Madamu to nyôbô

. Atsushi Watanabe stars as a playwright who moves with his family to a small rental house out in the country so that he can use the relative quiet to help finish his new play. He still ends up dealing with all manner of annoyances, including from his wife (Kinuyo Tanaka), his young daughter (Mitsuko Ichimura), and Madame (Satoko Date), the wife of their next door neighbor. Madame is a singer in her husband's jazz band, and their musical practicing makes work impossible.

This just-under 1 hour comedy is the earliest Japanese film that I've seen with sound, as they were slower to adopt the new technology, and in fact a number of noted directors continued in the silent format for another few years. The jokes are of the light-chuckle variety, and the performances, featuring several Shochiku studio regulars, are all fine. At one point, Watanabe is heard singing the chorus of "The Broadway Melody". There just isn't enough here to make this stand out at all.

This film begins with a playwright by the name of "Shinsaku Shibano" (Atsushi Watanabe) looking for a house to rent somewhere in the country where he can have some peace of mind from all of the distractions normally found in the big city. To that effect, once he finds what he is looking for he quickly moves in with his family and eventually starts to work on a play that has a short deadline. Unfortunately, it's at this time that he discovers that his neighbor's wife, "Takiko Yamakawa" (Satoko Date) is a jazz singer who constantly invites fellow musicians over to practice some musical numbers they intend to sing before audiences in the near future. Naturally, unable to concentrate with all of the noise, he ventures over to the house where he is welcomed with open arms-and this causes problems for his own wife "Kinuyo" (Kinuyo Tanaka). Now, rather than reveal any more, I will just say that this was the first "talkie" ever produced in Japan and as such the viewer may need to make some allowances for the audio. Likewise, it also takes place during a time when Japan was experiencing social tensions brought on by its emergence into the modern world and because of that the humor may be lost on viewers unfamiliar with these changes. Be that as it may, although this movie definitely has some fairly humorous scenes here and there, it really hasn't aged very well and for that reason I have rated it accordingly. Average.

This was not, as I had expected, a silent movie, but a full talky: the first, according to the IMDb, produced in Japan. Atsushi Watanabe is a playwright who has just rented a country house and moved there, with his wife, Kinuyo Tanaka, where he is to finish his new play -- which he has barely begun -- within a month. However, as you might expect, this is rather more easily said than done. There are constant interruptions: the friends who helped them move won't leave. The children demand constant attention. Door-to-door salesmen pop by to sell him patent medicines, and there's a jazz band practicing next door, with a modernistic and sexy Satoko Date to arouse the jealousy of the wife.

Gosho was clearly held in high esteem by production company Shochiku, to helm such an important movie, and he acquits himself in his comedy direction very well. Given the timing, it's no wonder that most of the jokes are about noise, their disruption, and a definite nostalgia for the Good Old Days is evident in the movie, even as everyone shrugs their shoulders and admits this is 1931 and we must be modern. Watanabe, who later played many roles, great and small for Kurosawa, is excellent in his role, awkward and gawky and impatient and very real. It's certainly not a great movie, but it remains a very pleasant effort.

The plot here is quite simple. It's the Laurel and Hardy or W. C. Fields plot where someone wants to do some work, but everything seems to be there to distract him. But here, the neighbors bring up another roadblock. It is pretty crude but it does have some physical humor. Different than the dark Japanese pieces I watched leading up to this.