Haru no yume

The precision and formality of classic Japanese cinema may not lend itself well to screwball comedy, but here's an offbeat farce that enjoys the best of both worlds. The style is more polite than its American role models, but the mild-mannered theatrics and calculated social satire are certainly enjoyable, and even quite touching at times. The story follows a rich, comfortable household thrown into escalating turmoil after a shabby vendor of sweet potatoes suffers a stroke in their drawing room. His presence alone isn't much of a catalyst (although it does spark plenty of interest and attention from the victim's greedy and envious tenement neighbors), but serves instead to counterpoint the absurd behavior of everyone around him. A large cast of sympathetic and eccentric characters bustles constantly in and out of each (oddly lit) scene, but despite all the frenzied activity and sharp dialogue the film presents a rather quaint moral: too much money spoils true love.

When this movie begins with a poor sweet-potato seller collapsing in the house of a rich industrialist, and his self-obsessed family acting their worst around him, you can't help but think this is going to be a Japanese version of BOUDU SAVED FROM DROWNING. Indeed, for a long time it proceeds that way, and it's clear that Keisuke Kinoshita had begun his movie with Renoir's as a ground plan. However, his center-of-the-storm is Chishu Ryu, not that marvelous monster Michel Simon, so in the end the story flows differently. Story is, after all, about how characters behave and change in situations, and this movie's Christ-figure is nothing at all like Renoir's.

Visually, this movie is striking for the set design and colors. It begins with subdued colors, taupes and beiges and grey-painted walls, all shot head-on so that everything is neat and symmetric and dead. As the movie proceeds and actual emotions begin to make themselves felt, pinks begin to intrude and shapes comes to disturb that dead symmetry. The story is rarely surprising, but it is well performed and always wonderfully watchable.

In many ways, "Haru No Yume" is like several other very famous films...in particular the French movie "Boudu Saved From Drowning" (later remade as "Down and Out in Beverly Hills") and "My Man Godfrey". See the pictures and you'll see what I mean. All the films are about a stranger entering a rich family's home and you begin to see that the household, though wealthy, is incredibly screwed up and in need of change. Both Bodu and Godfrey provide this change...and in the case of this Japanese film, the man staying with them is far more passive....but the same sorts of family dysfunction abounds.

When the story begins, the old man who sells sweet potatoes is told to go to a rich family's home, as some of the servants want his product. However, soon after arriving, the old man collapses and a doctor is called...a doctor who recommends they keep the man there for a few days until he's recovered. In addition to the screwy rich family, the family and friends of the old men are a mess as well...and want to turn this tragedy to their benefit.

While the story isn't as obviously funny or goofy as the other two movies I mentioned, the Japanese family is a mess and have plenty of crazy soap opera-like stuff going on...though NOT because of the newcomer, as unlike Boudu and Godfrey, this old man is prone almost the entire story and his interactions with the family are much more limited. Instead, goofy family stuff just happens to coincide with his illness. All in all, enjoyable but nothing unique story-wise.

By the way, you might not know it today, but in the 1950s and early 60s, there was a push towards communism and socialism in Japan...hence all the red flags as the workers went out on strike.