Elegie in Naniwa

...with a plot out of Precode Hollywood and frequent jazz music to match. A pretty young switchboard operator reluctantly decides to become the mistress of her boss so she can help her financially-strapped father who had embezzled company funds for an investment that went bad, and her college-student brother who needs his tuition paid. Of course she is ostracized from the family for her immorality without giving her the chance to explain how they got their money. Various other relationships and subplots also come into play. This one has nicely-plotted character dynamics, good performances, and beautiful cinematography.

It was this film alone that drove me into an intense obsession with cinema. Mizoguchi is the great Japanese master, and Osaka Elegy reveals his genius. From his long take compositions that are taxed with complexity and tension, to his ambigious depictions of character, I felt like I had grown after I had seen this film. Notice the national allegory at the film's conclusion, a confused and lonely Japan. And his inconclusive final shot taken many years before the well known 400 Blows. The devastating melodrama is not undercut by any cinematic manipulation. I highly recommend this to any lover of the cinematic medium. Also, I am a sucker for self-reflexive Kabuki theater sequences...

Ayako (Isuzu Yamada) becomes the mistress of her boss, Mr. Asai, so she can pay her father's debt, and prevent him from going to prison for embezzlement. She also sends money to her brother Hiroshi to pay his university tuition, but her father intercepts it.

Mizoguchi considered the film his first serious effort as a director, and while I am not familiar with his earlier work, I have to say this is the kind of film that leaves a mark. Either Mizoguchi or his cinematographer had an excellent awareness of the camera -- the door closing to block the camera early on in the film -- years ahead of its time.

The subject matter in general is impressive. I am not sure what the typical morality was in pre-war Japan, but to feature adultery and whatnot in the 1930s seems quite bold.

This is the first collaboration between Mizoguchi and writer Yoshikata Yoda, with the actress Isuzu Yamada in the principal role, as a young telephonist pushed to prostitution to save her ruined family, and then repudiated by them. Mizoguchi begins his impressive mastership with the framing and the perspective and, though still far from his masterpieces, is an interesting milestone for the Mizoguchi admirers.

There are so many interesting things going on in this film, and several of them surprised me. I loved Ayake (played by Isuzu Yamada) and the voices of the women in general. I couldn't help but contrast Ayake's headstrong will and fierceness to Yasujiro Ozu's Noriko in Tokyo Story (played by Setsuko Hara). Noriko was the perfect picture of traditional grace and dedication in a Japanese woman and she fit in perfectly with Ozu's straight lines and symmetrical framing. Ayake, on the other hand, is shadowed by an almost conspiratorial camera which cleverly spies on the fore and background simultaneously, and creeps behind walls and curtains to follow the characters and listen in on their conversations, amplifying the sense of daring and defiance of Ayake's character. The inventiveness of so many varying shots stole my attention more than anything else, though I also appreciated the quick and steady pacing of the story as it unfolded, predominantly led by Ayake.

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