Obscure Japanese Film #254
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| Shinjiro Ebara |
Kimura (Shinjiro Ebara) is a
young stoker on the railway saving up to marry Yukiko (Satomi Oka),
His best friend, Maeda (Tatsuya Nakadai), also works for the railway
but is an unhappy man with a reputation for skiving, drinking and
gambling. When a colleague’s money goes missing, Maeda is the main
suspect and the workers give him a beating until Kimura intervenes
and stops it. Later, Maeda asks Kimura to lend him some money, but
won’t say what for – Kimura at first refuses, then relents and
hands all his savings over to Maeda. Yukiko is furious when she finds
out and persuades Kimura that Maeda must have lost it all betting on
the bicycle races…
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| Tatsuya Nakadai |
Set
in the fictional town of Haginomiya but shot in Utsunomiya, north of
Tokyo, this Toei production is the only film to have been based on a
novel by the obscure Kazutoshi Himuro. Adapted for the screen by the
ubiquitous Kaneto Shindo, it was directed by Miyoji Ieki. Unlike many
of Ieki’s better-known films, none of the main characters are
children, but otherwise this is fairly typical of his oeuvre in being
a work of leftist social realism shot on real locations. Something I
don’t remember seeing before in an Ieki film, however, is an
accomplished action scene like the one we get here when there’s a
fault with the train and Kimura has to climb outside while it’s
still moving in order to fix it.
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| Hitomi Nakahara and Satomi Oka |
Toei
contract player Shinjiro Ebara had played his first lead in Tadashi
Imai’s Rice the year before and went on to marry his
co-star, Hitomi Nakahara (aptly nicknamed ‘Bambi’), in 1960. She
also appears here as Yukiko’s younger sister. In his hands, Kimura
seems quite dull at first and perhaps the filmmakers realised that he
was failing to make much of an impression – around 50 minutes in,
there’s a scene in which, completely out of the blue, he bursts
into a quite extraordinary solo a capella song and dance to which he
adds frenzied percussion by slapping himself and anything else near
at hand. This is followed by a scene in which he does something weird
with his shirt and gives an impassioned speech at a meeting, none of
which seemed thinkable from the Kimura featured in the film’s first
half. Well, I guess at least nobody was going to accuse him of giving
a boring performance after all that...
Less than a year away from stardom, Tatsuya Nakadai’s screen time is quite limited and he’s
not yet the assured actor he would soon become as a result of working on The Human
Condition. There’s a mystery about his character which is quite
intriguing, but ultimately his role feels underwritten, although this
may well be the only film in which you’ll see him break down and
sob uncontrollably.
The
Naked Sun was entered into the 1959 Berlin International
Film Festival, where it won the Youth Film Award for Best Feature
Film Suitable for Young People. This is perhaps a little surprising
considering that it was a West Berlin festival in those days and
Naked Sun seems like a film that would have been more popular
with the Communists in the Eastern sector. However, in this case the
workers only grumble a bit about their pay and conditions and are
generally shown as quite a cheerful and hard-working bunch.
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| Toshio Takahara |
The
film was ranked 5th best of the year by Kinema Jumpo
magazine, the top four being, respectively, Kinoshita’s The Ballad
of Narayama, Kurosawa’s The Hidden Fortress, Ozu’s
Equinox Flower and Ichikawa’s Conflagration (also
featuring Nakadai). I’m a little surprised to see it ranked so
highly myself but, while I wouldn’t call the film a masterpiece,
it’s certainly an interesting and likeable picture and not just for
train buffs.
Thanks
to A.K.
DVD at Amazon Japan (no English subtitles)
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