Movielogr

Rating: 7.5 stars

Tags

dkutv Japan writer poet poetry poverty black and white husband

All movies seen on 04/29/2023

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A Wanderer's Notebook (1962)

Directed by Mikio Naruse

Drama

Overview

Considered one of the finest late Naruses and a model of film biography, A Wanderer’s Notebook features remarkable performances by Hideko Takamine – Phillip Lopate calls it “probably her greatest performance” – and Kinuyo Tanaka as mother and daughter living from hand to mouth in Twenties Tokyo. Based on the life and career of Fumiko Hayashi, the novelist whose work Naruse adapted to the screen several times, A Wanderer’s Notebook traces her bitter struggle for literary recognition in the first half of the twentieth century – her affairs with feckless men, the jobs she took to survive (peddler, waitress, bar maid), and her arduous, often humiliating attempts to get published in a male-dominated culture.

Length 124 minutes

Actors

Hideko Takamine | Akira Takarada | Daisuke Katô | Keiju Kobayashi | Kinuyo Tanaka | Mitsuko Kusabue | Noboru Nakaya | Yūnosuke Itō | Jun Tatara | Masao Oda | Takeshi Katô | Tomoko Fumino | Natsuko Kahara | Chôko Iida | Machiko Kitagawa | Yurika Benisono | Chieko Nakakita | Toshiko Yabuki | Kin Sugai | Hisaya Ito | Mineko Yorozuyo | Shigeki Ishida | Yutaka Nakayama | Akira Nagoya | Rumi Konishi | Michiko Kawa | Masae Yoshikawa | Tatsuo Endô | Chisato Aoki | Kazuko Inano | Masako Yagi | Michiko Hayashi | Akiko Mori | Yoshiko Uno | Yachiyo Kirishima | Fumiko Umeka | Asao Uchida | Toshiaki Nishizawa | Hiroyuki Sugi | Katsuhiro Oida | Shin Kishida | Daigo Kusano | Isao Hashizume

Viewing History (seen 1 time)

Viewing Notes

Another unseen Mikio Naruse film crossed off the list thanks to DKUTV’s Akira Takarada celebration programming this weekend. Once again Hideko Takamine is front and center as the struggling writer encountering plenty of awful men along her path from poverty to success and getting slapped a few times by both women and men. I’ve not seen a Naruse film without Takamine in the lead role (I know, I write this every time). Here she’s really great bc she had a bit more of a fuck-all attitude and cuts loose.

Takarada plays against type and is a real shitheel of a husband. Always enjoy seeing him doing a different type of character than his usual congenial hero-type. Not sure if this film is in my Naruse box set bc it’s not in my DVDpedia catalog and I don’t know where it is. Need to track that down and watch all those movies.

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