Two Naruse Films Explore World of Geishas

The Little Tokyo Cinema 2 is presenting a second major Mikio Naruse double feature starting Friday. Although rarely shown, “Flowing” (1956) and “Late Chrysanthemums” (1954) are among the greatest films of the postwar Japanese cinema and are eloquent testaments to the nobility of the human spirit. Both of them deal with the lives of aging geishas and afford several of Japan’s most celebrated actresses roles that are among the finest of their careers.

To see Isuzu Yamada, Kinuyo Tanaka, Haruko Sugimura and Hideko Takamine--not to mention several other important actresses--all in the same film (“Flowing”) would be like seeing Lillian Gish, Bette Davis, Katharine Hepburn and Barbara Stanwyck acting together, with maybe Ida Lupino and Claire Trevor thrown in for good measure.

Cast as the proprietress of a distinguished but fading Tokyo geisha house, Yamada plays a dignified woman of stubborn integrity who now must pay the price for having spurned a wealthy patron in favor of a no-good man she loved, a fatal mistake in the “flower and willow” world. Yamada’s Tsutayakko is much like Madame Ranevskaya in Chekhov’s “The Cherry Orchard.” In this adaptation of the Aya Koda novel, there awaits for Tsutayakko an even crueler fate than that of Ranevskaya: As we take leave of her, she believes she has worked out her fate satisfactorily--yet we know otherwise. Tsutayakko is an uncharacteristically passive role for Yamada, yet she is stunning. It is a thrilling experience to see the ensemble playing between Yamada, Tanaka (as her devoted, loyal but comprehending maid), Sugimura (as a brassy veteran geisha) and Takamine (as Tsutayakko’s daughter, who has refused to be a geisha but has been unable to make anything of her life). Tanaka, the most sublime of actresses, died in 1977; Takamine is semi-retired, but Sugimura and Yamada remain active in theater and in television.

If anything, “Late Chrysanthemums,” an adaptation of a novel by Fumiko Hayashi--Naruse’s favorite writer--is an even deeper expression of the director’s compassion and understanding. Again we discover loyalties and treacheries among geishas.

In this film, the women have all retired as geishas. Only Kin (Sugimura) is prosperous, a successful speculator in real estate and a moneylender with little pity for her former colleagues, who include the still-beautiful Tamae (Chikako Hosokawa), reduced to working as a hotel maid, and the hard-drinking, uncouth Tomi (Yuko Mochizuki). Naruse doesn’t judge Kin, a lonely realist, and he allows Tamae and Tomi the comfort of having experienced motherhood.

Always able to find the humor and resilience in common, even vulgar, women, Sugimura is superb in conveying the complex intermingling of hardness and vulnerability in Kin, whose unexpected reunion with a handsome former lover (Ken Uehara) is heart-breaking--and a triumph of screen acting.

Information: (213) 687-8665.