Yoshiwara

A melodrama set in Yoshiwara, the dubious entertainment district of Tokyo, shot by Max Ophüls in a studio in Paris. The story was originally conceived (by Maurice Dekobra) around the expressive acting qualities of Sessue Hayakawa. But when Ophüls arrived on the set, the producer had apparently forgotten that the Japanese actor didn’t speak a word of French. The script was quickly rewritten so the rickshaw driver Isamo (played by Sessue Hayakawa) did have an important role, but was able to operate virtually without dialogue. The story was eventually about the love between the geisha Kohana (Michiko Tanaka) and the Russian naval officer Serge Polenoff (Pierre Richard-Willm). The jealous Isamo, who also fancies Kohana, is sentenced by the authorities because of his gambling debts. Polenoff is involved with spying and lured into a trap. He manages to escape, but when he hears that Kohana has been sentenced to death as his accomplice, he returns to die in the place where they declared their love for each other. The film was received coolly at the time and in the fifties it was still regarded by film-lovers as a parody of the exotic melodrama. Only later was the time ripe for this deliberate widening of the outer borders of melodramatic pathos. Balancing on the brink of kitsch and the laughable, Ophüls manages to link the sardonic to the tragic. GjZ