Yasujiro Shimazu – The Trio's Engagement (1937)

In my last post I lamented the fact that so few of Shimazu's films have survived the trials of time and that even fewer are available to the English speaking public. Not only is our possible fandom squelched from the get go, but for people interested in studying the director's work in-depth it is very frustrating to have only such a small sample size at their disposal.

It is especially frustrating in this instance because The Trio's Engagement is so fundamentally different from Our Neighbor, Miss Yae and my reaction to it was so dissimilar from my first Shimazu experience that I am aching to see more in order to better assess his body of work. But as it is, I am stuck with two very different viewing experiences. Not to say that The Trio's Engagement is horrible. On the contrary, the plot is quite amusing. Three young men find work at a textile company at the same time. One is from the suburbs, one from the countryside, one from the city. All three fall for their boss' daughter and court her. In the end, their supervisor hands them an invitation to the boss' daughter's wedding to a baron.

This admittedly contrived story gives Shimazu the possibility to explore how the men's different social origins define their work ethic and, more importantly, their flirting prowess. The film is light-hearted at it's core and at times outright farcical. For it to be such an obvious construct to explore social differences, The Trio's Engagement is utterly uninterested in going deep into the issue, preferring to be straight up entertaining without indulging in some darker beats, as we have grown accustomed from the Japanese social realist dramas of the time.

This is not a complaint. My complaint lies in the fact that Our Neighbor, Miss Yae impressed me so much more upon my first viewing. I totally got what Shimazu was going for in The Trio's Engagement, but I found myself a lot less engaged in the proceedings than with the other film. Not only was I less interested in the story, but stylistically, Miss Yae wowed me more. The seamless storytelling paired with impeccable directing and editing were the clear imprint of a master filmmaker. But The Trio's Engagement has a lot less to offer visually, rendering it almost interchangeable with any other fare from that period.

And herein lies the problem. By all accounts, Shimazu was indeed a master of the medium. But in viewing only two of his films, I couldn't confirm or deny it. One film is a masterpiece, the other one more average if still enjoyable. Which level of quality is the norm here? Where is Shimazu's handwriting? It's impossible for me to say. It is even more frustrating than in, say, Sadao Yamanaka's case who was considered the best Japanese director of the 1930's. Only three of his films have survived and they are all incredible masterpieces. We know that we miss out on a lot of quality and it's a tragedy that Yamanaka's body of work has mostly vanished. But with Shimazu, I can't even assess what the threshold is. And, to me, that's even worse.