• Source: Sound of the Mountain

Sound of the Mountain (Japanese: 山の音, Hepburn: Yama no oto) is a 1954 Japanese drama film directed by Mikio Naruse. It is based on the novel The Sound of the Mountain by Nobel Prize winner Yasunari Kawabata. Naruse declared Sound of the Mountain one of his favourites of his films.




Plot


Shingo, an aging businessman, sees the marriage of his son Shuichi and his daughter-in-law Kikuko, who live in the same household, fall apart due to Shuichi's coldness and adulterous behaviour. Flattered by Kikuko's overt adoration for him, he tries to act as a cornerstone for her. His own daughter Fusako, who left her husband and moved back into her parents' home with her children, blames Shingo for her arranged and failed marriage and for his preference of Kikuko over her. Shingo accompanies Kikuko to a hospital visit, only to learn later that she aborted the child she expected from Shuichi. A secretary from Shingo's company helps him to find Kinu, Shuichi's mistress and an independent businesswoman, who tells him of his son's abusive behaviour. Kikuko finally decides to divorce her husband and, meeting Shingo in a park, tells her father-in-law that she wants to try to live a life on her own.




Cast


Setsuko Hara as Kikuko Ogata
Sō Yamamura as Shingo Ogata
Ken Uehara as Shuichi Ogata
Yōko Sugi as Hideko Tanizaki
Teruko Nagaoka as Yasuko
Yatsuko Tan'ami as Ikeda
Chieko Nakakita as Fusako Aihara
Rieko Sumi as Kinuko (Kinu)




Themes


Naruse biographer Catherine Russell sees Sound of the Mountain as a woman's film, as it reduces the book's perspective of Shingo in favour of the female characters who, with the exception of the passive Kikuko, act outspoken and independently, "trying to make their way in a world in which men like Shuichi have been psychologically destroyed by the war". The last scene suggests the possibility of change for Kikuko, achieving a positive resolution of her problems.




Legacy


When a Woman Ascends the Stairs was screened at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive in 1981, at the Museum of Modern Art in 1985 and at the Harvard Film Archive in 2005 as part of their retrospectives on Mikio Naruse.




Awards


1954: Mainichi Film Award for Best Actor Sō Yamamura (for Sound of the Mountain and Kuroi ushio)




References






External links


Sound of the Mountain at IMDb
Sødtholt, Dag (November 2001). "Sound of the Mountain: The Beauty of Pessimism". Senses of Cinema. Retrieved 20 January 2021.

Kata Kunci Pencarian:

• The Sound of Music (film)
• Suara Gunung (film)
• Edward Seidensticker
• Nobuo Kaneko
• Shinjuku Gyoen
• Ken Uehara
• Mikio Naruse
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• So Yamamura
• The Sound of the Mountain
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• The Sound of Music
• The Sound of Music (film)
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