“Another of Mizoguchi's film portraits taken from life, this time set during the Meiji period around the turn of the present century. His protagonists are Sumako Matsui, Japan's first modern stage actress, and Hogetsu Shimamura, one of the founders of the Shingeki movement advocating theatrical realism. Once again, the subject was made even more attractive by its possibilities for promoting democracy, for Sumako Matsui was an unusual woman who risked everything for a career in the theater and pioneered a new place for women in an art form that previously had been altogether closed to them....
“The story is of a young woman enamored of the theater who leaves her husband to seek a career on the stage. She apprentices herself to Hogetsu Shimamura, and together they are determined to establish a Western-style realism on the Japanese stage. While rehearsing Ibsen's ‘A Doll's House,' in which Sumako is to play Nora, Hogetsu and Sumako fall in love. Hogetsu leaves his wife and daughter to form a permanent partnership with his new star. But he exhausts himself trying to keep the new company together; a simple cold turns into pneumonia, and soon he is dead. Sumako continues to rehearse with such obsessive fervor that after her opening performance she kills herself.” --David Owens

(Sumako will be repeated Sunday, August 2, at 3:00.)

Longer and unpublished program note:

“Another of Mizoguchi's film portraits taken from life, this time set during the Meiji period around the turn of the present century. His protagonists are Sumako Matsui, Japan's first modern stage actress, and Hogetsu Shimamura, one of the founders of the Shingeki movement advocating theatrical realism. Once again, the subject was made even more attractive by its possibilities for promoting democracy, for Sumako Matsui was an unusual woman who risked everything for a career in the theater and pioneered a new place for women in an art form that previously had been altogether closed to them.... Japanese critics charged that Mizoguchi, in his eagerness to flaunt his new democratic ideology, failed to bring to the screen the full-blooded believable characters that had been the strength of his best films. Mizoguchi himself professed dissatisfaction with the results. American film scholar Noel Burch, however, believes that Sumako ‘represents a plateau of excellence' from which Mizoguchi's work steadily declined.
“Though Sumako was not a success, its subject was certainly popular. That same year, Teinosuke Kinugasa made a much more successful film about Sumako Matsui, with Isuzu Yamada in the title role, called Actress (Joyu), which finished high in the Kinema Junpo annual ratings and also did well at the box office.
“The story is of a young woman enamored of the theater who leaves her husband to seek a career on the stage. She apprentices herself to Hogetsu Shimamura, and together they are determined to establish a Western-style realism on the Japanese stage. While rehearsing Ibsen's ‘A Doll's House,' in which Sumako is to play Nora, Hogetsu and Sumako fall in love. Hogetsu leaves his wife and daughter to form a permanent partnership with his new star. But he exhausts himself trying to keep the new company together; a simple cold turns into pneumonia, and soon he is dead. Sumako continues to rehearse with such obsessive fervor that after her opening performance she kills herself.” --David Owens