Gilbert Gottfried, a famous American comedian, died on April 12, 2022. Gottfried appeared at a show in New York a few days after terrorists killed thousands by flying jets into the World Trade Center. In his stand-up routine, Gottfried made this joke: "I have to leave early to catch a flight to LA. Unfortunately, I could get a direct. The flight is stopping at the Empire State Building." The audience was aghast and someone cried out "Too soon." Gottfried followed his quip about the terrorist attacks with his version of the notorious "Aristocrats" joke, a shaggy-dog story that involves bestiality, necrophilia, and incest. No one, Gottfried recalled, expressed any discomfort with that joke. Later, Gottfried ran into additional trouble when he joked about the tsunamis that devastated southeast Asia in 2011. Again, his humor was regarded as in poor taste and "too soon." Carmen's Innocent Love is a 1952 Japanese comedy directed by Keisuke Kinoshita. The film is a classic example of humor that was "too soon" and, in fact, most Japanese critics reviled the movie. It's bizarre and off-putting and, in fact, I can't recommend the picture. I will note, however, that some well-established critics of Japanese cinema make large claims for this movie and it is certainly interesting from many different perspectives. But I didn't think it was funny and the film's humor is raw, abrasive, and over-the-top. However, I have many times commented that comedy is in the eye of the beholder, very much culturally determined, and, perhaps, some people in Japan may have found the film hilarious -- but contemporary reviews suggest to the contrary.
The movie is the second in a projected series that came to a screeching halt with the critical and audience failure of Carmen's Innocent Love. The film chronicles the romantic adventures of a beautiful young woman, a member of the demi-monde in Tokyo, and her efforts to gain respectability (she is a cabaret performer and a strip-tease artist) by marriage to an egocentric, and eccentric, artist Hajame. Hajame has wealthy parents and marriage to him is supposedly worth 3 to 4 million yen. Hajame, however, is betrothed to Chidori, the buxom and promiscuous daughter of a prominent right-wing politician, Mrs. Sataka (she is the widow of a general in the Japanese Imperial army). Mrs. Sataka needs her daughter to marry the artist so that Hajame's wealth can be added to her war-chest to support her political aspiration to Japan's legislature. The plot is very complicated and, at times, inexplicable to someone not familiar with Japanese post-war politics and society.
Carmen is performing in a low-class pastiche of the Bizet opera that ends with a strip-tease. The show is very popular and we see her performing enthusiastically, flinging herself around in faux-flamenco dances to Bizet's music. Carmen's friend, Akemi, interrupts the show when her small baby begins crying. Akemi has been abandoned by her boyfriend -- she worked with him in a burlesque "swordsmanship" show. Akemi and Carmen are very poor and Carmen blithely suggests that they abandon the baby -- the kid cries all the time, is ugly with a flat nose, and upsets the other denizens of the lower depths hotel, the Camel Apartments, where Carmen lives. (There's a weird subplot involving Carmen annoyed to the point of homicide by the crying baby and taking out her wrath on a chicken; the owner of the poor chicken is aggrieved and he appears from time to time, seemingly a reasonable if easily irritated fellow, who sometimes babysits Akemi's brat.) Akemi and Carmen abandon the infant at the Sato Atelier where Hajame lives with his parents and a crazy aunt -- the aunt is obsessed with the atomic bomb and can't say a sentence without bringing up the subject; she calls disruptive women "atomic bombs" and dresses in an odd melange of garments that she calls "atomic bomb" as well. When there's a fire in the neighborhood, everyone runs out on the street in scenes reminiscent of a Godzilla movie -- they think another atomic bomb has been detonated. Akemi can't bring herself to really abandon the baby and she returns to the art studio to retrieve the kid -- this allows a "meet cute" between Carmen and her love interest, Hajame. Hajame has a studio full of mobiles similar to Calder artworks, strange phallic statues, Henry Moore style sculpture, and other odd modernist works, all played for laughs. (The film is very hip, up-to-date and outrageous -- it's similar to Frank Tashlin's vehicle for Jayne Mansfield, The Girl Can't Help It). Hajame is engaged to the voluptous Chidori who is the disreputable daughter of the right-wing political aspirant and feminist Mrs. Sataka (she looks a bit like a Japanese version of Eleanor Roosevelt). (Mrs. Sataka is physically monstrous-- in giant close-up, we first see her moustache and enormous buck teeth as she bellows samurai-style into the telephonel remarking on her someone says: "Catfish have whiskers too!") Mrs. Sataka, who is a prudish hypocrite, goes to see Carmen in her strip-tease show. At this point, Carmen is posing nude for the arrogant and exploitative Hajame -- he basically acts as her pimp and invites his cronies to "sketch" her as she models nude for them. At the strip-tease show, Carmen can't bring herself to disrobe and a riot ensues. When the brutal impresario begins to beat Carmen both Akemi and Mrs. Sataka rush onstage to her rescue. Akemi who has learned swordsmanship for her burlesque show seizes a sabre and assaults the impresario. Mrs. Sataka makes a basso profundo speech bawling something about women's rights. (I presume that Mrs. Sataka imitates some female right-wing politician well-known in Tokyo in 1952, but I have no idea who she is supposed to represent -- her politics are an odd mix of feminist rhetoric implausibly compounded with extreme right-wing militaristic Emperor worship -- at one point, the authorities arrest Mrs. Sataka, an act consistent with the American occupation that would have discouraged this sort of stuff.) There are political rallies and anti-rearmament parades, all more or less played for comedy. Carmen and her side-kick Akemi are tempted to become whores and, in fact, an old panderer makes a direct pitch to Akemi to join her brothel. Both women try honest work, but they aren't well-suited for it. One of the film's ongoing gags is that wherever Carmen works her bosses sexually harass her and this results in violent confrontations between Carmen and the men's aggrieved wives. There's plenty of slapstick -- chairs fall backward and people are constantly involved in vulgar squabbles. Carmen tries to impress the supposedly upper-crust Hajame (he's really just a poseur) -- she even takes ballet lessons with a flock of six-year old girls to improve her cultural standing. (We don't feel sad for Carmen because she fails to seduce the unpleasant Hajame -- the man is self-evidently a fraud although Carmen doesn't see this. To exploit the anti-rearmament sentiment in Japan, he titles one of his Jean Arp-style sculptures something like "Baby Birds threatened by daggers." It's clear that Carmen is morally superior to Hajame in every respect and that he is unworthy of her affections.) Hajame has a sports car and he goes for a ride with Chidori -- the car fails and poor Carmen, who happens upon the scene, actually tries to push the heavy vehicle carrying her would-be boyfriend and her rival. Carmen is inexplicably masochistic and renounces her claims on Hajame, noting that her bad reputation would harm his prospects. Carmen is left behind on the dark street and makes her way home. She's drunk and tells Akemi that the two of them should become whores. One of them says: "You know the saying: even insects have souls." One of Akemi and Carmen's hustles is to appear at political rallies in costume. Earlier in the film, we've seen them dressed as rats at a rally in which a politician vows to "clean up Tokyo" and exterminate "all the (political) rats." At Mrs. Sataka's rally, they appear grotesquely dressed as pens and bottles of ink -- apparently, representing the Free Press that Mrs. Sataka probably opposes. There's some heckling and Carmen is called on-stage to speak. She gets stage-fright and can only stutter: "Yes, I'm against war", not the sentiment that pro-rearmament Mrs. Sataka expected. There's another riot. In a long shot, we see Carmen bedraggled on the street and titles appear: Where is Carmen going? Hang in there Carmen!" with a closing title that says: "End of Part II." These questions aren't answered -- the film was a failure and there was no "Part III."
The film's often grotesque and caricatured subject matter is mirrored by the picture's bizarre film technique. In just about shot, the camera is either canted radically to one side or another. Many shots begin on an even keel and, then, the camera begins to rapidly roll onto its side. In some sequences, the camera tilts right, then, left until it is even before, later, pitching rapidly to the left into a shot in which the characters seem sprawled on their sides. The point, made literally, is that everything is out-of-balance in the world shown by the movie and there is literally no stable perspective on anything. The effect is interesting at first but, then, used so insistently as to "wear out its welcome."
Carmen's Innocent Love follows Kinoshita's very popular Carmen Comes Home, the first technicolor film produced in Japan -- the picture was released in March 1951. In the precursor film, Carmen is shown to be a farmgirl named Okin from Nagano -- a "little funny in the head because she was kicked by a cow when she was a little girl." The movie was a big hit. Carmen's Innocent Love, shot in gloomy black and white, was regarded as unduly misanthropic and put an end to the projected series of movies.
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