Review - Where Now Are the Dreams of Youth?

December 7, 2019

Where Now Are the Dreams of Youth? – Japan, 1932

The great Yasujiro Ozu had no qualms about returning to material he’d previously used as inspiration for a film. He remade his 1934 film, The Story of Floating Weeds, as Floating Weeds in 1954, and many of the films explore similar themes, so much so that a common comment about Ozu is that he made his first film in 1929 and then remade that film over and over just with varying titles. It is a joke made by those who are either unaware of his complete repertoire or are exaggerating for comedic effect, and yet it is impossible not to see the similarities between Yasujiro Ozu’s Where Now Are the Dreams of Youth? and his earlier “student films,” Days of Youth, I Flunked, But…, and The Lady and the Beard. In many ways, Where Now Are the Dreams of My Youth? is almost an amalgamation of his earlier films, albeit with an ending that is jarringly different that what came before.

Like those earlier movies, Where Now Are the Dreams of My Youth? begins in those jovial days of university, which, as seen in I Flunked, But…, mostly includes playing, hanging out with good friends, and being on the cheerleading squad, and there’s not a whole lot of studying going on during the interim. We first meet a young man named Taichiro Saiki (Tatsuo Saito). He’s such a studious fellow that he walks around the school grounds with his head buried in his books and a pencil in hand; he is not, however, bright – at least not according to his professor -  and he is a bit of a social misfit. In one scene, Ozu shows him watching his friends leading a pep rally from afar, with a look in his eyes that show unmistakable envy.

Soon we meet Tetsuo Horino (Ureo Egawa), who is very much Saiki’s opposite. In fact, it’s highly unlikely he has picked up a book for weeks. In one scene reminiscent of one from an early Harold Lloyd film, he gets so involved in a chess game that he and his opponent carry the game out of a bakery and play it as they are walking and even after they have entered the classroom. Early on, we also meet Oshige (Kinuyo Tanaka), a young woman whose family owns the bakery Horino and his friends frequent often. It is clear where her heart lies from her early interactions with Horino, yet later events caused me to reflect back on Saiki’s reactions during those early scenes in the bakery and see many of his facial expressions and physical movements in a new light. Things take a dramatic turn - at least momentarily – when Horino’s father dies and he elects to take over his father’s company instead of completing his degree.    

Ozu’s student films were made during a worldwide economic downturn, and that reality permeates through most of those films. In Ozu’s lost film, I Graduated, But…, a young man’s degree fails to land him a decent job; here, Tetsuo’s friends are graduating into a world where job prospects are bleak. In I Flunked, But…, the luckiest character is the one who doesn’t pass his exams because he gets to continue basking in the bright glory of student life, while his friends face rejection after rejection. Here, graduation is unnecessary for Hirino to achieve success; for his friends, it sends them ill-prepared into a job market reeling from a global contraction. Days of Youth is a different kind of film, focusing more on comedy and a love triangle, but even in that film, we see similarities to the romantic narrative found in Where Now Are the Dreams of Youth?

Where it diverges is in its finale, and I suspect it is this part of the film that contemporary audiences will have the hardest time with, for instead of embracing the notions that the passage of time creates permanent changes and that accepting that is part of growing up, it reinforces the idea that all that is needed to restore strained relations is an old-fashioned heart-to-heart. Here, said talk involves a confrontational discussion and a discomforting one-sided physical altercation. Voila, they’re all smiles, and life is as it should be. Except that it isn’t. The economy is still lousy, his friends are still woefully unqualified for employment, and Horino still does not have the experience necessary to run a successful company. I guess none of that is more important than whether four young men stay friends.

In fairness, with the exception of a few fleeting remarks here and there, the film doesn’t try to extend much into this reality, but by avoiding any real depiction of what was happening in 1931, the world these characters inhabit feels trivialized. It is as if Ozu is saying that all you need to survive trying times is family wealth and/or connections in high places. I don’t see that message resonating either now or in 1931. It reminds me of a Hollywood movie made during the Great Depression in which the lead character turns down a job because it doesn’t pay enough. Not many people in the audience could afford such considerations, and it is said that the line elicited laughter,

Where Now Are the Dreams of Youth? is a more enjoyable film if you ignore the real world. Set aside the drum beats of war and the shattered dreams of those unfortunate enough not to find comfortable employment, and just watch it as the story of four friends whose camaraderie is tested by extreme changes and, for two of them at least, an interest in the same woman. Viewed as such, the film mostly succeeds. It is humorous, employing wit and warmth reminiscent of the early works of Chaplin, Lloyd, and Keaton. The film is extremely well acted, and several scenes involving Horino and Oshige resonate emotionally. As for the film’s climactic moments, I will not sugarcoat it – they are off-putting and certainly left a bad taste in my mouth. However, after that wore off, I could reflect upon the film’s more uplifting and humorous moments and recall that I’d had a pretty good time up until that point. That should count for something. (on DVD in Region 2 as part of BFI’s The Student Comedies)

3 stars

*Where Now Are the Dreams of Youth? is a silent film.

Review - I Flunked, But...

November 23, 2019

I Flunked, But… - Japan, 1930

As a rule, I do not read about a movie before watching it, so I do not know for sure if my assumption about Yasujiro Ozu’s I Flunked, But… is correct. However, I suspect that parts of the film have been lost. For one, Ozu’s previous film, Days of Youth, clocked in at 99 minutes; I Flunked, But… is over after just 63, and before you remind me that many films from the same time period also had shorter running times, I should add that many pieces of the film’s narrative, as well as some of the film’s characters, are woefully undeveloped. More on that later.

I Flunked, But… is about a group of students “preparing” for a crucial series of examinations. I put the word preparing in quotation marks, for their concept of studying is writing pieces of information they think are likely to be on the exam on the back of one of the long-sleeve white shirts that the students wear as part of their uniform. They also employ an interesting technique of getting answers to students sitting further away by sticking them onto the back of the teacher as he is roaming around the classroom. Unfortunately, that technique is far less reliable.

The first day of the exam ends without their deviousness being discovered, so naturally, they immediately head home to prepare a second shirt. Problems arise, however, when one of the boys’ landlady mistakes the “cheat” shirt for one that could use a good washing and sends it off to be dry cleaned. Suffice to say, not everyone passes.

It is here where the film shifts tones. Up until this point, I Flunked, But… is humorous, with several scenes that will make you recall Harold Lloyd’s The Freshman. However, once failure makes its presence known, the film starts resembling a satire. one that is critical of Japan’s exam system and shatters the myth that all one needed to succeed in pre-World War II Japan was a degree . There’s a lot of potential in this plot point, but for some reason, Ozu elected not to explore it. Instead, we get a few serious scenes between Takahashi (Tatsuo Saito) and the girl he likes (Kinuyo Tanaka). In one, she notices the cheat shirt and registers an expression of disappointment, yet this is as far as the film goes with these sentiments. The next time we see her, she has forgotten all about her disillusionment; in its place is intense admiration and hints of budding love. The change is jarring, and I suspect that this is one of the spots from which a scene is missing.

And yet it is in this part of the film that its most interesting topics can be found. It has long been said that in Japan a job used to be guaranteed for life, and nothing we see in Ozu’s film shatters that. However, it does show that employment prospects were not quite as rosy as we’ve been led to believe, especially for someone who just barely passed his exams. After all, if no one wants to hire you, what do you care if employment is permanent?

So, I Flunked, But… has potential; it’s just not fully realized. First, I was never fully invested in these characters. Of the five members of the quintet, only two of them receive quality screen time. The other three just act silly, cheat in humorous ways, and dance the kind of short jig one usually associates with a fraternity in the 1950s. The lead character was so underwritten that he remains an enigma throughout the picture. In fact, if I’m honest, I’d say the most involving character is the one who barely passes his exams because we can all understand his plight. If only he’d received more screen time. Second, Ozu seems to be trying to have it both ways. He wants the audience to laugh at the absurdity of the boys’ behavior, yet respond with sympathy to their uncertainty and lamentations. There’s only one problem: We saw them cheating earlier in the film.

There’s a tendency to give the early films of people who eventually became great filmmakers a pass. To do so, some people seem to be view their films not as completed works, but as a source of stunning fragments that hint at the director to come. I get this; I do. However, no amount of esteem for Ozu’s later films can save I Flunked, But… It’s too disjointed, has weak character development, and, seen though modern eyes, contains eccentricity for eccentricity’s sake. It just doesn’t work. Therefore, there must be something lost. After all, the great Ozu couldn’t have made such a disappointing film. It must be that… Dang it. Now I’m doing it. (on DVD as part of BCFI’s collection The Student Comedies; it is Region 2)

2 stars

*I Flunked, But… is a silent film.

*Apparently, none of the characters in the film have names. I only learned the lead character’s name by reading the insert booklet.

Review - Ornamental Hairpin

August 18, 2017

Ornamental Hairpin – Japan, 1941

There is a noticeable difference between World War II-era love stories made in Japan and their counterparts in the United States. While American films such as Pearl Harbor and From Here to Eternity often present patriotism and love as going hand in hand, with patriotism receiving just a slightly greater prominence, many Japanese films present war as an obstacle even to the first date. It is almost as if thoughts of love are selfish when the country’s honor is at stake, and even when it is clear that two characters are in love, the fact that there is a war going on can prevent characters from even acknowledging their feelings aloud. Instead, they’re more prone to long loving looks that are often tinged with regret and stoic resolution. To me, such moments resonate more than those in which a couple says good-bye before shipping off to fight. They at least had joy; their Japanese counterparts often did not, and it is truly moving to see a character realize that what she wanted is something she will never have.

I reflected on these things after watching Hiroshi Shimizu’s 1941 wartime film Ornamental Hairpin. The war is only fleetingly referenced, yet every character seems acutely aware and affected by it. Young boys shout bonsai as they raise their arms, older people cling to tradition and established hierarchy in a way that people only do when they feel threatened or uneasy, and a steady stream of travelers leave the city in search of temporary respite from the chaos of the big cities and its constant war drums. And of course there’s the budding on a love that has no chance of a happy ending. War sees to that.

Ornamental Hairpin takes place at a popular mountain resort that, oddly enough, seems both popular and unprepared for the wave of visitors that descend on it. In its opening scene, we see a party of young geisha walking briskly along a dusty road reflecting upon just how wonderful it is to be away from the big city and the problems that come with it. One even remarks with wonder about how much she is sweating, for which her companion doesn’t share her enthusiasm.

We then meet a number of other residents. There’s the cranky professor (Tatsuo Saito), who has some pretty lofty notions of what his vacation is supposed to be like; his children, Taro and Jiro; two men sharing adjacent rooms, Nanmura and Hiroyasu; and Hiroyasu’s wife, who is unfortunately forced to endure the professor’s dismissive comments whenever her husband asks for her opinion. Shimuzu devotes much of the film’s first act to establishing these characters, and while nothing much happens narratively, we get a great sense of who they are and why they came together. I grew to care for them, even for the professor, whose mannerisms are likely the product of a lifetime spent adhering to tradition as if there were no other alternatives.

One day, as the men are enjoying time in the resort’s outdoor bath, Nanmura (played by a very young Chishu Ryu) steps on a hairpin inadvertently dropped by one of the young ladies staying there and is injured so severely that he requires crutches and physical therapy (playfully administered by Taro and Jiro, of course). He takes it all in stride and even speculates that the woman who lost it must be an extraordinary beauty. The professor chalks that up to the poet in him. As luck would have it, the woman, Emi Ota (Kinuyo Tanaka), contacts the hotel about her lost item and upon being told that it injured someone decides to return and apologize.

What follows is a beautiful and moving courtship that is something akin to a dance, with each person taking turns leading the other into the next phase of their relationship. At times, he leads, demonstrating to her his proud character and noble attributes; at other times, she carries him, sometimes literally, over the awkward hurdles that love can put in the way of two so smitten as they are. It is a beautiful thing to behold. We hear little of the war or of Nanmura’s role in it; we learn more about Emi’s backstory and realize just how much she has invested in Nanmura.

As I watched this unfold, I was reminded of the ways in which we measure time and of how we know that it has passed, by life’s small, but noticeable milestones – the end of the baseball season, the first day of a new school year, the first sight of Christmas lights – milestones that themselves begin things that are also transitory. All things indeed eventually end. Here, though, fate is especially cruel. There is no promise that someone will wait, no sudden elopement, no night of passionate embraces and tears. War, as it does so many things, prevents it. And by showing it, Shimizu may have made one of the subtlest and most heartbreaking anti-war statements of all time. (on DVD as part of Eclipse’s Travels with Hiroshi Shimizu)

3 and a half stars

*Ornamental Hairpin is in Japanese with English subtitles.

Review - Dragnet Girl

May 26, 2016

Dragnet Girl – Japan, 1933

In the run up to the Second World War, it is said that Japan was dealing with a contradiction of massive proportions. On the one hand, there was an official coordinated effort to convince people that the West was Japan’s enemy. However, even as the drums of war began to beat even louder, young people craved all things Western, from the fashion of the day to the vibrant beats of Jazz music. That contradiction cannot have made the government very happy, and it is not hard to imagine that hints – whether subtle or obvious – were given that the film industry had better toe the line. Kurosawa would eventually make Most Beautiful (1942), a film that extols the virtues of a female factory worker who sacrifices her health for the war effort, and Yasujiro Ozu would make There Was a Father (1944), a film in which a father practically calls his son unpatriotic for wanting to spend more time with him. However, in 1933, there was no reason to make films that had the obviously propagandist elements that characterized those later films. Make no mistake about it, though: Dragnet Girl is an example of subtle propaganda.

In the film, we watch a group of petty criminals holds down regular jobs by day and lets loose at night. Their leader is a young woman named Tokiko, excellently played by Kinuyo Tanaka, who dresses like Bonnie Parker, smokes, drinks, and speaks of her boyfriend’s ability to beat up people with an almost erotic zeal. In other words, she’s “western.” She and her boyfriend, Joji (Joji Oka), a former boxer, live in sin and are always on the prowl for the next money-making scheme. One day, at his old gym, Joji happens to meet a young boxer named Misako (Koji Kaga). It turns out that Misako idolizes Joji, and once he is under his tutelage, his behavior goes from bad to worse.

Enter Joji’s sweet, caring, traditional sister, Kazuko (Sumiko Mizukubo). We know she is the film’s moral center almost immediately because she is the only character who consistently wears a kimono. She also has an interesting habit of looking apologetic when people are rude to her; in other words, she’s such a good person that she feels ashamed at having provoked negative feelings in another human being. It’s only a matter of time until she becomes involved in trying to prevent her brother from going down the wrong path, and this of course involves arranging a meeting with Joji.

With a set-up like this, Dragnet Girl could easily have gone down the well-tread path of movies about terrible gangsters who fall in love in the most innocent of women. Fortunately, Dragnet Girl does not follow that script too far. I kept expecting Joji to confess his feelings and promise to be a better person, and I was rather enjoyed the fact that film avoids this scenario. Unfortunately, this does not mean that the film has any other original ideas, for just as quickly as one established genre is disposed of, it employs another one, that of the last job, and we all know how those turn out.

And that may be part of what hampered my enjoyment of Dragnet Girl: I was simply too familiar with films like it to be surprised by anything I saw. I could see what was in store for the characters before they did, and on the few occasions in which something happened that I hadn’t predicted, the actions of the characters seemed forced and slightly exaggerated, as if screenwriter Tadao Ikeda had purposely set out to avoid subtlety. Several conversations go on too long, one in particular in surprisingly creepy (you’ll know which one), and the ending scene goes on much longer than it realistically should, with characters repeating phrases over and over as they run around from one place to another.  In the end, I was more exhausted than moved.

Still, I like the movie. It is an interesting take of Ozu’s favorite subjects, contemporary Japan and its effect on families. Here, the families are broken. The gang, as well as its anti-social actions, is likely the product of absent or deceased parents, and Misako and his sister resemble the kind of makeshift family we so often see when either death or an economic crisis befalls a family. Therefore, there is no one to guide these families, to pull them back from the brink, or to act as the moral glue that binds them to each other and to tradition. These imperfect characters are tasked with keeping their families together, and with  possibly putting them on a better, more law-abiding path. Again, I like all of this – I just wasn’t especially moved by much of it, and I should have been. The cast, in particular, Ms. Tanaka, is excellent, and fans of Ozu’s later films will notice some of those trademark Ozu’s images. Yet, this is one time when Ozu’s magic just didn’t work on me as well as it has in the past. It all just seemed so standard. (on DVD as part of Eclipse’s Silent Ozu – Three Crime Dramas)

3 stars

*Dragnet Girl is a silent film with English intertitles.. 

Review - Women of the Night

February 25, 2016

Women of the Night – Japan, 1948

Kenji Mizoguchi’s Women of the Night begins with an aerial view of post-World War II Osaka, and for a moment, it is as if the war is a distant memory. Buildings appear to be either standing or rebuilt, and one could be forgiven for thinking that this is a city well on it way back from near oblivion. However, as Mizoguchi’s camera lowers, we get a better view of day-to-day post-war life. We meet a young wife waiting, hoping against hope that her long-lost husband will return home to relieve his family of poverty, a mother driven by desperation to sell her baby’s summer clothes, a brother-in-law so defeated by the times that he has fallen to alcohol and excuses for behavior that could easily be interpreted as callousness. Within the first few minutes of the film, disaster strikes multiple times: news arrives about the young woman’s husband, and it is not what she was hoping for; deaths visits her child after he is hit by a fit of convulsions; and what should be a happy reunion turns sad as the young woman learns that her parents have both died of malnutrition.

There are other things that we notice in these early scenes – the casual way in which people speak of either prostitution or making an “arrangement” with an interested employer, the lecherous eyes of a man looking at the widowed woman he has just offered to help out in emergencies, and the ready availability of jobs with titles such as “dancer.” Nowhere can hope be seen, and as the film progresses, we witness character after character descend ever lower morally until the innocent, respectable people we see at the beginning of the film are a distant memory. This is clearly not a time that rewards decency.

Women of the Night focuses primarily on three women. First, there’s Fusako (Kinuyo Tanaka), the young lady whose hopes for the return of her husband and with him their former stable life are dashed early on in the film; Natsuko (Sanae Takasugi), Fusako’s slightly jaded sister who seems to have accepted the precarious position of women in post-war Japan; and Kumiko (Tomie Tsunoda), a younger woman overwhelmed by the excitement of the lights, music, and revelry she sees around her. Kumiko has been protected by her parents for the majority of her life, and she, like so many other young people her age, yearns to escape the “overprotective” arms of her family. It is a mistake.

As the film continues, Mizoguchi shows us how fast people can fall and how quickly circumstances can turn ugly and force people to make choices that they may have told themselves they would never make. It seems to me that in the film society has lost its social fabric, that interconnectiveness that binds people together and keeps them from giving in to their darker side. Men take advantage of women, women gang up against other women, and police blame victims mistakenly rounded up in sweeps of “wicked women” because they shouldn’t have been there in the first place.

Much of the film is extremely powerful, yet this is my least favorite of Mizoguchi’s “fallen women” films. Some of the dramatic shifts in character happen a bit too quickly, and the changes can be so jarring that they take some time to get used to them. No doubt this is by design, yet I still felt it was too much too soon. There were also a few too many moments of unrealistic speechifying, moments when characters break into sudden monologues that just seemed forced rather than coming from the characters naturally. Also, too many characters seemed to turn on a dime, to be cold one moment and fighting to reclaim their goodness in the very next. Also hurting the film is the absence of any mention of the United States, which occupied Japan at the time, for it is hard to imagine that situations such as those depicted in the film went unnoticed by military officials. This was not Mizoguchi’s fault, of course, yet the absence is still glaring. And then there is the level of nastiness that permeates almost every moment of the film in which we see groups of women. Early such scenes are eye-opening, yet later ones feel voyeuristic, and it is hard to know just what Mizoguchi is intending with them.

Mizoguchi’s previous two “fallen women” films told more individualistic stories – those of a young woman who becomes her boss’s mistress and of two geisha sisters struggling to come to terms with competing versions of the men in their lives. Women of the Night is different. It is the first such film in which society itself is the enemy. It seems natural therefore that Mizoguchi would give his audience something to hang their hopes on, and here that hope comes in the form of charitable organizations that make it their life’s work to help fallen women turn their lives around. This storyline and the imagery used to express it are a bit heavy-handed, yet they provide a counter-image to everything else we see in the film. On the one hand, we have violence, indifference, and calls for revenge; on the other, the voice of hope and redemption. I never had a doubt which one would win out in the end, but the ride to that conclusion was never dull, and it was occasionally utterly heart wrenching. Women of the Night is not a masterpiece, yet it is a shocking and thought-provoking film about a time during which it was so easy to fall from grace, especially if, like Fusako, so much is stacked against you. (on DVD as part of Eclipse Series 13: Kenji Mizoguchi’s Fallen Women)

3 stars

*Women of the Night is in Japanese with English subtitles.