She Was Like a Wild Chrysanthemum
4 /10 1 Votes
Country Japan | Director Keisuke Kinoshita Language Japanese | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Release date 1955 (1955) (Japan) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
She Was Like a Wild Chrysanthemum (野菊の如き君なりき Nogiku no gotoki kimi nariki), also known as You Were Like a Wild Chrysanthemum or My First Love Affair, is a Japanese film directed by Keisuke Kinoshita which was initially released in 1955. It is based on a novel by Saicho Ito.
Contents
Plot
The film is set in the Meiji period. The story tells of the forbidden romance between teenaged cousins Masao and Tamiko. The lovers were also inhibited by a marriage arranged by her family for Tamiko and Masao needing to go away to school. The story is essentially a flashback as remembered by the 73-year-old Masao, played by Chishū Ryū, as he rides a boat back to his home village where they first fell in love.
Production
The flashback scenes were filmed using an oval-shaped mask typically associated with silent films. According to Alexander Jacoby, this masking gives the film "an appropriately nostalgic tone." Film critic Donald Richie describes the film style as representing "Meiji daguerrotypes."
Reception
Jacoby rates She Was Like a Wild Chrysanthemum to be "among the most purely moving of Japanese films" despite its "occasional naivety." He attributes this particularly to Kinoshota's "simple techniques," including "judicious choice of camera position," and to the excellent performances. Richie regards the film as one of Kinoshita's "most successful" in his later style. Joseph L. Anderson praises the film's photography, particularly the "rich blacks" and Kinoshita's "evocation of [the] area." Jacek Kloiowski, et al., regard the film as "one of the most sincere and purest films of its type in Japanese cinema," noting that it marks a return to "pastoral lyricism" for Kinoshota after focusing his films on social issues for the previous few years.
Awards
Cinematographer Hiroshi Kusuda won the Mainichi Film Award for cinematography in 1956 for his work on She Was Like a Wild Chrysanthemum and another Kinoshita–directed film, The Tattered Wings. He also won the Blue Ribbon Award for cinematography for the same two films.