• わが青春に悔なし (No Regrets For Our Youth)

11/20/20 (Fri)

This 1946 film, made under the watch of Occupation censors, was Kurosawa Akira’s first postwar work and one of his only films to focus on a woman. It spans the prewar years from 1933 through the war-end. Yukie (Hara Setsuko), daughter of a university professor whose leftist views have led to his resignation, is torn between the radical Noge (Susumu Fujita) and the more cautious and practical Itokawa (Akitake Kono). The latter is willing to give in to societal pressure for a good career, making him a safer choice for Yukie. But she tells him outright that he’s a bore and opts for the more dangerous Noge, who has gone away to pursue his leftist dreams in secret. She eventually tracks him down and marries him, and lives happily without quite knowing what he’s up to. He is ultimately caught and killed by the authorities as a traitor (based on a real-life incident), and she is questioned brutally by the authorities (a very good Shimura Takashi). Yukie, driven by a desire to reject her comfortable upbringing and do good, goes to her poor in-laws and works on their farm despite their social isolation as the parents of a spy. After the war, Noge is praised for having resisted the fascist government, and Yukie returns to the village, where she is now welcomed.

Too on the nose in its politics. It amounts to a polemic, an unsubtle diatribe against fascist Japan. It relies on speeches, newspaper headlines and other hoary devices to drive the narrative. The story of Yukie and her two men could have been interesting, and the signs were good when Noge stepped forward to lift her across a river as Itokawa stood helplessly watching. But the film thereafter doesn’t offer enough intimate scenes to give an idea of their personalities. Yukie’s remark to Itokawa that he’s dull and can never make her happy seems cruel, clumsy and out of place, and we have to take her attraction to Noge on faith. The film is also disjointed as some scenes seem strung randomly together. One sequence of snapshots of Yukie in dramatic poses against a doorway was laughably inept, as was an amateurish filming of a fall down a staircase. The late sequence on the farm, where Yukie works determinedly to help her in-laws despite abuse from the community for association with a spy, was a convincing portrayal of the power of propaganda and societal pressure. But even that is overlong and melodramatic.

Hara is difficult to read here, since she is unhappy both with Noge and without him; it’s hard to know what exactly she’s looking for, making her a less sympathetic character. The acting overall was less accomplished than in other Kurosawa’s films. In the end, the politics overwhelm the personal, and the film becomes a chore. I don’t understand the widespread praise for this work.