Carmen Comes Home – Karumen kokyô ni kaeru (1951)

Directed by: Keisuke Kinoshita | 96 minutes | comedy | Actors: Hideko Takamine, Shûji Sano, Chishû Ryû, Kuniko Igawa, Takeshi Sakamoto, Bontarô Miake, Keiji Sada, Toshiko Kobayashi, Kôji Mitsui, Yûko Mochizuki, Yoshindo Yamaji, Akio Isono

On the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the film studio Shochiku, Eye Filmmuseum is showing a program with films from the former Japanese production stable. Eye shows works by Yasujirō Ozu (‘Tokyo Story’, 1953), Masaki Kobayashi (‘The Human Condition’ – trilogy, 1959-61) and Takeshi Kitano (‘Sonatina’, 1993). There is room not only for the well-known acclaimed films in this program, but also for curiosities such as ‘Carmen Comes Home’ from 1951. This rural comedy may not belong to the established order of Japanese world classics, but it does provide an entertaining insight into Japanese folklore and satire. Moreover, this production is the first homegrown color film, because ‘Carmen Comes Home’ was shot in Fujicolor, a counterpart of the American Technicolor.

Due to a renovation of the Tokyo theater where Carmen performs, the voluptuous and colorful performer returns with her best friend and colleague Maya to her native village in the Nagano district. There, these bright ladies make many heads turn, because the once small Kin Aoyama, now parading through life as Lily Carmen, is now an accomplished stripper. Her father, who still roams the village, is ashamed of his daughter’s immoral calling, but as his fellow villagers whisper aloud, Kin had been kicked by a cow during her childhood. The local school director, played by Chishu Ryu, a regular actor of director Ozu, also expresses disgrace to his old pupil, especially afraid that the village children will get a bad example. However, the big businessman in the fussy town, Maruju, sees a lucrative business in the emergency vacation of the two artists with big-city character.

The mischievous jokes, pranks and characters in ‘Carmen Comes Home’ seem straight out of a jolly Austrian Alpine film, including the obligatory cows. It lacks the usual sleeping giants in the background because these are active volcanoes, which the villagers on Japan’s largest island, Honshu, consider sacred entities. The show by Carmen and Maya under the auspices of businessman Maruju is the highlight of the film: the ladies dance unrestrained variations on the French cancan accompanied by a mop orchestra that slightly molests works by Schubert, among others. In any case, the amount of references to Paris and other European culture is remarkable. Several times Carmen and Maya sing songs with a big wink to notorious European mores. The mix of petit-bourgeois drama and light satire even resembles the traditional Dutch ‘Fanfare’ (Bert Haanstra, 1958), minus the mountains.

‘Carmen Comes Home’ is a nice snack for the enthusiast, but can be a must for the (film) history loving viewer. Although not refined, this production is a characterization of the social mores in a specific place and time. Just as the Japanese at that time saw this Shochiku production mainly in black-and-white in cinemas (as a precaution, director Keisuke Kinoshita had to film in both black-and-white and color, because showing films in Fujicolor was still very expensive and laborious), his moral message, incidentally, very little color. Erotic dancing is wrong, it is a sin that tarnishes the honor of community and especially of the father. A bright spot in the film for Carmen and his associates: Japanese society accepts that this artistic phenomenon simply exists. In short, you’ll just be the daughter. Get back on the train to Tokyo soon!