In Brief: Japan’s first full-sound film isn’t quite as good as it sounds. Or maybe it’s exactly that good. Hmmm **
source: Hulu+
There’s really only one issue with Heinosuke Gosha’s genteel domestic comedy, and that’s with the film’s star- who is foregrounded and considered so remarkable that the rest of the cast is never really asked to pick up the slack. So who is this problematic star? Well it’s ‘Sound Technology.’ With this film, Gosha produced the first full-sound film in Japanese cinema. Sound took a while to catch on in Japan, longer than in the US and Europe where it dominated quickly once the technology saturated the market. Unlike in those regions, in Japan there were certain traditions that offered interesting spins on silent cinema as an art-form, such as vocal accompaniment in the form of the country’s traditional Noh theatre. This dulled the rush to sound, and silent films were still being produced in Japan into the mid-thirties when they’d all but died off in other territories.
Because tonight we’re gonna party like it’s nineteen-thirty-nine!
As anyone who has watched early sound cinema can attest, the technology wasn’t exactly the immediate breath of fresh air one might think it would be. Certainly it enhanced cinema’s potential as an art-form, but upon its original arrival it slowed down and limited film-making possibilities due to the necessity for new, extremely clunky equipment. Silent cinema had just about reached its creative apogee, with the likes of F.W. Murnau and Jean Epstein creating remarkably powerful, layered works of drama through shot composition, optical effects, and camera movement alone. The introduction of sound came as quite a backwards step as suddenly compositions became more ordinary, camera movements were simplified or stopped entirely, and actors had to tone down their efforts to instead focus on ensuring that their dialogue was properly captured by the various microphones stowed about the set.
I’ve got to admit, this whole conversing thing is pretty darn nifty
Into that fray enters Gosha’s comedy, an incredibly slight piece clocking in at little over an hour in length. It follows an easily distracted playwright, played by Atsushi Watanabe (he would become a semi-regular face in Akira Kurosawa’s cinema), who struggles to complete a play before a deadline hits. He moves himself, his wife, and their two young daughters out to a remote, picturesque cottage to help him with this task but of course things don’t go as he planned. Why? Because of sound, of course! Rowdy cats, unruly children, and a practicing jazz band next door all weigh in, creating a less than perfect setting for putting pen to paper.
You remember how to whistle, don’t you?
Okay, you obviously do. Please stop.
Just like the original talkie, The Jazz Singer, every fibre of the project’s being is devoted towards highlighting how we can now hear as well as see the unfolding events. The film opens with an altercation between the playwright and a painter, the latter annoyed by the former’s absent-minded whistling. The jazz band is no random occurrence either, but a major product placement. In fact they get credited before any of the actors and they have one full music number pretty much to themselves. All this invariably leaves the film feeling flabby and directionless despite the film’s brief runtime. It feels more like experiment than an actual feature.
To that end, the film haphazardly concludes with almost no resolution to the primary story. It’s almost like they just ran out of record and just shut the whole thing off. None of this could really rest with Gosha. There’s hardly any material to work with and it was uncharted territory. The very presence of sound is enough to validate the exercise which features a series of jokes that amount to someone prodding you in the ribs throughout and saying, “Did you hear that?!” Perhaps there’s more wordplay or clever dialogue that subtitles can’t quite capture. We might hope so since the project offers a specific credit separate from script and story for, ‘jokes.’ 
The Neighbour’s Wife and Mine is certainly no imposition. It carries a gentle lilt that, if nothing else, allows it to present itself as a slice-of-life vision of 1930s Japan. It helps in this respect that Gosha was known, as were a number of his contemporaries, for preferring to shoot on location- a trait that was less preferred in American and European cinema at the time. Nonetheless, standing as an important milestone in Japanese cinema, The Neighbour’s Wife and Mine can’t help but feel more like history than artistic endeavour. Especially when you consider, although such a direct comparison is unfair, that in the same year Fritz Lang’s M would stretch the dimensions of sound and hark forward to its full artistic potential. For fans of Japanese cinema, this is certainly a technical landmark, but it’s surrounded by magnificent silent films that held a far greater narrative and emotive depth. But of course, you have to start somewhere…
Concentric Ocelot Party 