarly discourse primarily concerning Ozu’s “Noriko Trilogy,” which marks the transitional period of post-war Japan through the narrative of a woman’s path to marriage. This dissertation seeks to complicate the discourse of reading women in these films by introducing different methodologies of formalist analysis, cultural analysis, theoretic discourse, historiography, and phenomenology. In doing so, this dissertation demonstrates the cinematic importance of these films through their unique formal characteristics and their cultural and historical meanings.