Magokoro

Teruko Kato and Etchan are schoolfriends. However, when reports cards come out, Etchan's mother, Sachiko Murase, is upset. She complains to her husband, Minoru Takada. He says she's a healthy, well-adjusted girl, so she goes to the teacher, who says nice things, but indicates that she needs to study harder. When she finds out that Miss Kato is now at the top of her class, she goes on about how her daughter is turning into a juvenile delinquent and Takada should have married Miss Kato's mother, Takako Irie. Etchan overhears this, tells her friend, and they think this is weird.

This mild comedy is a potboiler from a novel by Yôjirô Ishizaka. Everyone is very sweet and kind and moral, with the exception of Miss Murase. There's a bit of obligatory flag-waving, with Takada waiting for his draft notice to come in, which pleases everybody. It's a typically highly competent movie by Mikio Naruse. Like any skilled director, he could turn out a good movie, and his highly competent cast and crew deliver a pleasant 67 minutes.

1939's Sincerity clocks in at only 67 minutes yet it displays all the hallmarks of great Naruse; namely the everlasting conflict between the hypocrisy of adults and the easily corrupted innocence of youth & class status and its effect on the relationships choked by its confines. Two young girls, one from a rich family & the other from a poorer family where there is only a mother and a grandmother, go to school together where one is at the top of her class (the poor one) and the other, the rich girl, is in the 10th spot in class.

As the story unfolds its revealed that Tomiko's father at one time was quite fond of Nobuko's mother who was at the time married to a man who Nobuko's grandmother informs the young girl was a no good drunkard; we're left to make up our minds as to the integrity of this missing man as Nobuko's swears he was a wonderful man and, as previously stated, her mother holds the opposing viewpoint. An event occurs that brings the two would-be lovers together, glances are exchanged and thanks are given in the form of a French doll (an item which causes a briefly lived stir in Tomiko's house.) But in the end all go back to their lives, except for the father who has been shipped off to fight in the war. There is no real point in struggling against an existence that has so firmly planted itself into the daily lives of all those involved.