A Mother Never Dies

[Dan Sallitt]

I was really enjoying this 1942 film for a while, though its
tendentious qualities eventually sink it good and proper. The story –
the premature death of a young mother (Takako Irie, from A WOMAN’S
SORROWS and LEARN FROM EXPERIENCE) serves as eternal inspiration for
her husband (Ichirô Sugai) and son – creates expectations of crippling
sentimentality, but Naruse has no problem keeping that aspect of the
project in equilibrium. From the film’s first scene –a slow lateral
tracking shot of a busy office disassembling itself after the
company’s failure, dominated by the sounds of papers rustling and
shuffling of feet – Naruse and writer Katsuhito Inomata (adapting from
Sensuke Kawauchi’s novel) choose an ambient, stoical perspective on
the emotional swings of the story. The living room of the couple’s
house is photographed primarily in tranquil Fordian long shots with
the changing seasons visible through windows, and family life is
abstracted into a series of quiet tableaux– like the return of the
recently laid-off father from a drinking session with his former co-
workers, the mother bringing him a glass of water which he drinks
while sitting unsteadily on the floor. The progression of the
mother’s illness imparts a chill to the otherwise uninflected long-
shot visual scheme, and the camera finally retreats to a discreetly
Lubitschian position outside the house for the inevitable conclusion
of the mother’s story.

After the mother’s passing, a new focus on the father’s childrearing
techniques opens the door to propaganda, and the film ultimately
stands revealed as an exhortation to parents to make their children
into good Japanese citizens. (The father’s draconian crackdown on any
hint of sexual self-expression in his son perhaps gives some insight
into why Japan’s post-war American occupiers felt the need to
commission films like Naruse’s 1947 SPRING AWAKENS, which encouraged a
gentler touch in dealing with child sexuality.) The mother’s didactic
death-bed letter to her family is featured prominently and repeatedly
in the film’s second half, and the father’s hectoring patriotic
lectures to his son and to the world at large soon become hard to
endure. Still, and in keeping with his usual practice, Naruse never
quite gives up when saddled with horribly uncongenial material, and
distinctive Naruse elements (like the son’s sullen passivity when
confronted with parental authority) crop up even in the worst scenes.
Sugai, later a fixture in Mizoguchi’s 50s work, is an appealingly
contained performer who carries the film with no visible effort.