Tag: Japan

Romantic Daughters (ロマンス娘, Toshio Sugie, 1956)

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vlcsnap-2016-05-30-23h55m41s358Romantic Daughters (ロマンス娘, Romance Musume) is the second big screen outing for the singing star combo known as “sannin musume”. A year on from So Young, So Bright, Hibari Misora, Chiemi Eri, and Izumi Yukimura reunite on screen once again playing three ordinary teenagers with a love of singing and being cheerful through adversity. This time the main thrust of the narrative is the girls’ friendship with a wealthy boy and his grumpy grandpa who takes a liking to them.

Michiru, Rumiko, and Eriko are three ordinary teenage girls in contemporary ‘50s Japan. Very close friends, they even have part time jobs working together at a local department store. One day Michiru decides to return some change a customer forgot to take with him directly to his home and the three girls are rewarded for their extremely high commitment to customer service by getting their pictures in the paper! This brings them to the attention of their friend Kubota’s grandfather who is very impressed with their honesty. He invites them round to his mansion where they enjoy a mini Western style feast and play a few songs on the piano. Shortly after, a man in a bow tie turns up and says he’s managed to find grandpa’s long lost daughter only she has unfortunately passed away leaving a little girl, Yukiko, with no one to look after her. Grandpa isn’t quite convinced by this story, but begins spending time with the sad little girl to try and see if she really could be his granddaughter.

Just like So Young, So Bright, Romantic Daughters is not an integrated musical but an ironic comedy with frequent musical interludes. There are plenty of excuses found for the girls to suddenly start singing, whether it’s that they’re involved in a local festival, entertaining an old man, or trying to cheer up a sullen little girl. Also like the first film, the girls (and Kubota) attend a theatrical performance but this time they do actually see “themselves” – that is Michiru, Rumiko, and Eriko head off to see Izumi, Hibari, and Chiemi. They even sit underneath a large poster of their real life counterparts in the lobby completely confusing one of their admirers who can’t believe his luck! Once again they each get a production number with Izumi getting the “sexy” routine this time which is a little bit On the Town. Chiemi gets an elegant set piece with a ball gown and a fairytale palace behind her, but Hibari’s number is just kind of nuts as she cross dresses to play a male samurai who ends up “saving” Michiru from the attentions of Chiemi who is also playing a guy complete with bald cap and top knot.

Kubota seems most interested in Rumiko and the other two girls have some kind of relationship with two other guys who work at an amusement park but are completely forgotten about for most of the film until they’re needed to fill the other two rear seats for the finale which is a trio number featuring the three girls riding bicycles with the guys on the back. At one point the girls and Kubota decide to take the little girl to the amusement park to try and cheer her up, which they eventually do by venturing into a haunted house (actually quite scary) where Chiemi decides to break protocol by using some of the judo moves she was seen practicing earlier on a couple of the ghosts and ghouls to be found in the psychedelic horror show.

Once again what’s on offer is cute and fluffy fun with some silly comedy and impressively choreographed production numbers thrown in. Like the first film there are also a number of recurring subplots of single mothers, long lost fathers, and this time also the problem of the little girl who may or may not be the granddaughter but by the time they start to reach a conclusion it may be too late to undo all the bonding that’s begin to occur in any case. Cinematic soul food, Romantic Daughters makes full use of its vibrant Eastman colours for a Hollywood inspired elegant musical feast that is undoubtedly a lot of empty calories but nevertheless extremely satisfying.

Can’t find any clips from the film but here is the English language US pop track sung by Izumi Yukimura in the movie in its release version:

So Young, So Bright (AKA Janken Musume, ジャンケン娘, Toshio Sugie, 1955)

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Janken MusumePop stars invading the cinematic realm either for reasons of commerce, vanity, or just simple ambition is hardly a new phenomenon and even continues today with the biggest singers of the era getting to play their own track over the closing credits of the latest tentpole feature. This is even more popular in Japan where idol culture dominates the entertainment world and boy bands boys are often top of the list for any going blockbuster (wisely or otherwise). Cycling back to 1955 when the phenomenon was at its heyday all over the world, So Young, So Bright (ジャンケン娘, Janken Musume) is the first of four so called “three girl” (Sannin Musume) musicals which united the three biggest female singers of the post-war era: Hibari Misora, Chiemi Eri, and Izumi Yukimura for a music infused comedy caper.

As far as plot goes, it’s actually very simple and yet quite complicated at the same time as highschoolers Yumi (Chiemi Eri) and Ruri (Hibari Misora) end up on a school trip to Kyoto where they fall in a river because they’re laughing so much at their classmates’ excitement at spotting someone filming a jidaigeki on the riverbank (neat cameo from director Toshio Sugie). Breaking off from their group, they take their uniforms off to dry only to be disturbed by a young man who tries to take photographs of them at which point they pretend to be washing some clothes in the river. Later they head to an inn which is owned by a friend of Ruri’s mother (who is also an inn owner and former geisha) where they befriend an apprentice geisha, Piyo (Izumi Yukimura).

Piyo then turns up in Tokyo in a bit of a state as it turns out she will shortly be sold into prostitution! She’s fallen in love with someone from the city who she thinks could save her if only she can find him so the girls set out to help her, except the guy’s name is Saito which is the Smith of Japan. During all of this, Ruri also has a subplot about her long lost father who will shortly be moving abroad and apparently wants to actually meet her, opening lots of old wounds.

So Young, So Bright is not a musical in the classical sense, it’s not integrated, but allows ample space for its singing stars to do their thing. Yumi just loves to sing so she randomly starts singing songs she’s heard everywhere, Piyo sings as a geisha and Ruri is rehearsing for some kind of kabuki style performance she gives alone on stage at the climax of the film.

That aside, the main musical sequence comes towards the end where the three girls go to the theatre together and strangely end up seeing “themselves” performing on stage. It’s a neat kind of fantasy sequence in which each of the girls indulges in a little bit of daydreaming as they imagine themselves as stage stars with Piyo being given the cutest, most MGM style number which is then followed by a number from Yumi entitled “Africa” which is very much of its time…and then you get the elegant number from Ruri which is mostly the English version of La Vie en Rose. They also get a trio number to close the film which takes place entirely on a rollercoaster but celebrates each of their slightly different singing styles.

So Young, So Bright is not intended to be anything other than irrepressibly cheerful fluff (despite containing a subplot about possible forced prostitution), but succeeds in being exactly that. An early colour film from Japan it certainly makes fantastic use of its technicolour swirl to give Hollywood a run for its money in the sophistication of happiness stakes. Hollywood musicals are quite clearly the biggest influence though perhaps more those from the pre-war era even down to the only large scale dance sequence which has a distinct Busby Berkley vibe (even it only lasts twenty seconds or so). The rest of the film is actually quite light on dance but makes sure to showcase the singing talents of each of its leading ladies equally. Strangely innocent, even if darkness lurks around the edges with the betrayed geisha and possible prostitution subplots, So Young, So Bright lives up to its name as a completely charming musical comedy that is perfectly primed to banish even the bluest of blues far into the distance.

These movies are so much fun! No subtitles but here are some clips of the various musical numbers:

Izumi Yukimura’s Cha Cha number:

Chiemi Eri’s Africa number (not very PC by modern standards, just a warning)

Hibari Misora’s take on the English language version of La Vie en Rose

And the finale:

Hospitalité (歓待, Koji Fukada, 2010)

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hospitaliteFrom the Ozu-esque, classic calligraphy of its elegant title sequence, you might expecting a rather different kind of family drama than the one you find in Koji Fukada’s Hospitalité (歓待, Kantai). Though his compositions lean more towards the conventional, Fukada aims somewhere between a more restrained The Family Game and a much less explosive Theorem as he uses the family as a microcosmic analogy for his country’s attitudes towards “outside intrusion”. An absurdist tale of dysfunctional families and hypocritical social standards, Hospitalité takes a long hard look at whom exactly you regard as “guest” and how much you’re really prepared to take care of them.

The Kobayashis run a small printers shop in a rundown suburban backwater. Son Mikio has inherited the business and lives above it with his second wife, Natsuki, and his daughter from a previous marriage, Eriko. Older sister Seiko has recently moved back in following a divorce though she also has a vague idea of wanting to study abroad. Things start to go haywire when little Eriko’s pet parakeet absconds from the family home. Heartbroken, she designs a special flyer to try and find it which brings them to the attention of “old friend” Kagawa who claims to have seen the bird somewhere near the station.

Kagawa hangs round a little longer than necessary chatting to the couple when their assistant suddenly keels over. This allows a convenient opening for Kagawa to volunteer his services at the print shop – luckily he knows how to handle the machines. He quickly moves into their spare upstairs room before also moving in his “foreign wife”, Annabelle, and a bunch of other non-Japanese people by which time he’s well and truly wrested control of the mini printshop empire away from the mild mannered Mikio and caused a degree of local panic in the process.

The Kobayashis are “hospitable” people. To begin with they don’t mind having this “old friend” hanging around and helping him out by letting him stay and work in the shop. When he suddenly introduces his wife without warning they may feel he’s taking advantage but anyway they go along with it. Annabelle, from “Brazil”, or was it “Bosnia”, gives the impression of someone who is always pretending their language skills aren’t as good as they really are so people let their guard down around her. She teaches “salsa”, apparently, and starts to get on Natsuki’s nerves by usurping her position as resident English speaker.

The town itself is not quite as charitable as the Kobayashis as evidenced by the older lady who keeps dropping by with petitions for the neighbourhood watch to which she’d also like to recruit the ladies of the house. She’s worried about the increasing number of “foreigners” in the area which she now feels is becoming “dangerous” as a consequence. That’s not to mention the proposed “beautification” plan for the park (which really means getting rid of all those people who sleep there in cardboard boxes). That said, though neither of the women is particularly interested in joining the neighbourhood watch or against the idea of non-Japanese people coming to live in their town, they go along with the woman and her plans not to rock the boat. They run a business here after all so they have an interest in keeping the town stable and in maintaining good social relations with their neighbours, so it makes sense to just put up with whatever bigoted nonsense they’re spouting, right?

For all their “lascivious dancing”, topless sunbathing, and “promiscuous immorality”…the foreigners are quite clearly not as much of a problem as the underlying hypocrisy which runs through the Kobayashis’ world. When Kagawa asks about Mikio’s previous wife, he says “she got sick” leading him to think Mikio is a widower which isn’t quite true but is a less embarrassing for explanation for Mikio to offer than what really happened. There’s an obvious tension between Mikio and Natsuki as well as with the recently returned older sister. As soon as Kagawa begins to work his magic, driving a pneumatic drill right into all of those tiny cracks and fractures which exist between a husband and a wife, everything begins to fall apart though in an equally quiet and subtle fashion. However, people have need of their fantasies and even after Kagawa has exposed the holes in their marriage, Mikio and Natsuki seem content to simply paper over their differences and go back to pretending everything’s fine just like before.

A surrealist’s meditation on xenophobia, social mores, and what happens when a caged bird decides to be free, Hospitalité is a suitably nuanced, not to mention frequently amusing, look at contemporary small town mentality. Everyone is so invested in maintaining a particular quality of personal truth, be it in a hospitable place which thinks the answer to people cluttering up the park with their cardboard boxes is to “beautify” the area by throwing them out, or a neighbourhood watch group that’s all egos with a local place for local people mentality, that maintaining the lies is much more important than solving the underlying problem. Koji Fukada’s farcical approach to the absurdity of everyday life is a good natured and humorous one, but the problems at its core are all too real.

Hospitalité was released on DVD in the US by Filmmovement and still appears to be in print though the distributor’s website is constant 403.

English subtitled trailer:

Street Without End (限りなき舗道, Mikio Naruse, 1934)

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Street Witout EndNaruse’s final silent movie coincided with his last film made at Shochiku where his down to earth artistry failed to earn him the kind of acclaim that the big hitters like Ozu found with studio head Shiro Kido. Street Without End (限りなき舗道, Kagirinaki Hodo) was a project no one wanted. Adapted from a popular newspaper serial about the life of a modern tea girl in contemporary Tokyo, it smacked a little of low rent melodrama but after being given the firm promise that after churning out this populist piece he could have free reign on his next project, Naruse accepted the compromise. Unfortunately, the agreement was not honoured and Naruse hightailed it to Photo Chemical Laboratories (later Toho) where he spent the next thirty years.

Although Street Without End is a conventional melodrama in many senses, it’s also quite a complex one playing with multilayered dualities and symbolic devices. After beginning with some brief pillow shots of the real city streets, we meet the stars of the show, Sugiko and Kesako, who are both waitresses in a local tea room. Whilst walking together, Sugiko is presented with an offer from a movie studio currently looking for new talent but isn’t really convinced, though the money would come in handy for her younger brother’s college tuition. A little while later she gets another offer from her boyfriend, Harada, who wants to get married as his parents are trying to pressure him into an arranged marriage at home. Sugiko agrees but is knocked over by a car on her way to meet him with the result that Harada thinks she’s changed her mind and goes home alone. Slowly she grows closer to the man who knocked her over, Yamanouchi, and eventually marries him instead but quickly finds herself out of place in his upperclass world.

Kesako, by contrast, ends up picking up on Sugiko’s job offer and joining the studio herself. She takes her unsuccessful artist boyfriend with her though their relationship suffers as she falls in with the studio crowd. Both women get what they thought they wanted, only to discover it to be not what they wanted at all.

Sugiko’s story is the main thrust of the narrative as she marries up through misfortune after Yamanouchi carelessly runs her over. He himself plays the part of the sensitive nobleman who’s bullied by his more conservative mother and sister who’ve picked out a girl exactly like them for him to marry. In a gesture that’s probably born out of rebellion rather than love, Yamanouchi brings Sugiko home as his wife but then leaves her to the mercy of the people he most feared himself. An ordinary working class woman, Sugiko quickly angers her mother in law by treating the servants like actual people and not having the poise expected of a Yamanouchi wife. Yamanouchi is too soft to defend himself, let alone his choice of wife, and so Sugiko’s life eventually becomes untenable sending Yamanouchi off the rails with it. Naruse includes a less than subtle intertitle here which states “EVEN TODAY, FEUDAL NOTIONS OF FAMILY CRUSH THE PURE LOVE OF YOUNG PEOPLE IN JAPAN”, which makes his position plain but seems a little strong for the anti-romantic nature of the relationship between the rebound Sugiko and the “getting back at mother” Yamanouchi.

Both Yamanouchi and Harada were interested in Sugiko as shield against an unwanted arranged marriage. Sugiko was unconvinced by both offers but her decision to marry Yamanouchi is one which ultimately went against her unconventional nature (as borne out by her unconventional decision to leave it). Sugiko and Kesako appear as mirrors of each other as Kesako nabs Sugiko’s job offer and starts to climb the studio ladder. Just as Sugiko finds the life of an upperclass housewife is not all she thought it would be, so Kesako begins to find the acting profession, which she’d previously dreamed of, equally unfulfilling. By the time we loop round the end, we arrive at the beginning again with both ladies in pretty much the same space they were in before though perhaps a little clearer about what it is they want from life. The final scene is one more of acceptance and self realisation than it is about moving forward, but then there’s a curious reappearance of a familiar face on a passing bus. It remains to be seen if this is hope leaving town or merely circling.

Street Without End is the fifth and final film included in Criterion’s Eclipse Series 26: Silent Naruse box set.

Every-Night Dreams (夜ごとの夢, Mikio Naruse, 1933)

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Every Night DreamsFollowing on from Apart From You, Naruse returns to his exploration of working class women struggling to get by in a male dominated world in Every-Night Dreams (夜ごとの夢, Yogoto no Yume) also released in 1933. This time we meet weary bar hostess Omitsu who has a young son she’s raising alone after her deadbeat husband ran out on them a few years previously.

Omitsu doesn’t particularly like working in the bar, but as her mama-san grudgingly admits, she is quite good at it. She’s a modern woman who can drink and smoke and flirt to keep the guys buying drinks and wanting more though she’s finding it increasingly difficult to deflect some of the more intense interest such as that from a sleazy boat captain that her boss is eager to keep happy. Whilst at work, her son is looked after by a kindly older couple in her building who urge her to find a nicer line of business or get married again to a more reliable man.

The gentle rhythms of her life are disrupted when her long absent husband finally reappears. After first rejecting him outright, Omitsu eventually relents and lets him back into her life. However, despite his seemingly sincere pledges to change, get a proper job, start being a proper husband and father, Mizuhara fails to achieve any of his aims and also becomes increasingly jealous about Omitsu’s job at the bar. When their son, Fumio, is injured in an accident and requires expensive medical treatment, events reach a tragic climax.

Naruse would return to women alone facing a difficult economic future in many of his films but Omitsu’s situation is only made worse by the ongoing depression. Realistically speaking, there are few lines of work available to a woman in Omitu’s position and the more well regarded of them probably wouldn’t pay enough to allow her to keep both herself and her son, even as it stands she tries to borrow money from the bar to “reward” the older couple who watch Fumio while she’s working (though of course they wouldn’t take it). Omitsu herself feels there’s something degrading about her work and when her friend advises her to remarry, she exclaims any man worth a damn would run from a woman like her. Unfortunately, she may, in some senses, be right.

The man she ended up with, Mizuhara, is most definitely not worth a damn. It’s not entirely his fault he can’t find work – he does look for it and appears to want to find a job but in this difficult economic environment there’s not much going. Applying at factory, he’s turned down almost on sight because he’s a weedy sort of guy and doesn’t look like he’s cut out for physical labour. His inability to get ahead and provide for his wife and child sends him into a kind of depression and self esteem crisis which has him thinking about leaving again, especially as his increasing jealousy threatens his wife’s bar job which is their only form of income (whether he likes it or not). Fumio’s accident forces his hand into a series of bad decisions taken for a good reason but which again only cause more trouble for his family.

Naruse is a little flashier here than in Apart From You using canted angles, faster editing and even more zooms to hint at the panic felt by Omitsu in the increasingly distressing situations she finds herself in. Like the train accident in Flunky, Work Hard, the news that Fumio has been hit by a car is delivered in an expressionistic style beginning with his father putting down the boy’s toy car as a troupe of kids arrive and the screen is stabbed with a series of rapidly edited, alternating angle shots of intertitles mingled with the shocked reaction of the parents and the other children. If Naruse felt compelled to provide an ending with some sort of hint of far off promise in previous films, here he abandons that altogether as Omitsu laments her sad fate and instructs her son to grow up strong, not like his father, but like the mother who is doing everything she can to ensure his life won’t always be like this.

Every-Night Dreams is the fourth of five films included in Criterion’s Eclipse Series 26: Silent Naruse box set.

Apart From You (君と別れて, Mikio Naruse, 1933)

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Apart From YouNaruse’s critical breakthrough came in 1933 with the intriguingly titled Apart From You (君と別れて, Kimi to Wakarete) which made it into the top ten list of the prestigious film magazine Kinema Junpo at the end of the year. The themes are undoubtedly familiar and would come dominate much of Naruse’s later output as he sets out to detail the lives of two ordinary geisha and their struggles with their often unpleasant line of work, society at large, and with their own families.

The older woman, Kikue, begins the film by asking her much younger friend and almost daughter figure, Terugiku, to pluck a grey hair from her head. Kikue also has a teenage son, Yoshio, who is becoming progressively rebellious, filled with anger and resentment over his mother’s line of work. Ignoring Kikue’s many sacrifices for him, Yoshio drinks, skips school and messes around with a gang of delinquents.

Feeling sorry for her mentor, Terugiku makes use of her good relationship with Yoshio to convince him that he should be more grateful for the kindness his mother shows him. Taking him on a trip to visit her impoverished family, Terugiku shows him the oppressive environment in which she grew up. Resenting having been sold to a geisha house to finance her drunken father’s violent outbursts, she is even more outraged that they now want to force her sister to undergo the same treatment. Terugiku is not prepared to allow this to happen and has decided to do whatever it takes to save her sister from suffering in the same way as she has had to.

Naruse highlights both the problems of the ageing geisha who sees her ability to support herself declining in conjunction with her looks, and the young one who only looks ahead to the same fate she knows will come to be her own. Both women are subjected to the humiliating treatment of their drunken clients who horse around and occasionally pull violent stunts with little to no regard for those who may even have been their wives, sisters, or daughters with a different twist of fate.

Kikue does at least have Yoshio, though their relationship is currently strained, but Terugiku has no one else to rely on. Her greatest fear is that her sister will also be sold off and have to endure the same kind of suffering as she has. In order to avoid this turn of events she agrees to undergo something far worse than even the unpleasantness of the geisha house to earn double the money in her sister’s place. She faces a future even bleaker than Kikue’s, yet in some sense it is a choice that she herself has made, actively, in sacrificing herself to save her sister.

Apart from You is much less formally experimental than either Flunky, Work Hard or No Blood Relation with its elegant, beautifully composed mise en scène. That said Naruse frames with a symbolist’s eye such as in a late scene where he shoots through the cast iron footboard of a sick bed to show the two women divided yet each imprisoned. This is a world filled with subtle violence, flashes of knives from clients and delinquents alike, raining blows from drunken fathers, and innocents wounded by misdirected arrows. Maternal love is both a force for salvation and of endless suffering but romantic love is always frustrated, ruined by practical concerns. Naruse rejects the kind of fairytale ending he succumbed to in No Blood Relation for something altogether more complex and ambiguous where there is both hope and no hope at the same time as a train departs in an atmosphere of permanent anxiety.

Apart From You is the third of five films included in Criterion’s Eclipse Series 26: Silent Naruse box set.

Clip featuring Terugiku’s visit to her family (with English subtitles)

No Blood Relation (生さぬ仲, Mikio Naruse, 1932)

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No blood relationNaruse apparently directed six other films in-between Flunky, Work Hard and No Blood Relation (生さぬ仲, Nasanunaka) but we’ll likely never see any of them again. Adapting a “Shinpa” play (a new kind of Western style melodrama focusing on the real lives of everyday people), Naruse addresses a theme which later becomes central to his cinematic output – the trials and tribulations of women in contemporary society. This time we have two fully grown women tussling over the affections of a little girl who herself seems to have little input into the situation.

After a brief introductory sequence in which we witness the accidentally humorous escapades of a pair of petty crooks, we meet the sister of one of them who happens to be returning ex-pat and successful Hollywood actress, Tamae. It turns out that Tamae has come back to Japan after making her fortune in the movies hoping to reunite with the daughter she left behind six years ago.

However, her ex-husband, Atsumi, has remarried and the daughter, Shigeko, believes the second wife, Masako, is her real mother. Although the family are very happy together there is tension in the air as Atsumi’s company is running into trouble in this period of economic instability and he’s about to reveal he’s gone bankrupt. Atsumi’s mother does not take this well as she’s used to the upper middle class lifestyle and throws something of a hissy fit at being shamed in this way. Masako, by contrast, remains stoic and says she can bear the worst of what comes only she doesn’t want Atsumi to do anything illegal to try and solve their money problems and she doesn’t want to see Shigeko suffer. Her maternal feelings are further borne out when she is injured diving in front of an oncoming car which threatens to hit her daughter as she stops to pick up her doll in the middle of the road.

The problems continue pile up and Tamae uses her money as a lever to try and prise Shigeko away from her step-mother via the greedy grandma but the little girl was an infant when her birth mother left so she simply doesn’t remember Tamae and repeatedly asks to be allowed to go home to her “mother”. It’s understandable how much this would hurt Tamae who claims she’s only returned to Japan because she’s been unable to forget her daughter, yet her daughter never even knew her. If she was expecting some kind of cosmic connection it does not occur and if she truly wanted to rebuild a relationship with her child, what amounts to a virtual kidnapping was probably not the best way to go about it.

At heart it’s a tug of love between two women – the one who gave birth to a child and then abandoned it (perhaps harsh words, but no concrete reason other than a man and America are ever revealed), and the one who later raised it and came to love it as her own though shares no blood connection. Masako is the faithful Japanese wife, devoted to her family and just a very good, decent person which contrasts nicely with the ferocity of her rival – a modern woman, adulteress and movie star who thinks her money can enable her to take back what she previously gave up. For all that, it’s difficult to not to feel sorry for Tamae as her daughter continues to reject her. Even if the way she’s going about things is not sensible, her maternal emotions and the passion, desperation and even in part grief and regret are all too real.

Of course, what gets forgotten here is the plight of little Shigeko who never had any reason to believe Masako, who obviously loves her dearly, was not her real mother. Extremely confused and probably frightened, she just doesn’t understand why she’s being separated from her mum and being forced to hang out with this strange woman. Masako can’t get to see Shigeko after grandma has removed her from the house, but no one else stops to think about what sort of effect this is all having on a confused little girl who just wants to go home.

The depression is more of a backdrop here and even if Atsumi ultimately ends up feeling the brunt of it, money troubles are only a small part of the question at hand. Naruse doesn’t experiment as much as in Flunky, Work Hard but throws in a few impressive tracking sequences across open rooms and adds some rapid zooms as the two women have silent arguments over their relationships to Shigeko. Without giving too much away, the ending undercuts the degree of nuance Naruse had been trying add in ensuring that both women were drawn in a suitably complex manner, provoking sympathy and understanding for everyone caught up in this complicated situation (well, except perhaps for the bumbling crooks who are a little surplus to requirements).

The finale itself almost feels tacked on from an entirely different film with its sudden cheerfulness and abrupt closure as the original family is repaired thanks to a sudden monetary atonement and subsequent self-exile from the originally corrupting influence of the first wife. In many ways a standard melodrama of the time, No Blood Relation perhaps doesn’t have much more to recommend it than as an early example of Naruse’s development but does offer strong performances from its leading ladies and an interesting take on an age old question.

No Blood Relation is the second of five films included in Criterion’s Eclipse Series 26: Silent Naruse box set.

Flunky, Work Hard (腰弁頑張れ, Mikio Naruse, 1931)

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flunky work hardMikio Naruse is often remembered for his female focussed stories of ordinary women trying to do they best they can in often difficult circumstances, but the earliest extant example of his work (actually his ninth film), Flunky, Work Hard (腰弁頑張れ, Koshiben Ganbare), is the sometimes comic but ultimately poignant tale of a lowly insurance salesman struggling to get ahead in depression era Japan.

Okabe is the lowly insurance agent of the title. He works hard for his money, but there are slim pickings round here to begin with and a lot of competition from rival agents so Okabe struggles to provide for his wife and his little boy, Susumu, in the way that he would like. Okabe subjects himself any sort of humiliating behaviour on offer to try and get a contract including engaging in leap frog with a well to do lady’s children to try and seem more “friendly” than his rival broker.

Susumu, by contrast is a rebellious little boy and is aways getting into scraps with the neighbourhood kids who tease him because of his parents’ money problems. This wouldn’t usually be too much of a problem and Okabe even tells him it’s OK to defend himself when the other kids start in on him. Only this time Susumu has been fighting with the well to do lady’s sons which is going to make Okabe look bad and make it more difficult to convince her to take out a policy with his firm over another.

Okabe loses his temper and scolds the boy who runs off in anger and confusion only to get into a serious accident. His father, not knowing it’s his son that’s been injured, uses the news of a little boy getting hurt to try and convince the other mothers to take out insurance policies on their children. Later he feels bad about shouting at Susumu and decides to buy him a present, only he might already be too late…

Flunky, Work Hard starts out like the nonsense comedies Shochiku were known for at the time with a little of their common man approach thrown in, but quickly heads into melodrama territory as Susumu meets with his unfortunate destiny. This sequence is the most notable in the film as it’s far more experimental in nature than anything found in Naruse’s later work. Dipping into a montage of kaleidoscopic images, diagonal splits and the awful momentum of a train hurtling along a predetermined track only to meet with a horrifying, unexpected obstacle, this extremely complex sequence is the perfect cinematic expression of the blood draining from a father’s face as he contemplates the fact that he might have just lost his son through having lost his temper over something as trivial as a few shiny coins. Okabe is not a bad man, or even a bad father, but just another ordinary guy trying to make it through the depression. Even so, he may be about to pay a terrible price for failing to side with his son in favour of businesses prospects.

Like many silent films from this era, almost all of Naruse’s early work appears to be lost. Flunky, Work Hard is somewhat atypical when considered alongside his later career which had a strong female focus and leant more towards social commentary than the slapstick humour seen here. However, its tale of a father desperately trying to find a way to support his son in difficult economic circumstances only to find that his efforts may cost him the very thing that he was trying to protect all along is one which is instantly recognisable in any era.

Flunky, Work Hard is the first and earliest of the five films included in Criterion’s Eclipse Series 26: Silent Naruse box set.

Ornamental Hairpin (簪, Hiroshi Shimizu, 1941)

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ornamental hair pinShimizu goes on holiday! Again! Actually, when you think about it going on holiday is always inherently sad because just like everything else holidays end and you have to return to whatever it was that made you want to go on holiday in the place only with the painful reminder that a more cheerful world exists and you’re no longer in it. That rather depressing preamble out of the way, it’s time to join the temporary residents of a small hot springs resort in the picturesque countryside where a mislaid hairpin is about to kickstart a series of mini epiphanies in the diverse collection of guests.

We arrive at the inn in the company of Emi (Kinuyo Tanaka) and her friend Okiku (Hiroko Kawasaki) on a brief visit from the city. The inn is very full right now with a festival in town and everybody seems to want a massage! Another guest, the extremely grumpy professor Katae (Tatsuo Saito), is put out that the tour groups are sapping all the hotel’s resources and complains vociferously to his go partner who is staying at the inn with his two grandsons Jiro and Taro. Other guests at the inn include a mild mannered husband and his wife, Mr. (Shinichi Himori) and Mrs. (Hideko Mimura) Hiroyasu, and a recuperating soldier, Mr. Nanmura  (Chishu Ryu). Eventually the tour groups go home taking Emi and Okiku with them, but Emi discovers she’s left her ornamental hairpin behind and sends a letter offering to pay for the return postage if anyone should find it.

Mr. Nanmura finds it in his foot one day as he’s enjoying the hot springs and even though he’s not that bothered about it, complaining expert Professor Katae can’t make enough of a fuss about the supposedly shoddy conditions at the hotel. When the hotel owners write to Emi and explain to her what’s happened she jumps straight on a train to apologise in person.

Nanmura had actually been quite happy about getting skewered by the pin. He says he found it “poetic”, as if the atmosphere of the place had penetrated deeply into his skin. The supposedly learned Katae doesn’t quite understand the soldier’s poetic leanings and starts debating whether the owner of the pin will be pretty or not, as if that would make a difference to the soldier’s romantic construction of events. Emi is indeed very beautiful, through perhaps a little sad and obviously contrite about the pin. Everyone in the inn is quite invested in witnessing a true love miracle between the bizarrely crippled soldier and the wounded beauty from Tokyo.

Once again the inn is a constructed world, a safe haven far away from the trouble and strife which exists outside it. The guests indulge themselves in the tranquil atmosphere taking in the beautiful scenery and killing time on otherwise trivial pursuits which occasionally include projecting a kind of narrative on their new found friends. The two boys, totally bored by this deliberately unstimulating environment, turn everything into a competition – even cheering on their grandfather as snores along side the equally noisy professor with the result that pretty much no one else is getting any sleep. Later they help the injured soldier recover with a set of endurance games which see him trying to walk unaided from one tree to another and eventually across a bridge.

Further comic relief is provided by the Hiroyasus with the husband being the sort of mild-mannered man who has no idea what he actually thinks so he just goes along with everything everyone says (and later checks with his wife who has the ultimate authority). Hiroyasu often defers to the professor whose authoritative tone gets things done for him though he is in fact an extremely self centred prig who just loves to complain out of a desperate need to be validated. He’s the loudest snorer of all and is keeping everyone awake yet he constantly complains about the noise of the other guests and is quick to shout at the inn keeper when he can’t get a massage because they’ve been booked by the visiting tour groups the very presence of which also annoys him. Eventually he gets so grumpy he just goes home which is probably a win/win for everyone.

But what of Emi herself? She too is escaping from something. The loss of the ornamental hair pin and its rediscovery leading her to the inn and perhaps to Nanmura has pushed her into a further consideration of her life in Tokyo. She doesn’t want to go back, this brief respite has been too pleasant and she wishes it could go on like this forever, though she knows, of course, that it can’t. She doesn’t know what she’s going to do now, but at least while she stops at the inn the sun will light the way. This is 1941, Nanmura will probably be going back to the war, the future is uncertain for everyone, but in here everything is beautiful, calm, safe. It’s just a shame it can’t last.

Ornamental Hairpin (簪, Kanzashi) is the fourth and final film in Criterion’s Eclipse Series 15: Travels with Hiroshi Shimizu box set.

Clip of one of Nanmura’s “trials” (no subtitles):

The Masseurs and a Woman (按摩と女, Hiroshi Shimizu, 1938)

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vlcsnap-2016-05-19-23h22m51s149Hiroshi Shimizu takes another relaxing sojourn in 1938’s The Masseurs and a Woman (按摩と女, Anma to Onna), this time in a small mountain resort populated by runaways and bullish student hikers. Once again Shimizu follows an atypical narrative structure which begins with the two blind masseurs of the title and the elegant lady from Tokyo but quickly broadens out to investigate the transient hotel environment with even a little crime based intrigue added to the mix.

We arrive at the resort town at the same time as the masseurs themselves who’ve walked all the way passing the time playing games with each other over who can guess how many children are in a group travelling the same way or counting how many people they manage to overtake on the road. Comically, their efforts to pass a group of students actually frighten them a little bit so they take off at speed meaning Fuku and Toku miss their daily target.

As well as the group of male students and another group of female ones, the town is also host to a mysterious and beautiful woman from Tokyo who seems both a little sad and a little scared with a tendency to overreact to small sounds and unusual situations. The other main group is a little boy and his uncle with whom he seems to have something of a troubled relationship.

Toku becomes fascinated with Michiho, the mysterious woman from Tokyo, whom he recognises because of her distinctive perfume. Though he is blind, he “watches” her – sensing where she goes and reading her emotional state. He seems to realise there’s very little possibility that she will return his interest, though he allows her to play on the obvious feelings he has for her, and the pair strike up a melancholic friendship. However, Michiho is only interested in making a play for the good looking uncle of the little boy who she has also befriended but the boy eventually goes cold on her, feeling a little rejected because she spends so long talking to his uncle. The two neglected guys, Toku and the boy, form their own kind of friendship as the blind masseur is the only person who is willing to have some fun with him in this slightly less than child friendly resort in which he’s unspeakably bored.

This being a holiday town, it’s a place that only exists for a small amount of time before sinking back into the mists like Brigadoon when the season ends. All things are transient here and everyone is just passing through. The friends you make are just for now and this brief respite from everyday life will fade from the memory like a pleasant dream. Toku ought to know this as he spends his life in such places, providing additional relief for the weary traveller, yet he still has a yearning to connect which is only exacerbated by the feeling that his blindness cuts him off from everyday society.

When a spate of bath house thefts occur and it turns out Michiho has been seen at each of the crime scenes, Toku comes to the obvious conclusion even though his feelings make him reluctant to suspect her. He tries to help Michiho evade punishment for what he believes are her crimes only to find out a very different sort of truth that sees her eventually decide to continue her journey onward to an uncertain future (though at least one that is 100% of her own devising).

Again, Shimizu opts for a lot of location shooting emphasising the beauty of the scenery and the tranquility of the atmosphere. Mostly he sticks to static camera shots, aside from one lengthly tracking sequence and the hand held finale walking after a departing cart, but when he tries to show us the vision of a blind man it’s a striking moment – a whirling chaos where we too can almost smell the elusive perfume of a woman we know is “beautiful”  though we cannot see her, and also know is deliberately toying with us. A melancholy look at the transience of human relationships and the impossibility of true connection, The Masseurs and a Woman is a genre melding tragicomedy filled with innovative directorial flourishes that are once again far in advance of their time.

The Masseurs and a Woman is the third of four films in Criterion’s Eclipse Series 15: Travels with Hiroshi Shimizu box set.

This is the only video clip I can find but it’s not subtitled and it has quite a long speech about Hiroshi Shimizu’s career at the beginning so skip to 2:17 for the film itself: