no satisfaction
by Douglas Messerli
Yoshikata Yoda and Kenji Mizoguchi
(screenplay), Kenji Mizoguchi (director) Naniwa
erejii (Osaka Elegy) / 1936
A young telephone operator in the
Asai Pharmaceutical Company, Ayako Murai (Isuzu Yamada) is in love with a
fellow colleague, Nishimura (Kensaku Hara), a love which he returns with
several excuses and lies. At nights Mr. Nisimura has been accompanying the
company director’s wife, Sonosuke (Benkei Shiganoya), to the theater. Ayako
notices him being paid for his services, but the young man denies everything,
not recognizing his own behavior as a kind of prostitution. Unhappy at home,
the company head, Sumiko (Yoko Umemura)—presented from the beginning of the
film as a petulant, selfish, and abusive man—attempts to involve the young
Ayako in an affair, which she rejects.
Leaving home, Ayako enters a new nightmare world, expressed by the director’s dark, nighttime images. Once Ayako has left home, she hardly sees the light of day again. The elderly Asai, setting her up in an apartment, forces her to redo her hair in the manner of married woman so that he might appear with her in public. And much of the day she is forced to sit alone awaiting the return of her unfeeling lover.
When Asai’s wife encounters the two of them at a puppet play, he forces
another of his employees to insist that it was him who is seeing Ayako, not Asai, deceiving the incensed wife. But
soon after, she perceives the real truth when Asai’s doctor mistakenly shows up
at their house to care for Asai, when, in fact, he has fallen ill in Ayako’s
apartment. The affair ends, abruptly, disgracing Ayako.
Running into Nisimura in the street, the two former lovers come together
again, he asking Ayako to marry him; but embarrassed by her situation, she
rushes off. Later, however, she becomes determined to seek out Nisimura, to
accept his offer and admit her past. If his love is strong enough, she will
marry him, freeing herself from her downward spiral.
Ayako, meanwhile, attempts to explain her past to a horrified Nisimura,
but is interrupted by the police who arrest her. At police headquarters
Nisimura denies involvement with Ayako, denying any desire to marry her, and
the young girl is forced to admit to a crime she had committed only in search a
way to further help her family and give herself a better life.
Released by the police, she returns home, hoping for at least some
appreciation for her acts, almost speaking a version of the cliché “There’s no
place like home”; Mizoguchi’s irony in that statement almost breaks our hearts,
as reality in Osaka is shown to be the reverse of that same The Wizard of Oz platitude of three
years later. Over a family meal, of which she never offered a bite, Ayako is
shunned by her brother, berated by her father, and even derided by her younger
sister. Spurned by all, she is cast out from her home.
The film’s last scene shows her walking along the side of the railroad
tracks, pondering what might be the “disease of delinquency” for which her
family and society have condemned her. Clearly, in answer to that, she must
attempt a voyage into a strange new world once more. As in so many Mizoguchu
works, women—particularly strong and nonsubservient women—are abused by
Japanese society, ultimately having little choice but to use their bodies in
order to survive. The delinquency of which Ayako, in the end, is accused, is
actually a product of the delinquency of nearly all the film’s male figures,
who together scheme, lie, cheat, and abuse the young girls they encounter. And,
accordingly, the independent women end up as mere figures of service as if they
had never left home in the first place. The only successful woman in this world
(head of the Woman’s Association) is the unloving and tart tongued Mrs. Asai,
and it is she, as we observe in an early scene, who sleeps with a version of
Dorothy’s beloved dog; without a totemic scarecrow, woodsman, or lion to
accompany her, Ayako is completely on her own, with only her own brain, heart,
and courage to help her move forward.
Los Angeles, July 29, 2013
Reprinted from International Cinema Review (July 2013).
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