Breaking up the films which have had proper DVD releases is this film which you can see in a fairly good print on YouTube right now if you want, and I’d recommend checking it out. I certainly think I need to watch it again to pick up on all its subtleties, but Hideko Takamine’s wonderful acting is clear enough.
Nothing happens in Lightning, or rather I should say it’s filled with incident — bickering, sisterly squabbles, family fallouts, creepy dudes (and nice ones too) — but there’s nothing really big, there’s no disease killing one of them, there’s no life-changing event that they all rally together around, there’s no war, it’s just the flow of life. I think somehow Naruse’s films of this period, many of them (like this one) adaptations of the novelist and poet Fumiko Hayashi, stop somewhere just short of full-blown melodrama, though emotion clearly roils beneath the placid surface of his shots. Hayashi’s work, it seems, had a particular interest in individual women making a life for themselves, and her work is brilliantly conveyed by Hideko Takamine (another of Naruse’s regular collaborators in this period). Takamine, like Setsuko Hara, like many of the great actors, conveys a wealth of emotions through her eyes, though Takamine (and the character she plays here, Kiyoko) has a harder edge, perhaps developed in response to the insistence of her family that she settle down. It’s mentioned at one point that there’s one man to every 23 women in this post-war period, and certainly her half-brother has little interest in settling down, while another family friend, a sleazy baker, is on the prowl amongst all of the sisters. The resolution of the film, such as it is, just seems to be a level of understanding between mother (Kumeko Urabe) and daughter, the latter of whom has moved out of the family home by this point. These characters have a future, but we are left to imagine it.
CREDITS
Director Mikio Naruse 成瀬巳喜男; Writer Sumie Tanaka 田中澄江 (based on the novel by Fumiko Hayashi 林芙美子); Cinematographer Shigeyoshi Mine 峰重義; Starring Hideko Takamine 高峰秀子, Mitsuko Miura 三浦光子, Chieko Murata 村田知英子, Kumeko Urabe 浦辺粂子; Length 87 minutes.
Seen at home (YouTube), London, Thursday 23 April 2020.
filmcentric 