KINUYO TANAKA and HIDEKO TAKAMINE in WHERE CHIMNEYS ARE SEEN (1953) dir. Heinosuke Gosho

As the Clouds Scatter, Heinosuke Gosho, 1961

Kumo ga chigireru toki (Gosho Heinosuke, 1961)

Jitsuko Yoshimura in An Innocent Witch (Heinosuke Gosho, 1965)

Cast: Jitsuko Yoshimura, Kin Sugai, Taiji Tonoyama, Minoru Terada, Keizo Kawasaki, Yoshio Yoshida, Eijiro Tono, Takayuki Akutagawa. Screenplay: Hideo Horie, based on a novel by Hajime Ogawa. Cinematography: Sozaburo Shinomura. Art direction: Totetsu Hirakawa. Film editing: Sadako Ikeda. Music: Sei Ikeno.

An Innocent Witch begins like a documentary, with a voiceover narration describing the pilgrimages to Mount Osore, where the faithful gather to ask blind seers to facilitate communication with their dead loved ones. One of the pilgrims is Kikuno (Kin Sugai), who wants to speak with her daughter, Ayako (Jitsuko Yoshimura). As the seer goes into her trance, the film switches abruptly to a conventional narrative in which we learn that Ayako was sold -- willingly, it seems -- into prostitution by her mother because Ayako's father (Yoshio Yoshida) is too ill to continue supporting the family as a fisherman and gatherer of seaweed. (The father is never told about Ayako's work as a prostitute; he thinks only that she has gone to the city to earn more money.) In the brothel, Ayako loses her virginity to her first customer, a wealthy lumber wholesaler named Kansuke (Taiji Tonoyama). Pleased with the young woman, Kansuke becomes Ayako's regular customer. Then one evening a shy young man named Kanjiro (Minoru Terada) arrives with his fellow military cadets and Ayako relieves him of his virginity. They begin to fall in love, but just before he is called up for service, Kanjiro realizes that his own father, Kansuke, has been one of Ayako's customers. Kansuke, it turns out, has been aware that Kanjiro has also been seeing Ayako, and doesn't really mind sharing her with his son. But Ayako has promised Kanjiro that she won't see his father again, and when Kansuke insists on having sex with her anyway, he dies of an apparent heart attack. Soon word arrives that Kanjiro has also died at the front. The coincidence of the deaths of a father and son causes Ayako to be labeled a "femme fatale." But while visiting Kanjiro's grave, Ayako meets his older brother, Kanichi (Keizo Kawasaki), and her involvement with this ill-fated family deepens into further tragedy. The film climaxes with Ayako seeking a kind of exorcism that will purify her of guilt, but that, too, has fatal consequences. The core story of An Innocent Witch is very well handled by screenwriter Hideo Horie and director Heinosuke Gosho, but the framing of it in the context of a documentary about the search for communication with the afterlife feels awkward, as if Horie and Gosho were trying to impose a larger statement about the consequences of superstition on the material. Ayako's story speaks for itself without extra help.

Shinsetsu (Gosho Heinosuke, 1942)

Ichirō Sugai, Yuriko Hamada et Ichirō Ryūzaki dans « Visage unforgettable »『面影』(1948) directed by Heinosuke Gosho

The Neighbor's Wife and Mine [マダムと女房, Madamu to nyōbō] (1931) dir. Heinosuke Gosho

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The Bride Talks in Her Sleep (Gosho Heinosuke, 1933)

A torpid comedy about... ...university buddies who come aware that the wife of the more successful (and graduated) of them talks in her sleep, so they come over to crash and to wait for her to sleep, their every action embarrassing the wife and every limp action of the husband to stop them destabilising him in his wife's eyes. What a plot. Stark with humour and starker still in its early sound construction; those artefacts draping their dreamy, barely there veil over everything to make this interesting enough, though not in the way intended.

Enjoy this rare screening of a 1953 classic comic drama from Reed Hessler’s private collection. It is based on the novel, Mujaki no Hitobito, by Rinzo Shiina and is representative of the shoshimin-eiga film drama focusing on the lives of ordinary middle-class people. Delight in the drama swirling around a mysterious baby who is left at the home of Hiroko and Ryukichi Ogata. Directed by Heinosuke Gosho. Hosted by Reed Hessler, longtime host on WBJC.

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Date and Time: Saturday, March 16, 1pm

Location: Towson University, Center for the Arts

Art Lecture Hall, CA 2032

1 Fine Arts Drive, Towson, MD 21204

Info: https://bit.ly/aacc-events

人生のお荷物 五所平之助Burden of Life Directed by Heinosuke Gosho • 1935 • Japan

初老のサラリーマンには、三人の娘と歳の離れた息子がいる。人生のお荷物とは、その息子の寛一のこと。

女中と寛一が家路につく時の台詞

「ねえ、ぼっちゃんは、お父様のこと嫌い？」

「嫌いじゃないけど、好きじゃないな。」

「どーしてなんでしょうね」

「そんなこと聞かなくてもいいよ！」

「でも、ナミは不思議でしょうがないんですもの」

「つまりね」

「まあ」

「お父さんはさ、僕にはとても偉そうにするからさ」

「だって、お父様ですもの」

「ちぇ、おべっかい言ってらあ。あんなのちっとも偉くねえや」

「まあ！」

「夕飯のときごらんよ。酒飲むと、すぐ変な声だして歌うだろ」

「えぇ…」

「あれが、バカの一つ覚えっていうだよ」

「まあ、そんなことおっしゃって」

「だって、母さんがそう言ったよ。だからバカだろ」

「まあ、ぼっちゃん」

「バカなら偉くねえじゃねーか。どんなもんでえ」

→居間で妻にお酌してもらいながら酒を飲んでいる斉藤達雄

生意気なガキというのは、面白い。それが父親に対してだと反権力的で見ていて、痛快な気分になる。

喧嘩をして実家に帰ってくる長女。夫たちは、妻の愚痴を肴に酒を飲み交わす。

寛一が原因で、妻が家を出ていく。娘ではなく、親が別居する可笑しさ。

朧夜の女 / Woman of the Mist (1936) Dir: 五所平之助 / Heinosuke Gosho

As the Clouds Scatter, Heinosuke Gosho, 1961

Shinsetsu (Gosho Heinosuke, 1942)

Dispersed Clouds (Heinosuke Gosho, 1951)

Entotsu no mieru basho (Gosho Heinosuke, 1953)