Kinoshita is often called the Japanese René Clair, a master of both satiric comedy and haunting lyricism. Unlike Clair, however, he is best known for the latter, even though his comic bent blossomed forth in his very first film, The Blossoming Port (1943). The Carmen films (see Carmen Comes Home, January 2), confirm Kinoshita as a humorist and a bitter social satirist. Carmen's Pure Love, even more than Carmen Comes Home, paints a rogues' gallery of postwar types, casting about amid the rampant confusion of values-patriotism confused with democracy, sophistication with downright philistinism-that Kinoshita sees as characterizing the early fifties in Japan. As he would later do in Candle in the Wind, Kinoshita makes his comic points visually, through bizarre camera angles and movements that highlight the absurdity of his subjects. Carmen's Pure Love again stars Hideko Takamine as the naive stripper devoted to her art, and now to a playboy artist as well.