The Downfall of Osen

A film from the early period of Japanese cinema. Two people are waiting at a railway station. One is a man who has become a doctor, the other a woman. Neither knows the other is there, and both are remembering the same past. From there the narrative goes back. Osen works for an antique dealer. He sells fakes and swindles monks; he treats badly both Osen and the penniless young man he has taken in. When the dealer is arrested, the two are left with nothing. Osen wants the young man to study medicine and takes on the cost. They live in a small room; while his studies go on, nobody asks where the woman finds the money. What the film is interested in is not sacrifice but how visible sacrifice is, and to whom: years later the man practises his profession and understands late what made it possible. The editing does not run straight; there is memory inside memory, and toward the end the narrative returns to the station. Isuzu Yamada plays Osen. The source is a story by Izumi Kyōka. It was made as a silent film and was shown with a benshi, a live narrator. It is counted as an example of the period in which Mizoguchi crossed from silence into sound. Who it is for: anyone interested in silent cinema and in how Mizoguchi looks at women. Who it is not for: anyone bothered by technical quality; the surviving prints are worn and the storytelling is very indirect by today's habits.