Movielogr
Mother's Melody (1937)
Directed by Satsuo Yamamoto
Overview
The prewar film Haha no kyoku (Mother’s Melody, 1937) is known for its place in Japanese film history as one of the top three melodramas as well as for its authorship: Yamamoto Satsuo is an auteur not usually associated with filming melodramas. Yamamoto made the film right after he moved, along with his mentor Naruse Mikio, to the Toho film company. A number of subsequent postwar mother’s films adopted some of its essences, making it a genre-defining moment in Japanese cinema. This great melodrama is atypical of Yamamoto’s output, much of which deals with political corruption and inequities within social institutions and offers a strong anti-establishment appeal.
Length 91 minutes
Actors
Setsuko Hara | Joji Oka | Takako Irie | Yuriko Hanabusa | Sadao Maruyama | Toshiko Itô | Yôyô Kojima | Reiko Minakami | Masao Mishima | Osamu Takizawa