Karami-ai

I just watched this as part of Criterion's box set of Kobayashi's early movies. It was the movie he made right after completing The Human Condition, and while it's not in the same rank as that or some of his other masterpieces, it is still very enjoyable and very much worth seeing. A rich business executive is dying and decides he wants to meet with his three illegitimate children before dying to see if they're worthy of including in his will. This sets up a mad scramble between his relatives and employees to see who can best finagle the situation to their advantage. There's nothing much new here thematically (money corrupts, people are naturally greedy, etc.) but it's fun watching the story play out. Plus, beautiful cinematography and a great jazz score make this a must see.

A hugely satisfying noirish morality-play, THE INHERITANCE follows the succession proceedings of a nasty industrialist's estate when he's diagnosed with terminal cancer. Locking horns over this potential fortune are: scheming subordinates, his trophy-wife, a femme-fatale of a secretary and a battery of illegitimate heirs. In their quest to secure a bigger slice of the pie, we witness them forming suspicious alliances and ruthlessly resorting to impersonation, fraud, blackmail and even murder. It's so callously cynical in its outlook that a couple's implied incest is broached as "remember when" and then immediately dismissed to concentrate on the central deception. What's refreshing and what further augments the plot's universality is that instead of conveniently blaming the capitalist mentality, Kobayashi indicts human greed (sexual and material) - as the primary cause of moral decay. Though less flamboyant than his sadistic gangster turn in BLACK RIVER - Tatsuya Nakadai plays another ethically unsavory character who's tasked with locating one of his client's unacknowledged daughters. In addition to its themes and characters, the film's noir credentials are further bolstered by a wonderfully moody jazz score and narrative voice-over.

The suspense is for finding the answer to "Who's going to grab the inheritance?" Who will succeed? And how? As in a good Agatha Christie novel, we witness a parade of characters that, yes, want the money. And money... changes everything. Intrigue and double-crossing plans, jazz music, femme fatales that start to appear everywhere and a spectacular visual film in high contrast low-key lighting (pure chiaroscuro) within unbalanced frames that take the most of a full 2.40:1 aspect ratio.

Kobayashi is one of the finest directors, perhaps very underrated. A few months later he would shoot "Harakiri". He knew his craft. This is a solid film to enjoy.

Masaki Kobayashi finished his epic, humanist, three-part tale of World War II, and his next film couldn't be further from that. The Inheritance is a hardnosed look at one rich man trying to figure out who to give his fortune to on the event of his death from cancer within the next few months and the ensuing explosion of conspiring and backstabbing that erupts from that news, all with a certain jazzy, noir feel to it. This is the more obviously cynical Kobayashi of Black River rather than the earnest humanist from The Human Condition.

Senzo (So Yamamura) has received word that he has cancer. Well, he hasn't actually received word because, much like as is shown in Ikiru, it was common practice for doctors to lie to their patients about terminal illnesses. Still, he figures it out. He goes from a captain of industry, working endlessly everyday for forty years, to a quiet, contemplative man. His young secretary Yasuko (Keiko Kishi) notices and puts the pieces together herself before he actually tells her. He has a young wife, his former secretary Satoe (Misako Watanabe), and three illegitimate children that he has no contact with. In accordance with Japanese law, he must give at least one-third to his wife, but he wants to determine what to do with the rest. He wants his people to track down his three children, bring them to him without revealing his relationship to them or his motives for seeing them, and letting him decide if he wants to share the other two-thirds of his fortune with them or not.

And so starts the rat race. Satoe is angry because she feels like she deserves the entirety of the fortune as his wife, though she seems to have no real feeling for him, and he doesn't seem to have much towards her either. She conspires with Senzo's assistant Fujii (Minoru Chiaki) to find the seven-year-old girl he's assigned to discover no matter what so that she can become the girl's guardian. Yoshida (Seiji Miyaguchi) is assigned the second-oldest child to find, and he sends his assistant Furukawa (Tatsuya Nakadai) to find her. The eldest child, Senzo sends Yasuko to find, a young man born in Manchuria but living in Tokyo at that time.

Satoe is conspiring with Fujii, but it turns out that the girl died. Fujii decides to find another girl of the same age without parents in an orphanage to pass off as Senzo's heiress. Furukawa meets with Muri, the seventeen-year-old girl, and acts as a gatekeeper so that she will keep him in the loop if and when she inherits. Yasuko is given her task and seems to have no ulterior motive. However, when Senzo becomes too sick to go into the office anymore, especially after a surgery that removes three-quarters of his stomach, he insists that Yoshida take an extra room at his house. After Yasuko refuses to sleep with him one night, he begins a sexual relationship with Yoshida that leads to her getting pregnant. I think you can see where this is going to go.

Everyone is out for the money, and the only question is who is going to stay in it to the end. Revelations are revealed, Senzo dies, and more revelations are revealed. None of these characters are really rootable. They're all out for themselves with no concern for the wishes of the old man who actually earned everything beyond how they can manipulate him, even, in the end, Yasuko.

And that's kind of Kobayashi's point. The insane wealth up for grabs is completely corrupting. Even the young, quiet, and innocent female secretary is open to selling her body for access to the money. She always could leave, go find another secretary job somewhere, but she remains because of the potential life of ease up for grabs that we see at the opening of the film (the story being told in flashback as she has tea with Yoshida).

The lack of emotional connection keeps me at a small distance from the action, but the action itself is still a tense exercise and look at the corrupt side of human nature. Where Kaji refused to accept that he has lost it all and kept his efforts to retain his humanity in The Human Condition, Yasuko simply gives in completely. It's an interesting contrast in that light as well.

Tatsuya Nakadai is dying of stomach cancer. One third of his estate of 300 million yen must go to his wife, but he wants the rest to go to his three illegitimate children. As his lawyers and associates gather to figure out how to steal the money, only his quiet, loyal secretary, Keiko Kishi, seems to be on his side. Seems.

Masaki Kobayashi movie of greed and lies might be a very dry, black comedy, or it might be a story of greed and corruption impure and simple. The sum of money would have been worth $1.5 million in 1962, the equivalent of $13 today. That's a lot of incentive for greed. All of the characters except Miss Kishi are open and honest about their greed when not in Nakadai's presence. Miss Kishi gives a veautiful, guarded performance.