Floating Clouds

This melodrama of postwar Japan seemed to resonate with the people I watched it with; many seem to have seen it when it came out and it really spoke to them; but alas it is really a turgid melodrama that can't sustain your interest. Well directed and acted; it none the less becomes a series of redundant bad break scenes for it's heroine. Worth seeing, but not one of the greats of Japanese film.

Ukigumo (1955), directed by Mikio Naruse, was shown as "Floating Clouds" at the Dryden Theatre in Rochester as part of a Naruse retrospective. This is Naruse's best-known film, and it stars his muse, the outstanding actor Hideko Takamine. The film is adapted from a novel by Fumiko Hayashi. Seven or eight of Naruse's films were based on novels by this author. Finally, many of the Toho studio supporting players appear in this movie, as they do in all of Naruse's films. In summary, "Floating Clouds" is classic Naruse.

As in many Naruse films, the theme is grim. Japan is still struggling in the aftermath of World War II. The economy is slow, and the pall of defeat still hangs over the country.

Although we think of the war as totally tragic for everyone involved--especially everyone Japanese--this isn't accurate. Hideko Takamine's character (Yukiko) had a passionate and sincere wartime romance with an engineer when they were both stationed in an area away from the combat zone. It becomes clear--ten years later--that this love affair was the high point of both their lives. Masuki Mori plays Kengo, the engineer who loves Yukiko, but who will never marry her.

The tragedy of the film is that both Yukiko and Kengo have known happiness, but realize they will never know it again. Such happiness as they can grasp is undone by the harsh realities of financial and physical problems.

This movie is not exactly a masterpiece, but it is the perfect film if you can only see one work by Naruse. It defines his themes, demonstrates his unique skills and extraordinary expertise, and showcases the best actors in his company. It's a movie worth seeking out and watching.

Ot the three senior directors who dominated the golden age of Japanese cinema, Mikio Naruse is the least known in the West. This could be partly due to the fact that unlike his contemporaries, Mizoguchi and Ozu, his cinematic language was more conventional and less innovative. And yet, if one looks long and hard, it becomes possible to identify stylistic trademarks that could be uniquely his, characters that are forever walking and interiors that are often shot from the centre of a room looking towards a corner. The very title is a metaphor for characters that are drifting their lives away with very little sense of purpose. The tragic couple, Yukiko and Kengo, who met in French Indo-China during the second world war when they were engaged on a forestry project find themselves drifting when they meet up again in a post-war Japan soured with defeat and despair. Generally when we see them they are walking, often through urban landscapes of a Tokyo desolate and scarred by the immediate past. They are always on the move in the manner almost of characters in a road movie to wherever they can travel, be it to a sad holiday resort out of season or a remote island drenched by rain that hardly ever stops. But their relationship is doomed partly because whatever passion they may feel for one another is always curiously out of sync with each other's. Their personalities are also deeply flawed to the extent that neither is able to cope with the social disadvantages of being part of a defeated nation. It has been said that defeat left many professional Japanese men feeling emotionally emasculated. This is certainly true of Kengo. As for Yukika, she has none of the stoicism of Mizoguchi's long suffering female protagonists. Dissatisfaction with her lot has left her whingeing with self pity. ""Floating Clouds" is a deeply pessimistic film in a way that Kurosawa's "The Silent Duel", which deals with a pair of lovers living through the similar period of the immediate aftermath of war, is not. Ultimately Kurosawa's characters come to terms with misfortune in a way that presages a future of some hope. Both films no doubt reflect their directors' widely different temperaments.

This at first appears to be a riveting study of human relationships, and it is entertaining. But ultimately it never gets beyond the level of a high class soaper, and it goes on far too long. Calling it a soaper is by no means pejorative; I am a dedicated fan of Douglas Sirk. But Sirk never took himself as seriously as the makers of this film appear to, and that makes it all the more ponderous. Worth seeing, however.

"Ukigumo" covers a considerable span of time and numerous locations. It tells the story of a young woman (Hideko Takamine) who served in Japan's forest service in Indochina during WW2, and fell in love with a (married) co-worker (Masayuki Mori) while there. After the war, she returns to Japan, completely impoverished, and finds her lover (more or less) comfortably re-established in his family and uninterested in fulfilling the idle promises he made during the war. While Mori is only willing to dally half-heartedly with her (as well as younger prettier women), Takamine remains obsessed with him. Takamine and Mori do a fine job. I found the story effective enough, albeit a bit overly melodramatic. Not my favorite Naruse film, but very much worth seeing.