Carmen Comes Home

When the elders of a mountain village hear that a farmer's daughter is coming back from the city, they set about preparing a welcome. She is said to be an artist and the village takes it as a point of pride. But the young woman who arrives is a burlesque performer now going by the name Carmen, and she has brought a friend with her. What the village expected and what turns up do not match at all. Keisuke Kinoshita's film is the first feature shot with Japan's own colour technology; Fujicolor was used, and colour printing was so expensive that only two prints were made for the original release. The telling makes fools of neither the villagers nor the visitors from the city; it gives the tension between old and new in postwar Japan in a light tone. Hideko Takamine plays Carmen.