L'Espion Akanichi Kakita

Chiezô Kataoka is a displaced samurai.... not quite a ronin, but between jobs. He comes from the countryside and gets involved in efforts of the Dates to maintain their clan status, despite a series of bad chiefs and a current lord who is a child.

Kataoka is not young, he is not old. He's not handsome, he's not ugly. He is, in short, an undistinguished member of his class, who lacks the skill with the katana that the heroic samurai genre demands. He is a comic figure in this comedy that plays out during great events, admired because he cut open his guts to operate on himself, mocked because he wrote a love letter to a merchant's daughter; what the noblemen who laugh at him don't know is she sent a very sweet response. As more notable figures are sent poisoned sweets so they may kill themselves, and fighting erupts, he finds himself caught up in matters over which he has no control.

I can't make up my mind whether writer-director Mansaku Itami's handling of the film is an issue of budget constraints and the uncertainty of whether to tell the story using a mixture of stage and silent film techniques, a deliberate choice, or one forced on him by his budget and abilities. He quit directing within a couple of years, but continued to write for the movies until shortly before his death in 1946 at age 46, and several of his films have been remade.