Floating Clouds
| Floating Clouds | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Directed by | Mikio Naruse Kihachi Okamoto (assistant director) |
| Written by | Fumiko Hayashi (novel) Yōko Mizuki (adaptation) |
| Produced by | Toho, Sanezumi Fujimoto |
| Cinematography | Masao Tamai |
| Edited by | Hideshi Ohi |
| Music by | Ichirō Saitō |
Release dates | January 15, 1955[1] (Japan) June 6, 1980 (USA) |
Running time | 118 minutes |
| Country | Japan |
| Language | Japanese |
Floating Clouds (浮雲, Ukigumo) is a 1955 black-and-white Japanese film drama directed by Mikio Naruse. It is based on the novel of the same name, one of the last works by Japanese author and poet Fumiko Hayashi, written just before she died in 1951. The novel is set after World War II and contains the common post-war theme of wandering; Yukiko struggles to find where she belongs in post-war Japan, and ends up floating endlessly until her death at the novel's end.
The film follows female protagonist Yukiko Koda, a Japanese woman just returned to Japan from French Indochina, where she has been working as a secretary. Yukiko seeks out Kengo, with whom she worked in Southeast Asia during the war. They became lovers in Da Lat. They renew their affair but Kengo tells Yukiko he is unable to leave his wife. Brightly lit flashback of their time in Indochina contrasts with the sombre tones of the film's present.
The film was Naruse's most popular film in Japan.[2]
Cast
- Hideko Takamine - Yukiko Koda
- Masayuki Mori - Kengo Tomioka
- Mariko Okada - Sei Mukai
- Chieko Nakakita - Kuniko Tomioka
- Daisuke Katō - Seikichi Mukai
- Isao Yamagata - Sugio Iba
- Mayuri Mokusho - Nomiya no musume
- Noriko Sengoku - Yakushima no okaasen
- Fuyuki Murakami - Futsuin no shikensho-chou
- Heihachiro Okawa - Isha
- Nobuo Kaneko - Futsuin no shoin-Suitou
- Roy James - American soldier
- Akira Tani - Shinja
Comment
Adrian Martin, editor of on-line film journal Rouge has remarked upon Naruse's cinema of walking. Bertrand Tavernier, speaking of Naruse's Sound of the Mountain described how the director minutely describes each journey and that " such comings and goings represent uncertain yet reassuring transitions: they are a way of taking stock, of defining a feeling". So in Floating Clouds the walks down streets " are journeys of the everyday, where time is measured out of footfalls, - and where even the most melodramatic blow or the most ecstatic moment of pleasure cannot truly take the characters out of the unromantic, unsentimental forward progression of their existences."
The Australian scholar Freda Freiberg has remarked on the terrain of the film : " The frustrations and moroseness of the lovers in Floating Clouds are directly linked to and embedded in the depressed and demoralised social and economic conditions of early post-war Japan; the bombed-out cities, the shortage of food and housing, the ignominy of national defeat and foreign occupation, the economic temptation of prostitution with American military personnel." [3]
Awards
- 1956 - Blue Ribbon Awards for best film (Mikio Naruse)
- 1956 - Kinema Junpo Award for best actor (Masayuki Mori), for best actress (Hideko Takamine), for best director (Mikio Naruse) and for best film (Mikio Naruse)
- 1956 - Mainichi Film Concours for best actress (Hideko Takamine), for best director (Mikio Naruse), for best film (Mikio Naruse) and for best sound recording (Hisashi Shimonaga)
- 1995 - Named the Third Best film in Japanese history, in Kinema Junpo's 1995 "All Time Best 100" list.
References
- ^ Template:Jp icon http://www.jmdb.ne.jp/1955/ce000290.htm accessed 18 January 2009
- ^ Freda Freiberg,speaking about the film , DVD extras, BFI VD 694/2
- ^ BFI Mikio Naruse, booklet with DVD BFIVD 694