Three Sisters with Maiden Hearts
(Otome gokoro sannin-shimai)
With Hosokawa Chikako, Tsutsumi Masako, Umezono Ryuko.
Japan, 1935, 35mm, black & white, 75 min.
Japanese with English subtitles.
Naruse’s first venture after departing Shochiku, Three Sisters with Maiden Hearts is also his inaugural sound film. Made in 1935, this sororal melodrama is adapted from Nobel-winner Kawabata Yasunari’s Scarlet Gang of Asakusa (1930), a nocturnal, grimy X-ray of what was then downtown Tokyo’s most decadent and transgressive district. The titular sisters—Chieko, Osome and O-Ren—navigate Asakusa’s seedy nightlife in different ways: one is a shamisen player, the other a burlesque club dancer, while the third spends too much time with racketeers and gangsters. Some of the film’s (non-)actors are real-life revue stars; but most had little to no theatrical training. Naruse experiments with sound and image more than his studio contemporaries, employing two uncharacteristic techniques he would later rarely return to: voiceover narration and flashbacks (at least one of which is itself within a flashback). Three Sisters sees Naruse retaining the hyper-realist yet energetic editing of his silent-era opus, even as he is still finding his bearings at a new production company and with a new technology. Incidental, ambient noise plays a crucial role in the film’s sonorization of the city, as does pre-recorded music—including one remarkable (and hilarious) appearance of the gramophone. – Nace Zavrl
Part of film series
Upcoming screenings from this program
Anzukko
Mother
Sincerity
Summer Clouds
When a Woman Ascends the Stairs
Summer Clouds
The Stranger within a Woman
When a Woman Ascends the Stairs
Traveling Actors
Scattered Clouds
Scattered Clouds
Flowing
A Wanderer’s Notebook
Repast
Every-Night Dreams
Street Without End
Apart From You
No Blood Relation
The Road I Travel with You / Avalanche
