Après notre séparation

Just saw this lovely film in a flawless brand-new 35mm print, Nov. 16, 2005. It is a SILENT film (so soundtrack is mono only if there was originally a synchronized score on the release prints). Viewed was a full-aperture print, with no soundtrack overlay. I clocked it at 73 minutes, although silent film running times can vary depending on the projected speed, but a 1933 film would theoretically have been shot at 24-fps. This is a "comment" not a review. I have nothing more to say to be able to "pad" this out to "ten lines." Who thought up that rule? This is a "comment" not a review. I have nothing more to say to be able to "pad" this out to "ten lines." Who thought up that rule?

Aging geisha Kikue (Mitsuko Yoshikawa) worries about her teenage son Yoshio (Akio Isono) who lately has been skipping school and hanging out with a gang of petty crooks. Kikue's young co-worker Terugiku (Sumiko Mizukubo) has romantic feelings for Yoshio, but she has to continue working as a geisha in order to support her family, and so that her younger sister won't be forced into the geisha life. Terugiku attempts to set Yoshio back on the straight and narrow, with tragic consequences.

Naruse's penchant for exploring the hardships of working women comes to full focus here, with both Kikue and Terugiku prime examples of women suffering so that others may live better. Mizukubo gives a very good performance, but the brief 1-hour running time doesn't leave enough room to fully explore the older Kikue character. Still, this is a nice, emotional look at pre-WW2 Japanese society.

This is a quiet little melodrama from Mikio Naruse, but it scores points by taking the perspective of women, and by featuring Sumiko Mizukubo, who's like a ray of sunshine every time she's on the screen. She plays a geisha who seems to be carefree, but whose sad family life is eventually revealed. Meanwhile, her older friend (Mitsuko Yoshikawa) is struggling with getting older and losing the affection of her long time patron, as well as having a rebellious son who's skipping school to run around with the wrong crowd.

Both women are dealing with lazy men behaving badly in their family, and it's the main reason they continue to be geisha. The older woman wants to provide the money for her son's schooling and then stop, while the younger women works because her father claims over copious amounts of sake that "times are tough," and is presumably unemployed. The moment she stands up to him to try to protect her sister from being forced down the same path is probably the film's strongest. There is a sense of strength and perseverance here ("I won't let hardship defeat me") that is also stirring.

I liked the film for all of those reasons, but various issues prevented me from loving it. For one thing, the pacing was a little slow, even over just 60 minutes. Additionally, Naruse's various camera work, including those zoom shots into close-ups, seemed more cartoonish than effective here, and I say that despite having liked how he incorporated them in No Blood Relation (1932). Lastly, the plot connects the older geisha's son with the younger geisha romantically which leads to further melodrama, none of which was very satisfying, except perhaps the ending. All in all, not bad though.

I really enjoyed this straightforward story of two hardworking working girls. Naruse's great camera-work and expressive actors conveys the hard life, physically and emotionally, of working girls and the positive and negative sides of family ties. Never sentimental, carefully chosen scenes brilliantly illustrate an effective if familiar story of decline and fall, or rather fall and decline.

Naruse can be a little claustrophobic and hermetic, even static, but switches of location keep the story fresh and each scene moves the story along.

Relationships are entirely credible and dialogue (intertitles for this silent movie) is dramatic and appropriate.

On a personal note, look out for the ever so cute No. 2 actress Sumiko Mizukubo, the 'Japanese Sylvia Sydney' apparently, on account of 'her small size and the shape of her lips'.

Here we have a world being displaced, although probably you had to be young or a parent at the time to appreciate the full effect; feudal modern structures that despair, young people who have to pursue life away from their heart. Western mores are everywhere, yo-yos, music records, milk chocolate, but still very slowly displacing the old customs: it just means that the geisha mother on top of her traditionally lecherous clientele will now also have to entertain foreigners with their fancy movie projector.

Resolute girl preaches in the end that we'll have to be strong to make it through. Alright.

Well, this is pretty much the universal experience of life, life sucks and rarely goes your way, it's the stuff of drama, but we have come up with much more sophisticated ways to remind us. Even then, consider how the world was being discovered by the likes of Epstein.

This reminds me of that old anecdote - attributed to Joshu in The Gateless Gate - about a dunce with a lantern in hand looking for a fire in the middle of the night to cook rice with. Had he known what fire was, he would have cooked his rice much sooner.

So we have a lot of unease here from emotional fires but not much clue what fuels them or what they are. The eye is clear, or is thought to be, but the sight is dull. Not a clear eye at all when you think about it.