The Story of the Last Chrysanthemum

1939 Japanese drama

Rating: 17/20

Plot: The adopted son in an acting family falls for his baby brother's wet-nurse.

Apparently, you can buy wind chimes from a street vendor at 2 in the morning in Japan.

Despite long sequences where characters are cutting watermelon, preparing tea, or trying to get a trunk of a flight of stairs, this is exquisite. Those scenes probably help this succeed in making it seem as if long, lonely chunks of time really do pass. This skips a year at one point and four years at another, and both time, it really does feel like that amount of time has passed for these characters.

A lot of that might have to do with Mizoguchi's use of long takes. As you probably know if you've spent any time reading my poorly-written movie reviews, I'm a sucker for the long take. There's something a little static about a lot of the shots in this, but the camera angles are almost always interesting, and some of the movements from room to room are just wonderful during these extended takes. There's rarely anything showy about anything Mizoguchi is showing us, but just the natural angles of the architecture or details in the background kept my eyes glued to the screen. There is one pan to some rain that is absolutely heartbreaking, especially with another shot that it leads to where a character ends up by a tree.

I also liked how there were lots of people peeking through windows or surreptitiously watching the characters over pieces of furniture in the backgrounds. The first couple of times, I wondered if it was a mistake, some extra not being in the right spot or realizing he or she was in the shot.

The score almost has somebody singing along with some percussion or koto strumming. I couldn't tell if it was a score or if somebody was always singing in the vicinity of these characters. It was often very lovely though.

There are a few plays within the film, kabuki stuff that was visually neat but completely bewildering, at least to me. I kept trying to find a connection between those plays and the ideas about art and love this couple's story was developing, but I couldn't find anything there. I do think there must be something in the way the actor becomes this phenom after playing a woman on stage and the importance of this woman in his life.