La strada senza fine

This silent Japanese melodrama from Shochiku and director Mikio Naruse is about a young waitress Sugiko (Setsuko Shinobu) with a bright future. The day after her boyfriend proposes marriage, she's also offered a contract with a film studio to become a movie star. These wonderful options are both lost when she's accidentally hit by a car. The vehicle belongs to rich guy Hiroshi (Hikaru Yamanouchi), and he feels personally responsible, even if it was his chauffeur driving. He makes sure that Sugiko gets all the medical care she needs, while also falling in love with her, but his status-conscious mother and sister disapprove.

This fits firmly in the "women's picture" weepie genre that Naruse specialized in during the sound era (this would be his final silent film). Shinobu is good as the pure-at-heart Sugiko who gets driven to the emotional edge through no fault of her own. There's a subplot about Sugiko's former roommate becoming a film star, and her relationship with a struggling artist, that doesn't really add to the proceedings, and the film could have been tightened up with its omission. There are a few clever filming tricks used, such as a car crash being depicted not by the vehicle being shown wrecked, but rather having the personal effects of the car's occupants shown falling down a cliff in close-up.

"Even today, feudalistic notions of 'family' crush the pure love of young people in Japan."

A tad melodramatic early on, but eventually settles into a story about love across class lines with a refreshing, progressive message. The quiet strength of the character of the young waitress (Setsuko Shinobu) as she endures her wealthy mother and sister-in-law's taunts and eventually stands up for herself was admirable for the period. It's part of a larger theme, modernization, and how some changes should be embraced, like letting people marry for love.

Naruse puts images of working girls in western style hair and dress next to traditional images like Mt. Fuji, and lets his camera rove over the changes taking place to Tokyo. His creative use of the camera and fast edits give the film a vibrant feeling. Adding another layer to the story were the young woman's friends (Chiyoko Katori and Shinichi Himori) trying their hand at the movie industry. Look for the brief clip of The Smiling Lieutenant with Miriam Hopkins and Maurice Chevalier too.

The top layer here is about a modern life of movies and automobiles that is still under rigorous control of feudal structures. A waitress in a café is groomed to be a movie actress but her career hinges on her patrons' opinion of her love life. Finally she is back on the streets. This is so unremarkably blunt that near the middle an intertitle plainly announces as much.

But this is also about a fate that steals into you and hurts spontaneously, capriciously. Love defined by what you see, and what crashes into you.

So a melodrama about love and counter-love but with histrionics that function on decidedly overblown coincidence. The turning point, away from episodes of ordinary life and into soap operatic excess, is when our waitress is approached on the street to become a movie actress, itself a dream scenario. The rest unfolds as one of her movies might have, a lot of tragic irony and brazen emotion.

But there is a third layer here that achieves an exceptional resonance by resolving the play on a level behind narrative. Look for the scene where our waitress drives up with her soon-to-be husband to a majestic view of Mt. Fuji in the distance.

The obvious thing to note in tandem with the overarching message about persisting tradition, is that the modern pilgrimage - Mt Fuji being a traditional destination in the Edo period - is no longer an arduous trek on foot and instead a scenic, leisurely drive. But still to the place in view of the gods.

The other is that Mt. Fuji, the spiritual heart of Japan, can be written with characters meaning 'not-two' (fu-ji), also meaning 'unique'. The contrast of this is the fascinating tradition among adherents of the Shinto faith to construct artificial replicas of Mt. Fuji, small mounds of a few feet high, inside Tokyo, then Edo, and usually in view of the mountain (a famous one used to be in Meguro, others in Takata and Fukagawa, a few dozen of these remain to this day). This was done to facilitate a more comfortable pilgrimage to these 'new Fujis', whereby the people could exercise their religious duty without having to leave behind the bustle of secular ones.

Now most viewers will note that the film is rich in symmetry: two crashes reversing fate, two actresses performing roles, two spurned lovers. We may be inclined to interpret by folding the two ends. We may puzzle when it doesn't really compute as such. One crash is clearly the result of a karmic thread and we see, to that effect, the man actually broken in a hospital bed as result of his mother's and sister's meddling, the other is the result of random causality, pure chance. One of the women becomes an actress and discovers true love, the other doesn't. One lover abandons, the other is abandoned.

So we have only the illusion of symmetry, artificial nature. Things are 'not-two', no two people are the same, no two mountains, no two images, though we construct replicas to that effect - and cinema is a major tool to that effect.

This is a brilliant concept, so deeply visual and Japanese it still seems novel and fresh to this day - the same way Zen gardens of hundreds of years ago look 'modern'.

At the center is only a chance glimpse into a speeding vehicle repeated twice, a movie shot framed from life. And all sorts of narratives implicit by watching, because we expect things to mean things other than themselves. Oh, sometimes they do and there is a story. A woman and a man embracing in a car, what else would anyone surmise but a love affair? But they don't always, and lives are broken in the assumption.

Assymetry, empty space at the center of stories is what Naruse brilliantly achieves, with just these few strokes. You can only illustrate around this space, in our case the enigmatic final shot of the man on the bus.

What does it mean? Is he back? Back and married? Looking for her? Herself looking for him and conjuring the image? You pour your own tea.

But knowing he interpreted wrong the first time is our hint to resist the urge to attach a narrative. Take for what it is, meaning itself. Only the Japanese could do this so well.

Something to meditate upon.

Naruse's final silent film "Kagirinaki hodô" (Street Without End, 1934) was produced by Shochiku, where the director spent his silent period though not for much longer. It has survived in complete form and while the plot-line is not a masterwork, the film offers fascinating glimpses into Japanese modernity of the 1930's, early Showa period. For myself, it was more enjoyable due to the cinematography, the locations, the culture and the fashion than for the narrative, which is pretty plain and superficial for the director.

The film is a lightweight melodrama about two waitresses, Sugiko (Shinobu Setsuko) and Kesako (Katori Chiyoko). Being modern girls, they work for a living. But this still being Japan, work is seen as a transitional period. They aren't quite sure what they want for the future. There's a talent scout from a movie studio who is interested in Sugiko, but it's her friend who would like to become an actress. Sugiko gets engaged with a guy, but then tragedy occurs. She is hit by a car, and the guy thinks she doesn't want him after all. Little "Love Affair" before "Love Affair" (1939). It's hard to see this in a completely melodramatic light when the man jumps to conclusions like that. Anyway, this gives Sugiko a chance to get to know the driver who hit her, and Kesako goes on to pursue the career thing. Both are in for some let-downs.

This film has a lively feeling to it. Though it's a melodrama by plot, the characters appear easy-going and relaxed. In one scene a couple goes to see "The Smiling Lieutenant" (1931) by Ernst Lubitsch, a director whose fanbase included most notable Japanese directors of the time. The women bounce between modernity and tradition, and these things aren't always black and white. The material isn't a prize winner, but Naruse does the best he can with it, and by 1934 he had developed into a fine storyteller with an eye for visuals as well. This is a pleasant watch for anyone interested in the time period, or the director.