Shirô Toyoda – Uguisu aka Nightingale (1938)
Not much info on this film out there, but here is a nice little rundown by Keiko McDonald from her book, From Book to Screen: Modern Japanese Literature in Films:
“Uguisu (The Nightingale) drew on a story of the same title published that year by Einosuke Ito. Here the frame of reference is a subgenre that called itself agrarian literature. Ito’s tale is an episodic account of peasants responding to poverty and depravation with cunning, simplicity, and often woeful ignorance.
Toyoda gave Ito’s episodic structure the benefit of methods Edmund Goulding used so beautifully in his 1932 classic, Grand Hotel. The Goulding-Garbo magic spell was woven within the confines of a single hotel, with events spanning just two days. The various episodes focused on the comings and goings of people whose victories and defeats created a microcosm of the world at large.
The setting of The Nightingale is worlds away from any grand hotel. This story plays out in a rural police station in northern Honshu. Poor peasants come and go, a class of petty criminal created by the need to survive times of cruel deprivation.
The film was shot at record speed, in eleven days. Toyoda had no Garbo or Barrymore to work with, only a supporting cast borrowed from the shingeki (New Drama) stage. Haste and casting together give this film the look of a sketchy stage drama. Even so, it offers a fascinating glimpse of rural hardship as seen by writer, director, and actors themselves caught up in the toils of that difficult time.”
Nightingale (1938, Japan, d. Shiro Toyoda).avi General Container: AVI Runtime: 1 h 12 min Size: 1.18 GiB Video Codec: XviD Resolution: 716x480 ~> 716x537 Aspect ratio: 4:3 Frame rate: 29.970 fps Bit rate: 2 156 kb/s BPP: 0.209 Audio #1: 2.0ch MP3 @ 160 kb/s
https://nitro.download/view/F7C5552974CC7A4/Nightingale_(1938,_Japan,_d._Shiro_Toyoda).avi
https://nitro.download/view/02523356269D733/Nightingale_(1938,_Japan,_d._Shiro_Toyoda)_eng_02.srt
Language(s):Japanese
Subtitles:English