Kodomo no me / 子供の眼 / (‘Eyes of a Child’, 1955)

Obscure Japanese Film #162

Hideko Takamine

Kiyoko (Hideko Takamine) is a young woman living in Tokyo with her older brother, Shunji (Hiroshi Akutagawa), and his second wife, Sachiko (Mieko Takamine – no relation to Hideko), a dentist. They have a 10-year-old son, Osamu (Koji Shitara), by Shunji’s deceased first wife, and it’s left to Kiyoko to take care of him. 

 

Hiroshi Akutagawa

However, when Sachiko’s ageing father (Chishu Ryu) begins to have health issues, Shunji gets offered a promotion which involves moving to Nagoya, and Kiyoko receives a promising marriage proposal from factory worker Fujita (Minoru Oki), it becomes clear that this arrangement cannot last indefinitely and tensions arise… 

Mieko Takamine

 

Minoru Oki

This Shochiku production was directed by Yoshiro Kawazu, a former assistant to Keisuke Kinoshita who also often co-wrote screenplays with the writer of this film, Zenzo Matsuyama (who married Hideko Takamine the year this was made). Kawazu directed 24 films between 1955 and 1969, then went into TV when film work dried up before passing away at the early age of 46 in 1972 (I don’t know the cause). He won the 1956 Blue Ribbon Award for Best Newcomer for this film and Namida (‘Tears’), while the film itself shared the 1955 Golden Globe Award for Best Foreign Language Film with Dreyer’s Ordet (Denmark),  Michael Cacoyannis’ Stella (Greece), Laslo Benedek’s Sons, Mothers and a General (West Germany) and a Mexican film called Curvas Peligrosas (‘Dangerous Curves’) which has fallen into a profound obscurity. For some reason, this particular award was usually shared among entries from several countries at the time, but it’s still surprising that a modest little movie like Eyes of a Child would be submitted, let alone win. 

Koji Shitara

 

Kawazu’s film (his second) was based on a then newly-published novel of the same name by Ineko Sata (1904-98; incorrectly listed on IMDb as ‘Ineko Sada’), a feminist and former member of the Communist Party who was eventually expelled for criticising the party. The presence of Chishu Ryu and child actor Koji Shitara recalls the films of Ozu, and this domestic drama is in a similar vein, though it mostly lacks the contemplative, bittersweet quality of Ozu’s work. There’s so little drama in the first half that it all seems rather inconsequential, but it does become more interesting once an element of conflict is introduced later in the film. Although the title suggests that the story is told through the eyes of a child, this is not the case, but there is more attention paid to his feelings than in most other films of its type. Keisuke Kinoshita’s brother Chuji provides a surprisingly low-key music score (used sparingly), there’s a cameo by famous rakugo storyteller Sanyutei Kinba III (1894-1964) and a gloriously weird modern ballet performance by the ‘Youth Ballet Group’. 

Sanyutei Kinba III

 

And, of course, there’s Hideko Takamine – not in one of her most interesting roles, perhaps, but still demonstrating the naturalness and subtlety of expression that made her one of the cinema’s finest actors.