In Hollywood, Vincente Minnelli’s Meet Me in St. Louis (1944) is often regarded as a pivotal work in the transition from backstage musicals to integrated musicals; it is frequently cited as a model of the latter. However, the film has not been without criticism. It reinforces ideological conservatism, particularly in its portrayal of gender roles. Although the female characters actively pursue their romantic desires, their agency ultimately reinforces patriarchal norms by aligning these desires with heterosexual marriages. This study centered on the musical number “Over the Bannister,” where the protagonist Esther (Judy Garland) attempts to attract the boy she loves by manipulating his gaze. The analysis focuses on the visual and symbolic functions of the staircase on which she stands. As noted in previous studies, stairs in the cinema have traditionally served as devices for exhibiting women under the male gaze. The staircase trope originated in the Ziegfeld Follies, early 20th-century Broadway revues, and was later extended through backstage musicals following the advent of sound. By placing Meet Me in St. Louis within this visual tradition, this study argues that Esther’s performance reconfigures the gendered dynamics of the cinematic staircase, transforming conventional tropes of female display into a site of subversive agency.

An early and meteoric rise marked Hong Kong actress Lee Ching’s career. At just seventeen, she won the Best Actress award at the twelfth Asia-Pacific Film Festival, for her role in The Mermaid (1965). Over nearly two decades, she starred in over seventy films across various genres. This paper re-evaluates Lee Ching by focusing on her bodily image and exploring how she was constructed as an “Asian actress” during the Cold War. Firstly I examine the impact of the Asia-Pacific Film Festival on the Hong Kong film industry, highlighting how the Best Actress award played a crucial role in promoting actresses and solidifying the image of the “Asian actress” in Hong Kong cinema. Secondly, I explore the construction of Lee Ching as an actress, paying particular attention to examining how her body image was formed and represented in various genres, such as modern dramas, Huangmei opera films, co-productions, and martial arts films. Through a visual analysis of her representative work Susanna (1967), I analyze how Lee Ching’s body symbolically represents the cracks and anxieties that arose during the modernization process in “Free Asia” during the Cold War.

What does it mean to be both director and actor in the same film? This study examines Wanda (1970) as a distinctive case of filmmaking in which Barbara Loden assumed the dual roles of actress and director. It focuses on how Loden reappropriates her experience as an actor from a directorial perspective, incorporating it into both the production process and the film’s textual composition. Through this analysis, the study elucidates how her dual position shaped the film’s overall structure. The analysis begins with an overview of Loden’s career as an actor, highlighting her close connection to Method Acting during her time in 1960s Hollywood, before exploring the character construction in Wanda, and how the issue of “emotional expression” emerges when comparing her performances in Splendor in the Grass. The discussion then turns to Wanda’s narrative structure and final scene to explore the significance of Loden’s directorial decisions during the editing process. Through the method of “filming herself” in Wanda, Loden not only engages with the “emotional expression” she pursued as an actor, but also reconsiders this issue from a directorial perspective, shaping the film’s structure through its ending.

This paper reassesses Edgar Morin’s film theory, The Cinema, or the Imaginary Man (1956), from the perspective of recent anthropology and neuroscience. Although often overlooked, Morin’s ideas challenge traditional film theory and provide a distinctive framework for understanding cinema’s role in shaping human perception. By integrating contemporary anthropology and neuroscience, this study offers a fresh perspective on cinema’s medium specificity. First, the paper outlines Morin’s theory, emphasizing the concept of “participation,” which describes the immersive and interactive nature of the cinematic experience. This term highlights viewers’ deep psychological and emotional engagement with films, distinguishing Morin’s perspective from that of other theoretical approaches. Next, the study reevaluates Morin’s arguments through the lens of neuroscience and post-ontological turn anthropology, drawing on Philippe Descola’s four ontologies. It seeks to clarify some of Morin’s ambiguous descriptions and strengthen the theoretical foundation of his works. Finally, the paper argues that Morin’s concept of the “external retina telelinked to the brain” provides a valuable insight into the mechanics of cinema. This notion helps articulate cinema’s position within the contemporary landscape of media and art by focusing on how it activates and modulates perceptual habits.

This study examines the “Cornerstone of Peace” located on Okinawa’s Mabuni Hill, which is inscribed with the names of those who perished in the Battle of Okinawa and is a central motif in Katsuya Okuma’s 2024 film Close to the Bone. The paper explores the film’s final long shot and its meaning compared to existing discourse on the Cornerstone, the memory transmission of the Battle of Okinawa, and Okuma’s earlier works. Okuma’s project follows Takamatsu Gushiken, who collects remains, and the director’s search for his grandmother’s sister Masako, who died during the war. The film, a private documentary, depicts Okuma’s attempt to relearn the battle while grappling with the (im)possibility of representing war experiences. This study uses footage from Clinton’s 2000 Cornerstone speech and 1995 photo documentary. Cornerstone imposes ethical demands on filmmakers, addressing the ethical challenge of representing the names engraved and the war dead, introducing Okuma’s bodily presence through “tremors”——shared across his past and current long shots. Through these approaches, Okuma captures vocal tonalities portraying intercorporeal collaboration between the living——who address the Cornerstone——and the dead. The study concludes that this approach effectively inherits and transmits experiences that resist representation.

The 1960 film Cruel Story of Youth, directed by Nagisa Oshima, has long been discussed as a politically charged work centered on male agency. However, primary sources at the Shochiku Otani Library reveal that the film was initially planned as a sex education film titled New Virgin, targeting a young female audience. Building on this finding, this paper focuses on the female high school protagonist, Makoto, and offers a new reading of the film through a costume-centered analysis. The first section outlines the background by examining planning materials and proposals, situating the film within the lineage of sex education films, Sun Tribe films, and films depicting pregnancy. The second section explores how Makoto’s sexual agency and resistance are constructed through her costuming, with attention to star image and intertextual links to the 1956 film Crazed Fruit. The third section examines the recurring “New Look” style in Makoto’s costumes, considering its significance through the lens of fashion and film history. Through these analyses, the paper seeks to reassess Makoto’s agency and reframe Cruel Story of Youth as a film that foregrounds a contested yet significant form of female agency.