Carmen Comes Home (1951)

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Carmen Comes Home (1951) – K. Kinoshita

It is rather jarring to see Hideko Takamine in her role as a comic floozy after knowing her beloved turns as a caring schoolteacher in Twenty-Four Eyes (1954) and as an often suffering romantic heroine in Mikio Naruse’s many great films of the Fifties and Sixties, especially When a Woman Ascends the Stairs (1960).  Yet, she pulls it off (including some songs), even if the film itself is something of a trifle (albeit the first colour film in Japan).  The plot sees a rural village (in the shadow of Mt. Asama, Gunma Prefecture) excited to discover that one of its departed residents, a dancer with stage name Lily Carmen, is soon to return from Tokyo in triumph.  Her father is not so sure she is really an artist (as advertised) and indeed it turns out that she is a stripper to the shock of many.  She returns with one of her colleagues and turns the small village upside down with her brazen antics.  It is a bit difficult to determine whether director Keisuke Kinoshita is laughing at these country bumpkins (including Chishû Ryû as an uptight school principal, also very different than in his many pictures for Ozu) or if he is passing judgment on the women’s behaviour.  It is probably the former (Carmen’s behaviour is excused because she had a childhood head injury!?!) and the film ends with a striptease show (with only suggested nudity – this is 1951) that feels a bit prurient. Nevertheless, the money raised is put to a good purpose (contributing to the local school, paying down a blind man’s debt and convincing his greedy landlord to return a harmonium to him), most leering men are ridiculed, and the girls merrily depart.  The film even yielded a sequel, but it isn’t a classic by any means.