Takamine Hideko

[Aaron Gerow]

Takamine Hideko was always one of my favorite Japanese actresses. As a  
child star, she was as adorable as could be, as a teenager, as cute as  
could be, and as an adult, as beautiful as could be. She was a  
remarkably versatile actress, one who quickly transitioned from  
precocious children in films by Ozu Yasujiro (Tokyo Chorus), to cute  
girls in Makino Masahiro (Awa no odoriko or Hanako-san), to dramatic  
powerhouse in Yamamoto Kajiro (Tsuzurikata kyoshitsu or Uma) -- all  
before she even hit age 15. As an adult, she was most famous for the  
dramatic works of Kinoshita Keisuke (Twenty-Four Eyes) and Naruse  
Mikio (When a Woman Ascends the Stairs; her face at the end of  
Midareru is one of the most powerful visages in film history and  
graces the front page of Catherine Russell's The Cinema of Naruse  
Mikio), but we should not forget her great talent for comedy (playing  
a stripper in Kinoshita's Carmen Comes Home or a conniving housewife  
in the satirical Fuzen no tomoshibi) and for singing (Ginza kankan  
musume). She seemingly could do everything, and do it with resolve and  
bright inner strength. After retiring as an actress, she even excelled  
as a witty essayist, publishing nearly a dozen books.

I link to one of her songs on my blog:

http://www.aarongerow.com/news/


Aaron Gerow
Associate Professor
Film Studies Program/East Asian Languages and Literatures
Director of Undergraduate Studies, Film Studies
Yale University
53 Wall Street, Room 316
PO Box 208363
New Haven, CT 06520-8363
USA
Phone: 1-203-432-7082
Fax: 1-203-432-6764
e-mail: aaron.gerow at yale.edu
site: www.aarongerow.com



-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mailman.yale.edu/pipermail/kinejapan/attachments/20101231/2f84cc40/attachment.html