- 歌行燈 (The Song Lantern)
11/26/23 (Sun)
A 1943 film by Naruse based on a novel by early 20th-century author/playwright Izumi Kyoka (which has the much more evocative English title A Song by Lantern Light). Izumi’s fantasy contents wouldn’t seem an ideal subject for the more grounded Naruse, but maybe the apolitical subject matter was a way for the director to get around wartime restrictions and censorship. The film opens ominously with an exultation for the “100 million to carry the burden for bereaved households” (i.e., homes whose sons have died in battle), but the story thereafter is completely war-free. The Noh-based story has similarities with Mizoguchi’s Kabuki-based Story of the Last Chrysanthemums (1939), and while it does not reach those heights, it has its moments. Hanayagi Shotaro repeats his lead performance from the stage version, where it became one of his signature roles.
sekenbanashi 