Late Chrysanthemums
With Haruko Sugimura, Sadako Sawamura, Chikako Hosokawa, Yuko Mochizuki, Ken Uehara, Hiroshi Koizumi, and Ineko Arima
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Having seen 10 of the 19 films by Mikio Naruse (out of a career total of 89) screening at the Gene Siskel Film Center’s retrospective that started in January, most of them post-World War II features, I can think of only one–Travelling Actors (1940), an uncharacteristic comedy about two Kabuki actors who play a horse–that might cheer someone up. (None of his early silent films, many of which are comedies, is in the retrospective.) Steeped in lower-middle-class life, Naruse’s most celebrated films usually feature plots that disappoint the modest expectations of their working-stiff characters. Even Travelling Actors, also screening this week, is preoccupied with deprivations tied to class.
Lopate’s attitude seems tied more to an American context than a Japanese one. And in the case of Naruse’s masterpiece Late Chrysanthemums (1954), what’s most impressive isn’t its fatalism or resignation but its energy and vivid portraiture.
These women are as vivid as the characters in Erich von Stroheim’s Greed–not just because they’re obsessed with money, but because Naruse has an uncanny feeling for extraneous detail. Twenty years ago Dave Kehr aptly noted in this paper that Late Chrysanthemums “is a masterpiece of narrative construction,” yet paradoxically many of the things that register most indelibly aren’t essential to the story. Furthermore, although there’s nothing attractive or likable about any of the characters, they have a passion that’s fascinating, and we can’t anticipate any of their moves.
Where: Gene Siskel Film Center, 164 N. State
