Naruse's "Okaasan"

[Birgit Kellner]

Here's a small question about Naruse Mikio's "Okaasan" (1952). 

Anderson/Richie describe the film as follows (p.430f.): 

"In _Mother_, Naruse had great fun with the mechanical nature of the
motion picture. The film proceeds normally until, all of a sudden,
scenes start appearing on the screen upside down. The audience is
confused but just before it has begun to think that the projectionist
has made a mistake, Naruse cuts back to a normal view, a little boy
looking at the world as he stands on his head. Later, when things are
coming to a climax, just as we hope that all of the difficulties of the
characters will be solved, the title _The End_ flashis prematurely on
the screen. We think the film has ended to soon; then Naruse cuts to his
central characters leaving a theater. The title we saw belonged to a
movie that they were seeing, and we feel all the closer to his wonderful
people because we thought when we first saw _The End_ that we would have
to leave them to soon."

I've seen _Okaasan_ yesterday, but did not notice any of the upside-down
scenes described in this paragraph, though, having read about them
beforehand, I was attentively looking. Could it be possible that what I
saw was a reedited print? (length was 98 min.) 

I also have doubts about (a) the characterization that "Naruse had great
fun with the mechanical nature of the motion picture" and (b) the
description of "Okaasan" as being "told through the eyes of the eldest
daughter" (Anderson/Richie on p.195; the Pia Cinema Club-guide has the
same characterization); both seem to me rather superficial statements
not taking into account the way in which certain types of direction
affect narrative perspective etc. 

Any comments welcome, 

-- 
Birgit Kellner
Department for Indian Philosophy
Hiroshima University