A Wanderer's Notebook

[Dan Sallitt]

I can't find a way into this movie. It manages to create a character
for Hayashi, but not much of a storytelling context: the focus remains
on her stoicism in the face of relentless poverty, and on the poetry of
her voiceover commentary on her struggles. Takamine's performance,
though livened with comic moments, mostly seems actorish to me, too
devoted to impersonation. Characteristically, Naruse gives only
partial information about important character points: Did Hayashi
really sabotage her literary rival? Was her bad record with
relationships a character trait? But here the ambiguity doesn't
suggest alternative narratives. The film winds up mythologizing
Hayashi just by putting her so up front and center, and I'm not sure
that mythologizing suits Naruse.

- Dan

[jaime.c...@gmail.com]

Well, I don't know if this film has a poor reputation in general but I
got a rapid-fire 6 thumbs down from Dan, Jeff and Keith before leaving
today's 3pm screening - at least I was able to come home to this board
and NOT to find it being battered and vivisected and slurred and so
forth. Not YET.

It's a great film, maybe my third or fourth favorite film by Naruse,
and at least a near-masterpiece. And it's not that I think it's a
great "film maudit," although thinking about other famous film maudits
or "silly" masterpieces (I wouldn't like to name them - just imagine
the kind of film that turns a Film Forum crowd into a roiling mob of
self-satisfied, knee-slapping, tsk-ing, yukking hyenas*, and you'll
have some idea of what I mean) may reveal the way I found my most
rewarding inroad. Even if it comes to light (per Dan, or Michael K.,
or whomever) that the film has even a moderately healthy reputation,
I'd like to at least highlight the fact that I see the weirdness and
what I call "bad codes"** in WANDERER'S NOTEBOOK, but that I think
Naruse's form, with a little help from Ms. Takamine's great
performance***, transforms the whole kit, good and bad together, into a
great work of art.

To date, there's been nothing in the series, until NOTEBOOK, that I
found embarrassing or laughable. Oh, maybe Tatsuya Nakadai's
lovey-dovey faces in WIVES, DAUGHTERS, AND A MOTHER. On the other
hand, there are some problems with this film: tearful speechifying,
some bad choices in the editing (like that awful cut to Takamine
screaming "I hate you!" to her TB-ridden husband, which doesn't fit at
all with the rest of the scene), an ab-Narusean episodic arc that had
already been run into the ground when they made ALEXANDER'S RAGTIME
BAND in 1938, and with regards to that you knew you were in trouble
with that prologue, right? And c.

Think I should reveal something about myself that some know and others
may not know. In film, my biggest priority is form. Not just style,
not just A Beautiful Shot or A Dazzling Cut, but all that stuff
together...the rhythm of a film from frame to frame, not discounting
sound at all (despite what some foolish people tell you in film
school). Style can be appealing, pretty pictures can be appealing, but
form can cause your head to turn all the way around, like 360 degrees,
right on its stump. And being an auteurist, although sometimes I think
a weekend auteurist, an auteurist when the sun's out, etc., I find a
film like WANDERER'S NOTEBOOK has great value not just for its own
sake, but for the complicated ways it'll help me illuminate other
Naruse films, major and minor. (For instance I think it'll help put
the zap on my head when I re-see FLOWING in Brooklyn in '06.)

That said - by the way I'm no enemy of story structure or performance
or the power of a face or body, me with my big fat Takamine crush - I
was constantly drawn to Naruse's power to modulate the rhythm and
atmosphere in a single space over a long scene, i.e. what I think is
the film's most spectacular set piece, in the bar where (1) she downs
ten shots of something, (2) two patrons enter and abuse the hostesses,
(3) she tells them in no uncertain terms where to stick it and (4) they
are replaced by genial literati. It sounds Hollywoodish and, if you
wanted to be really down on it you could say the scene lacks even
H'wood's trademark, transparent cause-and-effect apparatus wherein
Hayashi's dressing-down of the abusive patrons *leads* to her big
break...but from the perspective of what I'm getting out of Naruse, and
the cinema in general, it was a great, sustained piece of moviemaking.
(There are other great examples of
modulations-of-rhythms-across-single,-long-scenes in NOTEBOOK.)

Keith probably won't be able to resist reporting for the record his own
post-screening bon mot, so let me just say that I have one too, and
it's...if not better, it's at least longer: the film can be described
as a remake of CIMARRON by Vincente Minnelli starring Nina Pens Rode
who was instructed by Zanuck to channel the spirit of Roscoe Arbuckle.
More on the serious side, I'd rather think of the film in terms of
GERTRUD than in terms of achingly bad biopics and epics like CIMARRON
(the one with Richard Dix) and THE STORY OF LOUIS PASTEUR, and so
forth. Hayashi gives the film an underlying core of semi-GERTRUD-ish
inscrutability - although it's not 100% the same as what Dreyer did -
that I found fascinating and distinctive, although I think I'd think
the film was even greater if I could imbricate that inscrutability with
what Naruse does as a director (see above).

It's a weird picture. It doesn't seem to fit the Naruse Big Picture -
it sticks out. But I love it.

* Feel I should point out that the audience at the 3pm was not like
this. Which supports my point that NOTEBOOK isn't an FM.
** In another context, "bad codes" are laugh cues for Film Forum
jackals.
***Which also risks tsking if you weren't bowled over like me, it's a
very "method" perf, and there's that community-theater old-age makeup
at the end there.

[Michael Kerpan]

Jaime -- I'm with you -- one hundred percent. I don't love this film
just as an "auteurist" or as a slavish admirer of Hideko Takamine. I
love it in its own. It is, by far, my favorite bio-pic, and it rises
considerably above te confines of that genre.

Yes, there are some problematic patches here and there, but so what.
Like you, I feel that, seen as a whole, the film's multitudinous
strengths far outweigh any minor blemishes.

As to reputation, I believe Takamine's performance here wa generally
considered to be one of her best.

[Dan Sallitt]

> Even if it comes to light (per Dan, or Michael K., or whomever) that the
> film has even a moderately healthy reputation

I've always had the feeling that Naruse commentators were complimentary
toward this film. Maybe you found yourself in a pocket of turbulence, and
everyone was having a good time a few seats over.

> On the other hand, there are some problems with this film: tearful
> speechifying, some bad choices in the editing (like that awful cut to
> Takamine screaming "I hate you!" to her TB-ridden husband, which doesn't
> fit at all with the rest of the scene), an ab-Narusean episodic arc that
> had already been run into the ground when they made ALEXANDER'S RAGTIME
> BAND in 1938, and with regards to that you knew you were in trouble with
> that prologue, right? And c.

There was some naked expository dialogue early on, but it subsided to an
acceptable level. I didn't find the film embarrassing, but I can't crack
it. I tend to think about Naruse in terms of his manipulation of
narrative forms and emphasis, and this one didn't play well to my
preconceptions.

> (3) she tells them in no uncertain terms where to stick it

This is where I usually feel Naruse's presence. A big scene-breaking
emotion like this often winds up taking us in a different direction than
expected: the climax will still have the shape and force of a climax, but
usually it leads to something other than the character evolution or plot
transformation that we expect.

In my mind, there wasn't enough context established here for me to find
the forking paths that these nodal points usually lead to. I come out of
this scene confirmed in my feeling that Hayashi is gutsy and sad, but I
don't feel as if I'm standing on new ground.

I actually liked another bar scene a lot, where Hayashi does her little
clown dance. Where did that come from? She's so dour most of the time.
When you think about it, she's able to draw a string of desirable (though
unpleasant) men, so she's probably not always dour - she must have charm,
or seductive powers. And there are a few other hints of extroversion in
her personality, like her funny habit of sticking her tongue out like a
little kid. I do wish that something more, or something different, was
done with this - as is, it feels like a few moments instead of an
undercurrent.

> More on the serious side, I'd rather think of the film in terms of
> GERTRUD

That last scene really evokes GERTRUD (which came a few years later).

> Hayashi gives the film an underlying core of semi-GERTRUD-ish
> inscrutability

I actually find Gertrud scrutable, maybe just because I so relate to her
mythology. The characterization there is very stripped down, though, very
abstract. Hayashi is more inscrutable, coz Naruse always conceals
important bits. But I wish she were more inscrutable, or less, or
something - basically, I wish she didn't carry the burden of being the
biopic subject, with its intense focus. I feel that that focus made it
hard for Naruse to be tricky. - Dan

[Keith Uhlich]

Nah. Won't be repeating that bon mot. It was a knee-jerk response and a
cruel, superficial one at that. I'm a bitchy queen in the immediate a lot of
the time, so my apologies, Jaime, for cramping your positive take when you
should have been given more support. I'm one who wants everyone to have
their say and I hope you might one day decide to write a full out essay on
"Wanderer's" (great thoughts here to expand on). As one who's often loved a
film immensely in the company of others who haven't, I know the pain and
I'll do my best to be more sensitive to you and to everyone on this board
who I've had the pleasure of sharing this festival with.

All that said, I stand by my belief that "A Wanderer's Notebook" is pretty
awful. Takamine's performance is all downturned eyes and occasional tics,
though the times when she stuck out her tongue seemed to me a hilarious -
and intentional - breaking of character that also gave some sorely needed
insight into the movie Fumiko, who mostly seems a hollow shell throughout. I
did, however, dig Naruse's recycling of the end quote from "Floating Clouds"
to close out "Wanderer's" - seemed his one genuine, personal engagement with
Fumiko's story beyond just relating the supposed facts.

Keith

[Jared Rapfogel]

So I'm definitely with Jaime on Wanderer's Notebook (for some reason I can never get around to writing about these things, which is why I'm several films behind here) - it's a bizarre film for Naruse partly just because it's essentially a bio-pic.  But I loved Takamine's boldly stylized, nakedly theatrical, and disarmingly comic performance, a bizarre approach but one that I thought worked beautifully, in part precisely because it was a bio-pic (a genre which tens to mitigate against adventurousness and irreverence).  And it's all the more surprising because it's not a biography of just anyone, but of Hayashi, a writer Naruse clearly admires, leading you to expect a more earnest, naturalistic portrayal.

 

At first I was put off by Takamine's perpetual hang-dog expression and her exaggeratedly slumped posture - but after fifteen or twenty minutes it became clear that the exaggeration was fully intentional, that she and Naruse were going for a silent-comedy quality, or maybe more accurately, silent-comedy as channelled through Giulietta Masina (though I think Takamine does Masina much better than Masina - I especially love her hilarious reaction when the writer introduces her to her ex-rival in the bar).

 

Of course, this approach means that the film operates on a very different register than the others, but it seemed inspired to me in any case.  And I think the stylization of her performance contributes to the wonderfully complex conception of the character - she's genuinely tough, resilient, and appealing, but she's also (somewhat disingenuously) creating an identity for herself, one that's founded on her own suffering and poverty.  Not that she isn't poor and suffering, but there's a strong suggestion that her ability to transform her suffering into poetry comes to depend on her continuing to suffer (this bubbles to the surface when she's arrested at one point and brushes aside the protests of her companions, saying something like, "It's okay - experience helps").  She has, however unconsciously, an act - not so nakedly that she becomes unsympathetic, but enough to complicate our feelings towards her.

 

There's a dynamic here, especially once she gets involved with her last lover, that bears a similarity to Anzukko, in that she has her reasons for remaining in a miserable situation.  As in Anzukko, her husband is much more unsympathetic than she is, but his resentment of her isn't totally off-base - it has something to do with his perception that she's not just what she appears to be, that there's a calculating aspect to her.  She deserves pity, but she also indulges in self-pity.

 

Does anyone know of any straightforwardly comic Takamine performances?  I felt like she showed a real comic flair.

Keith Uhlich <keith...@hotmail.com> wrote:

---

Yahoo! FareChase - Search multiple travel sites in one click.

[jaime.c...@gmail.com]

>>>Does anyone know of any straightforwardly comic Takamine performances?

Ozu's TOKYO CHORUS. Even at the age of seven she's dynamite.

[Michael Kerpan]

Comic Takamine performances -- the winner and overall champion is
surely "Carmen Comes Home" (and, by reputation, its sequel "Carmen's
Pure Love" -- whcih I have yet to see). Kinoshita's film seemed a bit
funnier the first time I saw it -- but remained entertainingly silly on
second watching. Chishu Ryu also is in full comic mode here.

Her role in "Hideko the Bus Conductress" is also primarily comic.