Neil Brand on Piano

(Furusato no uta). The thirtieth film Kenji Mizoguchi made in his prolific career, this rural parable is the earliest of his works still surviving today. The contrast between country and city is embodied in two young men: a modest village horse-coach driver, and a student who returns to the village educated in city ways, teaching the local boys to smoke cigarettes and the girls to dance to phonograph records. The hero ultimately must make a choice between modern opportunities and the satisfying traditions of home. The result of a writing contest sponsored by the Japanese ministry of education, the film has a clear didactic message, but its evocation of rural life enriches and transcends the diagrammatic plot. It is an eloquent document of cultural transition, beautiful images of slow-flowing rivers and rustic rooftops punctuated by telephone poles, horse-drawn carts sharing space with motorcars on dusty country roads.

—Juliet Clark

• Written by Ryunosuke Shimizu. Photographed by Tatsuyuki Yokota. With Shigeru Mokudo, Masujiro Takagi, Sueko Ito, Mineko Tsuji. (50 mins, Silent with Japanese intertitles and English subtitles, B&W, 35mm, Courtesy National Film Center, Tokyo)