In short: Danger Stalks Near (1957)

Original title: Fuzen no tomoshibi

The not terribly well off Sato family has very publicly won a very pricey camera. They’re not planning on using it to take photos, but are hoping to sell it for quite a bit of money. After all, husband Kaneshige’s (Keiji Sada) wages as a shoe seller and Yuriko’s (Hideko Takamine) housewifing are not bringing much money in when the couple takes care of their son and Yuriko’s mother (Akiko Tamura) who is of course living with the Satos. Not out of love or duty, mind you, but because Yuriko and Kaneshige hope to inherit a neat sum of money from her.

There’s also some business about Yuriko throwing out a lodger (type: modern woman) and hoping to acquire a new one; Yuriko’s sisters coming for money and to give unwanted advice; and a whole horde of other people – boyfriends, prospective boyfriends, delivery people and craftsmen, running into and out of the house as if it were a train station.

All of which rather disturbs the plans of a trio of young hoodlums (one of them a very unwilling one) watching the house to find some time when it is not too full of people to rob it.

This comedy is not usually seen as one of the “big” films of its director Keisuke Kinoshita, but going in not expecting much, I found myself pleasantly surprised. The film is very easily – and obviously – readable as a critique of a way of life where every human interaction turns into a transaction as well as a bit of a send-up of the idea of perfect, harmonic and somewhat traditional family life. As such, it manages to avoid preachiness or the sort of whiny sentimentality that could come with this territory all too easily.

Instead, Danger Stalks Near (certainly this week’s nominee for film with the least fitting title) is a rather joyful affair. There’s a palpable love for heaving one farcical development on top of the other, Kinoshita timing each ever more improbable development with the directorial version of a winning grin, as well as a kind of loving snarkiness that doesn’t feel very 1957 at all.

There’s a flow to the film that reminds me of the best screwball comedies, the film dancing from scene to scene, embracing absurdities and taking the mores of its time not seriously in a very serious way. The actors seem to have quite a bit of fun as well. Particularly Takamine (one of the favoured actresses of many a director of this phase of Japanese studio filmmaking) projects so much enjoyment in what she’s doing, it is sometimes easy to forget how unpleasantly materialistic she and everyone around her actually are. This doesn’t damage the film’s point, but rather puts a human face on it, and leaves this a funny instead of a judgemental movie.