In short
FilmSpotting’s Dissident Cinema Marathon discusses Akira Kurosawa’s 1946 melodrama No Regrets for Our Youth, focusing on its anti-fascist/political themes, Yuki’s personal awakening, and whether the film functions as propaganda.
Guests/backgrounds
No guest interviewees; hosts Adam Kempinar and Josh Larson lead the discussion.
Key claims
The episode calls the film Kurosawa’s most overtly political work, combining the 1933 Takagawa incident (Kyoto University Marxist-teaching professor fired; student protests) and the WWII Ozaki case (journalist executed for treason). They argue Yuki (Setsuko Hara) is Kurosawa’s only female-protagonist vehicle and that her transformation parallels “what Japan wants to be.” They debate “propaganda”: messaging is heavy (slogans, headlines), but artistry often remains strong.
Notable examples
silent-film-like love-triangle montage (picnic river crossing); Yuki’s piano “formal break”; flower-arrangement scene where she tears it apart (“this isn’t me”); Tokyo rain montage and shadow-revealed leftist work; rural hoeing montage and final resolve to work in the village.
Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Chapters
Tap a time to open that second in VOIntroduction to Dissident Cinema Marathon
1:04 to 1:47
Overview of the Dissident Cinema Marathon and Kurosawa's films.
“Apple Vacations, where your story starts.”
Introduction to Dissident Cinema Marathon
4:58 to 6:28
Overview of the Dissident Cinema Marathon and Kurosawa's films.
“And of course, what he experienced was raw and firsthand, but also filtered through the American military and what they wanted their sailors to think of the Japanese at that time.”
Exploring No Regrets for Our Youth
6:28 to 8:40
Analysis of the film's themes and historical context.
“So did this strike you as significantly different, both historically and as a Kurosawa film?”
Kurosawa's Political Statements
8:40 to 11:46
Discussion on Kurosawa's political messaging in his films.
“He is very much making statements about this macho, feudalistic attitude that got Japan into the war in the first place.”
Film Techniques and Character Development
11:46 to 14:00
Examining the film's techniques and Yuki's character arc.
“And we get these shots of closeups of faces and reactions and hands being held.”
Character Development and Bold Choices
14:00 to 16:44
Explore the bold character trajectory of Yuki and her awakening.
“And we can probably go on and talk about other instances where No Regrets for Our Youth suddenly feels experimental, bold, both aesthetically and politically as it goes on.”
Visual Storytelling and Love Triangle
16:44 to 19:42
Discuss the visual techniques used to convey the love triangle and character dynamics.
“And that leaves the other love interest here, Itokawa, left just looking and feeling forlorn and a little bit shamed perhaps.”
Visual Storytelling and Love Triangle
20:36 to 21:00
Discuss the visual techniques used to convey the love triangle and character dynamics.
“They have all of my favorite games, slot games, live blackjack craps, and bubble craps.”
Performance and Identity in Kurosawa's Work
22:33 to 28:05
Analyze Hara's performance and the themes of identity in the film.
“in a simple two-person conversation scene manages all that magic.”
Yuki's Transformation: From Daughter to Political Figure
28:05 to 33:00
Explore how Yuki's character evolves throughout the film, representing personal and national identity.
“But as far as Kurosawa using Yuki as a representation, you said who she wants to be.”
Show all 13 chapters
The Symbolism of Rural Settings in Kurosawa's Film
33:00 to 35:42
Discuss the implications of Yuki's return to a rural life and its connection to Japan's post-war identity.
“It's curious to think about the symbolism going on here, because I think you're right that she has found her identity in the ways you describe.”
The Question of Propaganda in No Regrets for Our Youth
35:42 to 39:42
Examine whether Kurosawa's film can be classified as propaganda and the nuances of artistic integrity.
“This is more of a larger marathon question, but I think No Regrets for Our Youth is a good time to ask it.”
The Question of Propaganda in No Regrets for Our Youth
43:17 to 43:47
Examine whether Kurosawa's film can be classified as propaganda and the nuances of artistic integrity.
“We upgraded our phones, our cars, even our coffee.”
Transcript
Automatic transcript. May contain errors.0:00Adam Kempenaar:This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human.
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1:28Adam Kempenaar:or contact your travel advisor. Apple Vacations, where your story starts.
1:35Josh Larsen:And now, another appliance triumph from our friends at Grand Appliance. With two dogs, every wash load came out covered in fur. I went into Grand Appliance looking for a fix,
1:46Adam Kempenaar:and they recommended the Maytag Top Load with Pet Pro Hair Removal System. They had it in stock and installed it days later. And you know what? It really works. Lint rollers are a thing of my past now. Great recommendations from the appliance experts. Shop GrandAppliance.com. GrandAppliance.com.
2:05Josh Larsen:Film Spotting is presented by Regal Unlimited, the all-you-can-watch movie subscription pass that pays for itself in just two visits. See any standard 2D movie anytime with no blackout dates or restrictions. Sign up now on the Regal app or at the link in our description and use code FILMSPOT26 to receive 15 % off.
2:29Adam Kempenaar:What kind of a show are you guys putting on here today?
2:32Josh Larsen:You're not interested in art?
2:33Adam Kempenaar:No.
2:34Josh Larsen:Well, look, we're going to do this thing. We're going to have a conversation.
2:39Adam Kempenaar:Hey, FilmSpotters, Adam and Josh here, doing with this dissident cinema marathon, what we've been doing, making the show available as a separate drop. We've heard, Josh, from listeners, that they seem to enjoy this, being able to find these marathon episodes easily, finding them separate from the show, especially because a lot of times they end up going back and checking out these episodes after they've had a chance to see these films. This is the third movie in our Dissident Cinema Marathon, and we're returning to a director that we've devoted a fair amount of time to over the last year or so.
3:16Adam Kempenaar:Our listeners, if you're a family member, you've heard a lot of Kurosawa talk over the last year because we've had bonus content to shows where we've talked about Stray Dog, we've talked about Drunken Angel, and I think that's prepared us nicely for this conversation about 1946's No Regrets for Our Youth. We will remind listeners that film spotting marathons are about eliminating our cinematic blind spots devoted to directors like Kurosawa, actors sometimes, genres or regions of world cinema. We have done over 50 of these since the show's inception in 2005.
3:53Josh Larsen:As for this one, the Dissident Cinema Marathon, we're looking at films that depict or openly confront fascism. So we've got six films in all. You can see that full lineup and find out where to watch these movies at filmspotting.net slash marathons. No Regrets for Our Youth was released in Japan in October 1946. It's set both in pre - and post-World War II Japan and focuses on a young woman named Yuki, played by Setsuko Hara, whose father and then later her husband are persecuted for their leftist beliefs. Adam these dissident cinema films have been for me at least a lot about learning about history almost as much as the films themselves or the filmmakers who are involved and that was certainly the case here for No Regrets for Our Youth.
4:47Josh Larsen:When I think of World War II in Japan I think of my grandfather who served in the Navy in the Pacific and those were the stories I got from him in terms of what he directly experienced. And of course, what he experienced was raw and firsthand, but also filtered through the American military and what they wanted their sailors to think of the Japanese at that time. So I've been learning obviously throughout my life about much more still. I don't think I was quite aware before watching this movie that there was a significant Japanese resistance on the home front, both prior to World War II and during.
5:30Josh Larsen:And I think if someone had asked me, was there, what's your guess? Obviously, I would think about other countries who had gone through similar movements towards militarism, as Japan did at the time, nationalism, and thought, yes, of course, there had to be, right? A nation is not a single political idea. But man, this was very eye-opening for me to see some of the inner workings, the characters, the people, the types of people who are affected by this. It is set in academia. That's where we begin. And we see the clamps coming down on professors and students, the students who are protesting. So I'm just curious if you had a similar experience with the film in regards to its history.
6:13Josh Larsen:And I guess the more film spotting question would be, did you have a significantly different experience with this as a Kurosawa film? Because as you said, we've become quite familiar with his work in the last year or so here on the show, even more so than we had been. So did this strike you as significantly different, both historically and as a Kurosawa film?
6:33Adam Kempenaar:Yeah, I'd say I had the same learning curve with this film that you did. And in terms of Kurosawa's filmography, we knew coming in one of the reasons why we wanted to include this film in the marathon, besides the fact that it was on topic, is that it's the most blatantly or it's billed as the most blatantly political film in Kurosawa's catalog. And while there are still a few blind spots that I have, that certainly checks out. I think a lot of these other films, especially the two that we've seen recently that I mentioned, like Stray Dog and Drunken Angel, those are very much commenting on the socio-political time in which Kurosawa was making those films.
7:21Adam Kempenaar:But the emphasis is on the socio part of that, not so much the political part of that. And this is all in on the politics. And I did a little bit of research and there's some text at the beginning that gives us maybe a little bit of background, but he's really combined. And this script combines a couple different incidents. Josh, there was a incident in 1933 called the Takagawa incident where a law professor at Kyoto University, where most of this takes place, was fired by the militarist education board because they thought he was teaching Marxist philosophies. And that did spark student protests.
7:59Adam Kempenaar:But then there was the Ozaki case where a journalist who worked as a Soviet spy was executed for treason. And that was during World War II. So we're combining those two historical events here. But it not only stands out for Kurosawa in terms of that political element. It's also his only film in which he has a female protagonist. And that's shocking when you consider how good Setsuko Hara is here. And not only how good she is and how good Kurosawa is at giving her such a vehicle for her performance, but in those other two films in particular, again, I'm just going to emphasize the ones that are top of mind for me over this past year, women's rights is a key focus for him.
8:50Adam Kempenaar:He is very much making statements about this macho, feudalistic attitude that got Japan into the war in the first place. So this feels to me like a very logical approach for him to make this film about Hara's character and have such a powerful performer like Hara in the lead. it it just stuns me josh that he didn't do this again with someone like hara or hara herself i know she went on to work with ozu so famously but it's a bit of a disappointment that kurosawa
9:29Josh Larsen:didn't do this again yeah i can totally understand that it's hard to complain about you know the towering performances we get from the likes of mifune you know and others who have come to be known so closely in connection with Kurosawa. I mean, we think about Takashi Shimura, who we've kind of come to see as almost his secret MVP, right? In later films, and who has a small role here actually. But yeah, you're so right that Hara is, and I want to come back to her probably and spend more detail on her performance, is giving such a powerhouse role. You can see a future where she becomes the Mifune, the Mifune of Kurosawa's filmography, without a doubt.
10:10Josh Larsen:Those would have to be very different stories, of course, but you can see that. Yeah. Just returning to the political thing, you know, how much to just in some of the research I was doing too, fairly limited, but how much to exactly say Kurosawa was the one leading this push in terms of the political messaging here. And you can certainly say messaging in this movie. How much was he working within the specific period, this American-led, American occupation towards anti-imperialist demilitarization efforts? That the United States was leading this national supposed change of heart, right? And so this is where Kurosawa was making this movie.
10:53Josh Larsen:And can you say that he specifically is the one who was nudging Japan into this other era? Possibly. You know, it's kind of hard when it comes to a specific director. Or was he more working within the confines of the tenor of the times? Maybe probably both is the answer. I do think, to address the point about his other films, aesthetically, he's bringing Japan, along with other filmmakers at the time, into a new era. And that is what really stood out to me about No Regrets for Our Youth, especially because this movie at its beginning almost feels like a silent film in that it is using very effectively, but quite basic instruments of film grammar.
11:36Josh Larsen:when this love triangle that is at the center, Hara's character, who's the daughter of one of the professors, and then these two students of the professor who are kind of vying for her affections very much at the beginning. They're all on a hike together. And we get these shots of closeups of faces and reactions and hands being held. And you almost don't need any dialogue. And this struck me because I watched this for the first time maybe almost a month ago now when we had it earlier on the schedule. and then I thought, man, my memories are starting to fade a little bit. So I watched it on the plane, couldn't find a downloadable version with subtitles.
12:12Josh Larsen:So I thought, you know what? I know the story. I'm just going to put it on and watch it silently. And that silent film grammar stood out to me, but even more stood out to me is I think about midway through, if we see this movie largely Adam, and maybe you agree, maybe you don't, but as the story of Harrah's character, Yuki, maturing in her, in almost every way, her political beliefs, her sense of womanhood, her independence, her identity. If you see the film largely as Tracy in that, I think there's a clear break where she is playing the piano a good way into the film. This is the second time we see her playing the piano.
12:52Josh Larsen:The first time, the sense is it's more of a traditional, quieter, demure piece.
13:08Josh Larsen:This time we see her playing something, and I can't remember the specific pieces, but much more antic and frantic. And Kurosawa quick zooms in on her as she's playing.
13:24Josh Larsen:And it strikes me that from that point on, we get flourishes that could register as experimental, including there's a moment where she's distraught during a family argument, goes out of the room, closes the door and leans against it. And we get a montage of dissolves of her in melodramatic poses. We don't see her move. We just see a dissolve from one pose to the other. And this is just so different than what we think of from a lot of filmmaking at the time. And certainly different from the more conventional style that first third or half of the movie had. And we can probably go on and talk about other instances where No Regrets for Our Youth suddenly feels experimental, bold, both aesthetically and politically as it goes on.
14:15Josh Larsen:Yeah. Yeah.
14:16Adam Kempenaar:I want to get into that filmmaking some more. Maybe we can come back to the type of awakening that she has and how we exactly characterize it, because I think it's tricky. I think there's no doubt that it's bold. And there's also no doubt that there is a very clear trajectory with her character. She goes from someone who early on as a younger teen, and I love what they do with Hara in terms of just basic things from her hair, for example, to make her and her dress to make her look older over the course of this film. It's completely convincing and in terms of her performance, too. But early on, she's bemoaning these boring conversations about leftist activism.
15:00Adam Kempenaar:And she has a pure idealism about the world. And by the end, we see someone who is very different. But she's also someone herself, Josh, who never directly gets involved in any of that political activism. Right. So that's something that is interesting perhaps to talk about or to navigate. But I want to talk about the visual elements as well. You were talking about the beginning in particular, but you went through some other scenes as well in terms of that silent approach, how it almost could be like a silent film. And it is effectively introducing us to this love triangle. and maybe someone can write in because it's killing me even though I feel like multiple films have done this.
15:47Adam Kempenaar:There is surely a film that takes this same approach from No Regrets for Our Youth where you've got a love triangle and the two men go off and one sticks to his ideals and is a troublemaker and the other one sells out and joins the government or takes the corporate a job. I just can't remember what it is, but it feels familiar to me in some ways. But when they're going on that picnic and they're going up into the mountains and they're going through the forest and we're introduced to the fact that there is a love triangle, how? Because she has to get from one part of the little river bed to the other side.
16:31Adam Kempenaar:And the two men are frozen trying to decide what to do, who's going to help her get across, how are they going to help her get across. And Nogue, the one who's the bolder, the more politically active, he makes the move and he just picks her up. He just picks her up and takes her. And that leaves the other love interest here, Itokawa, left just looking and feeling forlorn and a little bit shamed perhaps. And she has to be the one to make him feel a little bit better about it and give him a cute look and say, you know, it's okay, let's go run off. But that's all silent. We know everything we need to know about who these three characters are and that relationship all in about 40 seconds.
17:15Adam Kempenaar:And it's all done completely visually. But Josh, I'll give you another montage. You mentioned the one where it's very brief in her room and it's, it is experimental where we just get those, those quick cuts. How about the sequence where this one just slayed me, where she meets Nogue again in Tokyo and she's just walking back and forth. So great. It starts in the rain, that montage in the rain with her returning multiple days. And it's just those dissolves as she walks across. We understand it's the passage of time. We understand that she's returning again and again. And then finally he appears.
17:56Adam Kempenaar:And that's fine in and of itself. But what happens when they go upstairs and they finally have a conversation? And the whole thing about Yuki is that she needs to hold on to the belief that he still has beliefs, that he's still committed, that he's still the man that she fell in love with, that he hasn't sold out, that he still has these activist principles, even though it looks like the opposite is true. And so what does Kurosawa do? It's this simple, they're both standing with their backs against the wall and he just uses this two-shot sequence and it's one cut where she's talking and she's in the foreground in close-up and he's a little bit blurry in the background and she's explaining about how she left home, what she wants from a job, what she wants from life and she's talking about sacrifice and freedom And when she talks about sacrifice and freedom, she turns to face him.
18:59Adam Kempenaar:It's not an indictment, but she's clearly now turning it to him. And what happens? Kurosawa cuts then. And when he cuts, we're now on the other side with him in the foreground. And he now has to look away. And he's the one looking straight ahead as she's looking at him. It's a case where I feel like watching it, Josh, that he understands that if he looks at her, it's as if he can't look at her in that moment. And he knows that if he locks eyes with her, this is going to be dangerous. This is going to be dangerous for the both of them. And again, it's just a simple two-shot setup, and it's one cut between them.
19:40Adam Kempenaar:And then what happens when they do end up standing together then and they sort of come to an understanding? They're in a two-shot together. they're facing the camera. But Josh, that is even the best part of the sequence. The tour de force moment of that sequence is when he does finally admit, he finally admits that she's right, that he is still working for the leftist cause. What does he do? He leaves the frame so that it's her and his shadow. It's his shadow that's talking. It's his shadow self admitting to her that, yes, he is still working behind the scenes. That is him. It is literally his shadow self that is doing this work.
Read the full transcript
20:24Adam Kempenaar:And that's how they're going to have to live, is in the shadows. It's such an amazing moment from Kurosawa.
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22:33Josh Larsen:Yeah, no surprise, you know, the king of blocking that he manages that in a simple two-person conversation scene manages all that magic. I should say as Nogue too, the nice bit of performance by Susumo Fujita there where he's considering how much to open up to her about, and you can see him go to his hand. he's wearing a sport jacket that's buttoned up. You can see his hand fidget with it, like considering unbuttoning, you know, considering opening up, relaxing, letting loose and, but not doing it and holding back. And so, so much subtlety in, in the blocking of the camera work. And also even in the performance there, there's another moment I want to call out that is maybe not specifically about its aesthetics, but how what's happening there represents aesthetics and also can tie into Haro's performance if we want to move to that a little bit.
23:24Josh Larsen:But I think this happens shortly after the piano Zoom that I talked about, which to me is the kind of formal break where the movie breaks open. But we have Yuki in a ceremony, a class where she is arranging traditional flowers. There are other women around here. They're all dressed traditionally. that this is a very, we're reading this as a scene that could have been taking place for a hundred years of Japan and in the current climate would represent nationalism. You have to assume, you know, getting in line, everyone doing the same thing, respecting tradition, performing tradition perfectly. And she has created this stunning arrangement and all of a sudden she starts tearing it apart.
24:09Josh Larsen:And this movie, we should say, I feel it is a melodrama essentially from the love triangle to the performances, to a lot of the plot developments, and to some of the gestures. And here we get this wild gesture of her tearing this creation apart, exclaiming, this isn't me. And I love the touch after that, where she calms down, the other women are all distraught, and she picks up the torn blossoms from the flowers and just drops them in the pool of water where the arrangement had been. Kurosawa cuts to a close-up of that. And it's maybe two on the nose for some people, but it just seemed to me this moment capturing what might a new Japan look like?
24:51Josh Larsen:What might a new Yuki look like? What might new movies in Japan look like? It's doing all of that with this one short sequence of the flower arrangement. And Hara here, it's a performance that also is one of transition. This is almost like it's, You mentioned Ozu, and she starred in what's known as the Noriko trilogy because she played young women, similarly named single women, who gently pushed back against societal expectations in a variety of ways in films like Late Spring, Early Summer, and Tokyo Story. and this obviously came before that and you can see hara is almost like feeling her way towards those performances yet i think there's a section here in the middle where she's as good as she is in those like she's found her groove she's found and but it's it's not exactly the same either she does start more broadly at the beginning in that silent movie phase where the gestures are bigger They're big in that flower arrangement scene, but then she begins to employ more delicate facial expressions, subtler gestures.
26:03Josh Larsen:I actually love a very early one where she picks up a cigarette and I think it's Itokawa, the student who, you know, stays with tradition, not the rebel played by Akitaki Kono. And he goes to offer her to light her cigarette. and she looks at him and she just crumples the cigarette and throws it away and turns away. And you can just sense in that, this distress of this young woman trying to figure out who she wants to be. Does she want to smoke? Yeah, that's the obvious answer. Do I want to smoke or not? But there's so many questions going on below that. And many scenes have subtle, delicate gestures that capture so much by Hara.
26:46Josh Larsen:Now, I do want to ask you, when we get to it. We don't have to now, but it's somewhat related to her performance about the last section of the movie where, spoilers, we're going to do this with these movies in this marathon, but where she has since married Nogue, he has since been murdered, and she has sought his parents who are peasants living in the rural countryside as very poor rice farmers, and she decides she's going to live with them and try to get their farm up and running. And to me, the performance shifts back almost towards silent movie melodrama. And I wasn't quite so sure about that.
27:27Josh Larsen:So I do want to hear what you thought about that section in general, but you know, Hara in particular. Yeah.
27:32Adam Kempenaar:I've, I've already said how much I enjoy the performance overall, I can understand how you might see the broader strokes of that, especially in these silent movie elements. But I think it only gets stronger as the Yuki character becomes more in touch with her identity. And that's really what this movie is about. I alluded to this earlier. I think if you wanted to perhaps view this movie through a strictly feminist lens, you might have issues with how far it goes in terms of her transformation into a political figure. But as far as Kurosawa using Yuki as a representation, you said who she wants to be.
28:21Well, he's trying to figure out who or what Japan wants to be.
28:26Adam Kempenaar:And Yuki represents that divide, who she starts out as and what she ultimately becomes. And as we've talked about, she goes on a pretty major journey and a pretty major transformation. And part of it is even the sequence you talked about with the flowers and the piano. She is someone who starts out not really expressing herself, not having any type of identity whatsoever. She is a daughter. She is someone who's looking to only get married. She is someone who serves. She acquiesces. There is no personal expression, however. There is no sense of identity. And by the end, that's very much there. And the firmer she gets in that, the more I enjoyed Hara's performance.
29:21Adam Kempenaar:And it comes back to some of the filmmaking, too. I can't separate Kurosawa and Hara here. I'll give you one more example of this. When they, the mother, the mother-in-law and Yuki, go out to start that work. and she's very determined, Yuki is, to show that she's there for noble reasons, that their son is not the shameful figure that they hold him to be and starts with an amazing shot on its own on a small scale where there's this great distance between them as she starts, I think, is that a hoe, Josh? You're a gardener. I am not. She starts picking at the ground, or is that just an axe? Let's go with a hoe.
30:07Adam Kempenaar:Let's go with a hoe. A shovel. She starts hoeing the ground, the mother does. And as the mother gets more aggressive with the ground, she's talking about her son. She's getting angrier and angrier with her son as she chops at the ground with that hoe. And what does Kurosawa do? every strike of the ground by the mom the cuts increase in pace to hara's face and it it starts to increasingly look like she when she's hitting the ground we don't even see her hit the ground anymore it's like she's hitting yuki's face every time she cuts that's what it feels like it's a blow it's a blow to her every time that hoe hits the ground but then but then once yuki figures out what's going on and how she's going to respond and how they are going to have to work together.
31:03Adam Kempenaar:We get another moment where they're in a two shot together and that starts a montage where they're going to, they're going to begin the work and they do begin the work. But my point going back to the performance is that's where we see the resolve. And that's where we see a lot of, I think, smaller moments in, in Hara's performance, actually, where she's not, she, she doesn't have to do a lot of melodramatic posing, Josh. She just has to reflect what's going on inside of Yuki at that moment. And there is a lot of conflict and tension going on inside of her there. And I really did respond to all of that.
31:37Adam Kempenaar:And by the end, by the end, Josh, where we see her, we see her become, and here's another, I keep saying amazing. I'm going to have to come up another adjective here but we get another great montage of her putting her hair up going to work the use of low angle shots to emphasize her as this worker that she is transformed into and multiple cuts multiple dissolves showing that transformation her her outfits change her Her face becomes harder. It becomes more caked by dirt. And the camera gets closer and closer. So we're aligning more and seeing her more and more as a powerful individual figure. And that's why at the end, when she makes that decision, she makes to say, no, I'm going back here.
32:29Adam Kempenaar:I'm not going to stay at home. I have more work to do back in this village. That's the transformation truly becoming complete as far as her sociopolitical awakening.
32:41Josh Larsen:Yeah, I think that's all right. And I still think the performance is strong in that last section. For me, I guess maybe I see the political starting to overwhelm the personal with which, as you say, her becoming almost entirely to represent the nation at that point beyond just Yuki. And I found it, you know, I'd love to hear from listeners who know more about Japanese history at this time. It's curious to think about the symbolism going on here, because I think you're right that she has found her identity in the ways you describe. And it is in a Japan that is different than the one she was comfortable with at the start of the film.
33:20Josh Larsen:But it's interesting to me that she finds this in a very traditional rural setting. So in some ways, it doesn't register so much as a step forward as a punishing regression, maybe. And I think part of what I read, her motivation for doing this was to punish herself for who knows what, for maybe not becoming more active earlier, perhaps. And then the movie begins to move her almost into a certain sainthood. Some of the portrait shots Kurosawa employees reminded me of like Dreyer's Joan of Arc in a way when her face fills the frame and she's wearing the traditional hat as a rice farmer. It's almost like she's become the person who has to pay for Japan's World War II sins at that point.
34:14But it's interesting to me that I don't know if the rural setting is part of it or is it maybe pushing back against modernization, which was one of, and militarization
34:29Josh Larsen:and technology. I mean, this could be it too. It's like part of the movement, the nationalist movement at the time was clearly military and the strength coming through technology. And so maybe the return to a rural life is meant to represent a rejection of that.
34:47Adam Kempenaar:I didn't read it that way, Josh, because I think the most salient part of that is what she says. And I didn't write it down in my notes, but she does tell her mother specifically why she's going back. and it suggests that it's where she believes she can do the most good. And that's the only reason that there are specific tasks there. And women, she believes she can help there. And that's what matters. It's not that it's a return to traditionalism. That wouldn't match what Kurosawa was saying with the rest of the movie or his other films from the period.
35:22Josh Larsen:Which is the personal element too. And so as she does, once she gets there, she somehow becomes more symbolic. at least to me, and begins to represent Japan as a whole, which is what I found. It's interesting, definitely, but also maybe her personal story gets a little lost. It might be connected to a question that's been bubbling. This is more of a larger marathon question, but I think No Regrets for Our Youth is a good time to ask it. It's something that popped up to my mind for each film that we've watched so far. And it's essentially the propaganda question. It's how much do we consider the movies that we're talking about?
36:04Josh Larsen:And each one is different in its own way. So we can't really paint with a broad brush, but how much do we consider these being, yes, propaganda? This movie, we get banners with political slogans. We get newspaper headlines early on about the students that are all very much, you know, on the side of the students. Right. And I think it's interesting to ask this because we're, you know, these movies are probably ones we both politically largely agree with. Right. So this is the first time I thought, wow, with all of this, like sloganeering and messaging, some of the symbolism going on, like, is it not propaganda just because we might agree with it?
36:45Josh Larsen:or is it, and does it, does it even matter here? I'm just, these are things I'm starting to wonder about. And it goes back to this idea of here, particularly with No Grets for Our Youth, the history of its production, right? Made amidst this post-war democratization efforts that Kurosawa was working within, you know, some of that coming from inside Japan, a lot of it coming from occupation forces. Yeah. I don't know. This struck me as the most propagandistic movie we've watched so far, and I don't know that I mean that as a slight.
37:16Adam Kempenaar:Well, it's definitely not, well, I was going to say Rome Open City, I would not qualify as propagandistic in the sense that, to partly answer your question, I think a key part of whether or not we can classify a film as propagandistic, it does depend on whether or not there is some kind of government influence. It has to be serving. there has to be some money people involved or there have to be some overseers who are partly dictating what the messaging is and i don't know the entire history of this film there is an element of that here but that then gets at the larger question i think is true whether whether or not ultimately there are others involved or not it's just how pure is the artistry does the does the art feel like it's overwhelmed by the messaging and i was going to say with open city i'm not aware of anybody other than rossellini trying to make the movie that he wants to make now does that movie still get overwhelmed by its messaging that's that's something we could we could certainly talk about and maybe we did it's been so long ago right the great dictator we know we know what that movie's message is and and chaplain make sure we know what it is at the end And we thought that it went too far there where now we know so clearly what it is that the artistry, it undermined the artistry of that film, which otherwise we thought was there.
38:42Adam Kempenaar:So for me, that propaganda word, it's about that scale where the artistry starts to get overshadowed, but it also does come back just on a purely, we have to apply a letter of the law question. question. There's the spirit of the law, but there's a letter of the law too. And the letter of the law is, was it serving a government message directly? And this one's a little trickier, I think, because from what I understand, there was a board and the board had certain ideas that they wielded. But honestly, Josh, from what I saw, I thought it was more about there was another film that was coming out at the same time and they didn't want it to have the same message because it was covering some of the same incidents.
39:26Adam Kempenaar:I'd have to do a deeper dive on that. So I don't know. I don't know ultimately about the letter of the law part. In terms of the spirit of the law, you're right that it's there. There's no doubt. But there's so much artistry on display that I did really enjoy watching No Regrets for Our Youth.
39:44Josh Larsen:And I like that framework. You could think about it also as like an on-screen and an off-screen element. Like the on-screen is the artistry. you know, when does the messaging overwhelm it? As you say, the off screen is the production history and what actual influences that led to specific filmmaking decisions might there have been behind it. And that all somehow adds up to a formula that's, you know, a lot of that is interpretive too. So yeah, I think across the three films we've talked about, there are different varying degrees to that. This one probably felt the most to me just because of little of that production background, whereas Chaplin was clearly going out to do his own thing, had the power to do it.
40:30Josh Larsen:And yeah, I agree with you on Rome Open City absolutely being a pretty pure artistic statement.
40:36Adam Kempenaar:If there are overseer hands involved, you're probably going to get the other side of the scale, right? You're probably going to get some of that artistic integrity compromised. Inevitably, it would seem to work that way. No Regrets for Our Youth is currently streaming on the Criterion channel and available VOD. If you see it and agree or disagree with our thoughts, maybe you have thoughts on this larger question about what is or isn't propaganda. We'd love to hear from you. Feedback at filmspotting.net. And you can find our full marathon lineup over at filmspotting.net slash marathons.
41:12Josh Larsen:Quick note about Friday's show. We will be reviewing John Carney's power ballad. This one with Paul Rudd at its center. I'm looking forward to this. Had Had a chance to catch it earlier, but missed my shot. And so, yeah, I get to see it now and get to discuss it with Adam in just a couple of days. For Film Spotting, I'm Josh Larson. And I'm Adam Kempinar. Thanks for listening.
41:35Adam Kempenaar:This conversation can serve no purpose anymore. Goodbye.
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From the publisher
Adam and Josh continue Filmspotting’s Dissident Cinema Marathon with Akira Kurosawa’s 1946 drama No Regrets for Our Youth. Released in the immediate aftermath of WWII, the film stands out as a blatantly political entry in Kurosawa's catalog — and notably, his only film featuring a sole female protagonist.
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