Osaka monogatari / An Osaka Story (1957)

Kozaburo Yoshimura: 大阪物語 / Osaka monogatari / An Osaka Story (JP 1957). Photo © Kadokawa

大阪物語 / [Una storia di Osaka]

    JP 1957. Director: Kozaburo Yoshimura. Sog.: Kenji Mizoguchi, dai racconti di Ihara Saikaku. Scen.: Yoshikata Yoda. F.: Kohei Sugiyama. Scgf.: Akira Naito. Mus.: Akira Ifukube. Int.: Ganjiro Nakamura (Jinbei), Raizo Ichikawa (Keizaburo), Kyoko Kagawa (Onatsu), Shintaro Katsu (Ichinosuke Abumiya), Michiko Ono (Takino), Narutoshi Hayashi (Yoshitaro), Tamao Nakamura (Ayagi), Aiko Mimasu (Otoku). Prod.: Daiei. 35 mm. Bn. 96 min

    Not released in Finland.

    Courtesy of Kadokawa. E-subtitles in English and Italian by Chiara Saretta.

    Il Cinema Ritrovato, Bologna 2024: Kozaburo Yoshimura, Undercurrents of Modernity

    Introduced by Alexander Jacoby and Johan Nordström

    Viewed at Jolly Cinema, 25 June 2024

Alexander Jacoby e Johan Nordström (Bologna Catalogue 2024): " Yoshimura was widely viewed as an heir to Kenji Mizoguchi, and, when Mizoguchi died in 1956, he replaced him as director of his final project: a tragicomic account of a farmer-turned-merchant and his destructive obsession with wealth. Mizoguchi had collaborated with his regular screenwriter, Yoshikata Yoda (1909-91), on a script adapted from a number of the stories of Ihara Saikaku, the great Edo-period satirist and chronicler of the mores of the merchant class, whose prose had already furnished the plot for Mizoguchi’s Saikaku ichidai onna (The Life of Oharu, 1952). "

" Yoshimura avowedly made the film as a memorial to his late colleague. One may only speculate as to what Mizoguchi might have made of the material, but Yoshimura’s dry humour and harder-edged style is arguably more in keeping with Saikaku’s wry vision than Mizoguchi’s elegance and grace. Joseph Anderson and Donald Richie write that the film was “filled with excellent satire on the inception of capitalism”, and see the film as a dig at the expense of Japan’s commercial capital, whose inhabitants were stereotypically noted for an obsession with wealth. But they also judged the film to be a “period-drama meaningful to contemporary audiences”. No doubt the theme seemed particularly relevant as postwar Japan rushed to embrace Western-style capitalism. "

" “Kinema Junpo” critic Jun Izawa praised Yoshimura’s ability to draw in the viewer with sharply crafted, “smart, fast scenes” such as the striking opening. But he expressed reservations about the development of the main character, suggesting that he “takes on an independent existence, as if Yoshimura’s hand has been lifted”. Nevertheless, the central performance by Ganjiro Nakamura (1902-83) is one of the film’s definite assets. Himself an Osaka native, Nakamura had had a distinguished career in kabuki theatre. The postwar decline of kabuki in Western Japan impelled him to move into film and television, where he enjoyed a successful second career, working for such canonical filmmakers as Akira Kurosawa, Yasujiro Ozu and Kon Ichikawa. " Alexander Jacoby e Johan Nordström (Bologna Catalogue 2024)

AA: The film first screened in Bologna's Kozaburo Yoshimura tribute was Itsuwarero seiso / Clothes of Deception (JP 1951), written by Kaneto Shindo in homage to Kenji Mizoguchi's masterpiece Gion no shimai (JP 1936). I found the connection between Yoshimura and Mizoguchi one of contrast rather than affinity. Mizoguchi is a poet, Yoshimura a prosaist. Mizoguchi created an elegiac meditation of solitude where Yoshimura's film belonged to a context of rich realistic density near classic French naturalism. But intriguingly, in films such as Saikaku ichidai onna and Akasen chitai, Mizoguchi was moving towards Yoshimura's direction.

Now it was fascinating to see Osaka monogatari written by Mizoguchi himself based on stories by Ihara Saikaku (1642-1693), on whose text was also based Saikaku ichidai onna (JP 1952), a work of exceptional spiritual grandeur. Such grandeur is missing from Osaka monogatari, which is, however, effective in its own right.

Its lineage for a European viewer is great otherwise. We are led to remember Croesus in Herodotus, Aulularia by Plautus, L'Avare by Molière, Le Peau de chagrin and Eugénie Grandet by Balzac, A Christmas Carol by Dickens, McTeague / Greed by Frank Norris and Erich Stroheim and Uncle Scrooge in the Walt Disney universe. Osaka monogatari is a grand hyperbolic tale of greed, avarice and the power of money turning into an end in itself and ultimately against itself.

The story starts in circumstances of hard work, bitter poverty, injustice and arbitrariness of a cruel daimyo similar to Sansho dayu. The protagonists are children of poor farmers, and there is "no room for them in the inn". They suffer cold, they suffer hunger. They turn into gleaners like in Agnès Varda's Les Glaneurs et la glaneuse. 

Ten years later, the only thing that remains from the days of ordeal is a peculiar family ritual prayer to the broom with which they lifted themselves from almost certain death. They are wealthy now, but the father has become spiritually broken by extreme poverty and suffering. 

The mother is the carrier of the loving family spirit, but when she falls ill, the father's pathological avarice prevents them from acquiring the expensive medicine needed to save her. Even in her memorial service the hospitality budget is zero. 

In contrast to the extremist father, the son and his companions are spendthrifts only interested in expensive escorts at geisha houses, even robbing the father's cellar treasure for their pursuits. The film ends in brutalization, degradation and madness. The sense of black comedy is familiar from the classics.

Like in Itsuwarero seiso, the composer is Akira Ifukube, "the John Williams of Japan", trusted by Yoshimura, creating eerie passages, perhaps even veering to Godzilla territory. The cinematographer Kohei Sugiyama was a veteran who had started in the silent days and worked with both Mizoguchi and Yoshimura. He was also a pioneer of Japanese colour cinema, but Osaka monogatari is in black and white.

The 35 mm print's visual quality is uneven in the beginning but turns good soon after.