The Beloved Image/ 顔 / Kao (‘Face’, 1960）

Obscure Japanese Film #129

Machiko Kyo and Ryo Ikebe

This Daiei picture opens with young executive Ko (Ryo Ikebe) being seen off at Haneda airport by his family and colleagues as he leaves Tokyo to spend two years working in America. He looks around anxiously to check that a young woman, Eriko (Machiko Kyo), is among the crowd. Relieved to find that she is, he bids her an awkward goodbye... 

Eijiro Yanagi

 

We then flashback to a couple of months previously as Ko arrives home after work one day to find himself greeted by a stranger, who turns out to be Eriko. The two have not seen each other since childhood, but Eriko has come up from Kyoto to help look after her aunt, who is also Ko’s step-mother, Orie (Hisako Takihana), whom his father married after Ko’s natural mother had died giving birth to him. Now Orie is ill, and Ko’s father, highly respected religious scholar Kiyosu (Eijiro Yanagi), is not much help looking after her, so Eriko is a godsend. Ko and Eriko are mutually attracted to each other and soon become close, but neither does anything about it as he will soon have to leave for America. However, before he goes, Ko asks Eriko to stay at the house until he gets back, ostensibly to look after Orie. 

 

No sooner has Ko departed than Orie takes a turn for the worse and passes away. A couple of months later, Eriko accompanies Kiyosu on an overnight golfing trip, sharing a room with him (it’s unclear why she has agreed to this). Kiyosu forces himself on her, and the next day asks her to marry him. She accepts, perhaps because his status is such that she sees no way to refuse, or perhaps because she’s old-fashioned enough to think that it’s the only correct thing to do. Anyway, she resigns herself to the idea, they marry, and she gradually gets used to her new position even if she never feels entirely happy about it. 

Yasuko Nakada

 

Two years pass, and Ko returns to Japan. The woman he hoped to marry is now his new step-mother, so things are awkward between them and Ko wants to move out of the family home and get his own apartment. Eriko decides that Ko needs a woman of his own as well, so she tries to fix him up with a friend of hers from Kyoto, widowed fashion designer Setsuko (Yasuko Nakada), but she finds that she can’t quite forget her own feelings for her lost love.

 

Based on a novel of the same title by Fumio Niwa* (here adapted by Teinosuke Kinugasa), this melancholy love story for grown-ups is beautifully realised in all departments, and I’m surprised it’s not better known. As a director, former actor Koji Shima has a reputation as something of a hack who would make any old thing, but here he shows such impressive skill and taste that it’s difficult to believe he’s the same man responsible for the ridiculous starfish-people sci-fi flick Warning from Space (1956). Here, he’s ably abetted by veteran cinematographer Joji Ohara, whose compositions, lighting and camera movements are all frequently impressive. There are some nicely symbolic shots, too, such as the one of the moth trapped inside a light when Eriko is raped, while excellent use is made of the weather throughout – on several occasions, interior scenes are played out against a backdrop of snowfall or a storm raging outside. 

 

Regarding the music, there was something of a trend in Japanese cinema at the time for Spanish guitar, which can sometimes feel jarring and intrusive. In the hands of composer Seitaro Omori here, however, it’s subtle and highly effective, adding a great deal to the emotional impact of the film without ever feeling manipulative. 

 

In the leading role, Machiko Kyo’s character changes a great deal in the course of the film, but she’s never less than entirely believable. The same can be said for Ryo Ikebe, an actor I’ve previously described as ‘wooden’ – and who could certainly never be accused of overacting – but who impressed me here. This is a story largely about what is going on in the minds of Ko and Eriko, and both actors prove highly adept at communicating this with a mere glance or slight change of expression even if the film occasionally resorts to voiceover from both characters. 

Kyoko Enami

 

There’s also a brief appearance by Kyoko Enami in one of her first film roles as Eriko’s rude niece, but it’s Yasuko Nakada as the seductive young widow who proves to be the major scene-stealer. She’s so good, in fact, that I’m surprised she failed to become a bigger star, especially as she was the mistress of Daiei president Masaichi Nagata; as it was, she broke up with him in 1964 and retired from acting, but is still alive at the time of writing.

This is a superb film - rarely have I come across one so obscure of such high quality. And that ending...

 

*Fumio Niwa (male, 1904-2005) also wrote the novels on which Women of Tokyo (1939), Naruse’s The Angry Street and Battle of Roses (both 1950) and Kinuyo Tanaka’s Love Letter (1953) were based. The only Niwa published in English translation appears to be his novel The Buddha Tree.