KANKO NO MACHI / JUBILATION STREET (1944)

While Japanese director Keisuke Kinoshita came to regret his early work made during WWII, this summer of 1944 film must be about as far as you could get at the time from parroting war effort slogans & patriotic jingoism.  A gentle look at a small neighborhood, just a few blocks on Jubilation Street, due for demolition/redevelopment, and the remaining tenants putting their affairs in order before moving out.  A nervous husband with a pregnant wife.  A pair of romantic neighbors unable to convince either parents that they should marry.  He’s a rare catch since his military service as a test pilot keeps him in the city.  If only his father hadn’t split ten years ago her parents might give them the okay to wed.  A small business trying to finish all their back orders before closing up shop, bidding goodbye to an old workhorse of a tool & die machine as if it were a favorite uncle.  Small kindnesses, rueful reproaches, and rote promises to stay in touch, the formalities of civility.  Tragedy will strike, a missing relative will return too late, a new life will start, everything will go on/nothing will be the same.  Subtly and suitably handled by Kinoshita in a manner that recalls the mysterious manner Hollywood’s Leo McCarey held his sentimental/episodic films together.  Both getting us instantly involved in the hopes & troubles of their dramatis personae.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Kinoshita likes to end bitter arguments or misunderstandings by slamming shut one of those traditional Japanese sliding doors.  Less violent, noisy or satisfying than a hinged swinging door getting slammed.  A lesson in Japanese etiquette & custom built on domestic architecture.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: For more WWII Kinoshita Write-Ups: https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/search?q=kinoshita

RIKUGUN / ARMY (1944)

Keisuke Kinoshita’s fourth film was another wartime special, designed for the changing fortunes of 1944 and apparently commissioned by Army authorities. Something of a pep talk and a recruitment vehicle, if with a rather downbeat edge, it’s a multi-generational portmanteau pageant that begins in the battle-scarred midst of an 1866 war for supremacy between warring Japanese factions. Notably, the family arc we follow, with stops every decade or so for a fresh war, is on the losing side. After about four of these vignettes, the second half settles down to concentrate on a more modern story as a father, disappointed in own his war record, sees small hope for military advancement coming from his eldest son, a weakling and a bit of a sissy. Instead, the father leads a youth military-prep group in-between escalating comic fights with the factory owner who funds the organization. He hardly notices how his son has grown up, winning a fine army commission after all. Kinoshita gives us much of the war drama via commentary from non-participants, avoiding the action we hear discussed. An odd directorial choice, perhaps dictated by budgetary concerns. But it all leads up to a final sequence of real power, as the son heads to his deployment in China amidst thousands of marching troops in a festive citywide celebration to send them off. The film’s focus shifts to the mother, at first avoiding the spectacle, but then drawn to it in an increasingly desperate try to see her son in the big parade before he leaves. Kinoshita builds this sequence into an exceptionally strong set piece, as the mother struggles thru crowds for what could be a final look.*   It’s like an OTT silent film set piece from King Vidor, like the one in THE BIG PARADE/’25 where the French girl can’t bring herself to let go of her soldier boy as he’s being driven out of town. Here, it’s so effective, you have to think twice to remember the horrors perpetrated by the Japanese during the Chinese Occupation; leaving a sour taste to this historically interesting film.

DOUBLE-BILL: The complete Kinoshita WWII films are on Criterion/Eclipse - Series 41.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *John Ford gets a similar effect (in 20 seconds & a handful of shots) as Claudette Colbert moves to higher & higher ground for a last look at husband Henry Fonda as he marches off to face the British in DRUMS ALONG THE MOHAWK/’39.

IKITE IRU MAGOROKU / THE LIVING MAGOROKU (1943)

Hiding in plain sight behind wartime propaganda, Keisuke Kinoshita, in his second film, finds something like Japanese Chekhov in a story about converting sacred soil into farmland to help feed the troops.  Opening on an elaborately produced historical prologue about a great battle from the 1500s, the land now a memorial to the thousands who died there and the acreage controlled by a rudderless family whose chronically ill elder son is unwilling to step up and make decisions.  And what a lot of decisions need to be made!  A servant’s son proposing to the daughter of the family his parents had worked for.  A soldier stationed nearby who tries to buy the family’s most cherished heirloom, a rare samurai sword matching the one he stupidly sold as a young man.  A grandmother’s incessant chiming to Buddha and a mother’s fear for a frail son who believes he’s destined for the same early death as his ancestors.  Kinoshita perfectly crosscuts between all these modest dramas, then toward the end staging in counterpoint as they all climax at once.  With that special use of Japanese architecture, boxy rooms/sliding door panel walls, used like an extra editing device to help keep lines of action clear.  Brilliant depth-of-field staging, too.  And there’s real Chekhovian acting from the cast, balancing between tragedy, stubborn stupidity, sacrifice, lowdown comedy and quotidian duty.  Stanislavski would have kvelled.  (Though not at the overly tidy endings achieved by our suddenly recovered neurasthenic scion!)  Fascinating and entertaining, if dated by jarring wartime attitudes.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *His fine debut, PORT OF FLOWERS/’43, largely finesses wartime tropes.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2017/06/hana-saku-minato-port-of-flowers-1943.html

HANA SAKU MINATO / PORT OF FLOWERS (1943)

Those who know the gently satiric post-war Ealing Studio comedies (e.g. KIND HEARTS AND CORONETS/’49; THE LAVENDER HILL MOB/’51) will recognize tropes & tone in this bit of wartime escapism, yet still find the Japanese orientation a little jarring. A smoothly run debut for director Keisuke Kinoshita, out in ‘43 when the war seemed to be going well, no doubt explaining the relatively modest patriotic elements. It’s a standard farce set-up about a couple of con men who land on an underdeveloped island where they ingratiate themselves before raising a syndicate to restart the old shipyards with shares bought by trusting locals. Naturally, they’re planning a hasty escape with the cash before any work starts, but plans go awry when love enters the picture along with an unknown ‘relative’ and worst of all, when war is declared!  !Bonsai!  (Hey, it’s a Japanese war pic, Pearl Harbor is celebrated.)  Suddenly, their bogus plans take a practical turn as ship building is not only a boon to the community, but also patriotic & profitable.*  The playing leans to the broad side and some transitions are abrupt, but there’s more than just historical interest here. Especially with a cast that features fistfuls of actors soon seen in works from Ozu and Mizoguchi. Kinoshita continued making these wartime quickies, now collected in a Criterion set, and more prestigious fare later. But his films never really broke thru Stateside so that even his BALLAD OF NARAYAMA/’58 is better known in Shohei Imamura’s Cannes’ prize-winning version of 1983.* More reports on these wartime efforts to come.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: *Sure, it’s WWII Japan, but we might well be watching a sequel to THE MUSIC MAN or THE PRODUCERS.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *The heavy-weather subject matter of NARAYAMA (voluntary death in the forest for seniors) was D.O.A. in the Matthew McConaughey/Gus Van Sant SEA OF TREES/’15.

ÔSONE-KE NO ASHITA / MORNING FOR THE OSONE FAMILY (1946)

Where Keisuke Kinoshita’s first four films were made under wartime conditions (political & military policies to greater or lesser extent either sold, excused or put to the side), what a difference Unconditional Surrender made.  Questioning authority, once finessed away, now the main topic.  Specifically, the cost of war on a liberal-minded family of intellectuals and artists favorably inclined toward The West.  Opening at Christmastime 1943 as ‘Silent Night’ is played on the piano and sung by the family before a bit of Chopin played by a conscriptee one last time before he reluctantly begins military service.  One pacifist son has written a mildly critical article that’s enough to get him arrested while the youngest hopes to leave school early to become a war pilot.  A daughter is unofficially engaged to an unwilling draftee while a conservative Aunt & Uncle (a grafting Colonel stationed in Tokyo) move in after their house is bombed.  Simply set within the home of the widowed mother (Haruko Sugimura whom you’ll recognize from TOKYO STORY/’53), we move on to 1944, then two segments in 1945, before and after war’s end.  The four-act Chekhovian structure, another Western cultural reference, unmissable.  The Uncle & Aunt get their comeuppance, the family loses sons but survives.  And while it’s fascinating to see a film focused on this subset household lined up to resist the war, you do wonder how true to life this is or whether it’s just been careful designed to work hand-in-hand with new censorship/propaganda edicts.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: Akira Kurosawa, who would later start a short-lived film company with Kinoshita, was more roundabout bringing similar concerns to his first post-war effort, NO REGRETS FOR OUR YOUTH/’46)    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2011/04/waga-seishun-ni-kuinashi-no-regrets-for.html

DORA-HEITA (2000)

It took three decades for Japan’s Kon Ichikawa to get this on the screen. Co-scripted by Ichikawa with Akira Kurosawa, Keisuke Kinoshita & Masaki Kobayashi, the project died aborning when their indie production company tanked with the commercial failure of their first release, Kurosawa’s DODES’KA-DEN/'70.* Last of the classicists and sole survivor of the group, Ichikawa was a lively 85 when this got made, and he still turns out one gorgeous product. (Especially so in AnimEigo’s DVD transfer.) Koji Yakusho is delightfully blunt & devious as the new town magistrate, sent from Edo (ancient Tokyo) to clean up a notorious vice district. The problem is that the long-entrenched Council of Elders are all receiving a generous ‘cut’ of the illegal profits on drugs, booze & sex traffic. Others have failed at the task, but Yakusho has worked up a disruptive & highly original plan of attack, rudeness instead of readiness, and he has a couple of inside helpers to shake things up. There’s more talk & strategy than action here (the story winds up being a bit too one-sided for its own good), but it’s good talk, good strategy and, when it does show up, good action. All beautifully laid out by Ichikawa who keeps his storyline, characters & action clear as a bell. And note how he uses a strong-willed gal pal from Edo and a deadpan pair of official record-keepers to make most of the Japanese comic business scrutable to Western eyes. The film’s a treat.

CONTEST: *Hmm, this set up sounds a lot like the one that played out in post-WWII Hollywood when three top directors & a studio production chief opened an independent company that went bust after their first release didn’t live up to financial expectations. Name the company, the ‘disappointing’ film they released (a second title retained the banner-head, but was ‘packaged’ as a studio deal) and the three heavy-weight directors involved to win a MAKSQUIBS Write-Up of a NetFlix DVD.