Cinema Talk

There’s nothing necessarily wrong with making wistful films, but the type of romanticism apparent in the films of Kinoshita has always been somewhat grating to me. The problem is not that it’s naive exactly, but his almost mystical realism seems like child’s play compared to the titans of Japanese cinema during the 1950s. This isn’t exactly a fair comparison, but there’s definitely something here that prevents a film like this one, which has plenty of things working in its favor, from really feeling like a bona fide masterpiece.

Nakanuma works at a newspaper and he’s investigating the disappearance of his onetime friend and potential lover, Itsuko. Itsuko left him many years ago for a comfortable existence with the much older Kitaura. Nakanuma sends a reporter, Rentaro to find interview Itsuko. She’s now living with Mikako and her father, played by the great Chishu Ryu. Rentaro falls hopelessly in love with Mikako, which puts both him and Nakanuma in a tough position. Their paper needs to put something out about Itsuko running away from her husband, but neither wants to betray the trust they’ve earned from their respective love interests.

Rentaro is played by Rentaro Mikuni, best remembered for his performances in Vengeance is Mine and The Burmese Harp, doesn’t fair too well here. He’s a bit too emotional and a bit too dramatic, perhaps an accurate manifestation of Kinoshita’s own philosophy considering his manipulative streak. Rentaro falls in love with the 19 year old Mikako and although she is played by a very charming Yoko Katsuragi (later in Scandal and Japanese Tragedy), her interactions with Rentaro don’t seem to be particularly romantic. They’re cute to watch together, but it doesn’t fit with the film’s extreme finale.

Mikako’s health gets worse, the illness that is hinted at towards the film’s beginning comes back in the end to give us our ridiculous conclusion. Rentaro’s questionable behavior is meant to be held up as the moral standard, as the characters around him show some flaws. The film tries to villainize Itsuko (played by the lovely Chikage Awashima) because she is somewhat motivated by money. However, a single woman in 1950s Japan, who is trying to escape the control of her unfit husband shouldn’t be blamed for some greed. Her means to money would be difficult if the proposed divorce were to ever go through. This is where Kinoshita tends to lose me,  directing his characters to single dimensions. It’s a shame too, because the fragmented way in which he tells Itsuko and Nakanuma’s love story is actually interesting. I wish he had explored that more.

Instead, he shifts his focus mostly to Rentaro and a b-plot involving Nakanuma’s current girlfriend, who he somewhat uses. Again, Kinoshita feels like he needs to build certain characters with a number of flaws so we can recognize that they’re bad, or an example of what the protagonist is fighting against, at least ideologically. It’s a little insulting really, because the characters seem like they could be interesting had they not been drawn with such broad strokes. Mikako, of course, because of her poor health is of course a martyr. Don’t get me wrong, her story is heartbreaking enough, but she’s reduced to being an embodiment of primitive small town-ness. Rentaro falls in love with her as much as he falls in love of the idea of escaping the city, which is a nice sentiment but compartmentalizes a character.

These things wouldn’t be nearly as frustrating if the film didn’t have so much in its favor. While Rentaro Mikuni is over the top, the performances from Chishu Ryu, Masayuki Mori, and Chikage Awashima seem to ground both him and the film to a much more tolerable level. The photography is absolutely excellent, even when a very fake studio set is used to depict the countryside. Hiroyuki Kusuda frequently collaborated with Kinoshita, and the photography in these films tends to be fantastic. In a way, this perfectly summarizes how I feel about this film as a whole. It magnifies much of what’s wrong with Kinoshita’s work, but it also magnifies the good things as well. It feels like a missed opportunity through my lens, but there are enough inspired moments to make this much more enjoyable than most of the filmmaker’s oeuvre.

It’s worth mentioning before hand that I’m not a huge fan of Carl Dreyer. I admire his work more than I love it. I see the merit and can appreciate his craft, but his films tend to fall right outside of my wheelhouse. I think this is important to mention before I start talk about this film, which might not even be my personal favorite of his, but still a slightly different experience from his other works. I guess the biggest difference between a film like this one compared to Day of Wrath is that this one feels, at least to me, slightly more grounded to reality. It’s not a hard realism, but it’s not the “spiritual” film that writers assign to most of Dreyer’s best loved work.

Michael is an understudy and “adopted son” of Claude Zoret, a famous but aging artist. The two’s relationship is hinted at being romantic and physical, though obvious the age difference becomes a point of division, especially when Princess Zamikoff arrives requesting she be painted by Zoret. Michael falls hopelessly in love with her, spending less and less time with Zoret, even though the artist’s decaying mental state requires some attention. In the mean time, Michael begins stealing Zoret’s art and using them to help finance his new life with the Princess.

Dreyer deserves a ton of credit for the way he deals with the relationship with Zoret and Michael. Their romantic past is obvious, though obviously not materialized in anything physical, outside of holding hands. The film doesn’t have to spend too much time about establishing the fact that one of these men is in love with another man. Again, Dreyer deserves credit for not playing homosexuality as something bizarre. The few films from this era that do even acknowledge homosexuality, seem to suggest it’s some sort of disease. This is not the case here, and the film’s center comes from the heartbreak of Zoret and his acceptance of death. His relationship with Michael is treated as the non-issue that it should be, an intelligent move for even a modern film.

Dreyer’s personal intentions in making the film seem to underscore my sentiments. Even as the source material from Herman Bang was a more explicitly gay  text than the film, Dreyer did want this to be marketed as a “gay film” which suggests, one might argue, the intentions of the first “post-gay film” even as such a pseudo-genre had yet to get its bearings in the mainstream. Such gay films did exist, though, but I don’t want to linger on how Dreyer rejects those conventions.

Benjamin Christensen’s performance  as Claude Zoret really makes the film work. He watches the love that he and Michael share wither away as Michael’s interest shifts to Princess Zamikoff. The story sounds slightly melodramatic, and I’m not sure the film stays entirely outside of that tone, but the moments where Christensen is alone are remarkable. The most memorable of which is him on his death bed, waiting for Michael to arrive so he can inform him that he’s leaving all his art to him. His gestures are intensified (this is still a silent film after all) but the heartache comes from underneath the image, so to speak, still because of the fabulous performance but it is not a feeling that feels forced from the image.