Song of Home (1925)

Song of Home (1925)

1925-09-16 Japan 50 Min. PG-13
5.2 9 votes

Overview

Mizoguchi’s 30th film is the earliest surviving example of his work, and his only film of the 1920s to survive complete. Song of Home finds the director already concerning himself with the collision of traditional and modern values. The film is structured around the contrast of two country-bred boys: a coach driver who has never left his home, and a student who returns from Tokyo with city-slicker affectations and Western jazz records. Produced by the Ministry of Education, the film has a simplistic lesson-plan at its heart, but what lingers in the mind after viewing are its more ineffable qualities: The dulcet, lyric, evocation of a disappeared rural past.

Cast

木藤茂 is Naotaro Takeda
Naotaro Takeda
Masujirô Takagi is Naotaro's father
Naotaro's father
Sueko Ito is Naotaro's mother
Naotaro's mother
Kentaro Kawamata is Junichi Okamoto
Junichi Okamoto
Shirô Kato is Junichi's father
Junichi's father
Shizue Matsumoto is Junichi's mother
Junichi's mother
Michiko Tachibana is Taro Maesaka
Taro Maesaka
Hiromichi Kawata is Elementary school principal
Elementary school principal
Ichirō Shibayama is School inspector
School inspector
三桝豊 is American scholar
American scholar