Les coquelicots

Chiyoko Ôkura is a beautiful young woman, the daughter of Yûkichi Iwata. He fostered Ichirô Tsukida, who left Osaka five years ago to go to college, When he completed his education, they all believed, he would return to marry Miss Ôkura. Now, however, he has fallen in love with the wild and rich Kuniko Miyake, who was engaged to Tsukida's friend, Daijirô Natsukawa. She offers her inherited wealth and her father's gold watch, once promised to Natsukawa, to Tsukida. With those resources, he sees a fabulous future open before him. All he has to do is break the hearts of those who love him.

This may not seem like a movie for Kenji Mizoguchi to have directed. Ozu, yes, or Naruse -- but Naruse was still directing silent movies, and this is a sound film. This, however, was the strength of a studio system: directors, actors, technicians, all were called upon to work outside their core competencies, sustained by the many others on a production, so that any particular movie, even if it were not a classic, would be well made; and by making a different sort of movie, would learn new skills, learn new ways of making movies, adding richness and variety when they were closer to their usual metier. Each new movie was made by a director who could execute his craft with a greater set of skills.

This is a very good movie. I am unsure of what Mizoguchi learned from it. Perhaps he transformed the weeping of Miss Okura and Iwata at their betrayal into the calm deaths of the 47 ronin, or the bedraggled misery of Kinuyo Tanaka's Oharu. Perhaps not. I'm glad he made this very good movie, even though it is not a masterpiece, if only because of what he learned what to do, what not to do, and what he could do from it.