Obscure Japanese Film #73
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| Mariko Okada |
Saiko (Fujiko Yamamoto), the wife of Kadota, a young doctor (Keiji Sada), receives an unexpected visit one day from Hamako (Nobuko Otowa), an emotionally unstable woman accompanied by a 5-year-old girl she claims to be Kadota’s daughter. Hamako dumps the girl, Shoko, on her, saying she is no longer able to raise her by herself and Shoko is Kadota’s responsibility. Shortly after leaving, Hamako commits suicide. Feeling sorry for Shoko, Saiko decides to raise her as her own, but cannot forgive her husband his infidelity and insists on a divorce.
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| Fujiko Yamamoto |
Sometime later, Saiko goes to visit her newly-married cousin, the 20-year-old Midori (Mariko Okada), and meets her much older, pottery-fancying husband, Misugi (Shin Saburi), for the first time. Misugi tricks Saiko into going for a walk alone with him, which leads to a long-running affair. Eight years passes, and Misugi and Saiko still have no idea that Midori has known they’ve been cheating on her almost from the beginning but has chosen to remain silent…
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| Keiji Sada |
This Shochiku production is quite a free adaptation of Yasushi Inoue’s highbrow 60-page novella first published in 1949. The original story is introduced by a narrator who has been contacted out of the blue by a hunter (Misugi) after the latter realised that he must have been the inspiration for a man portrayed by the poet in one of his works. Misugi sends him a letter from each of the three women in his life, and it is these letters through which the rest of the story unfolds. Such a literary device was obviously not going to work for the cinema, so it was understandably dropped by screenwriter Toshio Yasumi, who had already collaborated on half a dozen other films with this film’s director, Heinosuke Gosho (and would go on to write a terrific screenplay for Shiro Toyoda’s Portrait of Hell). However, despite the fact that several scenes are replicated faithfully, much of the character motivation evident in the novella is not put across well here.
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| Shin Saburi upstaged by a lamp |
Indeed, The Hunting Rifle features perhaps the most implausible seduction scene in cinema history when Misugi, having known Saiko for what seems like five minutes, poses the question, ‘Being obsessed with Joseon white porcelain is alright, so why shouldn’t I be obsessed by you?’, which is apparently all it takes for her to melt into his arms. In the book, this is not really a ‘scene’ at all, and so is not an issue, especially as Saiko goes on to explain her motivation. Another clumsy moment occurs in the film when Misugi gives Shoko (now played by Haruko Wanibuchi) a book for her 16th birthday, explaining that the contents are all about love. This comes across as inappropriate and creepy here, but not so in the book, in which there is no explanation from Misugi. The filmmakers also neglect to make use of a memorable visual image that occurs in the original when Saiko visits a university and is disturbed by some snake specimens she sees preserved in jars. This leads Misugi to observe that ‘Everyone’s got a snake in him,’ a sentence which haunts Saiko, who comes to believe herself at the mercy of a persistent self-destructive urge which she visualises as a snake coiled in her belly. In the film, we don’t get the scene with the specimens, so the talk of snakes seems merely whimsical. Furthermore, the symbol of The Hunting Rifle itself goes for very little in the film, whereas in the story it is made quite clear that it represents man’s essential loneliness.
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| Nobuko Otowa |
Another problem with Gosho’s film is the casting, especially that of Shin Saburi. In his hands, Misugi is not only physically unattractive but completely uncharismatic, making Saiko’s helpless attraction for him baffling. Fujiko Yamamoto is a fine actress, but does not seem at all the sort to stab her cousin in the back, and her somewhat mask-like features are perhaps not the best at expressing complex emotions. It’s the more expressive Mariko Okada who takes the acting honours here – when the story jumps forward by eight years, Midori has changed from a rather naïve, gauche young thing to a sophisticated woman with considerable poise, and Okada not only handles this transformation very well, but is great at revealing the hidden thoughts of her character with a subtle look. The other notable names in the cast – Nobuko Otowa and Keiji Sada – are featured surprisingly little considering their status, but do their usual good work. But the casting of Sada also works against the film – imagine a woman leaving Keiji Sada because he had an affair and then rushing off to have an affair of her own with Shin Saburi!
I found this a real disappointment from director Heinosuke Gosho, whose films are generally good to excellent (I’d especially recommend An Inn at Osaka and An Innocent Witch). Although Inoue’s novella was unsuited to the screen in the first place, that certainly does not excuse all the poor choices here, which also include the truly awful string-laden music score complete with repeated harp glissando that heavily underlines every emotional moment. This is reminiscent of Hollywood at its corniest, and something I found especially grating as I watch Japanese films of this period partly to get away from all that. The culprit, Yasushi Akutagawa, has done good scores too, and I’ve noticed that the work of many Japanese film composers in particular seems to vary a great deal in quality, though I’m unsure why. Anyway, combined with the ham-fisted adaptation and ill-advised casting, the music makes The Hunting Rifle an almost total misfire for me, with only Mariko Okada hitting the target.
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