The Most Beautiful

Typical of Japanese war-time propaganda, the film suggests that Japan's fascist ideology, its inculcation of fanatical obedience, its vast perpetration of unthinkable atrocities in a systematic manner, and its aggressive military expansionism can all be replaced by Japan's supposed victimization. Rather telling in this respect is the song that the girls repeatedly sing to boost morale, a song that recalls that barbarian Mongol conquerors once tried to invade Japan from China, but that the perpetrators of such heinous deeds of aggression could not possibly co-exist under the same sky with the innocent and pure Japanese-- this, of course, is being sung during a war that was begun when an utterly unprovoked Japan invaded China and slaughtered untold numbers of its population mercilessly.

All of this would be something that one could simply shrug off as the past blindness of war, but films such as these are more disturbing today than, say, Triumph of the Will because while Germany was forced to confront the horrors it had unleashed upon the world, most Japanese films even today (and textbooks for that matter) still tend to view Japan as a victim in the war (see, for instance, Kurosawa's own Rhapsody in August so many decades later). Assisted by the policies of the American post-war occupation, Japan has never had to come to terms with what it did to the planet, and what in human history can possibly more disturbing than a lack of accountability for the worst sins humanity can commit? And by the way, I say all of this despite the fact that Kurosawa is probably my favorite director.

Like SANSHIRO SUGATA PART 2, this film was never released in the U.S. for political reasons. There's not any blatantly anti-American content, as in SSP2, but THE MOST BEAUTIFUL, filmed by government request, was a pro-Imperialist propaganda document.

Kurosawa gamely attempts to weave together a story which functions both as propaganda and as a tender coming-of-age story, but isn't entirely successful. This would have been a demanding proposition even for a seasoned pro, let alone a young director like Kurosawa, directing only his second feature.

The story follows a group of young girls working in an armaments factory in the latter days of WWII. The girls must increase production sharply. The girls suffer hardships of all sorts. One, Tao, emerges as the leader of the group. Through the travails of helping her coworkers meet their quotas, Tao learns courage, fortitude and compassion.

If all this sounds a little boring, that's because it is. Kurosawa's visual signatures are seldom seen. At least the performances are good, especially Yoko Yaguchi as Tao. Takashi Shimura has a thankless, do-nothing role as the foreman of the factory.

Can outright propaganda lead to a great film experience? I think so. Mikhail Kalatozov's Soy Cuba was nothing but propaganda for the Cuban Revolution, and it's a remarkable watch. The problem in general, I think, is that the demands of propaganda and drama are almost always diametrically opposed. Drama requires certain stakes and potentialities that propaganda is naturally resistant towards. It also requires a certain level of subtlety that is anathema to propaganda. You don't need a subtly driven message of duty to one's country, you need to hit your audience over the head with duty to Imperial Japan against America and Britain. That lack of subtlety combined with the fact that there is no antagonist really derails any sort of audience investment in the actions of the characters in Akira Kurosawa's second film, a film specifically made for propaganda purposes, funded by the Japanese government in the middle of World War II.

The story is about a group of female workers in a factory that specializes in lenses for the military. We never see an American or Brit, instead we just follow the girls as they try to deal with life during a four months period where production must increase over quotas. Something felt off about this film from the beginning when Watanabe (Yoko Yaguchi) cries to management that it's unfair that the men's quota went up by 100% but the women's quota only went up by 50%. Surely management, led by the director of the plant (Takashi Shimura), doesn't think so little of the women and their commitment to the cause. Surely they can raise the women's quota to 67%. When Watanabe comes back and tells all the girls of her successful negotiation, they all break into cheers. Do I believe that Japanese women would feel great senses of duty to the Empire and the cause? Yes, I do. Do I believe that they would endeavor to work as hard as possible? Yes. The issue is that it's all too easy. There's never a dissenting voice in the group about the work they have to do or the pressures on them. Management is kindly patriarchal and never harsh. There's no real drama here. It's all just dedication to the cause.

The bulk of the movie tracks the girls' morale against the output with a very clear relationship between them being happy and them meeting their goals over the four months. The pieces that feel like drama are a girl, Suzumura (Asako Suzuki) getting slightly sick and her father coming from the country to Tokyo to take her home with the rest of the girls crying as she leaves with her begging their forgiveness for missing work. There's another girl, Koyama (Haruko Toyama) who constantly runs a slight fever at night, but Watanabe covers for her so that she can work while protecting her from other physical activity. When the woman who runs their dorm, Mizushima (Takako Irie), leaves for a few days to try and bring Suzumura back, the other girls turn on Watanabe, with her quietly accepting the verbal assault until Toyama tells everyone the truth about her low-grade fever and how it's all for the cause of helping them meet their quota. These bits of drama amount to little of interest because the characters are so uniform and everything is brought up and forgotten in minutes. All of these girls are completely interchangeable because they have no real character or desire other than to help increase output for the cause.

The ending of the film is dominated by a single event where Watanabe, in her job as an inspector of the lenses after production, misplaced a lens she hadn't fully inspected. If she doesn't find it and it goes out, there could be Japanese lives at risk, so she spends all night looking, eventually finding it with little more than a pat on the back by management. They're happy she worked so hard and not mad at all for her for the mistake. It's all very sanitized.

And that really points to a problem with propaganda like this. None of the girls can have any question about the cause or being overworked or have problems with management. Problems have to be with people who aren't dedicated to the cause (a father figure far removed from the factory) while it can't be anyone in the factory because that could imply there are saboteurs in actual factories. Without any real antagonists, problems have to come from misunderstandings between like-minded individuals. It's just not that interesting.

The most interesting thing about the film is two-fold. The first is the look at a real optics factory in Imperial Japan. It's almost a pseudo-documentary about the manufacture of lenses in a certain way. The second is Kurosawa's eye. There are times when the film is quite nice to look at. They're fewer and further between than in Sanshiro Sugata, but they are there. There's a shot of the girls gathered round a pair of barrels that's quite striking, and there's a small moment where one of the girls goes outside in the middle of the night into the vegetable garden they keep with the moon featured prominently in very nice ways.

Otherwise, the movie is kind of a drag. There's no real drama. The characters are thin and interchangeable. This was a burgeoning artist working under a tight artistic regime that demanded a storytelling mode that wasn't really amenable to compelling cinema.

Propaganda films are usually of interest to me because of the situation and time period they were made in and their point of view not because of plot or sublime character development. Rarely do the characterizations, I currently cannot think of one, go beyond one or two dimensions. This is because the point of the propaganda film regardless of origin is to rally the troops and align their sense of duty. This movie is no different in that regard. But there are several key differences from the typical propaganda film that makes this film more interesting. The most interesting approach was the documentary approach Kurosawa took. Though he used actresses he did all he could to remove the artificiality of their craft to create a realistic portrait of the young girls at that time who were working in military construction. I felt this movie was effective in that regard. The tempered acting to those that are used to the Noh influenced acting of his later films. Another surprise is that this is one of two films of Kurosawa where the protagonist is a woman. The other one is No Regrets For Our Youth (1946) with Setsuko Hara.

The least interesting aspect of the film is the story. It is about a group of young women in an optical instrument factory that have to push up production to fill the need for the optical lens. While the men were asked to increase their production a hundred percent, the women were asked to do 50 percent. This insulted the women and they asked that they do a more respectable number like 66 percent (would a higher number have been insulting to the men?). The hardships created by this are numerable as the women face sickness, injury, mental breakdown and general crabbiness.

The movie is too episodic and heavy on the "team spirit" motif (not that Kurosawa had much of a choice), but it eventually settles on the titular protagonist in Tsuru Watanabe (Yoko Yaguchi) who embodies the spirit (kokoro) of an ideal worker. Her mother is dying, but her father and her mother want her to stay in the factory working so that Japan will not lose face. What is subversive is that she is a stubborn individualist. When she loses track of lens that she did not finish correcting, she goes through the monument task of finding it, and regardless of the pain it causes her, the lack of sleep and her supervisors telling her she does not need to do it – she does it anyways.

I do not agree with Donald Richie in his The Films of Akira Kurosawa when he states "Twenty years later it is almost impossible for us to think a lost lens this important." She states that she worries that lost lens might result in the death of Japanese soldiers (and possibly in her mind a battle and ultimately the war). It does not matter if she is correct in this thinking, it only matters that she feels that way. Anyone who has any degree of OCD can relate to this. Once the mind gets fixed with an idea that may haunt them it is easy to understand the monomania which consumes her until she finds her mistake.

One thing that surprised me when hearing it in the film, and the fact that Kurosawa got away with putting into the score (he mentions this in his autobiography), is the insertion of "Semper Fidelis" by John Philip Sousa.

Has anyone seen any other Kurosawa film where he uses as many horizontal wipes? After the picture he married the main actress Yoko Yaguchi. It was love at first sight. Kurosawa stated "She was a terribly stubborn and uncompromising person, and since I am very much the same, we often clashed head on." I do wonder how well they got along over the years though.

I think this film can satisfy not only Akira Kurosawa fans but fans of social realist cinema and of course those looking for propaganda films of WWII. If someone is just getting into Japanese cinema this probably could be passed on for quite a long awhile. But for completists (those reading this) they will want to see this. But then again completists want to see everything.

During the World War II, the management of a war industry of optical instruments for weapons requests an effort from the workers to increase the productivity during four months. The target for male workers is an increase of 100% of the production, but the female workers, led by the dedicated Tsuru Watanabe (Yôko Yaguchi), ask the direction to surpass their goal from 50% to 70%. Along the period, the women have to overcome illness and their personal problems to complete their quote.

"Ichiban Utsukushiku" is a war propaganda and tribute to the Japanese female workers in times of war by Akira Kurosawa recommended only for fans of this great director. The plot is boring in many moments, but I liked to see the humanization of the nationalist Japanese workers and this unusual perspective from a people that were sooner defeated in the war. The winners usually write the history from their perspective and this film is a rare testimony from the Japanese point of view. Watanabe is an enlightened character with her dedication and positive leadership. My vote is six.

Title (Brazil): "A Mais Bela" ("The Most Beautiful")