Song of Home
(Furusato no Uta)
Screening on Film
With Shigeru Kido, Sueko Ito, Shiro Kato, Kentaro Kawamata.
Japan, 1925, 35mm, black & white, silent, 45 min.
Japanese titles with English subtitles.
Print source: National Film Center, Japan
A commission from the Ministry of Education for an educational film about rural youth, Mizoguchi’s earliest extant feature observes the tensions that erupt among a group of village children when two privileged youth return from Tokyo where they have been studying in a private school. Song of Home offers a very different approach to the rigid Japanese caste system explored in so many of Mizoguchi’s later films, here by focusing upon the difficult decisions faced by a young village boy when forced to choose between schooling in Tokyo and upholding his family tradition as a farmer. Stylistically Song of Home is also strikingly different from Mizoguchi’s iconic films, most notably for its use of Soviet-style montage and extreme close-ups and the total absence of the long-takes of expressionist camera movement that would become one of the director’s signatures.
Part of film series
Screenings from this program
Utamaro and His Five Women
White Threads of the Waterfall
The Life of Oharu
The 47 Ronin, Parts I & II
Tales of the Taira Clan
Victory of Women
The Love of Sumako, the Actress
The Woman of the Rumor
