A Town of Love and Hope

A Town of Love and Hope (Japanese: 愛と希望の街, romanized: Ai to kibô no machi) is a 1959 Japanese drama film written and directed by Nagisa Ôshima. It was Ôshima's feature film debut.[1][2][3]

A Town of Love and Hope
Japanese愛と希望の街
Directed byNagisa Ôshima
Produced byTomio Ikeda
Written byNagisa Ôshima
Starring
  • Hiroshi Fujikawa
  • Yuki Tominaga
  • Kakuko Chino
  • Yûko Mochizuki
Music byRiichirô Manabe
CinematographyHiroshi Kusuda
Edited byYoshi Sugihara
Production
company
Distributed byShochiku
Release date
  • November 17, 1959 (1959-11-17)
Running time
62 minutes
CountryJapan
LanguageJapanese

Plot

Masao lives with his mother, who works as a shoe polisher, and his sister in a poverty-stricken era of Tokyo. He earns extra money for the family by repeatedly selling his sister's pigeons to passersby in the city, knowing the pigeons will escape their new owners and return home after a few days. The latest buyer, upper-class girl Kyôko, unites with Masao's teacher Miss Akiyama in an act of sympathy to help Masao get a job in the company of Kyôko's father Kuhara. Kuhara first declines, but Kyôko's brother Yuji, who has developed an interest in Miss Akiyama, tries to talk him into giving Masao a chance. Yet, when Kyôko and Miss Akiyama find out that Masao's fraud was not a single but a repeated one, both turn away from him in disappointment. Breaking all ties in a final vengeful act, Kyôko once again purchases a pigeon from Masao and has her brother shoot it with his rifle.

Cast
  • Hiroshi Fujikawa as Masao
  • Yuki Tominaga as Kyôko
  • Kakuko Chino as Miss Akiyama, Masao's teacher
  • Yûko Mochizuki as Kuniko, Masao's mother
  • Fumio Watanabe as Yuji, Kyôko's brother
  • Fujio Suga as Kuhara, Kyôko's father
  • Michiko Ito as Yasue, Masao's sister
  • Noboru Sakashita as Taizô
  • Toyoko Uryû as Isako

Production

Due to the "new wave policy" of Shochiku studio's head Shirō Kido, designed to promote fresh and free films, Oshima was given the opportunity to write and direct his first feature film with the production title The Boy Who Sold His Pigeon. Kido, unsatisfied with the result and calling it a "tendency picture", only gave it limited distribution under the title A Town of Love and Hope. Still, reviews for the film were positive.[1] More recent reviewers have pointed out the difference of A Town of Love and Hope both to other Japanese filmmakers of its era and Italian neorealism lying in its refusal to inject humanism or humanist sentiment into its portrayal of class opposition.[2][4]

References
  1. Richie, Donald (2005). A Hundred Years of Japanese Film (Revised edition). Tokyo, New York, London: Kodansha International. ISBN 978-4-7700-2995-9.
  2. Jones, J.R. "Review of A Town of Love and Hope at chicagoreader.com". Retrieved 31 December 2020.
  3. Rayns, Tony. "Review of A Town of Love and Hope at timeout.com". Retrieved 31 December 2020.
  4. Turim, Maureen (1998). The Films of Oshima Nagisa: Images of a Japanese Iconoclast. Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press. ISBN 0-520-20665-7.
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.