Style and Themes
Zigeunerweisen is a departure from director Suzuki Seijun's Nikkatsu films in many ways. It was shot entirely on location without access to studio resources; it runs 144 minutes, in contrast to the former's 90-minute maximum; and its intellectual characters and period setting and subject matter invited a more literary audience as opposed to the younger genre fans that formed Suzuki's cult following. On the other hand, freed of studio constraints, Suzuki was able to carry his style even further in the direction his genre work had taken and abandon traditional narrative entirely in favour of random occurrences and incongruous and misleading associations. He presents, comments on and challenges the conceptions of the TaishÅ era, specifically the wide introduction and assimilation of Western culture into Japan and its effect on the Japanese identity.
Read more about this topic: Zigeunerweisen (film)
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