the weak and the strong
by Douglas Messerli
Tadao Ikeda (screenplay, based on a story by Mikio Naruse) Mikio
Naruse (director) 夜ごとの夢 Yogoto
no yume (Every-Night
Dreams) / 1933
Mikio Naruse and Kenji Mizoguchi created, as I have stated
previously, a sub-genre dealing with women suffering financial destitution who
have forced to works as prostitutes. Omitsu (Sumiko Kurishima) in Naruse’s
famed silent from from 1933 is just such a woman, whose husband having
abandoned her, has been forced to work at a Ginza bar catering to sailors in
husband, having abandoned her, has been forced to work at a
Ginza bar catering to sailors in order to support her son, Fumio (the charming
Teruko Kojima).
As the movie
opens, she is returning from a trip of what was evidently several weeks.
Although it is never explained where she has been, we clearly perceive that she
has probably gone away with a client on a sexual tryst. In her absence Fumio
has been cared for by the kind unnamed elderly couple (Jun Arai and Mitsuko
Yoshikawa) who also rent her a room, and think of the child almost as a
grandson.
Fumio is delighted
by his mother’s return, and asks if she has brought him a present. She
apologizes, but explains she will soon bring him another “toy” even though it
is clear she has so little money that everything she makes goes for food and
rent; she is forced to attempt to borrow on her “salary” from the mean-spirited
proprietress of the bar where she works. A seedy denizen of that bar, a Captain
(Takeshi Sakamoto) intercedes, providing her with money, but obviously
expecting favors in return.
Like the hostess
featured in Naruse’s wonderful film of three decades later, When a Woman
Descends the Stairs, it is obvious that Omitsu is a skilled worker, who is
popular with the men, but who would also prefer, were few.
Suddenly into
this stew of repressed desires and dreams comes Omitsu’s former husband,
Mizuhara, a handsome but frail individual who regrets his previous choices, and
is desperate to simply see his son.
At firs Omitsu,
still hurt by his abandonment, absolutely rejects him. She argues that his
behavior alone has helped her to be hard and strong; pleading and tears no
longer affect her. Indeed, if there is any one “theme” of this film it is her
inner strength and her determination that her young son grows up to be an
equally “strong” man.
Yet when, accidentally, Fumio enters the room during their conversation, and she sees the
immediate bond between the two, Omitsu displays her own weakness; she still
loves the man who has failed her, who can find no new employment. As Mizuhara,
himself, puts it, he has “no luck with work.” Most of the available jobs demand
hard labor, and his thin, almost sickly frame, immediately disqualifies him
from those jobs.
His wife allows
him back into her life if for no other reason that he can play the doting
father, and, with few illusions, even if he might wish to be able to free her
from her nightly role as a kind of geisha—the only traditionally dressed woman
in the jazz-and-dance loving bar. Naruse is particularly wonderful in conveying
to us, through the language of the silent screen, just how bifurcated Omitsu’s
life is between her precious day hours with her son and her free-wheeling night
life.
Hit by a car, Fumio
survives nonetheless, but he needed hospital care spirals his already poverty-stricken
family into a situation from which they can never escape. Since Mizuhara has
failed at finding a job, even though he vaguely attempts to find one, it is
clear the Omitsu will have to give into the demands of the much-hated Captain.
Even worse,
determining to take his share of the responsibility, Mizuhara commits a
robbery, attempting to reward Omitsu with the money not only to live up to his
patriarchal duties, but to protect the life of his beloved son.
If as an immoral
woman, Omitsu is string, as a highly moral mother she is even stronger, and
will not accept his stolen gains, insisting that he turn himself into police,
and serve out whatever sentence they my invoke. Recognizing the he has failed
yet again. Mizuhara determines to leave—if for no other reason than to allow
Omitsu to support her son in a way that does not involve her in his criminal
behavior.
He leaves her,
this time forever, by drowning himself in the nearby ocean, and, even more
horribly, with his punishing act of writing a desperate suicide note.
His wife
returns of her suffering son to answer his questions about where his father has
gone by angrily declaring him a coward, a weakling, and again instructing her
son to grow up to be strong. She will certainly have to be, since she clearly
will never find salvation from the life she hates.
Along with Ozu’s
silent works, this Naruse film is perhaps one of the most-loved silent movies
of Japanese cinematic history. And one can easily perceive why. Naruse reveals
an unforgiving world, not only for women, but for men who cannot live up to how
the society might determine to define them. No loving society can ever survive
on a dichotomy of the weak and the strong; even the resilient Omitsu knows
that, but has no choice but to reiterate the cultural lie. Surely, we realize,
Fumio will also suffer for its absurd demands.
Orange, California, February 17, 2020
Reprinted from World Cinema Review (February
2020).
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