Sadao Yamanaka 1937 Japan
Starring: Kan'emon Nakamura, Chôjûrô Kawarasaki, Shizue Yamagishi, Sukezo Sukedakaya
Humanity And Paper Balloons is an odd film, which I suppose is somewhat fitting as its director Sadao Yamanaka had an odd life story. Unlike his contemporaries Yasujirō Ozu, Mikio Naruse and Kenji Mizoguchi Yamanaka didn't have a long and distinguished career. Instead he made a colossal 26 films in 6 years before being called up to the Imperial Army on the day Humanity premiered in Japan. He died of dysentery several months later in a Manchurian field hospital, aged only 28, and only 3 of his films have survived, Humanity being the last. As noted it's an odd one, focusing on the inhabitants of an 18th century housing estate of sorts but remaining startlingly minimalist throughout, its characters fascinating yet quiet. There's the cocky, gambling barber who takes bluff to worrying levels in an effort to humiliate his rival; the impoverished masterless samurai, drunken and desperate for most of the film; the daughter of the local pawnbroker, promised to the son of a samurai and debating whether she'd be better running off with her servant and even the slum itself, operating at times as little more than a holding pen for potential suicides. Fans of Ozu will be familiar with the ensemble piece but a nice twist here is that all the characters are allowed time to develop and have their own story, the only common ground being that everyone is looking for something better and that their subtle despair is captivating. It's a shock somehow to see a director treat his characters with such compassion and respect, especially when some of them appear not to have many redeeming features, and it makes me think that, had he survived, Yamanaka would have been as well remembered as his peers, rather than for his untimely death.
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