Synopsis
The disturbing story of a physician who conducted the first operation with general anaesthetic, and the women in his life who are both so determined to win his love that they volunteer as subjects for his experiments
The Wife of Seishu Hanaoka
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Alternative Titles
Hanaoka Seishû no tsuma, La esposa del Dr. Hanaoka, 하나오카 세이슈의 아내, Жена Сэйсю Ханаока, 华岗青洲之妻
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Japan
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Japan
28 Oct 1967
- Theatrical
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The first trick is calling it The Wife of Seishu Hanaoka, instead of just Seishu Hanaoka. it is not, in fact, a movie about the revered 19th century Japanese surgeon who performed the earliest known surgeries under general anesthetic, though he of course figures prominently in the story. It instead imagines the story of his wife, Kae, on whom he would test his anesthetic potion.
And it goes further, painting a gothic portrait of a household full of women entirely devoted to the support of this one man. It is his wife, and his mother, and his sisters, all of them having no existence outside of their servitude to him. It is these names that do not factor into the…
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So this time from Yasuzô Masumura we have a biographical picture about a 19th century Japanese doctor who was a pioneer in the use of general anesthesia, but what he is most interested in - and certainly the element of the story which grabbed my attention - is the completely engrossing fictional battle of wills that is bolted on to what would have still been a watchable but hardly riveting drama; a scientific discovery film, the likes of which Hollywood excelled in back in the day (William Dieterle's The Story Of Louis Pasteur, Mervyn LeRoy's Madame Curie, Preston Sturges' The Great Moment, etc.).
No, the real 'meat on the bones' here is provided by two of the finest actresses of…
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As a huge admirer of Masumura's works, I kind of feel let down by this movie. But I am not sure what else he could have done better with a biopic like this. I felt the movie was more borne out of Kaneto Shindô's screenplay rather than Masumura's direction. Shindô's impact on this one is enormous than in any of his million screenplays.
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Part of my Japanese New Wave Top 200
Okay, the violence against cats in this is more disturbing than anything happening in Blind Beast.
Otherwise this is a pretty conventional melodrama by Masumura-standards, albeit still guided by his steady and cruel hand. The premise is interesting enough, aided by Kaneto Shindo's script. While the film masquerades as a sort of biopic of the surgeon Seishu Hanaoka, it is really about the tense relation between his mother (Hideko Takamine) and his wife (Ayako Wakao). This is a classic setup for a Masumura-film, which allows him to attack the patriarchal family by focusing on the women who without recognition offer the lives to enable male achievement. There are flashes of brilliance here, but it's also a bit tame compared to some of his other films.
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Instead of being a mere biographical film about the first surgeon who ever performed surgery using general anaesthesia, Masumura conjured a tale of women sacrifice (and competitiveness for self-value) amidst a patriarchal society out from the historical context. It’s ultimately a tragic story which ends with an uplifting medical advancement. Any film with only one of the three main leads (Raizo Ichikawa, Ayako Wakao, and Hideko Takamine) would be appealing enough, and we have all three in the same film! That leaves me speechless.
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No, not a hagiography (as one might expect) about Seishu Hanaoka and his famed historical accomplishments in medical surgery, but rather a Kaneto Shindo screenplay which focuses upon the plight of Edo era women in the family household, each struggling to bolster and elevate the male counterpart, while always effacing themselves in deferential subordination to men as a sole societal purpose--even fighting, woman against woman, at great risk to prove their most uncompromising allegiances to husband, male heir, son, clan leaders. TWOSH contains a demure although fierce competition between Japanese actress icons Hideko Takamine and Ayako Wakao both in consummate form. Here's an astute gender study within a framework of professional households whose echo still rings loud and clear in…
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HIPODERMIS
La imprevisible evolución de Yasuzo Masumura dentro de la productora Dahei, desde su debut a finales de los 50 cuando parecía destinado a ser una especie de Tashlin japonés (y vale la pena confrontar especialmente "Ao-zora musume" del 57 con varias recientes o contemporáneas del autor de "Artists and models"... para encontrar más concomitancias con Sirk) hasta principios de los 70, alumbra en la segunda mitad de los años 60, con varios altibajos y retrocesos tan desconcertantes como sus progresos, algunas de las películas más apasionantes del cine oriental.
La cadena de influencias que avanza y se depura hasta llevar a sus mejores películas, también recoge afortunadamente algunos de los tesoros ocultos de un film afeado por la crítica,…
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Possibly the strangest bio-pic I have ever seen. Instead of reviewing the life of Seishu Hanaoka, noted Japanese Doctor, Masumura decides instead to review the struggles faced by his wife and her conflict with her mother-in-law.
Joking aside, Masumura frames Ayako Wakao struggle as a wife forced into servitude, lied to by her mother-in-law, and then treated either as a second to said mother-in-law by her husband, or as a guinea pigs for the anaesthesic he is trying to invent.
This is frightening look at tradition, hierarchy and the struggle of women in Japan's past.
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Stories where the mother and wife are both in love with the son are fucked up. This story involves medical experiments that lead to the breakthrough invention of anesthesia so it's even more fucked up. Also major major major warning for animal cruelty involving testing. Hideko Takamine and Ayako Wakao are Japanese cinema royalty so watch it for them and not for the plot if you take the plunge.
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Yasuzo Masumura's period piece is based on a novel by Sawako Ariyoshi and adapted by the ubiquitous Shindo Kaneto. The story is essentially about the wife of a pioneering doctor, Seishu Hanaoka (Raizo Ichikawa) who was the first person to develop a functioning general anesthetic-it was recorded later in the west. But much of the story revolves around Seishu's wife, Kae (Ayako Wakao-Masuura's muse) who agrees to be wed to the family mostly because she admires Seishu's mother, Otsugi (the legendary HidekoTakmine). Seishu was trying to develop a functioning general anesthetic, but since he did this in 1804 Japan, his work was not known in the rest of the world, where the first general anesthetic was long credited to an…
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two all-time favorites actresses facing off, really great stuff. but quite a bit of legit cat violence (the road to developing anesthesia is paved with experiments) not so great stuff :(