Obscure Japanese Film #7
Originally published in serial form between 1949 and 1951, then as a single volume the following year, Yasunari Kawabata’s novella A Thousand Cranes was first filmed in 1953 by director Kozaburo Yoshimura. According to IMDb, that version was co-written by Kaneto Shindo and Nagisa Oshima, but this seems highly unlikely as Oshima was still at university then, so it’s probable that Shindo was entirely responsible for the adaptation. The 1969 version also credits Shindo with the screenplay, so it could be that director Yasuzo Masumura was working from the same script as Yoshimura.
The story deals with the complex relationships between the 28-year-old Kikuji and the two former mistresses of his deceased father. Chikako, a teacher of the tea ceremony, has an ugly black birthmark on her breast which Kikuji once saw as a child; it seems to simultaneously repel and fascinate him. She’s an insensitive, interfering busybody who takes it upon herself to arrange an unasked-for marriage match for Kikuji, although it’s by no means certain that she has the young man’s best interests at heart. Chikako seems never to have recovered from the insult of being dumped by Kikuji’s father in favour of Mrs Ota, a widow, although she nevertheless remained part of his life on platonic terms after the event. Unwisely, Kikuji embarks on an affair with Mrs Ota, who is almost the polar opposite of Chikako: fragile, sentimental and over-emotional.
Like Koji Takahashi in Two Wives, Mikijiro Hira (as Kikuji) has the difficult task of playing the stolid male lead between two much bigger female stars. Machiko Kyo gives the best performance as the scheming, impervious-to-insult Chikako, and one can see the schadenfreude written all over her face when tragedy strikes. Ayako Wakao has the lesser part as Mrs Ota, a rather one-note character usually seen either in tears or on the verge of fainting. One interesting difference from the book is that Mrs Ota is portrayed as being less sincere and more manipulative in the film – on two occasions, she appears to surreptitiously check that her tears are having the desired effect on Kikuji. Both women are well-cast, although the then 35-year-old Wakao is ten years younger than the character described in the book and looks it. A Thousand Cranes was the last of 20 films directed by Masumura in which she starred. Apparently, in a 1970 interview, he described her as ‘selfish and calculating’, going on to say that ‘she’s hardly a pure-hearted woman and she knows it,’ [1] so it certainly appears that the two fell out and one wonders whether Masumura’s view of her coloured the portrayal of Mrs Ota in the movie.
I have to admit to having found the Kawabata novella entirely unengaging and Masumura’s film did little to improve matters for me. Although certainly very faithful to the literary original, this unfortunately translates as a series of scenes of people talking in rooms, which seldom makes for exciting cinema. No doubt this meant that only a small budget was required – something which may have been a consideration as the studio responsible (Daiei) was struggling at this point and would go bankrupt two years later. Wakao is good as ever, but A Thousand Cranes is unlikely to satisfy her fans as she has the lesser of the two main female roles and disappears less than an hour into the film.
[1] Quoted by ‘manfromplanetx’ in his review of The Graceful Brute (1962) on IMDb. Unfortunately, I don’t know the original source.
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