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Yasujiro Ozu's mature style can be observed already fully-formed in the opening, with its still-life glimpses of lanterns and clocks at a train station. Show business in the provinces, the itinerant acting troupe and the leaky proscenium. The real drama unfolds away from the footlights, the boss (Takeshi Sakamoto) compares rheumatic pangs with his old mistress (Choko Iida), their son (Koji Mitsui) believes him to be just a wandering uncle. Transitory gigs versus steady jobs, "depends on the audience." The jealous leading lady (Emiko Yagumo) sends her understudy (Yoshiko Tsubouchi) to seduce the lad, the makeshift family of theater disbands and the real one cannot be acknowledged. The melancholy yoke is worn lightly, a little joke during the fishing trip sums it up—the father's wallet falls into the river, the son shrugs, couldn't have been much in it because it was floating. Samurai and geisha populate the seedy show, a special note is taken of the costumes ("No matter how great the actor, it's hard to play the horse"). Fitzmaurice's The Barker, but also Capra's The Matinee Idol and Ford's Upstream. On the sidelines, the comedy of the kid (Tomio Aoki) who plays an itchy dog onstage and guards his little kitty-shaped coin bank even in his sleep. Ozu has great feeling for a cloudy sky skewered by electrical wires, for the flapping banner and the stalled bicycle, for the sadness that cuts through a toast and a song. It ends where it started, a waiting room between life's venues. "You can thank me with a curtain call." The director supplies his own remake twenty-five years later, though not before Fellini and Lattuada's Variety Lights. With Reiko Tani, Seiji Nishimura, Kiyoshi Aono, and Eijiro Tono. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |