In short: Carmen Comes Home (1951)

Original title: Karumen kokyô ni kaeru

When her theatre closes for renovation, artistic dancer – or as most people would call her, stripper – Carmen (Hideko Takamine) and a dancer friend of hers return to Carmen’s old home in the country for a visit. Being a bit of a flake, as well as a someone who is clearly herself so totally, it becomes as admirable as it can be ridiculous, our heroine causes all kinds of chaos. She also opens up old family wounds in her deeply conservative father – Carmen herself, bless her, is clearly over that sort of thing – and does cause some hormonal troubles in parts of the local population.

When it came out, this comedy by Keisuke Kinoshita was an immense hit. In part, this is certainly because it was the first Japanese colour feature film. It never looks and feels like the first, though, for Kinoshita uses colour as if he’d been doing it all his life, studied what it’s good for in filmmaking, and is now calmly applying what he learned with the calm assuredness of a man who has worked in colour for ages. So visually, this is a pretty astonishing movie that makes wonderful use of the contrasts between natural country colours – this was mostly shot on location – and the joyous, colourful, artificiality of Carmen’s wardrobe and makeup.

The humour hasn’t aged quite as well, of course, so there are some stretches in the film that were probably very funny indeed when this came out but now simply feel old-fashioned and aged; at other times, things still work quite well, particularly whenever the film has its fun with the contrasts between Carmen’s overblown, paper-thin personality and her less flashy surroundings.

Pleasantly, particularly with this kind of material, the film doesn’t have a judgmental bone in his body: it sees and makes fun of the folly of Carmen as well as the conservatism and boringness of her former peers, but it does so in a way that lacks mean-spiritedness. Kinoshita is very willing to point things out and laugh at them, but he’s not here to humiliate anyone. In fact, whenever the film turns more melodramatic, it shows respect for the emotions of both sides of any argument, with less interest in one side being right but in people finding a way to live with one another despite their differences. Which is so much the opposite of 2023, I’m nearly becoming nostalgic for a world that never actually was that way.

In short: Danger Stalks Near (1957)

Original title: Fuzen no tomoshibi

The not terribly well off Sato family has very publicly won a very pricey camera. They’re not planning on using it to take photos, but are hoping to sell it for quite a bit of money. After all, husband Kaneshige’s (Keiji Sada) wages as a shoe seller and Yuriko’s (Hideko Takamine) housewifing are not bringing much money in when the couple takes care of their son and Yuriko’s mother (Akiko Tamura) who is of course living with the Satos. Not out of love or duty, mind you, but because Yuriko and Kaneshige hope to inherit a neat sum of money from her.

There’s also some business about Yuriko throwing out a lodger (type: modern woman) and hoping to acquire a new one; Yuriko’s sisters coming for money and to give unwanted advice; and a whole horde of other people – boyfriends, prospective boyfriends, delivery people and craftsmen, running into and out of the house as if it were a train station.

All of which rather disturbs the plans of a trio of young hoodlums (one of them a very unwilling one) watching the house to find some time when it is not too full of people to rob it.

This comedy is not usually seen as one of the “big” films of its director Keisuke Kinoshita, but going in not expecting much, I found myself pleasantly surprised. The film is very easily – and obviously – readable as a critique of a way of life where every human interaction turns into a transaction as well as a bit of a send-up of the idea of perfect, harmonic and somewhat traditional family life. As such, it manages to avoid preachiness or the sort of whiny sentimentality that could come with this territory all too easily.

Instead, Danger Stalks Near (certainly this week’s nominee for film with the least fitting title) is a rather joyful affair. There’s a palpable love for heaving one farcical development on top of the other, Kinoshita timing each ever more improbable development with the directorial version of a winning grin, as well as a kind of loving snarkiness that doesn’t feel very 1957 at all.

There’s a flow to the film that reminds me of the best screwball comedies, the film dancing from scene to scene, embracing absurdities and taking the mores of its time not seriously in a very serious way. The actors seem to have quite a bit of fun as well. Particularly Takamine (one of the favoured actresses of many a director of this phase of Japanese studio filmmaking) projects so much enjoyment in what she’s doing, it is sometimes easy to forget how unpleasantly materialistic she and everyone around her actually are. This doesn’t damage the film’s point, but rather puts a human face on it, and leaves this a funny instead of a judgemental movie.

Devil’s Temple (1969)

Original title: Oni no sumu yakata

Japan in the 12th Century (I believe). Thanks to twists of fate caused what I think are the violent upheavals between Heike and Genji, a former noble (Shintaro Katsu) has moved into a burned out temple in the mountains close to Kyoto. Initially, he had only dwelled there with his wife Kaede (Hideko Takamine), but some time ago, the former prostitute Aizen (Michiyo Aratama) wormed her way in. When most of the film takes place – there’s a somewhat confusing time jump in the first act we don’t need to reproduce here - she’s psychologically and sexually dominating the man who now goes by the name of Mumyo Taro, wallowing in every depravity and act of violence he commits. And since he is now a rather horrifying bandit, there’s quite a bit of that to go around.

Kaede still believes there’s something about her husband worth saving, and does a lot of quiet and not so quiet suffering in hopes of enabling his better self. The situation will come to a head when a priest (Kai Sato), carrying a golden buddha statuette, arrives and begins an attempt to save the souls of these three people caught in their own private hell on Earth.

Going by the description I had of Devil’s Temple, I assumed this would be one of Kenji Misumi’s always wonderful chanbara films with an added element of the supernatural. Even though there is a bit of sword play, this isn’t really a movie about swords or samurai morals, but rather an intense religious and psychological drama. Not being a Buddhist and from Germany too boot, I’m not exactly the ideal candidate for this sort of film, so it does say something about its strength that I found myself riveted by most everything that happened on screen.

Misumi’s filmic language is as intense and moody as it ever was here. A mix of complicated long shots and more intimate set-ups – there’s some incredible editing and use of close-ups, particularly in the climactic seduction of the priest by Aizen – creates a sense of tension as well as, curiously enough, evokes a feeling of archetypal clarity and precision. With this, its focussed presentation and its briefness (only 76 minutes runtime!), Devil’s Temple often feels like a folktale or religious parable brought to emotional life.

The acting is of a heightened and theatrical kind that here only strengthens the emotional and psychological intensity. Katsu is a massive, glowering physical presence like you’d rather more often see from Shintaro Katsu’s brother, the great samurai actor Tomisaburo Wakayama, while Takamine avoids all whininess in a character that would in lesser hands be nothing but whining, and Aratama projects a larger than life aspect of lust – for sex, for destruction, for domination – that feels frightening and inhuman as well as unpleasantly attractive.

Even though the film’s emphasis is on a Buddhist interpretation of what is going on with the characters, it also knows a thing about domination and the kind of sexual relation that feels perverse even to a viewer who doesn’t really believe in the perversity of sex at all. Misumi portrays the power relations between Aizen and Taro with immense brevity and precision, evoking depths, and leaving the audience to look into them.

Of course, seen in 2023, you could interpret the whole film as an expression of male fear of female power and female sexuality where only women like Kaede, who suffer and persevere through their suffering without ever actively asserting themselves, are seen as living like a proper woman should, and where Taro’s responsibility for his own deeds is all too easily forgiven. It wouldn’t be a wrong way of reading the film, exactly, but I do believe it would really be beside the points Devil’s Temple is making about the human heart, Buddhist concepts of Evil, and the devils in our minds.