Obscure Japanese Film #257
 |
| Taiji Tonoyama |
This late film by the prolific writer-director Kaneto Shindo (best known for his 1964 picture, Onibaba) tells the story of Taiji Tonoyama, an actor who appeared in most of Shindo’s films before his death at the age of 73 in 1989. Tonoyama was a short, prematurely bald Yoda lookalike with sad, baggy eyes, so he was usually to be found among the supporting casts of the many films he appeared in, in roles of various sizes – the only leading roles played by him that I’m aware of were in two Shindo films: The Naked Island (1960) and the previously-reviewed Libido (1967).
 |
| Naoto Takenaka |
Shindo recreates scenes from the actor’s life with Naoto Takenaka as Tonoyama, placing the focus on his relationships with his first wife, Asako (Hideko Yoshida), and second wife, Kimie (Keiko Oginome), whom he meets when he is 36 and still married to Asako and Kimie is 17 and working as a waitress. Tonoyama was an unlikely womaniser and we also see him picking up various barmaids with apparent ease while simultaneously fighting a lifelong battle with the demon drink. Shindo intersperses these dramatisations with scenes from the films they made together and a straight-to-camera interview with Nobuko Otowa, Shindo’s mistress and eventual wife who frequently acted alongside Tonoyama (Otowa died in 1994, so Shindo must have been sitting on this for at least 6 years). Towards the end, there is also some very brief interview footage with fellow directors Shohei Imamura, Hiromichi Horikawa and Seijiro Koyama.
 |
| Nobuko Otowa |
Shindo had already written a book about Tonoyama, who had also written a number of books himself, notably a 1966 volume whose title translates as The Irresponsible Ramblings of a Third-Rate Actor (unsurprisingly, these have not made it into English).While I’ve long been a fan of Tonoyama myself, I’m not really sure that Shindo has done his memory a lot of favours by making this film. Although Naoto Takenaka’s performance seems a pretty good Tonoyama impression for the first couple of minutes, he goes on to deliver every line with exactly the same throaty, drawn-out intonation, and it gets old fast. The film is also way too long at over two hours – a one-hour documentary would have been far more preferable in my view, especially as the end result feels so superficial and sentimental, with the repetitive piano and violin music-by-numbers score delivering the coup de grâce to what is easily the weakest Shindo film I’ve seen.
 |
| Keiko Oginome |
A note on the title:
The film is frequently listed as ‘By Player’ in English, but I’m sure this was never an official release title. It’s also meaningless, and I can only assume that somebody somewhere came up with ‘bit player’ as a translation for ‘sanmon yakusha’ and somehow managed to confuse ‘bit’ with ‘by’.
DVD at Amazon Japan (no English subtitles)
English subtitles at Open Subtitles
If you enjoy this blog, feel free to Buy Me a Coffee!
No comments:
Post a Comment