The Way of Drama

A young actor has his first success and his head swells; he goes from the small theater to the big time in Tokyo. leaving his girl behind in Osaka. Meanwhile the producer-director back in Osaka decides on a course of plays that examine the meaning and cost of heroism in war. It’s too deep-dish for his audience, and his once formidable reputation shrivels, even as he stubbornly insists on his new artistic methods.Mikio Naruse’s movie about what acting means and entails looks like it’s a movie he insisted on making, taking a smaller budget and lesser-known performers to make the movie he wanted. True, the actors are quite good, and some would become internationally famous in his other and Kuroswa’s movies over the next decade, but for the moment, this is an odd movie for 1944 Japan, set in an earlier era, yet steadfastly ignoring the War…. or does it? The young actor gains his reputation in a potboiler in which he dies during a battle, crying out a huzzah for the Emperor; that strikes me as a bit satiric.