The Shape of Miyazaki To Come: “The Castle of Cagliostro” at 40.
Looking back at Hayao Miyazaki’s debut feature film.
I feel weird calling a Hayao Miyazaki movie underappreciated. Like, sure, maybe it’s not as popular as Spirited Away or My Neighbor Totoro, but it’s still a Miyazaki movie. You know, the most prolific anime director of all-time, whose middling works receive more attention than another director’s best. That guy. Have you heard of him?
To some degree, I think Lupin the Third: The Castle of Cagliostro is underappreciated. Released in December 1979, it pre-dates the founding of Studio Ghibli by six years so it usually goes unmentioned in studio retrospectives, and lacks the iconicity of other Ghibli movies. What makes it important is that it’s the first feature film that Miyazaki would direct, acting as somewhat of a blueprint for his body of work over the next couple of decades. It’s the Ur-Miyazaki.
This wasn’t Miyazaki’s first time with the Lupin characters — in the early 1970s, Miyazaki, along with Isao Takahata (co-founder of Studio Ghibli, Grave of the Fireflies), were brought on to handle production and direction of the first Lupin the Third anime. Based on the popular manga series by Monkey Punch, Lupin III follows the titular character, a master thief in a green sport jacket, and his crew: sharpshooter Daisuke Jigen, samurai Goemon Ishikawa, and the femme-fatale Fujiko Mine. Stories predominantly focused on the crew pulling various heists while being pursued by Interpol Inspector Koichi Zenigata, the Wile E. Coyote to Lupin’s Roadrunner.
In the original manga, Lupin is a lech. The kind of guy who owns a Mercedes-Benz 770 purely because it was the car Hitler drove. He’s a James Bond-esque character, driven by a lust for money, women and the thrill of it all. A flamboyant playboy, he didn’t fit into Miyazaki’s idea of what a hero is.
Before the release of The Castle of Cagliostro, Miyazaki penned a letter that was published in the Lupin fan club newsletter. In it he explained his reasons for rewriting the titular thief’s character, that Lupin isn’t driven by a hunger for superficial things like riches and sexy women, but by something deeper. “[Lupin] is fighting to give his life meaning and is yearning for someone who can lead him to that fight.” Miyazaki’s Lupin is more happy-go-lucky and upbeat, with a somewhat noble sense of honour. He’s willing to do things because it’s the right thing to do, not because he’ll get something in return.
Make no mistake though, the Lupin of The Castle of Cagliostro is still a thief; the movie opens with him and Jigen robbing a huge casino in Monaco, only to discover that all of their hard-stolen cash is counterfeit. Despite being incredibly good counterfeits that almost fooled the career criminals, they end up dumping the fake money and decide to track it to its source: a castle in the region of Cagliostro.
Not only do they discover that the castle hides a huge printing press that’s been used to counterfeit money for generations, but after the two thieves save Clarisse, the princess of Cagliostro, they become entangled in the nefarious plot of the Count of Cagliostro. He plans on forcing Clarisse into an arranged marriage, giving him greater control of the region and allowing him to uncover the fabled lost treasure of Cagliostro. He locks her in the castle’s tallest tower until the time comes. So, find untold treasures and save a damsel in distress? It’s a win-win for Lupin.
It’s interesting just how much of Miyazaki’s aesthetic is already intact. For a first theatrical feature it feels so sure of itself, as though it’s the work of a seasoned vet. The way scenes are framed, the lush backgrounds, the specific detail he pays to mechanical works. Even the character designs; the Count’s flying-machine would fit perfectly into the world of Castle in the Sky, and Clarisse looks almost exactly like Nausicaä, the heroine of Miyazaki’s manga series and sophomore film.
On a thematic level, Miyazaki’s recurring topics are there: the folly of mankind’s greed, the beauty of nature and the idea that it’s humanity’s greatest treasure. The only thing it’s missing from the Miyazaki checklist is a strong female lead, a supernatural-fantasy element and score by Joe Hisaishi. (Although that’s not to diminish Yuji Ohno’s romantic, jazzy score.)
Production time for Cagliostro was four months, which is a shockingly tight turn-around for an animated feature. But if Cagliostro was rushed, it never shows. A fast-paced heist escape from a Monaco casino leads into a comfy opening credit sequence, as we watch Lupin and Jigen drive through a series of beautifully painted European backdrops. (Kobayashi Productions would later be responsible for the equally serene backgrounds of My Neighbor Totoro and the gritty, neon sprawl of Katsuhiro Otomo’s Akira.)
What follows this moment of peace is one of the finest car chase sequences ever committed to film. Animation is a medium of movement, and not for a second does this sequence lose its pace. It’s Miyazaki’s first big flex, a powerful announcement of what he’s capable of as a feature director.
The world of Castle of Cagliostro is a romantic, idealized version of Europe know as akogare no Paris — a Japanese concept that roughly translates to the “Paris of our dreams.” Rolling fields as far as the eyes can see, distant snow-capped mountains that reach to the heavens, and huge ancient castles. And if there’s one thing Miyazaki loves its European castles and nature, visual motifs that frequent his body of work. It gives the movie a serene, almost fantasy-like atmosphere.
This European aesthetic is what defines Cagliostro. French animator Paul Grimault, who’s unfinished masterpiece Le Roi et l’Oiseau was such a huge influence on Miyazaki and his team that they’d regularly analyse scenes frame-by-frame to figure out how they were animated. Miyazaki’s character redesigns are evocative by the ligne claire (clean line) art of Franco-Belgian comics—a style popularized by cartoonist Herge’s The Adventures of Tintin—as opposed to Monkey Punch’s more cartoonish and exaggerated designs. Even the plot shares a similarity with more traditional European fairy tales, where a hero must rescue a trapped princess from the highest room in the tallest tower.
Looking back at the film through the lens of Miyazaki’s storied career, it’s prototypical. In an interview with film critic Roger Ebert, Miyazaki mentions the Japanese concept of ma, which is an intentional silence, the space between claps. His execution of ma isn’t as apparent as his later films—My Neighbor Totoro is practically all ma—you can feel him working out the value of that silence.
While the film features numerous, fast-paced and tightly choreographed action sequences, they’re just as memorable as the quiet moments between them. Two friends driving through the European countryside together, playing a game of Rock-Paper-Scissors to decide which one has to fix a flat tyre. When they arrive at the castle of Cagliostro, Lupin and Jigen wander around the nearby ruins, surrounding themselves with the rich blues and greens of the lake and plant-life that has reclaimed the man-made structures. (Another motif that Miyazaki would revisit in later works, like Castle in the Sky and Princess Mononoke.)
Every shot has the attention to detail and love of the craft that you’d expect from Miyazaki. You know Lupin and Jigen have been on the move for a while — possibly low on cash — because the ashtray of their tiny Fiat 500 is overflowing with cigarette butts and the back seat is piled with cans of fish, wine bottles and instant ramen cups. The way Lupin’s speed begins to overwhelm him while running down the castle’s roof so he leans forward in an attempt to not outpace himself, his jacket lifting from his back, before using the momentum to leap to another rooftop with the grace of a dancer. The constant movement of Lupin and the Count during the climactic clock-tower fight scene, where they awkwardly try to find their footing and work against the spinning gears. While he comes off as sinister and menacing, the Count still struggles to keep pace on a rotating platform, like a child going up the down escalator.
It’s those little details that make his work special. The world feels richer and more lived in, while his characters come across as more human and real, like flesh-and-blood actors instead of drawings. The way they move, right down to the tiniest gestures and expressions, speak volumes of personality. It’s as simple as something like Lupin using an active camp stove to light a cigarette instead of pulling out a lighter. He’s a man who knows how to use his surroundings to his advantage, like a good thief should be. Even without a prior knowledge of the Lupin the Third franchise, The Castle of Cagliostro still works. It’s more of a Miyazaki film than a Lupin film. It’s a fantastic adventure, with fun characters and beautifully paced action sequences.
However, while time has been kind to it, the film was a box office bomb when originally released in Japan. While Cagliostro exudes Miyazaki’s aesthetic and is friendly to new viewers, it’s still constrained by the requirements of what a Lupin the Third adventure needed to be. You can see Miyazaki doing his best to work within those guideline while still flaunting his own vision through his re-designs of the core Lupin cast and the rewriting of Lupin’s character. In the end, he was dissatisfied with the overall final product. In his autobiography, Starting Points, he calls it a “clearance sale” of his previous work that didn’t do anything new.
Castle of Cagliostro is a good film, despite what Miyazaki thinks of it. Everything you love about his movies is there to some degree, and it’s fun to look at how certain aspects of his aesthetic have evolved and been refined over the past forty years. In his letter to the Lupin fan club, I think he was talking about himself as much as he was talking about Lupin. He had spent 16-years in the animation industry before making his feature film debut. He was 38, fast approaching middle age. He wanted something more, and he got that more in the shape of Castle of Cagliostro. It’s a film that heralded his arrival, while giving him a greater purpose as a director.
Shannon Tindle, an animator and character designer whose work includes the Academy Award-nominated Kubo and the Two Strings, notes that the failure of Cagliostro played an important role in Miyazaki’s career direction, with the director choosing to focus on his own creations, like the Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind manga that would eventually evolve into a feature adaptation.
In hindsight, Cagliostro might not have lived up to Miyazaki’s expectations, but it helped him figure out what he wanted to do. It gave him a clearer vision of the artist he wanted to be. As Tindle puts it: “The failure of that film is the genesis of Studio Ghibli.”
