• 大阪物語 (An Osaka Tale)

10/13/18 (Sun), Tokyo

A highly entertaining piece of 1957 devised by Mizoguchi Kenji from a 17th-century tale and ably taken over after his death by Yoshimura Kozaburo. It was reminiscent of Mizoguchi’s Chikamatsu Story: the lead was a stingy businessman ultimately undermined by his own stubbornness, and Kagawa Kyoko was a put-upon daughter who gets the poor clerk in the end. But this was a comedic approach to the material, which, though not as deep, worked wonderfully on its own terms.

The movie gives top billing to the hugely popular Ichikawa Raizo, who was excellent in an unusually mousy turn as clerk. The star role, though, is clearly the hilarious Nakamura Ganjiro II as the skinflint Omiya Jinbei, whose stinginess out-Scrooges Scrooge. (The two actors were to work together to equal effect the following year in Ichikawa Kon’s Conflagration, where Raizo’s higher billing made more sense.) Ganjiro is moving in his desperate early years, when he begs for work and resolutely refuses to let wife sell herself to a brothel despite their circumstances, finally reduced to sweeping up spilt rice for his family. When he finds that he can sell that rice for cash, he parlays that into a life of wealth.

Ganjiro then expertly transitions to a tightfisted miser who worships money above all, starting with serving bad rice to his family while selling the better stuff for money. His absolute refusal to tolerate even the slightest luxury ranges from turning down New Year’s decorations and refusing to donate to the local lord, to the more serious action of denying medicine to his dying wife. That final action earns the enmity of his kids, and his impetuous reaction when he thinks his clerk has been stealing from him – an adeptly developed scene starting with a coin dropped into a river – ultimately drives his family away from him. He eventually goes mad and locks himself up in his storeroom clutching his money.

Ganjiro’s spot-on performance is the lynchpin of the film. Raizo may have been the bigger star, but Ganjiro is the driving force here in every way, adept in both comedy and misery. Kagawa was superb as always as the young daughter who refuses to let fate and family determine her future. Also noteworthy is the strikingly young pre-Zatoichi Katsu Shintaro, perfect as the boisterously dissolute kid plotting to run off with the courtesan in defiance of his miserly mother’s plans to pair him with Kagawa. He is priceless in the brothel scene, where he correctly figures that the best way to win over Jinbei’s timid son is to get him laid with a courtesan (Nakamura Tamao at her considerable best). He shows off some pretty impressive shamisen and singing skills. Naniwa Chieko and Mimasu Aiko are memorable as the tightwad’s long-suffering wife and the scheming widow hoping to marry off her son into money. Great production values all around. Yoshimura is curiously unappreciated overseas despite some indisputable classics, most notably Ball at the Anjo House, but his direction here is expert. Loved this film.