Twenty-Four Eyes (1954)

Los comentarios sobre esta película se pueden encontrar en castellano en otra entrada de este blog


Nijushi no hitomi (Twenty-four eyes, 1954)
Based on a novel by Sakae Tsuboi
Director: Keisuke Kinoshita.
Actors: Hideko Takamine, Chishu Ryu, Hideki Goko, Yukio Watanabe, Eisei Amamoto,...
Full credits at imdb.com

An original Shochiku production. I am commenting on the Spanish DVD release of this film by Notro Films

"How difficult is to deal with women and children... they're crying, crying all the time!"

One of the good things of watching a film at home is that, whenever you're watching a good melodrama, you don't shy away from crying openly. And this film is perfect for that. I picked it because a) I love classic Japanese films and b) it's got Hideko Takamine in the lead... If you are already aware of her, I don't need to elaborate further, if you aren't... well, just make yourself acquainted with her work: honest, you won't regret it.

This film won a good deal of awards, in fact, it won the Kinema Jumpo Award as best film of 1955 over no other than Kurosawa's "Seven Samurai", so you get the idea of how successful it was upon its release. The films about teachers are not considered a genre per se, though that subject has given some very memorable movies about learning and growing up, and this film is a fine example. Keisuke Kinoshita deftly directs the film in a beautiful, lyrical way, if inevitably melancholic in its vision of Japan's recent past.

1928. In a little Japanese island, the first year students at school are about to meet their new teacher, the spirited Oichi-san, quickly dubbed by the naughty kids as Koichi-san ("Miss Pebble", a pun, since Oichi means "Big Stone"). Hisako Oichi soon wins her student's hearts with her open smile and her lively manner. Parents, though are not enthusiastic about that young woman who dresses with western clothes and rides a bicycle: too modern a girl for their tiny rural island. But Hisako ultimately earns the respect of the genitors and her older colleagues (who didn't welcome her new methods). Due to an accident, Hisako has to leave for other school, bidding temporary goodbye to her twelve children, who shall meet her again in the sixth year.



When Hisako meets again her students as teenagers, they look towards the future with dreamy eyes, though reality will start soon to show her ugly face. There's a filmic turning point, as the ship in which Hisako and her class are doing a school-trip crosses with the ship where "Miss Pebble"s Husband works as a sailor. The ships approach each other as to lovers who are going to embrace, while the music speeds its tempo. As the ships meet and the travellers and crews wave hands, nobody is aware that these happy days are going to vanish soon.

In fact, in the same trip, Hisako meets one of her students who had to look for a job after her mother's death: forced to be an adult before time, she works in as a waitress in a restaurant where her former teacher stops to have some tea. During the trip, the boys talk about their wish to serve the emperor: dreams of glory which are more appealing to them than the simple life of the island. Hisako is concerned: she doesn't regard war as something desirable, and more when she has grown to love these kids as if they were her own children.

"The colour of the sea and the shape of the mountains remained the same. Tomorrow became today"

Hisako finds out that she's been teaching "forbidden" stuff to her students... In fact, she just thought that she was opening their eyes to the world, but she learns from her superiors -who consider her a "red"- that her duty is to produce patriotic and unquestioning subjects to the Empire's militaristic regime. That implies shutting up and burning prohibited books on the stove. Hisako is not keen on teaching her students to become cannon fodder, so she quits her job ( The situation depicted here was somewhat reminiscent of the film This Land is Mine, and also of Miss Oki's plight in Osamu Tezuka's comic Adolf). Hisako will even be misunderstood by her own son, who thinks that a mother who doesn't want him to become a soldier is cowardly and unpatriotic.

Meanwhile, adulthood starts to take her toll as Hisako's students have to face poverty, disease or her dreams of youth being shattered, and then war. Hisako's life is touched by tragedy as well. A group photo of their first year becomes a symbol of the lost paradise.

War is never actually seen, only its effects on the community. When Hisako's boys are drafted, she goes to the harbor to bid them farewell. As she holds a streamer, held in the other extreme by one of her alumni , we get the ominous feeling that an umbilical cord is a bout to be broken.







The war is over, and Hisako returns to teaching. Heartbroken about the fate of the children she brought up to believe in the future, she will nevertheless be comforted by the survivors of her doomed class, who show her that she didn't sow the seeds in vain -well, sort of-.

Some links:
- Freda Freiberg's review at Senses of Cinema
- Slarek's review at DVD Outsider l
- Joan Mellen's essay on the film at Eureka Video
- Online documents about "Twenty-Four eyes" and other films by Kinoshita atCinefiles