The story of Sumako Matsui, the first great modern Japanese actress and, for manyJapanese, their first public "twentieth century woman," was itself adrama that, in 1947, attracted both Kinugasa in Actress, and Mizoguchi in TheLove of the Actress Sumako. Sumako Matsui worked with director HogetsuShimamura-whose Art Theatre (Geijutsu Gekijo) was the first to introduceWestern-style realism, via Ibsen and Tolstoy, to the Japanese stage-and theirlove affair was a public scandal that ended in tragedy. Kinugasa's version ofthis scenario is a haunting elegy to personal and artistic freedom, told in apowerful visual style and drawing on a deeply felt performance by Isuzu Yamada asSumako. Kinugasa's camera never leaves the theatre environment; like Shimamura(Yoshi Hijikata) himself, we become immersed in the creation of the Art Theatre,and in an artist's determination to awaken a land "where no one smilesanymore." Sumako comes to this environment wide-eyed but not ingenuous,determined after two "failed" marriages to land a job. A Doll's Housewas made for her and it is her first triumph. Meanwhile, the slow dismantling ofShimamura's homelife is shown in the yawns of his disapproving wife, sitting inthe theater audience.... For Shimamura, as for Sumako, there is only one choice,to be or not to be, and Kinugasa reflects the existential ramifications of thescript in a visually expressionistic style (more Western than Japanese). Outsideand inside are continually counterposed in a complex use of windows and mirrors;figures appear and disappear at the director's will; fades and double fadesremind us that he, too, was once a maverick artist (see A Page of Madness,November 5).