White Beast

White Beast is one of four films made by Mikio Naruse in 1950 (the others were Professor Ishinaka, The Angry Street, and Battle of the Roses). It prefigures the female exploitation prison films of the 60s and 70s, and was not well-received by Japanese critics. However, it is a serious problem film that addresses many topics that are still avoided today. Most of the women at eh White Lilly Institution are former prostitutes who are being rehabilitated (an approved genre by the occupying censors). The "White Beast" that is tamed by the institution in this film is Mitsuko Miura (Yukawa) a proud and defiant woman who is not happy to be incarcerated-but she is told White Lilly or serious prison. Although there are plenty of melodramatic elements such as catfights, hysterical tantrums, film noir lighting, and dramatic music there is a clear indebtedness to American film. However, Naruse highlights social hypocrisy when a prison official comes to lecture the women about their greed. Yukawa challenges him by asking who the customers were-you and your sons... There is also the issue of syphilis which is addressed-another subject polite society would rather not discuss. Some characters are cured, but one woman has an advanced state and dies in a grotesque fashion-penniless and alone after having served as a comfort woman. Such treatment calls to mind Kurosawa's The Quiet Duel, made the year before that also deals with syphilis. This is not a major Naruse production, but it shows flashes of his greatness in editing sequences such as the one in which a tapping foot transitions to a woman using her foot to power a sewing machine. There is some impressive cinematography from Masao Tamai, who would be behind the camera in some of Naruse's most popular films of the 50s.