|
In which Max Ophüls fortuitously converges with Mizoguchi, the way Bergman re-creates Renoir in Smiles of a Summer Night without having seen The Rules of the Game. A ruined house, off to the titular red district with the daughter (Michiko Tanaka), "bless your sublime sacrifice." Geisha lessons and codes, her virginity makes her a valued item. She's loved by the coolie (Sessue Hayakawa), poor but something of an artist. ("Fragonard!" somebody exclaims at the sight of his sketches.) His rival is the Russian naval lieutenant (Pierre Richard-Willm) who makes the maiden's acquaintance by rescuing her from her first client, torn kimono and all. The gates to Yoshiwara open to reveal a ghost town in the heroine's eyes, then a rollicking festival from the vantage point of randy seamen on leave. "Tonight the tea houses will be gold mines!" A Puccini emulation without the music, or rather a straight drama imbued with the music of Ophüls' exceptional pictorial rhythm. Overlapping secret missions inform the triangle, a cannonade announces the return of the Tsar's frigate, the beloved's presence in the rickshaw disrupts a skirmish. Japan in a Joinville-le-Pont studio, cf. Sternberg's Shanghai Express, mats and fans and scrims before Eugen Schüfftan's lenses. Happiness is a lantern in the wind or a reflection in a mirror, "if only it could last." The romantic dream pantomimed in the drawing room goes into Cukor's A Star Is Born, standing ovation at the opera house and sleigh ride through Saint Petersburg snow, swirling backgrounds and enduring emotions. "Une dernière prière..." A matter of war, later recognized by Fuller (House of Bamboo). With Roland Toutain, Lucienne Le Marchand, André Gabriello, Camille Bert, and Philippe Richard. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |