Two Movie Reviews

[Steven Spinali]

spinali at postmark.net

I apologize for the botched review shipment with the strange text.
Corrected text follows:

Steve Spinali
Two films by Keisuke Kinoshita

OSONE-KE NO ASA (Morning for the Osone Family) 1946
     Keisuke Kinoshita?s thoughtful Morning for the Osone Family
focuses its conscience on what must have been a familiar crisis for
many social liberals in the latter years of the second world war --
the conflict between loyalty to the state and personal ideals.  It?s a
snowy December in 1943, and as the well-off, well-educated Osone
family sings Christmas carols, they also face the first in a series of
impending calamities.  The youngest daughter, Yoko (Mitsuko Miura),
discovers her suitor is about to be sent to the front lines.  Ichiro,
the mouthpiece of the family, owns a library of potentially suspect
material, and has been pulled away by the police for interrogation
(and eventual imprisonment) as a political dissenter.  Their uncle, a
general who enjoys unusual liberties considering his post, has now
consolidated a position of power in the family, even suggesting Yoko
accept a marriage with a military loyalist.  And Taiji, whose great
passion is painting, has only now discovered that he, too, will be
sent for the front lines.  The changes are so gradual for their mother
(Haruko Sugimura) that it?s difficult to recognize the outrageousness
of the situation, with both pacifist and willing soldier lined up for
the same fate.  
     A year passes, and the damage continues.  Due to family
obligations, the Osone maid is forced to leave, and frail Taiji
convalesces in a military hospital.  Worst of all, the youngest son
Takeshi has secretly volunteered for the naval reserves, cementing
Uncle?s position of power in the Osone family.  The mother,
long-suffering without recourse, simply endures her family?s ruin.
    The film?s final section begins shortly before the end of the
war.  As Uncle rails against what he feels is a conspiracy leading to
the Japanese surrender, he also musters every bit of his influence to
illegally re-direct army provisions of rice and canned goods to the
Osone home -- or what?s left of it.  Two sons are dead, another still
in prison, and their contact with Minari has dwindled to only an
occasional letter.  
     At least until its last few minutes, Morning for the Osone
Family covers the ideological material as The Human Condition trilogy,
which was produced several years later.  Caught in a tightly bound
social system, the characters are forced to consider choices --
conscription, marriage, prison -- that members of an educated, liberal
family would normally resist.  As the years pass, the family is a
waning shadow of what it once was.  Kinoshita almost seems to be
measuring the breaking point of the durable Japanese family unit, as
well as what?s necessary to preserve it.  
     The subtext is more subversive.  From its opening scenes, the
drama is set in one claustrophobic household; our only exposure to the
war comes from letters, visitors, and the far-off sounds of sirens and
bombings.  Although family members come and go, the audience almost
feels like the dinner guests in The Exterminating Angel, unable to
leave our prison until rescued.  The metaphor of a Japanese family is
portrayed here as insular and cordoned off from the world, an island
unto itself; it?s only in the drama?s last scene -- when Uncle is
finally ejected from the house -- that we?re finally allowed the
liberty to escape and step outside into a peaceful world, what one
character calls ?a new dawn.?  Japan can no longer remain insulated
from the world in quite the same way, and long-suffering families like
the Osone?s will be its hope.
     These days, Morning for the Osone Family is probably less
interesting in what it has to say than in how it says it.  A melodrama
at heart, and relentlessly melancholy, it has the same soft heart as
most of Kinoshita?s work.  While it covers familiar material, the fact
that Kinoshita made the film so soon after Japan?s defeat qualifies it
as something of an act of courage -- offering sentiments he couldn?t
express as comprehensively in The Blossoming Port (Hana saku minato). 


KARUMEN KOKYU NI KAERU (Carmen Comes Home) 1951
     Rural villagers aren?t quite ready for the return of Okin, whose
stage name is Lily Carmen (Hideko Takamine), who rolls into her modest
hometown -- actually, a cowtown -- almost as a stranger.  Half of her
luggage is clothing, all of it western-style and much of it bright
enough to cause retinal burns.  In Tokyoite, Carmen made a name for
herself as an artiste (or rather, a high-paid stripper with harmless
conceits to art); her father, a rancher, is less concerned with her
fame than his own shame mixed with pity.  His theory is that her
aberrent behavior is a result of a cow kicking her in the head as a
child.  He may or may not be right, but it?s as good an excuse as any.
     Set loose in a place with more livestock than people, she and a
girlfriend amuse themselves the best they can.  Their more amusing
exploits involve dancing through the fields in bright and/or skimpy
clothing, putting on song-and-dance acts to nobody in particular, and
acting so self-important that the townsfolk actually begin to believe
in the girls? press.  But even in this cowtown, everybody seems to be
into the art business one way or another...a blind harmonium-player
composes simple country tunes the schoolmaster quickly dubs
masterpieces, which are just as quickly converted into odd pieces of
exercise choreography by a fellow teacher...the bandmaster suddenly
thinks himself something of a conductor when the girls are in
attendance at a childrens? festival...and a skinflint moneylender
turns himself into an impressario when the strippers decide to put on
strip show as a reward for everyone?s patience.  It?s a reward more
than a handful would rather do without
     Keisuke Kinoshita sets up individual scenes with a utilitarian
attitude to camera angles, and several with an artlessness that has to
be intentional.  (On the other hand, his ?put the camera in one place
and let the action happen? approach may well have been dicated by the
on-location shooting.)  The movie falls together pretty well in spite
of it all, the girls? campiness acting as a glue to hold most of it
together.  
     The film?s main satiric jibe holds up even despite the passage
of time and references long worn away.  Takamine, who made audiences
cry ten years before with Uma (Horse) back in 1941, frequently finds
herself beseiged by herds of horses and cows, often appearing at the
oddest moments.  And just when the gags wane, all it takes is a guest
appearance by their Mount Ayama to send the schoolmaster into verse on
the majesty of their own local dormant volcano.  
     The striptease show goes on, and soon the girl reluctantly take
the train back to Tokyo.  ?Art?s terrific!? seems to be the main
reaction of the menfolk, who are pleased but confused by it all.  The
schoolmaster wonders whether public morals have been damaged by the
show.  Mt. Asamo smoulders in the background.