Let me just start by saying that though I absolutely love the films of Ozu and Mizoguchi, and of course Kurosawa, it continually pains me to a certain degree that Mikio Naruse is not nearly as well know as the 3 big hitters of classic Japanese cinema. His technical capabilities are just as well honed as theirs; perhaps its his regularly surfacing sense of extreme pessimism and sometimes nihilism that keeps the Japanese from exporting more of his films (after all, about 50 have survived.)
He's just as interested in the then modern Japanese family as Ozu, just as willing to explore societal concerns as Mizoguchi (and might be considered even more of a feminist if it weren't for his perpetual sense of futility in resistance, most notably in When a Woman Ascends the Stairs.) His ability to tell a story is just as marvelous as Kurosawa's. So the question remains, why don't more Americans know Naruse? I really don't know, but with Criterion's recent Eclipse set of silent Naruse films perhaps there's a glimmer of hope for this master to gain more notoriety among American cinephiles.
1939's Sincerity clocks in at only 67 minutes yet it displays all the hallmarks of great Naruse; namely the everlasting conflict between the hypocrisy of adults and the easily corrupted innocence of youth & class status and its effect on the relationships choked by its confines. Two young girls, one from a rich family & the other from a poorer family where there is only a mother and a grandmother, go to school together where one is at the top of her class (the poor one) and the other, the rich girl, is in the 10th spot in class.
As the story unfolds its revealed that Tomiko's father at one time was quite fond of Nobuko's mother who was at the time married to a man who Nobuko's grandmother informs the young girl was a no good drunkard; we're left to make up our minds as to the integrity of this missing man as Nobuko's swears he was a wonderful man and, as previously stated, her mother holds the opposing viewpoint. An event occurs that brings the two would-be lovers together, glances are exchanged and thanks are given in the form of a French doll (an item which causes a briefly lived stir in Tomiko's house.) But in the end all go back to their lives, except for the father who has been shipped off to fight in the war. There is no real point in struggling against an existence that has so firmly planted itself into the daily lives of all those involved.
No comments:
Post a Comment