Floating Weeds (1959)
Floating Weeds (1959, Daiei, 119 minutes)
● Screenplay/Director: Yasujiro Ozu
● Cast: Ganjiro Nakamura, Machiko Kyo, Ayako Wakao, Haruko Sugimura, Hiroshi Kawaguchi, Hitomi Nozoe, Kumeko Urabe, Chishu Ryu
Produced by Daiei, in color, and set in Shima, Mie Prefecture, this is a film that can be viewed with a unique or fresh feeling even among Ozu's works.
The opening, which captures a large lighthouse with fixed shots while changing angles alongside empty bottles, ships, and mailboxes, is very beautiful.
You can enjoy imagining how this film will unfold while associating metaphors: the lighthouse is always there to welcome those who come, while empty bottles drift, ships come and go, and mailboxes receive messages.
It depicts a few days in the life of a traveling theater troupe performing in a seaside town.
With no electric fans or air conditioning, they cool off in the evening with paper fans.
Among the children walking on the road, there are even naked boys. While this was natural for the era, the children's clothes are mostly just white undershirts, with almost no color.
The adults play shogi, and the children play menko.
Images that could be called the original landscape of a Japanese summer are projected quietly and peacefully.
Along with "My Neighbor Totoro", I hope this work will also be passed down to future generations of Japanese people as an image that records the standard of a "Japanese summer".
It is the perfect film to watch during this time of year.
The story finally begins to move around the 45-minute mark.
After his current partner Sumiko (Machiko Kyo) feels suspicious of the troupe leader Komajuro's (Ganjiro Nakamura) behavior and persistently questions the members, it is revealed that he has an illegitimate child with a former lover he met here while traveling, and that he visits every year.
And the scene where Sumiko visits the leader at that woman's (Haruko Sugimura) place (a so-called showdown) is breathtakingly tense.
It is pouring rain outside.
There is no background music.
The camera is, of course, fixed.
The two of them fell perfectly silent. However, the silence that occurred when the progress of a storm was suddenly halted just as it was about to rage was by no means a symbol of peace. There was something rather terrifying lurking in that unnaturally suppressed moment of silence.
...I remembered this passage from Natsume Soseki's "Meian" (Light and Darkness).
And the story twists further as Sumiko asks Kayo to seduce Kiyoshi (the illegitimate child).
The seduction technique of Kayo, played by Ayako Wakao, is so perfectly executed that Kiyoshi becomes unable to live without her.
Before doing it, Kayo had said, "Can I really do something like that?" but she visits Kiyoshi, who works at the post office, saying she wants to send a telegram, and lets him know she knows who he is by saying, "You're Kiyoshi, right?"
"Please come over there."
"Who is the addressee?"
"It's you."
She says this to call him out and tells him to meet her after the play.
In the scene where the two meet secretly in the hut afterward, Kiyoshi's face is completely in the dark, with no lighting on it.
"Are you trembling? Me too, look. Like this." She takes Kiyoshi's hand, places it on her chest, and kisses him.
Kiyoshi, now ignited, kisses Kayo himself.
And he's fallen. The scheme is a success. Game set.
A young man who, if he had any free time, would study with his senior at the post office where he worked, has now reached a state where he doesn't care about university anymore.
This part of the depiction is also drawn carefully, and you can enjoy the film by empathizing with any of the characters.
Some inn. The two are wearing matching yukata.
Even in the scene where Kayo tries to persuade Kiyoshi by saying, "You should go back to your mother," it cuts to a scene where, despite her words, she ends up in Kiyoshi's arms and they kiss.
A Ramune bottle and an empty ice cream dish are on the low table, but there are empty beer bottles outside the room.
I wrote that you can empathize with them, but the line where Kayo says, "Take me with you, boss," is a bit of a mystery as to whether it was her true intention.
Certainly, she has nowhere else to go, and she may also feel that being with her is not good for Kiyoshi.
Given that she didn't push it further after being stopped by Komajuro, I feel that she didn't really mean it seriously.
This is the only part where a little mystery remains.
In the final scene, there isn't much dialogue between Komajuro and Sumiko, but it is fully wrapped in the aesthetic of the so-called Ozu style, and it is wonderfully moving.