Time was we were told that these earnest black and white accounts of female suffering were the mother load in Japanese film making and all that stuff with Toshiro Mifune waving a samurai sword was just padding.
There are probably a few people that still think so but seeing the uncut 24 EYES again, fifty (!) years later, confirms my original impression that this is unshaded and unshaped to the point of tedium, as well as leaving me with the urge to shake Hideko Takamine's impassive victim character that her second crop of pupils call "Miss Cry Baby." Watching her unwilling to intervene as the parents declare their gifted daughter will be trained for cafe work or seeing headmaster Ryo burn her leftist text page by page, without complaint, doesn't produce sympathy - just irritation. Characters who should be important die off screen. The military have no weapons. The background that should give character is deliberately left out - the island fishing industry, class room teaching methods.
What the makers undoubtedly saw as discretion just makes attention wander.
Star and director both made other, superior films so I'm inclined to chalk this one up to miscalculation. There are occasional striking images - the funeral procession passing through the terraced fields is telling.
However if the print of one of these that they wanted to send to Cannes had been ready, we might never have got to know about RASHOMON and Japanese movies might now rate alongside those from Burma.
There are probably a few people that still think so but seeing the uncut 24 EYES again, fifty (!) years later, confirms my original impression that this is unshaded and unshaped to the point of tedium, as well as leaving me with the urge to shake Hideko Takamine's impassive victim character that her second crop of pupils call "Miss Cry Baby." Watching her unwilling to intervene as the parents declare their gifted daughter will be trained for cafe work or seeing headmaster Ryo burn her leftist text page by page, without complaint, doesn't produce sympathy - just irritation. Characters who should be important die off screen. The military have no weapons. The background that should give character is deliberately left out - the island fishing industry, class room teaching methods.
What the makers undoubtedly saw as discretion just makes attention wander.
Star and director both made other, superior films so I'm inclined to chalk this one up to miscalculation. There are occasional striking images - the funeral procession passing through the terraced fields is telling.
However if the print of one of these that they wanted to send to Cannes had been ready, we might never have got to know about RASHOMON and Japanese movies might now rate alongside those from Burma.