This film is the fourth directorial effort by Shinoda Masahiro. Shinoda had started directing at Shochiku the previous year, having previously worked there as a second unit director for Ozu Yasujiro, who obviously has a totally different cinematic style. By 1961, Shinoda had not yet found his personal approach to film-making, and this film finds him still practicing his craft. It is an adaptation from a novel by Sono Ayako, and the screenplay was adapted by Shinoda together with Terayama Shuji, who had worked on his three prior films as well. The lead actors, Kawazu Yusuke and Iwashita Shima had also appeared in these films. Iwashita, of course, would become Shinoda's wife in 1967.
"Waga koi no tabiji" (Epitaph to My Love, 1961) starts off looking like a yakuza film, and then journeys towards the melodramatic color-kingdom of Douglas Sirk. It's a classically structured melodrama, told partly in flashback-form. Kiyoshi (Kawazu) meets Chie (Iwashita) and falls in love, but economic troubles darken their world. Things get even worse when Chie is involved in a car accident, and loses her memory. That's pretty classic melodrama right there. The world of this film is not as pretty as that of Sirk, or that of Ozu, Kinoshita or Naruse for that matter. The film looks youthfully rugged, but the narrative still comes through as conservative. In the end, it all seems very uneven and carelessly put-together in terms of style and substance. A more traditional director would have better served this material, as Shinoda doesn't seem all too interested in it. Probably the studio made him do the film.
This is not a bad film in any sense, but's also not a very good one. The scenes aren't memorable enough to make an impact one way or the other. The acting is pretty good, especially Iwashita, who was named the best new star in 1961. The following year she would only advance in the ranks of Japanese actresses by appearing in two classic films, Ozu's "Sanma no aji" (An Autumn Afternoon) and Kobayashi's "Seppuku" (Harakiri). She is a talented actress, and would later get better films from her husband as well.
