Joyu to shijin / Actress and Poet (1935)
Michael Kerpan
writes children's songs and is also the somewhat hen-pecked husband of
an actress (Sachiko Chiba). When not doing house chores, he dabbles at
song-writing and chats with neighbors and friends (including Kamatari
Fujiwara, who is currently way behind in the rent at his apartment).
After one neighbor (an insurance salesman) sells a life insurance
policy to a nice (but somewhat nervous) couple that have just moved
into the neighborhood, Uruki celebrates with the neighbor and his
chatty, nosy wife. After drinking lots of beer, the neighbor acts out
one of Uruki's children's songs (played on a phonograph) about a tanuki
(raccoon dog). Uruki is in a somewhat truculent mood when he gets home,
but is too far gone to notice his wife's arrival.
The next morning, as Uruki tries to fix breakfast, his wife (who is
clearly a late riser) insists he help her rehearse her lines for an
upcoming performance. As they engage in simulated domestic violence,
Fujiwara arrives luggage in hand, looking for someplace to stay (having
been evicted) -- and overhearing their dispute, tries to make peace.
The couple laughingly tells him it is just a rehearsal. Soon, however,
a disagreement between Uruki and Chiba over whether to let Fujiwara
lodge with them results in a real marital spat. Fujiwara, having taken
a stroll while trouble was brewing, returns and sits down to watch the
renewed "rehearsal" appreciatively. When the nosy neighbor lady
overhears the commotion, she insists that he intervene -- but he
re-assures her that is all just acting. So she too sits down to watch
the oblivious domestic warriors. Meanwhile, the neighbor's husband has
discovered that his nice young policy buyers committed double suicide
overnight. When he tells his wife the news, the two of them get into a
brawl over who is to blame for selling the improvident policy (the wife
is the one that noticed the couple's arrival and prodded her husband to
make his sales call).
The next morning, Chiba has gotten up first and is making breakfast for
a change. As Fujiwara sleepily comes down the stairs from his room
toward breakfast, he notes that the chit-chat in the downstairs room
between reconciled actress and poet is becoming amorous -- so he
decides he had best wait before entering the room.
This is not a major Naruse film, but it is an entertaining one (though
the insertion of a suicide into the midst of a domestic comedy strikes
one as a bit unusual)-- with exuberant performances by all the
principals. Interestingly, the opening of this film pre-figures the
opening of Ozu's "Tenement Gentleman" -- one hears and sees a man and a
woman in the middle of some highly melodramatic situation -- but it
turns out that we are just seeing a dramatic rehearsal in Chiba's
living room. The cinematography by Hiroshi Suzuki (who worked with
Naruse on numerous occasions between 1935 and 1952) is quite good (but
a bit more restrained than that found in other Naruse films of the
mid-30s).