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The flatness of a map dissolves to a half-lit still-life, explosions in the background and foreground give its depth of field. A town during the Satsuma Rebellion, amid the rubble are two geishas (Isuzu Yamada and Komako Hara) comparing existential philosophies. "One can die while one wishes to live." "One can live while one wishes to die. It's destiny." They share the stagecoach with the fleeing bourgeoisie, bathed in scorn while muskets sound off in the darkness, "not a picnic." Manet at the crossroads, with the heroines enjoying a smoke while the men labor to repair the overturned vehicle and their wives complain about having to eat yams. The imperial general (Daijiro Natsukawa) has his eye on the maiden (Kinue Utagawa), the aristocratic captives try to convince her to offer herself while the servant looks for nobler specimens in a pigsty. "My word, these animals are more human and affectionate than you are." Kenji Mizoguchi's "Boule de Suif," as distinct from Sternberg's or Ford's, with the arrival of sound adding to the pictorial rhythm of The Downfall of Osen. (A shootout is staged with the screen streaked by tree trunks and with horses riding in the distance, government forces disband to an insistent bugle.) "He wants a woman? I am a woman." The commander is not without a certain brooding dash, from a pair of military boots striding over lily petals he's reduced to a uniform tattered before the pistol of the spitfire he once rejected. The closing tableau echoes with his (and the director's) stupefied admiration for the fervid courtesan, "brave like a samurai." With Eiji Nakano, Yoko Umemura, Keiji Oizumi, Shinzo Shibata, Toichiro Negishi, and Shizuko Takizawa. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |