One of Naruse’s most underrated films, Nadare describes a love triangle in which Goro (among the most detestable of Naruse’s many flawed male protagonists, played by his regular collaborator Hideo Saeki, 1912-2003) is torn between his wife and a childhood friend. It was based on a serialised novel by the popular author Jiro Osaragi (1897-1973), many of whose books were adapted into films. The screenplay was prepared by Tomoyoshi Murayama, a playwright whose outspoken leftwing convictions are reflected in the film’s critique of the Westernised upper class. Although Murayama retained credit for the original draft, his version of the script differed significantly from the final one, which was completed by Naruse himself.

One of the assistant directors on the film was a young Akira Kurosawa. He complained that Naruse insisted on “doing everything himself”, leaving his assistants with nothing to do, and wryly related that he fell asleep on set, only for his snoring to enrage the director. Nevertheless, he was impressed by Naruse’s discipline on set and expertise, and testified that he had learned much from his method of “of building one very brief shot on top of another, which, spliced together in the final film, […] give the impression of a single long take”.

The film excited the ire of various contemporary film critics. Fuyuhiko Kitagawa complained about the literary material’s unsuitability for cinematic adaptation, while “Kinema Junpo”’s Seiji Mizumachi disliked the obtrusive technique in which a kind of gauze or blind falls over the image in order to allow characters to speak their thoughts to the audience, as if in a theatrical aside. Seen today, this gesture seems refreshingly experimental. The film is generally stylish: Tetsuya Hirano rightly praises the dynamism of scenes shot around Nagoya Castle, the imagery of sunlight filtering through the trees, and the panning shots of the protagonist walking in the rain.

Alexander Jacoby e Johan Nordström