Preston Sturges Needed a Prison Full of Inmates to Say What Kenji Mizoguchi Could Say with One Fat Doctor

Osaka Elegy (1936)
directed by Kenji Mizoguchi
rating: 3 out of 5 cravats
on DVD from Netflix

It's difficult to imagine the modern equivalent for what it must have felt like to be a Japanese citizen watching Osaka Elegy in 1936. Even if the country looked on women twice as sympathetically as Mizoguchi's men do, the public reaction would necessarily seem to be one of either anger or dismissal. But Mizoguchi made a career behind the camera without ever letting up on his nation's male hierarchy. On the one hand, you can point to the women - gentle, strong, oft-abused heroines - as the secret of his success. But like a lot of thoughtful people, Mizoguchi seems like he was probably a pretty funny guy, and Osaka Elegy gets a lot of its surprising buoyancy from some unexpected situational humor. Road to Okinawa it's not, but watch the scene where a CEO distractedly stops for prayer on his way to breakfast, and tell me you can't picture Bob Hope clapping his hands once, speaking "please grant me health and wealth" to the sun, and then going in the kitchen to complain about the tea.