HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

''Wife! Be Like a Rose!'' (), also titled ''Kimiko'', is a 1935 Japanese
comedy drama Comedy drama (also known by the portmanteau dramedy) is a hybrid genre of works that combine elements of comedy and Drama (film and television), drama. In film, as well as scripted television series, serious dramatic subjects (such as death, il ...
film directed by
Mikio Naruse was a Japanese filmmaker who directed 89 films spanning the period 1930 to 1967. Naruse is known for imbuing his films with a bleak and pessimistic outlook. He made primarily Shoshimin-eiga, shōshimin-eiga ("common people drama") films with f ...
. It is based on the
shinpa (also rendered ''shimpa'') is a modern form of theater in Japan usually featuring melodramatic stories, contrasted with the more traditional ''kabuki'' style. Taking its start in the 1880s, it later spread to cinema. Art form Theatre historians ...
play ''Futari tsuma'' (二人妻, lit. ''Two Wives'') by Minoru Nakano and one of Naruse's earliest
sound film A sound film is a Film, motion picture with synchronization, synchronized sound, or sound technologically coupled to image, as opposed to a silent film. The first known public exhibition of projected sound films took place in Paris in 1900, bu ...
s. ''Wife! Be Like a Rose!'' was one of the first Japanese films to see a theatrical release in the United States. It was voted "The Best Japanese Film of the Year" in 1935 by critics of the prestigious film magazine
Kinema Junpo , commonly called , is Japan's oldest film magazine and began publication in July 1919. It was first published three times a month, using the Japanese ''Jun'' (旬) system of dividing months into three parts, but the postwar ''Kinema Junpō'' ha ...
.


Plot

Kimiko, a young modern
Tokyo Tokyo, officially the Tokyo Metropolis, is the capital of Japan, capital and List of cities in Japan, most populous city in Japan. With a population of over 14 million in the city proper in 2023, it is List of largest cities, one of the most ...
woman, lives alone with her poetress mother Etsuko. Etsuko still grieves for her former husband Shunsaku, who left the family for ex-geisha Oyuki fifteen years ago, although Kimiko remembers their marriage not as a happy one. Kimiko believes that her mother has brought her loneliness on herself by being a bad wife: her personality is too proud and serious. The only contact between Shunsaku, Etsuko and his daughter are money orders without personal messages he sends them. At her uncle's suggestion, Kimiko travels to the countryside to talk Shunsaku into returning to the family, as her boyfriend Seiji's father wants to meet him before giving his admittance to Kimiko's and Seiji's marriage. Contrary to her expectations, Shunsaku is happy with his new wife and their two children, and Oyuki turns out to be a warm-hearted person instead of the calculating woman Kimiko was sure to meet. Not only does she support her husband, whose business is going badly, but it is also she, not Shunsaku, who is sending the money to Etsuko and Kimiko. Shunsaku agrees to go to Tokyo with Kimiko, but after a short discordant time spent with his ex-wife, he returns to Oyuki and his children, while Kimiko finally accepts that the past can't be reversed.


Cast

* Sachiko Chiba as Kimiko Yamamoto * Heihachirō Ōkawa as Seiji, Kimiko's boyfriend *
Yuriko Hanabusa was a Japanese actress. She appeared in more than 80 films between 1920 and 1970. Selected filmography * '' Souls on the Road'' (1921) * '' Wife! Be Like a Rose!'' (1935) * '' The Daughter of the Samurai'' (1937) * '' Young People'' (1937) * '' ...
as Oyuki * Tomoko Itō as Etsuko, Kimiko's mother * Setsuko Horikoshi as Shizuko, Oyuki's daughter * Chikako Hosokawa as Shingo's wife * Sadao Maruyama as Shunsaku, Kimiko's father * Kaoru Itō as Kenichi, Oyuki's son *
Kamatari Fujiwara was a Japanese stage and film actor who appeared in over 200 films between 1933 and 1984. In addition to regular appearances in the films of Akira Kurosawa, he worked for directors such as Mikio Naruse, Yasujirō Ozu, Heinosuke Gosho and others ...
as Shingo, Etsuko's brother


Background

Naruse had joined P.C.L. studios (soon to merge into
Toho is a Japanese entertainment company that primarily engages in producing and distributing films and exhibiting stage plays. It is headquartered in Chiyoda, Tokyo, and is one of the core companies of the Osaka-based Hankyu Hanshin Toho Group. ...
) only the year before, unhappy with the working conditions at his former studio
Shochiku is a Japanese entertainment company. Founded in 1895, it initially managed '' kabuki'' theaters in Kyoto; in 1914, it also acquired ownership of the Kabuki-za theater in Tokyo. In 1920, Shochiku entered the film production industry and establis ...
. ''Wife! Be Like a Rose!'' received the 1936 Kinema Junpo Award as Best Film of the Year and opened in New York in 1937 under the title ''Kimiko''.


Reception

Film creator and writer
Dan Sallitt Dan Sallitt (born July 27, 1955) is an American filmmaker and film critic. He is known for his microbudget filmmaking and cinephile film criticism. Early life and career Sallitt was born on July 27, 1955, in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. He re ...
wrote that the film positions itself in an ideological middle ground between the modern, assertive woman and the traditional ideal of marriage and a woman’s place in the family. Kimiko, though her
Americanized Americanization or Americanisation (see spelling differences) is the influence of the American culture and economy on other countries outside the United States, including their media, cuisine, business practices, popular culture, technology ...
behavior deviates in multiple ways from her expected role, compensates for this when she tells herself that she will be a “good wife,” namely a wife who “acts childish and cajoling, or jealous sometimes, or motherly and protective.” By neutralizing the challenge that her modernity poses, she becomes the film’s “dialectical synthesis.”


Legacy

Film historians have since emphasised the film's "sprightly, modern feel" and "innovative visual style" and "progressive social attitudes". It was screened at the
Museum of Modern Art The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street (Manhattan), 53rd Street between Fifth Avenue, Fifth and Sixth Avenues. MoMA's collection spans the late 19th century to the present, a ...
in 1985 and at the
Harvard Film Archive The Harvard Film Archive (HFA) is a film archive and cinema located in the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Dedicated to the collection, preservation and exhibition of film, the HFA houses a c ...
in 2005 as part of their retrospectives on Mikio Naruse, and at the
Cinémathèque Française A cinematheque is an archive of films and film-related objects with an exhibition venue. Similarly to a book library (bibliothèque in French), a cinematheque is responsible for preserving and making available to the public film heritage. Typically ...
in 2018.


References


External links

* * * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Wife! Be Like a Rose! 1935 films 1935 comedy-drama films 1930s Japanese-language films Japanese comedy-drama films Japanese films based on plays Films directed by Mikio Naruse