You Were Like a Wild Chrysanthemum (Keisuke Kinoshita, 1955)

Masao: Chishu Ryu
Tamiko: Noriko Arita
Young Masao: Shinji Tanaka
Masao's Mother: Haruko Sugimura
Tamiko's Mother: Kazuo Motohashi
Tamiko's Father: Nobuo Tagaki
Tamiko's Sister: Keiko Yukishiro

Director: Keisuke Kinoshita
Screenplay: Keisuke Kinoshita
Based on a novel by Sachio Ito
Cinematography: Hiroshi Kusuda
Art direction: Kisaku Ito
Film editing: Yoshi Sugihara
Music: Chuji Kinoshita

Keisuke Kinoshita loved trying things out, and was so prolific and popular a filmmaker that his studio, Shochiku, let him get away with his innovations. For You Were Like a Wild Chrysanthemum* Kinoshita and cinematographer Hiroshi Kusuda decided to put all of the film's flashback scenes inside an oval mask, giving them the effect of vignetted images in a photo album. It's an interesting choice, but to my mind a mistake: More than half of the film consists of flashbacks, and given that almost all of the drama is contained in them, there's a loss of clarity and intimacy in the film's most important scenes. The unmasked frame story consists of the return of Masao, now a man in his 70s, to the village where he grew up. His closest friend, we learn, was his cousin Tamiko, a girl two years his senior. And this age difference -- not the blood relationship -- was considered a barrier to their engagement and marriage. As the aging Masao recalls the past, we see how Tamiko's family stymied their budding romance, sending him off to school and pressuring her into an arranged marriage. It's an affecting story, well performed by not only veterans Chishu Ryu as the old Masao and Haruko Sugimura as his mother in the flashbacks, but also the younger actors who play the young Masao and Tamiko. The cinematography is lovely, and it won awards, but I still think the masking gimmick is a distraction.

*The title the Criterion Channel on FilmStruck gives it. IMDb and other sources call it She Was Like a Wild Chrysanthemum.

The Tattered Wings (Keisuke Kinoshita, 1955)

Hideko Takamine and Keiji Sada in The Tattered Wings

Fuyuko Terada: Hideko Takamine
Shunsuke: Keiji Sada
Keizo Ishizu: Takahiro Tamura
Kojiro: Teiji Takahashi
Ryo: Akira Ishihama
Tokiko: Toshiko Kobayashi
Kimiko: Kuniko Igawa
Shunsuke's Father: Eijiro Yanaki
Fuyuko's Father: Takeshi Sakamoto

Director: Keisuke Kinoshita
Screenplay: Keisuke Kinoshita, Zenzo Matsuyama
Cinematography: Hiroshi Kusuda
Art direction: Kazue Hirataka
Film editing: Yoshi Sugihara
Music: Chuji Kinoshita

Keisuke Kinoshita's explorations of postwar domestic dilemmas continue with The Tattered Wings, in which Fuyuko, a war widow, is torn between -- what else? -- love and duty. Before the war she was in love with Keizo Ishizu, but she was forced into a marriage with the older son of a wealthy distiller. Her husband was cruel and unfaithful, and he left her with a daughter when he was killed in the war. Meanwhile, her husband's younger brother, Shunsuke, has fallen in love with her. He's a nicer guy than his brother, but things get complicated when Keizo suddenly returns to town, paying a visit before he moves to a new job in far-off Hokkaido. Their meetings stir gossip in the town, some of it fed by Fuyuko's sister, a telephone operator with a direct line, as it were, to the latest news. Meanwhile, Shunsuke is there to remind her that her daughter needs a steady, reliable father. Will Fuyuko choose stability or an unknown, romantic future? Kinoshita works all of this out with finesse and his usual attention to environment -- the sometimes claustrophobic small town -- but lays on a bit too much of his brother Chuji Kinoshita's musical emotion-tugging.

Remorques (Jean Grémillon, 1941)

Michèle Morgan and Jean Gabin in Remorques

André Laurent: Jean Gabin
Yvonne Laurent: Madeleine Renaud
Catherine: Michèle Morgan
Gabriel Tanguy: Charles Blavette
Marc: Jean Marchat
Renée Tanguy: Nane Germon
Radioman: Jean Dasté
Georges: René Bergeron
Dr. Maulette: Henri Poupon
Marie Poubennec: Anne Laurens
Le Meur: Marcel Pérès
Pierre Poubennec: Marcel Duhamel

Director: Jean Grémillon
Screenplay: Jacques Prévert, André Cayatte
Based on a novel by Roger Vercel
Cinematography: Armand Thirard
Production design: Alexandre Trauner
Film editing: Yvonne Martin
Music: Roland Manuel

Remorques features Jean Gabin at his most effortlessly rugged and romantic, playing André Laurent, the captain of a tugboat that rescues distressed ships and is paid a percentage of the assessed value of their salvaged cargo. He's happily married to the delicate Yvonne, who longs for him to give up the hazardous work and retire to a less stormy port. Still, André is also devoted to his longtime crew and is reluctant to leave them to the mercies of the company's management. One stormy night they go out to rescue a ship whose captain, Marc, is a nasty piece of work. Among other things, he has a very unhappy wife, Catherine, who manages to escape from the ship in a lifeboat that is picked up by André and his crew. When the storm begins to subside, Marc manages to break the towline that is pulling his ship to shore and head to the port of destination under his own steam, thereby depriving André's tug of its share of the rescue money. But André has salvaged something else from the rescue: Catherine, to whom he is attracted at the peril of his marriage. As their relationship heats up, however, Yvonne becomes seriously ill. Director Jean Grémillon makes the most of this blend of action and romance, keeping it from sinking into mush by leavening things with solid supporting performances and providing a piquant, bittersweet outcome. Remorques was made under difficult circumstances as France fell to the Germans, and was not released until after its stars, Gabin and Michèle Morgan, had left the country for Hollywood.

Repast (Mikio Naruse, 1951)

Setsuko Hara and Ken Uehara in Repast

Michiyo Okamoto: Setsuko Hara
Hatsunosuke Okamoto: Ken Uehara
Satoko Okamoto: Yukiko Shimazaki
Mitsuko Murata: Yoko Sugi
Seiko Tomiyasu: Akiko Kazami
Matsu Murata: Haruko Sugimura
Koyoshi Dohya: Ranko Hanai
Kazuo Takenaka: Hiroshi Nihon'yanagi
Shinzo Murata: Keiju Kobayashi

Director: Mikio Naruse
Screenplay: Toshiro Ide, Sumie Tanaka, Yasunari Kawabata
Based on a novel by Fumiko Hayashi
Cinematography: Masao Tamai
Art direction: Satoru Chuko
Music: Fumio Hayasaka

Repast is one of those beautifully layered films by Mikio Naruse that defy simplistic judgments about the characters. Superficially, it's a story about a failing marriage that tempts you to take sides: Michiyo and Hatsunosuke have been married long enough that the tenderness has rubbed off of the relationship, and they have no children to provide a distraction from the routine of living together. She suffers the tedium and toil of keeping house, and he comes home from his salaryman's job in an office tired and frustrated. They are scraping by financially, and live in a less than desirable neighborhood. Initially the focus seems to be on the woman's lot -- she's the one we see doing all the lonely work of managing the house, whereas he at least has the opportunity to get out and fraternize with his fellow office workers. And when his lively young niece, Satoko, comes to visit -- actually to escape from family pressure to settle down and get married -- Michiyo finds herself slaving for both her husband and his niece. Eventually, things come to a head and Michiyo goes to Tokyo, taking Satoko back to her parents and leaving Hatsunosuke to fend for himself, which he doesn't do a particularly good job of. But Naruse is careful to let us see his side of things as well, and when Michiyo returns to him -- after making a few steps toward finding a job and leaving him permanently -- it's possible to see this as not a defeat for her so much as an acknowledgement that some remnants of their original affection remain and that she has decided to try to build a more equitable relationship on them. The performances of Setsuko Hara and Ken Uehara, who starred in several other films for Naruse, have that lived-in quality necessary for such a muted and ambivalent conclusion.

The Samurai Trilogy (Hiroshi Inagaki, 1954, 1955, 1956)

Samurai I: Musashi Miyamoto

Toshiro Mifune in Samurai I: Musashi Miyamoto

Samurai II: Duel at Ichijoji Temple

Kaoru Yachigusa in Samurai II: Duel at Ichijoji Temple

Samurai III: Duel at Ganryu Island

Toshiro Mifune and Koji Tsuruta in Samurai III: Duel at Ganryu Island

Musashi Miyamoto: Toshiro Mifune
Otsu: Kaoru Yachigusa
Kojiro Sasaki: Koji Tsuruta
Matahachi: Rentaro Mikuni
Takuan Osho: Kuroemon Onoe
Akemi: Mariko Okada
Oko: Mitsuko Mito
Osugi: Eiko Miyoshi
Sado Nakaoka: Takashi Shimura
Sasuke: Minoru Chiaki
Nikkan: Kokuten Kodo
Koetsu Hinami: Ko Mihashi
Toji Gion: Daisuke Kato
Shishido: Eijiro Tono

Director: Hiroshi Inagaki
Screenplay: Hiroshi Inagaki, Tokuhei Wakao
Based on a play by Hideji Hojo and a novel by Eiji Yoshikawa
Cinematography: Jun Yasumoto (I,II), Kazuo Yamada (III)
Art direction: Makoto Sono (I)
Production design: Kisaku Ito (II,III)
Film editing: Eiji Ooi (I,II), Koichi Iwashita (III)
Music: Ikuma Dan

Toshiro Mifune achieves a kind of gravitas that he never displays in the movies by Akira Kurosawa in which he played a samurai. That's because Hiroshi Inagaki's trilogy is a kind of cinematic Bildungsroman: the education of Musashi Miyamoto, a historic figure who served as a kind of bridge between the swordsmanship tradition of the Japanese warrior and the meditative tradition rooted in Zen Buddhism. It's a strongly planned trilogy where it comes to Miyamoto's development, and Mifune provides a solid center. But I found myself distracted by the Hollywoodizing of the story, especially the subplot involving Otsu, the woman who loves Miyamoto so much that she devotes her life to seeking him out. The argument goes that this romantic subplot represents one of the trials that Miyamoto must undergo before he can achieve the kind of wisdom that his spiritual mentors wish for him, but Otsu's doggedness struck me as heavy-handed and sentimental. Still, it's a fascinating and often spectacular trio of films, beautifully climaxing in the battle between Miyamoto and Kojiro Sasaki as the sun sets over the sea on whose verge they are dueling.

Le Amiche (Michelangelo Antonioni, 1955)

Yvonne Furneaux, Eleanora Rossi Drago, Anna Maria Pancani, and Valentina Cortese in Le Amiche

Clelia: Eleanora Rossi Drago
Lorenzo: Gabriele Ferzetti
Cesare Pedoni: Franco Fabrizi
Nene: Valentina Cortese
Momina: Yvonne Furneaux
Rosetta: Madeleine Fischer
Mariella: Anna Maria Pancani
Tony: Luciano Volpato
Clelia's Employer: Maria Gambarelli
Carlo: Ettore Mani

Director: Michelangelo Antonioni
Screenplay: Suso Cecchi D'Amico, Michelangelo Antonioni, Alba De Cespedes
Based on a novel by Cesare Pavese
Cinematography: Gianni Di Venanzo
Production design: Gianni Polidori
Film editing: Eraldo Da Roma
Music: Giovanni Fusco

The usual rap on Michelangelo Antonioni's films by those who dislike them is that nothing happens, when in fact all sorts of things happen, from mysterious disappearances to murder. What sets Antonioni's films apart is that things happen almost randomly, without the usual dramatic buildup, and that the way his characters react to the things they witness or that happen to them is not usually the way we would react to them. So Le Amiche starts with an attempted suicide to which the sophisticated women who form the circle of "girlfriends" of the film's title react with a kind of detachment and indifference, even though the woman who tried (perhaps not very hard) to kill herself was one of them. Even Clelia, the outsider who will soon become part of the little circle and who discovers the unconscious Rosetta, seems to take the occurrence in her stride. The next on the scene is the brittle, cynical Momina, who knows Rosetta and accepts her suicide attempt as something like a part of the routine. And so we, along with Clelia, are thrust into a group of people in whom something essential seems to have atrophied, producing several fractured marriages and dead-end affairs. Clelia has come to Turin, the city where she grew up, to supervise the opening of a dress shop, part of a chain headed by the designer for whom she works. So it's the world of fashion superimposed on a place Clelia knew in the immediate postwar years as a grimy working-class city, and her point of view on the lives of the girlfriends is a special one. Partly in reaction against these wealthy women and their ineffectual men, Clelia takes up with Carlo, a supervisor on the construction of the shop, who shares her lower-class roots in the city. But you can't, as they say, go home again. The film is full of Antonioniesque touches that anticipate his major works of the 1960s. There's a visit to the beach where the behavior of the girlfriends and their men evokes some of the behavior that precedes the disappearance of Anna in L'Avventura (1960), and there's a breathtaking cut from the suicidal Rosetta walking away into the darkness to a high-angle shot of her white-shrouded body on the pier after she succeeds in killing herself. Antonioni antagonists will find nothing in Le Amiche to counter their charges of "arty ennui," but those of us who appreciate his work, even if we have to struggle sometimes, think this earlier film is almost the equal of his later work.

Seduced and Abandoned (Pietro Germi, 1964)

Saro Urzi, Stefania Sandrelli, and Aldo Puglisi in Seduced and Abandoned

Agnese Ascalone: Stefania Sandrelli
Don Vincenzo Ascalone: Saro Urzi
Peppino Califano: Aldo Puglisi
Antonio Ascalone: Lando Buzzanca
Amalia Califano: Lola Braccini
Baron Rizieri Zappalà: Leopoldo Trieste
Cousin Ascalone: Umberto Spadaro
Matilde Ascalone: Paola Biggio
Orlando Califano: Rocco D'Assunta
Police Chief Polenza: Oreste Palella
Francesca Ascalone: Lina Lagalla
Lawyer Ciarpetta: Gustavo D'Arpe
Consolata: Rosetta Urzi
Rosaura Ascalone: Roberta Narbonne
Pasquale Profumo: Vincenzo Licata
Priest: Attilio Martella
Brigadier Bisigato: Adelino Campardo
Don Mariano: Salvatore Fazio
Uncle Carmelo: Italia Spadaro

Director: Pietro Germi
Screenplay: Pietro Germi, Luciano Vincenzoni, Agenore Incrocci, Furio Scarpelli
Cinematography: Aiace Parolin
Art direction: Carlo Egidi
Film editing: Roberto Cinquini
Music: Carlo Rustichelli

Bigotry is fun to watch, as long as it's someone else's. There's no fun to be had from the recent story about the high school valedictorian who was kicked out of the house for being gay, even though it had a happy ending: He received a full college scholarship. That's because it hits too close to where we live: a United States constantly beset by bigots sanctioned by our government. But Pietro Germi's Seduced and Abandoned delighted audiences because it made them feel superior to the small-minded, small town Sicilians who cause such a ruckus over Agnese Ascalone's out-of-wedlock pregnancy. To them, the story was much ado about "honor," a concept long regarded as outmoded ever since it was mocked by Shakespeare's Falstaff, and the notion that things could be set right by marriage, even if the marrying couple was a rapist and his victim. In this case, however, the seducer, Peppino, refuses to marry Agnese, whom he impregnated, because she's not a virgin -- no matter that it's his fault that she isn't. Much raucous but edgy humor ensues from this Catch-22, as the irascible head of the Ascalone family, played wonderfully by Saro Urzi, tries to work out the complications while maintaining the family honor -- a word that will be engraved on his tombstone. Seduced and Abandoned is a keen-eyed, cold-hearted film that works best if you realize that Germi and his screenwriters are making a point about the danger of imposing societal values on private matters, the risk run in communities of all constituencies and convictions.

Floating Clouds (Mikio Naruse, 1955)

Hideko Takamine in Floating Clouds

Yukiko Koda: Hideko Takamine
Kengo Tomioka: Masayuki Mori
Sei Mukai: Mariko Okada
Sugio Iba: Isao Yamagata
Kuniko Tomioka: Chieko Nakakita
Seikichi Mukai: Daisuke Kato

Director: Mikio Naruse
Screenplay: Yoko Mizuki
Based on a novel by Fumiko Hayashi
Cinematography: Masao Tamai
Production design: Satoru Chuko
Film editing: Eiji Ooi
Music: Ichiro Saito

Mikio Naruse's Floating Clouds brings to mind some of Ernest Hemingway's stories about war-damaged lovers trying to make the best of a doomed relationship. Yukiko is a young woman returning to Tokyo after working in Japanese-occupied French Indochina as a secretary. There she had an affair with the bitter, cynical Kengo, an employee of the Japanese forest service who is married to the sickly Kuniko. Trying to make it on her own in postwar Japan, Yukiko finds that her secretarial skills are in little demand because she doesn't know English, a necessity under the American occupation. Desperate, she picks up an American soldier and becomes his mistress. Meanwhile, she also seeks out Kengo, and finds him trying to make a go of it in the lumber business, still married to Kuniko but unwilling to divorce her and marry Yukiko. So over the course of the film, these two deeply wounded people meet and part repeatedly, not only lacerating themselves but also hurting others with words and deeds. At the end, they have seemingly found a way to live together, partly by retreating from the world onto a remote Japanese island, but even that rapprochement is ill-fated. Naruse's film is an absorbing downer, gaining much of its energy from our suspense about what the protagonists will do to each other next, as well as a showcase for Hideko Takamine's marvelous performance. There are those who think it a masterpiece. 

Sisters of the Gion (Kenji Mizoguchi, 1936)

Isuzu Yamada and Fumio Okura in Sisters of the Gion

Omocha: Isuzu Yamada
Umekichi: Yoko Umemura
Shimbei Furusawa: Benkei Shiganoya
Sangoro Kudo: Eitaro Shindo
Kimura: Taizo Fukami
Jurakudo: Fumio Okura
Omasa Kudo: Sakurako Iwama

Director: Kenji Mizoguchi
Screenplay: Kenji Mizoguchi, Yoshikata Yoda
Based on a novel by Aleksandr Kuprin
Cinematography: Minoru Miki
Film editing: Tatsuko Sakane

"Why do there even have to be such things as geisha?" laments Omocha at the end of Kenji Mizoguchi's Sisters of the Gion. The line could well be a motto for Mizoguchi's career as a filmmaker, as he returned again and again to the theme outlined in the film, not just for geisha but also for prostitutes, mistresses, and wives: Why do women have to spend so much of their lives employing their talents, intelligence, and energy at pleasing men? In this larger sense it's a theme that preoccupied not only Mizoguchi but also Yasujiro Ozu, Mikio Naruse, and other Japanese filmmakers, especially after the war, when political and social change altered the roles of both sexes. Sisters of the Gion is decidedly pre-war, but it's a film that can hold its own with those of the postwar renaissance of Japanese film. It's both of its time and prophetic of what is to come, embodying the dynamic of tradition and change in its two sisters, Omocha and Umekichi, the former outwardly faithful to but inwardly rebellious against her profession, the latter resigned to its demands. In the end, both suffer defeat, but the film implicitly endorses Omocha's defiant strength.

A Kid for Two Farthings (Carol Reed, 1955)

Jonathan Ashmore in A Kid for Two Farthings

Joanna: Celia Johnson
Sonia: Diana Dors
Avrom Kandinsky: David Kossoff
Sam Heppner: Joe Robinson
Joe: Jonathan Ashmore
"Lady" Ruby: Brenda de Banzie
Python Macklin: Primo Carnera
Blackie Isaacs: Lou Jacobi
Mrs. Abramowitz: Irene Handl
Madam Rita: Sydney Tafler

Director: Carol Reed
Screenplay: Wolf Mankowitz
Based on a novel by Wolf Mankowitz
Cinematography: Edward Scaife
Art direction: Wilfred Shingleton
Film editing: Bert Bates
Music: Benjamin Frankel

Carol Reed's first color film is a very talky, somewhat claustrophobic one, best remembered today as a portrait of the London Jewish community that inhabited Petticoat Lane (called "Fashion Street" in the film) in the East End. The story centers on young Joe, a lover of animals (often to the animals' misfortune, as he can't seem to keep some of them alive) who lives with his mother, Joanna, over Mr. Kandinsky's tailoring shop. Kandinsky indulges Joe with stories about animals, telling him that if he ever found a unicorn it would bring everyone good luck. So naturally Joe finds one, a feeble little goat with one deformed horn, that a merchant is happy to get rid of. Joe thinks it will bring luck to the pretty Sonia and her body-builder boyfriend Sam Heppner, who want to get married but don't have the money; to Mr. Kandinsky, who would like to have a better trousers press; and to himself and his mother, who are waiting for his father to return from South Africa, where he has gone to seek his fortune. Things eventually work out for Sonia and Sam and Mr. Kandinsky, but at the film's end Joe and his mother are still waiting for the return of his father. There's a fair amount of whimsy at work, but it's subsumed in much local color and the hard-scrabble realism of the neighborhood. Diana Dors shows considerable depth as an actress, rising above the exploitation that tried to turn her into the British Marilyn Monroe. But the great Celia Johnson is wasted in the thankless role of Joe's mother, with little to do but look worried. The wrestler Primo Carnera appears as Python Macklin, whom Sam must conquer in the ring to make the money he and Sonia want, even though he's reluctant to develop the unphotographic muscles needed by a wrestler.