This 1947 film (considered the best film of that year in Japan) is about an aristocratic family, who right after Japan's defeat in World War II, is forced to adjust to new circumstances, in which the nobility's old privileges have been curtailed by new laws. The family is worried they will have to sell their mansion, so before that happens they decide to give one last ball. It's a bizarre movie, if only for its setting: Europeans directors like Visconti or Buñuel do decadent nobility much better than the Japanese. These downward nobles look more ridiculous than pathetic. The movie stars the beautiful Setsuko Hara (who would soon star in some of Yasujiro Ozu's masterpieces, like Tokyo Story and Late Spring and who is still alive as of 2015, almost seventy years after this film was made) as the aristocratic patriarch's daughter. Whether this was the original intention or not, the movie, with its often stilted dialogue looks a bit campy now. It is quite funny and entertaining in that sense. Worth seeing just for the bizarre tango between Setsuko Hara and her father at the end.
Review of Anjô-ke no butôkai
