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Carmen's Pure Love
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Wikipedia article
'Carmen's Pure Love' 'Carmen Falls in Love' or 'Carmen's Innocent Love' is a 1952 Japanese satirical comedy film written and directed by Keisuke Kinoshita. It is a sequel to Kinoshita's 1951 comedy 'Carmen Comes Home'.
Plot
Carmen works as a strip dancer in Tokyo, appearing in a variet version of Georges Bizet's 'Carmen', while her friend Akemi has been left with a baby daughter by her unfaithful left-wing activist lover. To spare the child an upbringing in precarious financial circumstances, Carmen and Akemi leave her at the doorstep of the upper-class Sud family, but soon return in bad conscience to take her back. Carmen falls in love with Hajime, the Sud's artist son and a notorious womaniser, taking his offer to pose nude for him as a serious interest in her person. Meanwhile, Hajime's fiance Chidori has constant arguments with her right-wing politician mother Kumako over her promiscuity. When Carmen is fired after refusing to strip naked in front of Hajime, Chidori, and Kumako, who she spotted in the audience, she decides to turn to "serious art" and takes ballet classes while working as an advertising girl for skin cream and rat poison. Contrary to the Sud family's housemaid, who loses her job after confronting Kumako for her pro-rearmament politics, Hajime agrees to support his future mother-in-law's campaign out of sheer conformity. During Kumako's campaigning speech, she and Hajime are shouted at by a protester, who turns out to be the father of Akemi's child. While Akemi begs her embarrassed ex to take her back, Carmen attacks him for his unfaithfulness. In the final scene, the housemaid, now working as a shoe polisher, shakes her head over the election results she reads in a newspaper, with marching music and battlefield sounds drowning out the street noise.
Cast
* Hideko Takamine as Carmen
* Toshiko Kobayashi as Akemi
* Masao Wakahara as Hajime Sud
* Chieko Higashiyama as housemaid
* Chikage Awashima as Chidori Satake
* Eiko Miyoshi as Kumako Satake
* Tatsuo Sait as Hajime's father
* Sachiko Murase as Hajime's mother
* Yko Mochizuki
Production and legacy
Unlike its predecessor, 'Carmen Comes Home', which had been shot in colour (making it Japan's first feature length colour film), 'Carmen's Pure Love' was shot entirely in black-and-white and made extensive use of expressionist camera angles.
Film historian Alexander Jacoby called 'Carmen's Pure Love' an "uneasy, somewhat misanthropic satire" in contrast to the "tender humour" of its predecessor. Donald Richie was of a different opinion: while he called 'Carmen Comes Home' one "of the better comedies", he saw its successor as "the greatest [satire] made in Japan".
References
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