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Michael Kerpan wrote:Mr. S -- I think Keiko is pretty close to in love with the doctor. And I don't think what she does at the end was intended for revenge and humilition. I think it is (1) kind-hearted and (2) saving her own dignity (letting him lover know that she was never "for sale").

I agree that she was in love with him (or close). But the gesture of handing back that bond at the station in front of his wife and child, with all the embarrassing implications of it, is not something designed to be kind-hearted. Sparing the doctor such a scene in front of his family would be kind-hearted; but doing it in public like that, and in such a way that it's going to raise upsetting suspicions in the wife and friends/family and require dissimulation from the doctor...I don't know, it seemed like a muted version of a heroine seeking out the lover that jilted her in some public place and embarrassing him by airing the whole sordid business in public.

Keiko's strength, to me, lies in her patience and perhaps even hesitance I think. Now, sometimes that patience is fully intended. Refusing money and marriage from potential benefactors comes off as not wanting to make mistakes her peers have made. When her peers are starting their own bars, I feel like her initial reaction is one of jealousy, but I think as the film goes on she has less and less of a desire to open her own. And she more fully sees the downside and perhaps even rotten-ness that could befall her if she missteps.

Her dignity is the product of that patience and refusal to rush in to situations, but it might also be borne out of necessity or confusion. I can't keep but thinking what happened between her and her husband that leads her to never want to re-marry/love another...is it really nothing but the vow? Was she compromised or tied down in a way then that she doesn't want to repeat? The struggles with her family are another ambiguous part of the film. Is she really being unfair by not sharing her money with her brother and nephew? They certainly don't come off as greedy. I feel like when they are asking for money, she is not refuting them because they've taken so much from her, but it feels as if everybody wants a piece of her.

Of course, it seems that when she does make big decisions, they come to haunt her quickly, reinforcing perhaps her desire for the status quo?

Mr. S, Keiko brought all sorts of gifts (she couldn't really afford) for the family, and she acted just like what she claimed to be, someone who had respect for the husband (and, by extension, for his family) due to a business relationship. She carried the role off quite elegantly -- and, if a little risky, she prevented much more serious consequences from occurring at a later date. (This may have been her only real opportunity to return the bonds(?) -- one doesn't get a sense there was much time). Besides, if the wife _knew_ (or had an inkling) of the relationship, the way Keiko handled things would have been re-assuring -- rather than the reverse.

Michael Kerpan wrote:Mr. S, Keiko brought all sorts of gifts (she couldn't really afford) for the family, and she acted just like what she claimed to be, someone who had respect for the husband (and, by extension, for his family) due to a business relationship. She carried the role off quite elegantly -- and, if a little risky, she prevented much more serious consequences from occurring at a later date. (This may have been her only real opportunity to return the bonds(?) -- one doesn't get a sense there was much time). Besides, if the wife _knew_ (or had an inkling) of the relationship, the way Keiko handled things would have been re-assuring -- rather than the reverse.

Hmm. Good points. I'd forgotten the gifts, but somehow retained the impression of general embarrassment (which, to be fair, could be simply a part of Japanese social customs when in the presence of strangers). I think by that point in the film I wasn't watching with full attention.

I wonder, tho', why Keiko didn't have someone else return the bond. I suppose she might've wanted a chance to see him one last time, and of course her relationship with her usual go-between, Nakadai, was pretty strained by that point.

Mr Sausage wrote:

Michael Kerpan wrote:Mr. S -- I think Keiko is pretty close to in love with the doctor. And I don't think what she does at the end was intended for revenge and humilition. I think it is (1) kind-hearted and (2) saving her own dignity (letting him lover know that she was never "for sale").

I agree that she was in love with him (or close). But the gesture of handing back that bond at the station in front of his wife and child, with all the embarrassing implications of it, is not something designed to be kind-hearted. Sparing the doctor such a scene in front of his family would be kind-hearted; but doing it in public like that, and in such a way that it's going to raise upsetting suspicions in the wife and friends/family and require dissimulation from the doctor...I don't know, it seemed like a muted version of a heroine seeking out the lover that jilted her in some public place and embarrassing him by airing the whole sordid business in public.

I can see where you're coming from with this Mister S, but I don't know that the intention is truly vengeful or at all negative. I think the cowed nature of the husband having to sit there on the train while Keiko returns the bonds is coming from his sense of surprise: perhaps he has not met anybody before in his life who would have done such a thing. Perhaps he is realizing deep down inside that he is riding home with the wrong woman. Keiko has elevated and purified herself by returning the money. She is, in my honest opinion, telling him two things with the return of the bonds:

"I cared for you, truly,"

and

"Because I did/do care, I cannot allow this reductive--albeit well intentioned, and thus unintentional-- insult to my character to sit, loaded, in front of me."

It's presumably blowing him away by it's purity, by its goodness, and shaming him slightly as byproduct by his erroneous assuming she could accept that as a band aid to assuage the pain of her loss. Or that financial assistance has a place amidst the extreme pain and disappointment of their unrequieted love. She's dividing herself once again, as she typically does, from the rest of the Ginza hostesses . . . all of whom we know would have snapped up that money in a nanosecond.

So to me it is merely the culminating act of Keiko's ongoing Moral Demonstrations of self-ness. The whole film is a demonstration of her holding on to her image of herself. . . not to be swallowed by the sordid nature of her work. She's at the top of the heap because she is the one gorgeous woman who has not been had, who has not given in. Wanting, as Spock says, is better than having in many cases. The allure of Keiko to all is not just her physical beauty and sexual elusiveness, but the fact that this is not a false pride for appearances, because she truly could not live with herself were she to cave in to the daily riff raff with any kind of regularity.

In a sense, her not taking the money is her reclamation of that dignity despite the fact that she had been fucked by one of the businessmen. It's the culminating act of her Not Giving In to sordid, profitable temptation. She's regulated the universe back to her status quo--once again, despite being drunkenly fucked, and depsite REALLY wanting to open a bar of her own in the Ginza, she slept only with a decent man she truly cared for. And although her plans with him came to naught, she purified her sense of self by sacrificing the bar money by reclaiming a self-knowledge that she can live with. He admitted to her in her flat that he doesn't have the courage to satisfy his innermost desire to be with Keiko, to leave his wife and familiy, to buck the status quo despite his feelings for her; conversely, she, unlike he, has the courage to let go of her dream of running her own business to service her innermost sense of self. She can buck the material visible world of lifestyle and posessions in the enrichment of her inner self. He could not.

That's the closest I can see to "vengeance," but because her act is so divided from the rest of those in her moral universe, it's more the way things HAD to be. If she didn't return the money, Keiko would no longer have been Keiko, the woman to whom he was so attracted to that he openly stated that underneath it all he would rather be with her. It's more Keiko becoming herself again. It was the final righting of what had been disturbed when keiko learned the morning after that no relationship was possible with him.

I think he, while riding home on the train, accepted that--knowing Keiko for who she is--it couldn't have been other way. I think it merely elevated her image in his eyes, and the unrequieted love between the two would become only more bittersweet and aching because of it. I think she simply became more exceptional to him as her image faded into oblivion.

My nickels worth on this specific part of the film. I hope it made sense in parts, I rushed through this as I'm busy but didn't want to lose my thoughts on this.

Yeah, like I indicated in my post above, I'm no longer persuaded there was any vengeance in the act. And I agree with you that the gesture was a direct repudiation of Nakadai's accusations and a personal victory for Keiko, especially given what that kind of money would mean to her life.

Cool.

Didn't mean to appear piling on, I was writing my stuff while you and MK were having your dialog above.

HerrSchreck wrote:Cool.

Didn't mean to appear piling on, I was writing my stuff while you and MK were having your dialog above.

That's what I assumed, although I wouldn't have minded if you were piling on, it's great discussion.

Nakadai in this film is pretty creepy, ;~}

Daisuke Kato is my favorite (male) supporting character here -- as the seedy small-businessman with a propensity to propose when drunk. And the (Kato-less, except by being talked about) scene where Keiko meets Kato's wife in a dusty tenement playground (?) -- as the kids circle a about -- is one of my favorites (both visually and content-wise).

Mr Sausage wrote:That's what I assumed, although I wouldn't have minded if you were piling on, it's great discussion.

Mr. S -- I will be particularly interested in seeing what you think about Naruse a year from now (assuming you get enticed into seeing some of his other films). I am glad that _I_ finally learned to tune into his wave length by the time of his 100 birthday -- and, thus, got to be part of the "we must track down every extant Naruse film club" -- an effort that took several years but ultimately succeeded (and which morphed into the "we must come up with fan subs for every Naruse film that isn't available with official subs").

I must thank the long-ago-departed World Artist Home Video, whose VHS tape of WaWAtS was probably the best-looking widescreen black and white VHS tape I had seen (or ever saw subsequently). The fact that this film _looked_ preternaturally good on VHS made me give it (and Naruse) extra chances. While WAHV's Late Chrysanthemums didn't look nearly so splendid, the content (and performances) bought Naruse even more extra chances. (I did write and thank the guy who ran WAHV -- and he seemed like a pretty nice guy -- he really wanted to do more to promote Naruse's work in the US, but got minimal cooperation from Toho. He actually prepared a release of "Wife Be Like a Rose" -- but it never made it out the door. Too bad, I think lots of people would have enjoyed seeing this).

How's The Sound of the Mountain, MK? It's my favourite of the Kawabata novels I've read, so it's naturally the Naruse film I'm the most curious about.

Mr Sausage wrote:How's The Sound of the Mountain, MK? It's my favourite of the Kawabata novels I've read, so it's naturally the Naruse film I'm the most curious about.

I first saw this (with English subs) and Repast (with French subs) in the same week -- and the impact was almost as overwhelming as seeing Tokyo Story and Early Summer over the same long weekend, a year or two earlier.

The inter-relationship between the book and film is quite interesting. Each is (IMHO) a masterpiece, but the film goes in a slightly different emotional direction. The screenwriter (Yoko Mizuki) is one of the few whose name can convince me to see a film (to a lesser extent, the same is true for the writer of the Repast script -- Sumie Tanaka). Note -- Naruse probably depended more on female screen writers than anyone in Japan, other than Kon Ichikawa during his collaboration with his wife.

Mr Sausage: Have you watched the film with Donald Richie's commentary? He provides a lot of social context to the final scene at the train station that I never would have known. Richie explained that Keiko's way of addressing the wife rather than the banker (he's a banker, not a doctor, right?) was actually a very formal and polite gesture, and that the wife asking the husband for permission to take the money back was also in keeping with Japanese etiquette. And I believe that one of the accompanying essays states that despite the relative chastity shown in the Ginza bar of the film, women who worked in Ginza bars were often groped by their customers, and in another section stated that the wives of the clientele were most likely accepting of this atmosphere as it was seen as a part of doing business in Japan. I don't mean to harp on the "revenge" angle any more, but I wanted to plug the commentary (as well as the second essay included with the Criterion edition) as great places to get a bit of context for the film, especially since the whole concept of a Ginza bar was so alien to me going in.

That being said, I do question what her motivation here was. Herr Shreck makes some great arguments about how it helps her retain her dignity, but returning the money doesn't absolve her of what she feels is her greatest sin- breaking the vow she made to her late husband to stay faithful. Perhaps somebody with a better understand of Japanese culture can elaborate more, but I wonder if returning the money is an act of absolution (i.e. trying to undo the crime) or an act of penance (i.e. making sure she suffers for the crime). I am also curious as to which method represents a greater betrayal to the husband in her eyes- would it be worse for her to have slept with a man because she needed money, or to have slept with him out of love?

As for her interactions with her family, I think these scenes provide a role reversal from what happens with Keiko while she is working. At the Ginza bar, wealthy patrons come in, and it is up to her to charm and beg and try to get their money. When she is at home, things are flipped- she is the one with all the wealth, and the family must charm and beg to get their share of it. I think that in both these situations, Naruse shows the people holding the wealth not nessesarily in a negative light, but in a light that is less than flattering while still rather understanding. The wealthy in this movie are never selfless, and I don't think Naruse really expects that they should be. There is never any charity in this film, only negotations and business deals. Although the customers at the beginning may seem predatory in their interactions with Keiko (especially the old man who places the money on the table, only to lecherously suggest that they could "perhaps come to an understanding...") the conversation with her brother show that Keiko can be just as "selfish" with her money, although it doesn't paint this as a fault.

What makes Naruse such an incredible director from my viewpoint is his near plotless method of storytelling. Characters usually end in the exact same position they began in, just with a new awareness of the position they are in and the prospects they have for their life. Any events that do occur never push the character into a new situation, but are more illustrative and work more on the level of emotional realizations.

I think WaWATS is an incredibly rich and detailed film, but not quite Naruse's most powerful. It pretty much exhaustively goes through all the details of Keiko's situations all the options that are open to her and methodically shuts them down one by one until we realize she has no where else to go. But along the way we get such a thoroughly detailed portrait of her business, family, the different kinds of men that are open to her, and her co-workers, many of whom represent the possible paths she could take and usually the inevitable downfall of taking such a path.

I think something like Repast (also my favorite Naruse) is much more emotionally destructive to me, because it's all about subtle fluctuations in character and brimming with possibilities and plot pitfalls that never materialize. You can just feel the arguments the characters never bother having with each other just hanging in the air. WaWATS never quite reaches those same internal emotional heights for me, as its more of a slow emotional wearing away.


I'm still working my way through Naruse's filmography, but I'd highly encourage anyone who isn't completely won over to keep exploring. Its definitely been the case for me where each Naruse film I watch makes me appreciate every other film he made even more.

Banker is right. I don't think Keiko is returning the money to absolve any _past_ actions on her part -- rather she returns the money because she knows _keeping_ it could cause serious harm to her banker friend/client/lover (call him Mori) in the future.

Part of the problem with Keiko and her family is that they all assume she MUST have loads of money, when in fact she has to scrimp (and even maybe sometimes borrow) to help them out. They think her clothes and make-up mean something different than what they, in fact mean. They are part of Keiko's obligatory uniform -- a business expense that she can't avoid. They think that if she can afford what seem to be outrageous luxuries to them, she must be stingy is she won't share (much) more with them. She has tried to explain this -- and they simply think she is lying to weasel out of sharing her (negative net worth) wealth.

YnEoS -- I think the ur-auteurist approach is extremely fruitful for Naruse. He worked almost exclusively at making works for hire -- on time and on budget (unlike his junior colleague at Toho, with initials AK). The cumulative impact of his beetter/best films (which means over half the surviving 69 or so) is greater than the impact of any single film. He (usually) has a distinctive and recognizable style -- but not one that an analyst can easily describe in words.

I consider Naruse's Repast the world greatest romantic comedy (or is a comic romance) -- even though it does have profound depths.

Michael Kerpan wrote:Part of the problem with Keiko and her family is that they all assume she MUST have loads of money, when in fact she has to scrimp (and even maybe sometimes borrow) to help them out. They think her clothes and make-up mean something different than what they, in fact mean. They are part of Keiko's obligatory uniform -- a business expense that she can't avoid. They think that if she can afford what seem to be outrageous luxuries to them, she must be stingy is she won't share (much) more with them. She has tried to explain this -- and they simply think she is lying to weasel out of sharing her (negative net worth) wealth.

Interesting, I guess this also parallels how Keiko feels about Yuri in the film, assuming she was quite well off when in fact she was in dire straights. It just goes to show that having a lot of stuff doesn't indicate that a person is wealthy, it only means they have spent a lot of money.

One thing I didn't mention in my above post is the symbolism of the staircase. Phillip Lopote makes a point inhis essay that although narratively the film constantly moves forward, with suicides and marriage proposals and what have you, Keiko always returns to the same stairway, implying that despite these events she is going nowhere. I think this is true, but I think the stairs also offer a way for Keiko to literally elevate herself to a different class level, albeit temporarily. The film always shows Keiko as she wishes to be seen- well mannered in an elegant kimono- but my impression from the film is that these are just costumes; attempts to dress herself up and escape the lower class life she was born into, while mingling with the upper class she aspires to be a part of. This is particularly poignent when she has the fight with her mother and tells her "go back downstairs"; this line struck me as Keiko saying "you don't belong up here with me, go back down to the lower class." Looking at it this way, I don't think Keiko's problem is the fact that she keeps having to climb up the stairs; rather her problem is that eventually she will inevitably have to go back down them.

Michael Kerpan wrote:He worked almost exclusively at making works for hire -- on time and on budget (unlike his junior colleague at Toho, with initials AK). The cumulative impact of his beetter/best films (which means over half the surviving 69 or so) is greater than the impact of any single film.

Looks like I probably haven't run deep enough yet to encounter his more minor run of the mill material, but it's good to here that a significant amount of his surviving films are major.

Michael Kerpan wrote: I consider Naruse's Repast the world greatest romantic comedy (or is a comic romance) -- even though it does have profound depths.

I realize I might have been overly harsh in my characterization of Repast. So hopefully without derailing the thread too much, I should clarify that I do think it is a wonderfully comedic and light film on a certain level. I just find the the superficial "non-importance" of the issues being raised become all the more stifling/frustrating and that's why they work on me the way they do. But perhaps others might not react quite the same way.

FWIW -- Repast is film no. 2 on my "honorary top 5" list. I think it is possibly the best depiction of married life ever -- both fundamentally honest AND kind-hearted with its characters.

For all of the love for Repast I hope we don't forget Flowing from MoC's unfortunately dead set. It is in serious contention for the best Japanese film I've ever seen with the best 'invisible' editing ever. Every character in that, whether eddy or tributary, moves together in a fashion that cuts as deeply as possible.

You'll get no argument from me, Flowing is yet another totally wonderful Naruse film.

Since you're the closest we have to an expert does he have any The Munekata Sisters type skeletons in his closet? The weakest I've seen is Mother which still has a good number of positives going for it.

For whatever reason, the storytelling in Flowing doesn't really click for me the same way most of Naruse's other films do. And I've been fortunate enough to see it on 35mm after watching the MoC DVD. I haven't given up on it completely yet though because...

Spoiler

That ending is just one of the most apocalyptic things I've ever seen in any film ever.

knives wrote:Since you're the closest we have to an expert does he have any The Munekata Sisters type skeletons in his closet? The weakest I've seen is Mother which still has a good number of positives going for it.

Maybe this question is better asked on the Naruse board in Film Makers. So, I will cut and paste and answer there. ;-}

What I always admire most when watching Naruse--and this film is a fine specimen-- is the editing rhythm, and how smoothly and subtly the stories appear to unfold. I'm reminded of the process of making two specific films-- the first is City Lights by Chaplin, where the man labored and labored endlessly in the rendering of this very simple yet hugely affecting and poetic narrative. One of his most personally difficult projects, the film has been described as flowing (paraphrasing David Robinson) as easily and perfectly as a stream over an easy bed of pebbles. Testimony to the extreme difficulty of Simplicity.

Another byproduct of the process of constructing a specific title I'm reminded of are Bunuel's comments about Jean Epstein's shooting of Usher. This film exhibits a mise en scene that couldn't be any further from the long-take aesthetic of Jean Renoir who--as Captain Ascot Bogdonavich astutely observed--had this sort of sense that if it happens on the set . . despite the fact that it is rendered by actors on a set . . . there is a feeling and a belief that it actually happened. The events play out and unfold unmistakably for all to see. The longer they get to play out without interruption, the more real they seem to become, the closer they become to having actually "happened." There is no doubt they occured-- the only judgement to be rendered either on set or by the viewer of the final product is whether or not that occurance was believable, and whether or not it carried a suitable amount of perhaps poetic freight. But while making the film, with this long take aesthetic there is never any doubt in the actor's minds regarding what it is they are portraying, what key they should be acting in--and in a sense this feeling of all Being On The Same Page can extend to the entire crew.

Jean Epstein abstracted his Usher narrative so severely, and his editing rhythm and compositional choices were so unusual, that Bunuel simply didn't have the slightest clue where his director was going. It seemed to him that this seemingly haphazard assembly wasn't going anyplace good. And so via this disagreement bowed out of the production--and it was only after its final construction and release that Bunuel saw that there was indeed a logic, and a great sense of order . . . there just wasn't any way to make any sense of it during the process of filmmaking. Witnessing fragment after seemingly unrelated fragment being filmed with the most bizarre of approaches, there simply was no way to dope out that these fragments could be patched together into the alternate universe of film, a bounds free world where different laws apply.

I'm also reminded of the process of filmming The Spirit of the Beehive . . . the actors had not the slightest clue what it was they were doing. Had no clue what the film meant, or where it was going. They had to wait until the end of the film to discover the director's concept and see it in full bloom.

Naruse of course isn't anywhere near as abstract in his final product viz "Ascends . . ." But I find it utterly remarkable that a man could keep popping the camera here and there around the set and get the actors to render these little fragments bit by bit, and fillm these bits with the assurance and the confidence, with the full measure and final image of the thru line planted so solidly in his and nobody else's head, whereby the end result, when assembled, is not abstract, impressionistic, nor does it even feel "muscularly edited."

Rather, the end result feels like the byproduct of it's polar opposite of filmmaking: the long take style of Renoir, where the human events seem to ring utterly true and with the air of genuine human event. They flow together as firmly and as naturally as David Robinson's little stream over pebbles. To be able to interrupt the flow of acting so chronically and yet produce a human tale that unfolds so organically, so easily and naturally, the achievement is just astounding. This is the industrial confidence of a man who completely owns his vocation, and has made the chronicaly difficult aspects of his vocation virtually second nature. This isn't to say that there wasn't any teeth gnashing in the editing room-- Chaplin gnashed his often and wildly--but the ease of the flow of the output is just outstanding.

There is no plasticity on display here, no Sirkian visual muscularity, or remnants of this or that "Ism" or Wave. These are just beautifully told tales from a man who arrived at a manner of film construction using lots of girders and beams, walls and steps, and yet the building is an organic whole that flows from without and within so smoothly there is not a forced nail or frame.

Naruse is like a double magic trick-- the trick is to find where the trick is, because the sleight of hand is so freaking quick and smooth. There is so much behind every little simple easy thing in this film, and yet it resists every attempt to take it into film school and demonstrate the achievement to some who don't know what to look for. Woman's melodrama what?