Cast:
Isuzu Yamada (Ayako Murai), Seiichii Takekawa (Junzo Murai), Chiyoko Okura (Sachiko Murai), Shinpachiro Asaka (Hiroshi Murai), Benkei Shiganoya (Sonosuke Asai), Yoko Umemura (Sumiko Asai), Eitarō Shindō (Yoshizo Fujino), Kunio Tamura (Dr. Yoko), Kensaku Hara (Susumu Nishimura), and Takashi Shimura (Inspector) Directed by Kenji Mizoguchi.
Review:
"Filmmakers must study the film image and its potential for expression. This is our primary responsibility."
It never seems too busy to cover another classic Japanese director of the first time, as with the cast of Kenji Mizoguchi. Born in Hongō, Tokyo, his family went through poverty due to a failed business venture by his father during the Russo-Japanese War. The result was that Mizoguchi's sister was put up for adoption (effectively selling her to a geisha house). In childhood, he suffered from rheumatoid arthritis, which resulted in a lifelong gait. His first work as a teenager ended up being as an apprenticeship in designer for yukata manufacturing, as arranged by his sister (his mother died before he was even twenty). He studied art (specifically Western-style painting) before working in advertisement design before entering the film industry as an assistant director at the age of 22 in 1920 with Nikkatsu. He directed his first film with The Resurrection of Love (1923). A good deal of his films from the 1920s and 1930s are considered lost, but a good deal of those films were remakes of works from German Expressionist cinema and the works of authors such as Eugene O'Neill. It was Osaka Elegy (1936) and Sisters of the Gion (1936) where he felt he first reached maturity as an artist, while The Story of the Last Chrysanthemums (1939) is considered his major pre-WWII achievement. He also made a couple of films during the war that honed a bit of patriotic effort such as The 47 Ronin, a two-part jidaigeki (historical drama) released in 1941 and 1942. Described as a master of the long take (as described by himself as "One shot, one take"), Mizoguchi made over one hundred films until his death from leukemia in 1956, which included internation recognition in the later years of his career with films such as The Life of Oharu (1952), Ugetsu (1953), and Sansho the Bailiff (1954). A tireless pusher of his crew, he is called one of the prime directors of Japan's "golden age" of cinema alongside Akira Kurosawa and Yasujirō Ozu, although it probably doesn't reflect well on me that Mizoguchi was third covered among the three esteemed directors.
Osaka Elegy (1936) and Sisters of the Gion (1936) share the same writers (Yoshikata Yoda and Mizoguchi), cinematographer (Minoru Miki), producer, and select actors (Yamada and Umemura, Shiganoya, Shindo), and each has received attention among viewers of the pre-war era of films (Japan invaded China one year later); Osaka came out first. This film involves a switchboard operator trapped in having to make a decision about trying to help her family out of a rough situation that ends with her being wrapped in a situation with her boss. Yamada is an ideal presence among the modern woman wrapped in a world of conniving people with wavering moral fiber. She is flawed like the people that try to pursue her, but she conveys compelling curiosity over how much we care about her qualities. She is an individual in a place that cares about father figures and obligations more than her. With that in mind, Shiganoya and Takekawa are quality representations of the hypocrisy that befalls people falling into a downward spiral, whether that involves foolish pride or foolish trifling in affairs. The bunraku (puppet theatre) theatre sequence works well in outlining the nature of these people as if they were puppets themselves, mere playthings constrained by distinct hands and behavior. I admire the last sequence that follows Yamada into an unknown future, one where she asks about any supposed cures for delinquency before wandering off, no doubt to participate again in the cycle of moral decadence (the sequence involving the reunion between the family is also effective in its stark realities).
At any rate, a 71-minute pace is not much to ask for Osaka Elegy, which is a fairly episodic feature on the suffering that comes with the trouble of being a young woman in a world that has only certain needs for them. The camera is a curious observer, leering at us at numerous angles without requiring many cuts that is quite riveting. It is a deft feature, one that is clear in its uncompromising tragedy with striking realism that makes it an interesting effort and useful starting point for viewers in world cinema. It is visually precise without becoming a preachy movie, one that finds that trying to escape the muck of social and gender norms can result in being on the same level as they are. True colors being laid out makes for a sobering and realistic feature. As a whole, it is fairly accomplished melodrama, devastating in tragedy of the modern woman without asking for tears that made for a worthy first venture of maturity from an accomplished director in Kenji Mizoguchi as an expression of useful imagery.
Overall, I give it 9 out of 10 stars.
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