“We would sigh or let out a great breath from the depths of our hearts, for what we felt was precisely this: can it be possible that there is such a woman in this world?” The novelist Shusaku Endo wrote those words about Setsuko Hara, who is remembered with a day-long tribute in TCM’s annual Summer Under the Stars program. And it strikes me that Endo’s words could apply equally to any number of women also being saluted this August (and men, for that matter).
Over the years, there has been a lot written about the phenomenon of movie stardom. What is it exactly? Acting ability? Good looks? Publicity campaigns? All true, but never any one factor alone. Hara was a remarkable actor, and so were Ingrid Bergman and Gloria Grahame, also being honored this month. They were beautiful, and they were well-publicized. But we can all think of brilliant actors who don’t really work onscreen and heavily promoted actors who were greeted with indifference and faded from view. These artists all developed a kind of magical call and response with the camera and then the viewer, continuing across the years on its own special wavelength.
Director Yasujirō Ozu once said of Hara that it was rare to find a Japanese actress who could play the daughter of a good family, which describes the majority of the work they did together. But Hara is just as compelling in the edgier films of Mikio Naruse, or as the Nastasya Filipovna character in Kurosawa’s The Idiot.
Grahame, alternatively, was “typed” as a “loose woman,” but that doesn’t begin to do justice to her work in, say, Crossfire, let alone the complex characters she played in In a Lonely Place or The Cobweb. (On the other hand, not many actresses of the time would have taken the dive right into the deep end of the pool the way she did in Odds Against Tomorrow—I’m thinking of that great moment when a shirtless Robert Ryan opens the door and she goes wide-eyed and says, “What’s going on in there, an orgy?”) Bergman never allowed herself to be typed, onscreen or off, and she is as believably ethereal in Gaslight as she is believably unnerved and rattled in Voyage to Italy.
Each of these artists was able to go so deep into the subtleties and nuances of their roles that they sometimes harmonized with their directors and took the whole film to a level that was breathtaking and impossible to describe, a level that could only be lived with by the viewer. Sometimes it was expressed in surprising line readings at key moments—Kyōko Kagawa’s question “Isn’t life disappointing?” and Hara’s smiling answer, “Yes, it is” in Tokyo Story; Bergman’s exclamation that “Life is so short” as she and George Sanders wander through the ruins of Pompeii in Voyage to Italy. But more often than not, these women practiced their art in the realm of light and shadow, rhythm, gesture and silence.
Setsuko Hara
Biography
Biography
Renowned for her work with celebrated auteur Yasujiro Ozu, post-war leading lady Setsuko Hara became an icon of Japanese cinema thanks to a string of performances which challenged the traditional roles of women in society, before causing shockwaves across the industry by retiring at the peak of her career. Born in Yokahama, Japan in 1920, Hara's first brush with the film world came in 1935 when her director brother-in-law Hisatora Kumagai secured her a job at the legendary Nikkatsu Studios. After making her on-screen debut in "Do Not Hesitate Young Folks!" (1935), Hara then landed her breakthrough role in German-Japanese production "The New Earth" (1937), where she played a maiden who unsuccessfully attempts to immolate herself in an active volcano. Hara went on to star as the tragic heroine in a number of wartime films before delivering a powerful turn as crusading political prisoner's wife Yukie in Akira Kurosawa's "No Regrets For Our Youth" (1946), a role which arguably set the strong-willed tone for the rest of her career. After portraying the 'new' Japanese woman in Kimisaburo Yoshimura's "A Ball at the Anjo House" (1947) and Keisuke Kinoshita's "Here's to the Girls" (1949), Hara teamed up with Yasujiro Ozu for the first of six collaborations, "Late Spring" (1949), playing a spinster who prefers to stay at home with her father than look for a potential suitor. Following parts in adaptations of Dostoyevsky's "The Idiot" (1951) and Fumiko Hayashi's "Repast" (1951), Hara then reunited with Ozu to play a woman who finds the courage to get married without her family's approval in "Early Summer" (1951). But it was her compelling performance as a widower urged by her in-laws to move on in "Tokyo Story" (1953) which truly cemented her status as a symbol of Japanese cinema's golden age. Hara continued to explore the theme of uneasy domesticity on Mikio Naruse's "Sound of the Mountain" (1954) and "Shuu" (1956) and Ozu's "Twilight In Tokyo" (1957) and "Late Autumn" (1960), playing against type in the latter as the mother of the reluctant nest-leaver. Returning to more familiar territory as a widowed daughter-in-law in Ozu's final film "The End Of Summer" (1961), Hara was expected to dominate the '60s in the same manner as the previous decade. However, following Ozu's death on his 60th birthday in 1963, Hara announced her shock retirement from the industry, leaving period drama "Chushingura" (1962) as her last major screen credit. Hara subsequently claimed that she had never enjoyed acting and had only pursued a film career in order to provide for her family, although Ozu's death and failing eyesight were also rumoured as possible explanations for her swift exit. Hara went onto lead a secluded life away from the public eye in Kamakura, the small city in which several of her films with Ozu were made. Setsuko Hara died of pneumonia on September 5, 2015, although her death was not announced to the public until late November. She was 95 years old.
Filmography
Cast (Feature Film)
Articles
Scorsese Screens - August 2021
Scorsese Screens - August 2021
Life Events
1963
Retired from film industry at the age of 43
Videos
Movie Clip
