Undying Pearl (1929)

战前日本最重要的无声电影之一。
This resolution recurs in several of Hiroshi Shimizu's silent films, of which Eternal Heart (Fuei no Shiratama, 1929) was shown at Pordenone. This film examines different aspects of modernity through the personalities of two sisters. The elder is in love with Mr Narita, but he marries the younger, only to find that she neglects him and spends her time attending parties and drinking. Thus summarised, one might read the film as essentially conservative - an indictment of a "modern" woman who fails in her wifely duties. But the older sister also personifies an aspect of modernity, since she works as a typist in a Tokyo office. Courted by her boss, she is introduced to his children, who speak scathingly of her profession, and criticise the morality of working women. Here, Shimizu's sympathies are clearly with the modern, professional woman against the spoilt and judgemental upper class. The film's intelligence, in fact, lies in its ambivalent attitude to the modern - an ambivalence that one can trace through Shimizu's later and finer silent films. Unfortunately, the narrative resolution is unsatisfactory; the hero's departure from Japan and the heroine's marriage to her boss fail to answer the problems that the film has posed. The final escape seems a contrivance, though it may be that this failing is to be blamed on Kikuchi Kan, author of the original novel, rather than Shimizu.