Koibumi (Tanaka Kinuyô, 1953)

This is a very difficult choice, but I will take a scene from one of the six films directed by the extraordinary Japanese actress Tanaka Kinuyô. I could have chosen almost any scene from any of her three earliest (and best) films as director. As in a similar poll I chose a scene from Chibusa yo eien nare (Eternal Breasts, 1955), I’m choosing now another, from her first effort as director, after having played at the other side of the camera in 147 films: Koibumi (Love Letters, 1953). This happens after some 35 minutes. Mayumi Reikichi (Mori Masayuki), who we already know passes time at train stations trying to find someone, overhears, hidden by a curtain at the store where he works as a writer of love letters in English from Japanese women to their departed American soldiers and former lovers, a voice that he thinks he recognizes, and runs after her across the streets of the city, until he sees finally Machiko (the graceful Kuga Yoshiko) already inside the train, and calls her. She comes out of the wagon, they look at each other on the platform, the train starts… and the scene ends. And then, after these 5 minutes, starts a very long (6 minutes) flashback which explains what happened to her from her childhood to her forced marriage, followed by another, terrible 5 minutes in which he reproaches her very rudely, tells her he lost uselessly for five years hopelessly searching for her (in Tokyo!), and she asks forgiveness and leaves, and then he hesitates for a moment before walking in the opposite direction. Of course, this is almost three scenes, but in really good films there are not isolated scenes for an anthology nor coups de théatre but rather what Robin Wood called “an organic structuring”, and that is what moves me very much, as someone that does not drive and therefore can imagine or project himself less in Vertigo’s Scottie (James Stewart) than in the more modest Mori looking across the crowds, waiting at bus or train or subway stations, walking and running after the woman he loves and has lost.

Respuesta a la pregunta sobre escena favorita en la revista finlandesa Filmihullu