• 夜の河 (Undercurrent)

10/11/25 (Sat)

Yoshimura Kozaburo’s 1956 melodrama (also known more literally as Night River) is another of his Mizoguchi-type female-centric films exploring the plight of women in contemporary Japan. Yamamoto Fujiko is a Kyoto kimono designer working at her family shop. Her talent and perseverance have won her success in what is seen as a dying industry (back in 1956! – fortunately that proved untrue) in an increasingly Westernized society. She missed out on the normal marriage years due to the war and is now 30 and unwed, quite old for the time. She is resolved to be her own woman, not reliant on anyone, and rejects the efforts of her friends and family to match her up. A young painter is clearly in love with her, even basing his works on her, but to his despair, she takes no notice romantically.

During a stroll into town, she happens upon a man (Uehara Ken) wearing a tie with her design. Something about him attracts her, and they strike up a friendship. He proves to be a scientist at prestigious Osaka University specializing in fruit flies, which somehow matches his dull personality. Still, she actively pursues him despite the inconvenient fact that he has a wife and daughter. She visits his lab, designs a kimono with red flies (seems a strange motif, but there you are), arranges an exhibition of her goods in Tokyo as a pretext to see him there, and goes openly with him to dinners, which she insists on paying for. She learns that his wife has been bedridden for the past two years and is barely hanging on. Still, they continue to meet.

Their relationship has attracted rumors but nevertheless remains chaste, until one night they take lodging during a rainstorm and, well, one thing leads to another. She tells him later that she will treasure the child if she’s pregnant. She is even visited by the daughter, who clearly knows everything and seems happy with it. Her attitude changes, however, when Uehara urges her to wait just a bit longer. When the wife ultimately dies, Yamamoto attends the funeral but leaves quickly. Uehara soon visits her to propose marriage, but she refuses. She tells him that marrying him under these circumstances would imply that she had wished for the wife’s death, which was never true. She parts from him and returns to the factory. The last shot shows her on the roof blankly watching the large May Day parade.

A subtheme addresses the ongoing changes in Japanese society as seen in tradition-bound Kyoto. One unhappy apprentice in the dye shop, hired as a family favor, finds the work difficult and the relationship with his boss feudal. He declares that the old relationships don’t hold under the postwar Constitution and quits for factory work. When his factory fails, however, he comes crawling back for his old job. That is, the old Japan hasn’t given up the ghost just yet. Yamamoto’s character similarly wants to carve a new way, maintaining her independence in a male-dominated world, but whether she will be truly happy after rejecting a chance at a loving relationship is an open question as she stares out at the final parade.

This was the director’s first color film, and he took full advantage of it, helped immeasurably by the great cinematographer Miyazawa Kazuo. The setting was a kyozome dye shop, so color was a key plot point, especially red: the dye, the fruit flies, the May Day flags, the bed scene so beautifully shot in the red glow of a neon light from outside. (The lovers kiss passionately but remain fully clothed as the camera trails suggestively down to the woman’s tabi socks. Great scene.)

The film was generally well acted, though Yamamoto dominates all of her scenes. She has a natural beauty (she was a former Miss Japan) and manages to play the strong woman while still maintaining her charm and poise, such as her firm stance with the would-be patron who is after more than her kimono designs. It’s an effortless performance. She was a major star in her day, but a fight with her studio led effectively to her banishment from the film industry after just ten years. She moved to theater (her first show was the stage version of this film) and television but never reached the status of her contemporaries Kyo Machiko and Wakao Ayako. That was a real loss judging from her performance here.

Uehara is a blob as usual; it’s hard to see what Yamamoto sees in him, but that’s pretty much true for all his films. Tono Eijiro does well as her crusty father, who would like to see her married off (he won an award as supporting actor).

The direction is largely undistinguished and doesn’t entirely escape sentimentality. The bed scene is terrific, and there’s a nice bit in the train when Yamamoto’s image is seen reflected in the window. The director pursues his much-loved theme of women’s plight in society and the slow dying out of the old world, as he did to much better effect in The Ball at Anjo House around ten years earlier. Still, it basically boils down to melodrama, not helped by an overwrought musical score. The film, which has been re-mastered, does look terrific thanks to Miyazawa’s camerawork. That and Yamamoto’s performance make it worth a watch.