bad girls
by Douglas Messerli
Yoshikata Yoda (story, based on the novel by Eijirō Misaita), Kenji Mizoguchi (director) 夜の女ち Yoru no onnatachi (Women of the Night) / 1948, USA 1979
Kenji Mizoguchi’s powerful post-war
film is also somewhat problematic. A woman, Fusako Owada (Kinuyo Tanaka) whose
husband has not yet returned from the war, is living, rather uncomfortably,
with her tubercular son with her husband’s brother. The brother has little
income, and Fusako and her ailing child must often fend for themselves.
Attempting to sell one of her summer dresses, Fusako is told by the seemingly
friendly clothes-merchant that she should try prostitution, which shocks the
struggling woman.
Back at home, her teenage sister-in-law, Kumiko (Tomie Tsunoda) arrives
to report that there is news of Fusako’s husband. Together they rush to his
former place of employment, only to discover that, after surviving throughout
the war, he has died of malnutrition, leaving behind only a few personal
belongings; even his worn uniform has been destroyed. The head of the company,
Mr. Kuriyama (Sanae Takasugi) offers his condolences and his help if needed.
Natsuko, we discover, is working as “dance hall hostess,” and Fusako is
now working as an executive secretary to Mr. Kuriyama. Natusuko asks if she
might move in with her sister, and Fusako agrees. After an utterly depressing
beginning, accordingly, it now appears that the world has improved for the two
sisters. However, as we soon discover, Fusako’s price for her position is the
sexual attentions of her boss, who we also discover is smuggling cocaine. While
Kuriyama is away on a business appointment, his assistant rushes into his
office report to Fusako that the police are on their way, entrusting a large
cache of the drug to the secretary, who is told to hide it in her home.
When she arrives home, she discovers her door is locked from inside.
When Natsuko finally opens it up, we discover Mr. Kuriyama within; the two have
obviously been also having an affair. Furious with the betrayal, Fusako leaves
home, disappearing from her sister’s and Kuriyama’s life. Secretly, she has
taken the clothes-merchant’s advice and tutelage (the elderly woman also
apparently serves as pimp for several women), joining the numerous
street-walkers of Osaka.
If some critics have complained of
Mizoguchi’s cuts across space and time in the story I have recounted so far, I
would argue that instead of creating confusion, it allows the inevitable
surprises of life itself, and we quickly assimilate these alterations in the
condition of his character’s lives. Yet the sudden transformation of Fusako,
while perhaps inevitable given the difficulties of her life, seems almost
inexplicable. How could a woman horrified of the concept when she was in
greater need, suddenly turn to such a way of life? We must wait until later in
the film, perhaps, to comprehend a rationale: her utter hate of men, and her
desire, after being lied to by Kuriyama, to seek revenge.
When Natsuko discovers that her sister
has been spotted on the streets, she goes in search of her, but is mistakenly
arrested with numerous other prostitutes in a police round-up. Once the women
are booked, they are taken to a prison hospital and tested for syphilis. At the
hospital, the two sisters again meet up, Natsuko explaining her mistaken
arrest. Although Fusako is now angry with her sister, she remains protective,
assuring her that she will be freed and everything will be fine once she proves
she has contacted no disease. Shockingly, however, Natsuko discovers that not
only is she infected, but that she is pregnant. Yet she quickly becomes
determined to have the child and take the cure to rid her of syphilis. When she
later explains the situation to Kuriyama, with whom she has been living, he
demands she have an abortion and is unsympathetic to her situation. Now also
jilted, Natsuko begins to bring home men from her job and to drink heavily.
In one of the most exciting moments of the film, Fusako, still locked away in the hospital, escapes over the wall, returning to the streets before, finally, returning home to find Natsuko drunk, about to give birth. Fusako demands she join her, lifting up the near-lifeless body, as she takes her to a woman’s refuge. At the refuge, Natsuko goes into labor; the child is stillborn, but she survives. Authorities try to convince both women to change their lives, but Fusako still resists, angrier than ever and now a hard-boiled street creature.
A similar situation has previously occurred with her young
sister-in-law, Kumiko, who, having run away from home and been refused refuge
in the Owada apartment, has met a young street boy, who rapes and robs her,
abandoning the innocent girl in an inn where the local prostitutes beat her and
steal her clothing. Kumiko is forced to join them to survive.
In the final and most moving scene of
this film, Fusako accidently meets up with Kumiko when she is called to observe
a beating of the young intruder into the older prostitute’s territory.
Recognizing her, Fusako demands that the women cease beating her, but the girl,
now as hard-boiled as her sister-in-law is unrepentant and determined to remain
on the street, in response to which Fusako herself beats the young girl,
taunting her for her degeneracy and the condition of her life before breaking
down into tears, the young girl seeking solace at her knee. Determined to take
the girl to safety and, finally, to abandon the profession herself, Fusako
lashes out against the other violent women, who, in turn, fall upon her,
beating her relentlessly. Finally, a group of on- looking prostitutes
intercede, realizing the truth of Fusako’s insistence that “there should be no
women like us.”
Although Woman of the Night quite
clearly shows us that it is the men in these women’s lives who have helped to
destroy them, the film ultimately seems to suggest that the women alone must
redeem themselves, must reject the demeaning and destructive roles they have
embraced. In a strange way, however, it is only as prostitutes that these women
seem to have any power in the post-war Japanese society. Mizoguchi does not
show one woman, other than the child-like acolytes of the women’s refuge—given
daily quite meaningless “pep” talks by the center’s director—who is permitted
any dignity. It is clear that the sometimes “rightist” film director was of two
minds about the predicament of his “women of the night,” quite brilliantly
revealing their plights while blaming them for their decision to choose this
method of survival. The paradox he has created is nonetheless a fascinating
one, worth pondering through viewing this mesmerizing film.
Los Angeles, June 5, 2013
Reprinted from International Cinema Review (June 2013).
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