Uwasa no musume / Girl of the Rumor (1935)
Michael Kerpan
One of the rare near washouts for Naruse. Audie Bock has a few glowing
sentences about this in her book on Japanese directors (in the Naruse
film listing) -- but her plot summary is so inaccurate that I suspect
she didn't actually _see_ this.
Despite decent actresses and occasionally interesting cinematography,
this story felt so incoherent that I could not generate much
enthusiasm. Sachiko Chiba is now slotted as the elder (and more
old-fashioned) of two half-sisters. Her younger sister, Ryuko Umezono
(the #3 sister of "3 Sisters") is a still childish would-be "moga"
(modern girl). The family runs a bar/restaurant. Kamatari Fujiwara
seems to play an elderly uncle. Tomoko Ito is Umezono's real mother --
though the girl doesn't want to accept this. We have a disastrous
marriage meeting for Chiba -- at which Umezono shamelessly kibbitzes.
The father is carted off by the police at the end -- for no obvious
reason.
I would class this with "this Happy Life" (which has _some_ interest --
despite not seeming too succcessful) as compared to "War of the Roses"
w2hich was mainly just dull.
Dan Sallitt
>
> One of the rare near washouts for Naruse. Audie Bock has a few glowing
> sentences about this in her book on Japanese directors (in the Naruse
> film listing)
And Chris Fujiwara also said something highly complimentary about it in
his Film Comment article on Naruse. I believe that this film and THE
STRANGER WITHIN A WOMAN are the only two Naruse films that made the Kinema
Jumpo top ten, but weren't included in the traveling retro. - Dan
Michael Kerpan
didn't seem to work.
Proble,ms --
A lot of shilly-shallying by not very interesting male characters. A
plot that seemed to lurch from one segment to another. Umezono was a
pretty uninteresting "moga" here (not nearly as good as she was in
"Three Sisters". Chiba's part seemed quite generic.
Chris Fujiwara finds all sorts of formally interesting visual things in
this film -- and I agree these are there (though not necessarily any
more interesting here than in some of the earlier films). Also all
these early films tend to have a remarkable richness of environmental
details.
But CF also describes the film as a whole: " In the furious The Girl in
the Rumor, as tight, absorbing, and intricate a 55-minute film as any
ever made....." This simply doesn't seem to describe the same film I
watched.
If you wanted to look at this unsubbed, I could let you borrow this. ;~}