THE BILLIONAIRE (OKUMAN CHOJA)
Japan, 1954, 83 minutes, Black and white.
Isao Kimura, Yoshiko Kuga.
Directed by Kon Ichikawa.
A Billionaire is a satire on post-war Japan, made almost ten years after the end of World War Two. The film focuses on a naïve tax collector and the range of characters that he encounters, a young woman working on an atomic bomb at home, a spoon tycoon going to America, a boy wanting to be a movie star, a scheming geisha. This means that the film is a critical comment about the effect of the war on Japan, the American occupation, the odd attempts to build up Japan again in the post-war period.
The film was written and directed by Kon Ichikawa, who began directing films immediately after the end of World War Two in 1946, made an international hit with an Oscar nomination in 1956, The Harp of Burma. He continued to make many films including Enjo, Conflagration as well as An Actor’s Revenge. He was still making films at the age of ninety in 2005.
1. How best would this film be described: comedy, social comment, black humour? Its impact in the fifties and comment on the fifties, now?
2. Black and white photography, Japanese locations, the styles of neo-realism in world cinema of the fifties - filming in the streets, slices of life, realistic style? The western-style score?
3. The plausibilities of the plot? The aspects of realism? Contrivance? Audience response at each level? How well did they combine for insight into a human beings post-war Japan? The critique of Japan?
4. How well was the Japanese atmosphere communicated? The opening with the various characters and their talk? the comments on the post-war period, the focus on Tate? The streets the city, poverty and wealth, officialdom the geishas? The purpose of the film - for Japanese audiences, non-Japanese?
5. The jaunty tone of the opening with the girl talking about making atom bombs, the geisha complaining about lack of business, the businessman going to Europe to study, the politician talking about his popularity in jail? The clock stopping and the focus on the ordinary citizen? The attitude and tone of the narrator throughout the film? The facts, comment, criticism?
6. How engaging a character was Tate in himself? The narrator’s description of his shyness, lack of relationship with his fellow workers, dedication to his work? Seeing him in his apartment, his testing the coffin for the undertaker etc.? Relationships at the office - helping people while the girl combed her hair? How realistic ware his fears, planes and the memories of the war? The black humorous way in which this was presented - getting under the table? His worry about bombs, radioactive rain? His running 23 kilometres with his lunch? The blend of realistic fear and satirised fear? The point?
7. His visiting people to ask them for money? The change after visiting the poor family? The widow and her mix money? The questions he raised about his life, corruption? Giving the money away?
8. His advice to draw up the list for tax evaders- the humour in his coming to life especially at the dancing? His work and the boss's daughter infatuated with him? His disillusionment in hearing the geisha's motives for blackmail? leaving the book in the street? His behaviour in the court case, his expulsion as a madman? The geisha, his department head and the others trying to persuade him against telling the truth? The comment on honesty in society?
9. The presentation of politicians especially the Conservatives in jail, the investigations, the running of the court case? The contrast with ordinary people, the girl and her making the bomb the family and the boy wanting to be a film star the geisha and her children? The comment on the cross-section of Japanese people in the fifties?
10. The themes of large families, children and poverty, birth control and the future?
11. Themes of disparate wealth, poverty, corruption? The family preparing to die and the irony of their being poisoned by the fish? The hero and the son running off In different directions to escape the bomb?
12. The comments on the state of Japan in the mid-fifties - prospects for its future?
