The Dancing Girl of Izu (1933 film)

The Dancing Girl of Izu (Japanese: 恋 の 花 咲 く 伊豆 の 踊 子, romanized: Koi no hana saku Izu no odoriko, lit. 'The Blooming Love of a Dancing Girl of Izu') is a 1933 Japanese silent romance film directed by Heinosuke Gosho. It is the first adaptation of the 1924 short story The Dancing Girl of Izu (伊豆の踊子, Izu no odoriko) by Yasunari Kawabata.

The Dancing Girl of Izu
Japanese恋 の 花 咲 く 伊豆 の 踊 子
Directed byHeinosuke Gosho
Written by
Starring
CinematographyJōji Ohara
Production
company
Distributed byShochiku
Release date
  • 2 February 1933 (1933-02-02)
[1]
Running time
124/94[1][lower-alpha 1]
CountryJapan
LanguageJapanese

Plot

During his vacation tour on Izu peninsula, student Mizuhara befriends a group of travelling players. He and dancer Kaoru fall in love, but they are drawn into a scheme involving a local gold mine once inherited by Kaoru's brother Eikichi, which Eikichi lost through his carelessness.

Cast

  • Den Ohinata (credited Den Obinata) as Mizuhara
  • Kinuyo Tanaka as Kaoru
  • Tokuji Kobayashi as Eikichi
  • Eiko Takamatsu as Otatsu
  • Kinuko Wakamizu as Chiyoko,
  • Shizue Hyōdō as Yuriko
  • Jun Arai as Zenbei
  • Ryōichi Takeuchi as Ryûichi
  • Reikichi Kawamura as Kubota
  • Ryōtarō Mizushima as Tamura
  • Takeshi Sakamoto as Hattori
  • Chōko Iida as a geisha
  • Kikuko Hanaoka as a geisha
  • Shōzaburō Abe as customer
  • Kiyoshi Aono as Kisaku

Legacy

The Dancing Girl of Izu is not only the first, but also regarded the best of the many adaptations of Kawabata's story, and an important example of films connected to the junbungaku ("pure literature") movement, which favoured "serious" literature in opposition to "popular" literature.[2] Gosho and his screenwriter Fushimi added a sublot and obscured the class differences between the characters, instead aiming at a nostalgic depiction of the country "untainted by modernization" (Mitsuyo Wada-Marciano).[3]

Notes

  1. With a length of 2,576 meters, the film's running time is 124 minutes when projected with silent film frame rate (18 fps) or 94 when projected with sound film frame rate (24 fps). The Japanese Movie Database lists 124 minutes running time, other sources 94 minutes.

References

  1. "The Dancing Girl of Izu at the Japanese Movie Database" (in Japanese). Retrieved 19 January 2021.
  2. Nolletti Jr., Arthur (2008). The Cinema of Gosho Heinosuke: Laughter through Tears. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. ISBN 978-0-253-34484-7.
  3. Wada-Marciano, Mitsuyo (2008). Nippon Modern: Japanese Cinema of the 1920s And 1930s. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. ISBN 978-0-8248-3182-0.
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