Carmen Comes Home

To be honest, Keisuke Kenoshita's film Carmen Comes Home (1959), Japan's first color film, was something of a let down. This is mostly because I was impressed with his mid-career innovation in films like A Japanese Tragedy and A Ballad of Narayama. There are many reasons for this I suspect, the first being that I am sure the studios wanted a  mass market success with their first foray into color, so we have a light musical comedy-something of a departure for star Hideko Takamine known for the somber tragedies of Mikio Naruse. There are other familiar faces such as Ozu's main cypher Chshu Ryu as the respectable principal of the local elementary school. Takamine and her burlesque companion, Toshiko Kobayashi, return to newly dubbed-Carmen's home in an attempt to show off their new found fame as strippers-several misunderstanding sand antics ensue. The setting of the film is near Mount Asama in Nagano prefecture, which is slowly smoky in the background as Taklamine and her companion stroll about in loud outfits and intermittently breakout in song. The film was a commercial success and spawned a sequel, Carmen Falls in Love. Kinoshita is capable of much more and I will keep searching for the gems in his oeuvre that remain.