Carmen Comes Home (1951) User Reviews

Quite nice

[amosduncan_2000 · 8/10 · 25 November 2010]

When I saw "Carman Comes Home" some years ago it struck me as a gentle and well played comedy on familiar themes. The striking thing, as it was the first Japanese Color film, was the photography which was memorable. It seemed on a par with classics of the era and recalled Michael Powell's best films. I would recommend it to anyone, and I hope a version subtitled into English comes to DVD soon. There are so many good to wonderful Japanese films of the classic era this one should not be lost in the shuffle. I saw it at the Japan Center in Los Angeles. There were once several great Japanese movie theaters in L.A.

Part of the fun of following the Japanese greats, however, is that a lot are hard to see and you have to wait for special screenings.

Like so many Japanese movies, it's very strange but very interesting

[toclement · 8/10 · 28 December 2000]

This was the very first color film made in Japan. It's a relatively simple tale about a small remote village that rests at the foot of a volcano. The people are simple and life is uncomplicated here, even if the people struggle to make ends meet.

Things get interesting when the daughter (Karumen, or Carmen) of one of the townsmen decides that she will be returning for a visit. She had left the village years ago in search of greener pastures in the big city (Tokyo) where she has become a famous dancer. The townspeople have only heard about her celebrity but don't really have a clue as to the content of what has made her famous. It turns out that her performances border on the risque and she is essentially a high-class exotic dancer. Scandal erupts in the town as this fact comes to light.

Now one might assume that with this plot, the logical thing to have happen is that Karumen realizes all the wonderful things she gave up in the small village and that her life in Tokyo as an exotic dancer is hollow. But this being a Japanese movie, it doesn't follow that cliched convention. Instead the message from the film is complex and can be interpreted in many ways: perhaps one man's exotic dancer is another man's performance art; or the world needs exotic dancers to attract more general attention to the arts; or people should be free to decide what type of performance they want to put on and people should be free to decide what type of performance they wish to watch; or maybe in fact while the exotic dancer gets a big audience (and money), her life is indeed hollow compared to the poor (and blind) harmonium player in the village.

At any rate, the movie does not give you a simple and easily interpretable message. Instead it only provides you with many thoughts and leaves it for you to decide what message you think you should take away. This is such a lost art in filmmaking, particularly in today's Hollywood in-your-face heavy-handed manner of giving the audience the 'message'. What's also interesting in the film is the complexity of the characters. They do good things and bad things at different times, and while some might be better than others, no characters are always good, and neither are any always bad. This certainly more accurately reflects real human behavior and again is something that is often missing from mainstream American cinema.

In sum, I think that this film is certainly worth a look, and while it is not likely to blow you away, it is well worth watching for historical reasons, for some magnificent scenery, some intriguing musical numbers and choreography, and for seeing a different way to tell a story in film. 8 out of 10.

Hideko Takamine Shows Some Skin

[boblipton · 6/10 · 4 September 2018]

In a tiny mountain village where the children are taught to dance to a dirge-like town anthem, comes news that Hideko Takamine is coming home for a visit, since her theater is closed for a week, and bringing her friend, Toshiko Kobayashi. Her father, Takeshi Sakamoto, want to forbid it, even though she has sent home gifts and money since she ran away at 18; he can only imagine how corrupting Tokyo is. However, the school principal, Chishû Ryû, gives him a long lecture about art and culture, and he gives way. The girls are a little strange, showing too much leg, and it isn't until halfway through what seems to be Japan's first color movie that the village discovers the girls' art is the strip-tease.

It must have been a nice change of pace for one of Japan's leading actresses of feminist roles to play a ditzy stripper, but she appears to be having more fun in the part than this rather mild movie calls for. It's mostly about the characters in the small town; as I so often am, I am once again astounded at exactly the same sort of people cropping up in mountainous Japan as in small-town Indiana or Italy, with the same sort of story that might star Mitzi Gaynor or Diana Dors -- you choose your own Continental actress for the part. Keisuke Kinoshita directs facilely, if not deeply, Kiroshi Kusuda handles the color camera as well as he ever did the black & white model, and the mountain scenery is quite lovely. It's clearly a movie where they played it cannily, and the financial results seem to have been good enough to justify a sequel the next year. I'm sure that, having been a child actress on a movie lot at 5, Miss Takamine enjoyed showing a bitof adult skin .... and roaring at Miss Sakamoto like she was Toshiro Mifune.

Japanese director's light-hearted satire depicting patriarchal society in transition

[Turfseer · 6/10 · 6 April 2022]

Carmen Comes Home has the distinction of being the first Japanese film shot in color. But because printing it was so costly, a black and white version was also done. That meant that actors had to act every scene twice. Amazing!

At the time the film was released, the American occupation was winding down. Director Keisuke Kinoshita designed this gentle satire to reflect the profound changes Japanese society had undergone because of the American influence throughout the country.

Kinoshita was interested not only in chronicling how the patriarchal culture of rural conservative areas reacted to the liberal American ways but also designed the narrative to "soften the blow" among all those who were traumatized by strange new experiences.

Japan's defeat in World War II led to the gradual emancipation of women in the culture. In the urban areas, women became sexually involved with American soldiers much to the chagrin of Japanese men, often former soldiers who felt emasculated.

In Kinoshita's story, his protagonist Kin using the stage name Carmen Lily (Hideko Takamine) returns to the small town where she grew up after becoming a well-known dancer. But actually she's just a striptease "artist."

Carmen is accompanied by fellow dancer Maya (Tokisho Kobayashi), a comic figure bored by the lack of excitement in Carmen's hometown. Carmen's father Shoichi (Takeshi Sakamoto) was never happy about his daughter leaving in the first place and as a deeply conservative man, is ashamed that she has taken up such a profession.

At first the School Principal (Chishu Ryu) hides his deep-set reactionary nature by convincing Shoichi to support his daughter in the name of art and culture as well as "human rights." All the while we're smiling because let's face it, Carmen is hardly an "artist" unless you consider her and Maya's laughable dance routines to be true "choreography."

But when Maruju (Bontaro Binyake), the to wn robber baron, colludes with Carmen to put on a live "nude" show for 100 yen a pop, Ryu throws a fit and apologizes to Shoichi for initially supporting the intrepid stripper. In days gone by, Shoichi may have ended up committing hari-kari but here he realizes that the "shame" he had to endure over his daughter's behavior has a silver lining.

It should be noted that the men in the town turn out in droves to see Carmen's show which features a small taste of nudity when Carmen and Maya drop their outfits at the climax of their routine for a few seconds. Of course, I doubt that such nudity would have been at all permitted in a small town despite the liberal post-war climate, but the joke is the men are game for at least a modicum of bacchanal diversions.

As to the aforementioned silver lining, Carmen's triumphant performance even causes Maruju to lighten up (albeit after imbibing a surfeit of sake) and ends up returning an organ to the blind musician vet Haruo (Shuji Sano) who earlier had to give it back to the businessmen after going into debt. Even better, Shoichi can pass on Carmen's profits from the show to a local school which they plan to use to improve the children's education.

Kinoshita's lesson to all those Japanese people who a few years earlier were bloodthirsty militarists was the new liberalism in society was not such a bad thing. The shame of open sexuality was not real as Carmen is shown to be thoroughly harmless. And while Kinoshita's is clearly critical of exploiters like Maruju, even scheming capitalists may serve a positive purpose within the community.

Of course, it's all wishful thinking as someone like Maruju probably would have not shown any signs of a good heart as Kinoshita depicts things here.

Carmen Comes Home could have used some judicious editing especially in the opening sequence in which it takes an interminably long time before our protagonist is introduced.

As cultural history, Carmen Comes Home proves to be a fascinating glimpse of a once authoritarian society now embracing liberal democracy with all of the attendant pluses and minuses.

carmen comes home

[mossgrymk · 7/10 · 25 April 2022]

As perhaps befits the first Japanese color film the visual elements linger in the mind far longer and more brightly than the story elements. One remembers the pastel dresses of the two visiting Tokyo strippers set against the greens and browns of the austere mountain/ranch location and all presided over by a benign volcano long after the way too cutesy rustic comedy stuff is forgotten. Give it a B minus.

CARMEN COMES HOME - Japan's first color movie is quite a revelation

[BrianDanaCamp · 9/10 · 12 December 2009]

For years, I had thought that Teinosuke Kinugasa's GATE OF HELL (1953) was Japan's first color movie. I had read that somewhere as a film student many years ago and in all this time I never came across any mention of earlier Japanese color films. Until this year. In reading Yoshihiro Tatsumi's autobiographical manga, "A Drifting Life," I stumbled upon a reference to CARMEN COMES HOME (1951), described in the manga as "Japan's first color film." Needless to say, I was astounded by this discovery and began looking for more information about it. Some of the reference sources I have do indeed accurately cite this film, so I have no idea where I came across that original erroneous mention of GATE OF HELL. Eager to see CARMEN COMES HOME, I asked around on the web and got word that YesAsia was selling it on DVD-with English subtitles-so I bought it.

The previous review, by "toclement," touches on many of the film's virtues in as concise a manner as you're likely to find on IMDb, so I hope not to repeat what was said, but simply to add to it. The most important aspect of the film for me is, of course, the color cinematography, beautifully captured in this expert DVD transfer. (According to the book, "The Japanese Film: Art and Industry," by Joseph L. Anderson and Donald Richie, the process used was Fujicolor.) The film was shot almost entirely on location in a farm town at the foot of Mount Asama, an active volcano on the central Japanese island of Honshu. Many of the shots are framed with Mount Asama majestically rising in the background, with steam sometimes seen escaping from the volcano. There are hilltops and green meadows abounding where the lead character, Carmen, accompanied by her friend, Maja, takes off her shoes and runs through the grass, dancing and frolicking in bursts of spontaneous joy. Nearly every shot is drenched in sunlight and the bright colors of Carmen's and Maja's costumes and the redness of their lipstick dazzle the viewer in every scene. Adding to the splendor is the way Carmen bursts into song, entirely on her own, in scene after scene. She may be visiting her childhood hometown for the first time in years, but she's wrapped up in her own self-created universe and she takes it with her wherever she goes.

It's quite unlike any other Japanese film I've seen. Most Japanese films I see have urban settings or historical settings or are science fiction films set in the future, on spaceships or on other planets. Rarely have I seen films about contemporary rural life in Japan, especially in color. And this film shows us numerous details about small town life in Japan and the people who live it. As the previous reviewer indicated, the film never seeks to judge its characters (with one notable exception), but simply presents them to us as they are, warts and all. It's an amusing film, with lots of humorous behavior, but it's never condescending. It's also never laugh-out-loud funny, precisely because it avoids the contrivances, farcical touches and melodramatic highs and lows that characterize traditional movie comedy. The humor arises from obvious collisions between the manners of aggressive citified showgirls and those of the more laidback country folk. In one scene, Maja flirts quite openly with Mr. Ogawa, the young schoolteacher. His reaction? He complains to Carmen's amused brother-in-law that Maja was "bullying" him. Carmen herself is a flamboyant character, but she's never larger than life. We come to understand her, particularly after her father offers a revelation about a childhood incident that might account for her behavior. She's not the sharpest knife in the drawer and would surely be quite a handful in any relationship, but she's still cute, endearing and fun to take in small doses.

The one character on whom the film casts judgment is Maruju, the local businessman who pretty much runs the town. He sees himself as a beneficent entrepreneur, seeking to promote art and culture when he offers to let Carmen and Maja perform their racy dance act for the town-for 100 yen a ticket! He is berated by Carmen's father and the school principal, but, in the end, Maruju's not such a bad sort after all. In fact, it was always Carmen's dream to find a way to share her "art" with her hometown audience. Which she does, most memorably. And a handful of characters benefit in varying, but important ways. And it's Maruju who makes it possible.

The film is filled with character types familiar from Japanese films. The school principal, played by Chishu Ryu, famous for his roles in Yasujiro Ozu's films, is something of a caricature, a rigid defender of Japanese culture and tradition, like someone out of the 19th century, who comes to regret his initial endorsement of Carmen's visit. A running gag has him turning to Mount Asama to sing traditional folk songs in praise of the mountain. Still, these characters are all far less exaggerated than they would have been in a similarly-themed Hollywood comedy, the kind in which everybody would have been transformed in some way by Carmen's visit. (Mae West may have made something in that vein in the post-pre-Code 1930s.) In this film, the town is left with a couple of subtle positive effects, but Carmen is no different when she leaves than when she arrived.

I've seen a handful of other Japanese color films made in the 1950s, including GATE OF HELL (1953), the SAMURAI trilogy (1955), JANKEN MUSUME (1955, also reviewed on this site), RODAN (1957), OHAYO (1959), and THE MYSTERIANS (1959). Now I'd like to see more. [UPDATE: I've seen many more color Japanese films from the 1950s in the 12 years since I did this review, from many different genres, some of which I've reviewed here. TCM will be running this film on the morning of April 4, 2022, which is why I came back to check my review.)

Clunky, Mildly Amusing Musical.

[net_orders · 5/10 · 1 May 2016]

Viewed on Streaming. Cinematography = eight (8) stars; subtitles = five (5) stars; musical editing = four (4) stars. Director (and scenario writer) Keisuke Kinoshita delivers a Japanese version of an outdoor "sound of music" movie (at least a decade before this approach was used big time in the West) with most dancing (sometimes in high heals!) and singing (prerecorded, of course) shot on location and in the field (literally). (The photo play also is usually credited as being the first major Japanese motion picture to be photographed in color.) Kinoshita could hardly have picked a more scenic, interesting, and, perhaps, dangerous exterior set on which to create his film: next to Mount Asama in central Honshu. (Asama was then and remains the most active volcano on Japan's main island.) The plot is centered on the clash of rural and urban cultures (with each life style attempting to one up the other) when a farmer's daughter takes an uninvited ego trip back to her native village to show the hicks what life is all about (especially when it comes to dressing/ undressing in public) as lived in her adopted big city of Tokyo. (It looks like the locals, though, are not really all that unsophisticated and have the last laugh.) Clearly this film could benefit from more talented and firmer musical direction. Village inhabitants are portrayed as usually singing characteristic (at least in Japanese films) rambling, blank-verse choral numbers when not chasing horses and cows. This incessant singing quickly becomes a big bore for the viewer (the singing starts during the opening credits!) and the movie could use tighter editing to remove a lot of it. The music bounces back and forth between choral numbers and 1940ish style lyrical numbers sung (with warbling deliveries reminiscent of Hollywood musicals from the 1930's) by the Carmen character (and her girl-friend companion). The real star of this movie is Asana which is shown steaming in the background of most scenes (and often talked about when not shown). Actress Hideko Takamine again demonstrates her range of acting skills this time in a comedic turn (it is unclear if she did her own singing), but occasionally her line deliveries drift into ham. Distinguished veteran actor Chishû Ryû has been seriously miscast as a silly school principle. Opening credits are marked by continuous fame jitter and the lack of subtitles for ongoing singing. Dialogue subtitles are often too long given their short durations on screen. And multi colors are not used for different speaking characters. Without careful listening (most/all dialog is in Kansai-Ben), it can be difficult to determine which subtitle line applies to which character. Cinematography (narrow screen, color) and scene lighting are excellent. Not so much for editing, especially the editing of 1940ish musical numbers. The latter is often marked by cutting between extreme distant shots and close-ups almost randomly which distracts from the effectiveness of singing/dancing performances. Pretty much limited to being a historical curiosity, especially for Japanese film enthusiasts. WILLIAM FLANIGAN, PhD.

Charming, slightly risqué Japanese comedy

[jamesrupert2014 · 8/10 · 7 April 2022]

Kin Aoyama (stage name Lily Carmen), who had run away to Tokyo as a young girl, triumphantly returns to her traditional home town as a successful artist, although not in any art form that the locals were expecting. This bright, fun comedy was Japan's first colour production, something that Carmen and her friend and fellow artist Maya's vivid outfits make the most of. Hideko Takamine is excellent as the brash but somewhat fragile ecdysiast and much of the humour revolves around her relationship with the various men in the town, including her father who is appalled at her choice of profession. There is little mention of the recently concluded war in the pacific (other than a teacher who was blinded) but the awkward, sometimes sad, often humorous, blending of Western culture (Carmen's 'look' is very American and her stage name is from the European opera) and traditional Japanese values (represented by her father, lecherously ignored by the rest of the men in the town) is central to the story. The film was a hit in Japan when it came out in the early 1950s but the humour has aged well and both the jokes and the a the star (and her character) should appeal to modern, international audiences. Followed by a much blacker, satiric sequel, 'Carmen's Innocent Love', which I found very odd, but very funny.

More interesting than entertaining

[jellopuke · 5/10 · 12 June 2022]

This is fascinating for what it was, ie) the first color movie in Japan, but it's not exactly a great watch. Ditzy strippers, bumpkin country folk, and a slow pace add up to a historical curiosity more than a fun movie. It's a neat time capsule though.