Saw The Story of the Last Chrysanthemums, a black-n-white Japanese film about a young actor who is the son of a famous actor and is therefore constantly heaped with praise. One day a servant admits to his face that he isn't that good an actor and, blown away by this gem of candid wisdom, falls in love with her. The actor's family disapproves so they run off together to try to make it in showbiz on their own terms. It's a period piece and also a showbiz film. There's a lot of behind-the-scenes intrigue and puffed-up egos and so on, but also Shakespearean loyal servants and courtly, godlike rulers. There's an interesting mix of genres going on.
Of the story, it's very fable-like and kind of saccharine. The whole emotional core of the plot comes from the servant-girl being endlessly, endlessly self-sacrificing. The archetype of the martyr has significant traction even today, of course, but it gets wearisome by the end. The actor dude is fairly likeable and, for all its treacly goodness, the film does tug at the heartstrings so it's not bad by any means, just not very progressive. But obviously not, seeing as how it was made in the 30s. The actor also plays mostly women, so it may be that there's some intelligent gender-business going on (though I doubt it.)
Anyway, the film was most interesting to me as a sort of historical document, intermixed with . It's the 30s' take on the 19th century. I also stayed up way too late to watch this film and to write this, so I think I'm mainly addled with exhaustion right now. Also, chrome's spell-check is confusing and enraging.
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