What Made Her Do It?
Theatrical Poster
Japanese name
Kanji何が彼女をそうさせたか
Directed byShigeyoshi Suzuki
Written byShigeyoshi Suzuki
Based on
  • That Girl Sumiko, What Made Her Do It?
  • by Seikichi Fujimori
Produced byTeikoku Kinema Engei
Starring
  • Keiko Takatsu
  • Rintarō Fujima
  • Yōyō Kojima
  • Hidekatsu Maki
CinematographySeiji Tsukakoshi
Production
company
Teikoku Kinema Engei
Distributed byKinokuniya
Release date
  • 6 February 1930 (1930-02-06) (Japan)[1][2]
Running time
  • 3,019 meters (original version)
  • 78 minutes (restored version)
CountryJapan
LanguageJapanese

What Made Her Do It? (何が彼女をそうさせたか, Nani ga kanojo o sō saseta ka) is a 1930 Japanese silent film directed by Shigeyoshi Suzuki. It was the top-grossing Japanese film of the silent era.[3][4] Notable as an example of the tendency film genre, it reportedly caused a riot upon its showing in Tokyo's Asakusa district.[3]

Plot

The plot centers on a schoolgirl, Sumiko, who has been sent to live with her uncle. Arriving to a harried household with many children, her aunt and alcoholic uncle are annoyed by her arrival. A note, which Sumiko cannot read, announces that her father has killed himself. After being denied schooling and placed into labor for the family, Sumiko is eventually sold to a circus where she suffers at the hands of its members and ringmaster. Sumiko escapes with another circus performer, Shintaro, but Sumiko joins a team of thieves and ends up arrested. She is given work in the home of a wealthy aristocratic family, who denies even the simplest of pleasures to their staff out of cruelty. She is sent to a Christian orphanage, where she is humiliated for writing a letter to an old friend, and must make a public speech renouncing her ways and accepting Christ into her heart. Given the opportunity, Sumiko instead denounces the church, and ends up burning it down.

Cast

  • Keiko Takatsu as Sumiko
  • Rintarō Fujima as Hiroshi Hasegawa
  • Ryuujin Unno as Shintarō
  • Yōyō Kojima
  • Hidekatsu Maki
  • Itaru Hamada
  • Takashi Asano
  • Saburō Ōno

Production and reception

After the commercial success of other tendency films such as Tomu Uchida's A Living Puppet and Kenji Mizoguchi's Metropolitan Symphony (both 1929), produced by the Nikkatsu studio, the entertainment-oriented Teikine (Teikoku Kinema Engei) studio produced What Made Her Do It?, introducing "vulgar elements" (Geoffrey Nowell-Smith) aimed at the audience to the story, thus lightening its social criticism.[5] The film was an enormous commercial success, with press reports of riots following its showing in Tokyo's Asakusa district.[3]

In his 2005 book A Hundred Years of Japanese Film, film historian Donald Richie titled the film "a melodramatic potboiler", at the same time acknowledging it for being "also extraordinarily film literate".[4]

Restoration

The film, thought to be lost after World War II, was restored in 1997 from an incomplete print found in the Russian Gosfilmofond archive in 1994.[6] The restoration, under supervision of Yoneo Ōta, replaced missing scenes at start and finish of the film with title cards.[6]

References

  1. "何が彼女をそうさせたか". Japanese Movie Database (in Japanese). Retrieved 24 May 2023.
  2. "何が彼女をそうさせたか". Kinenote (in Japanese). Retrieved 24 May 2023.
  3. 1 2 3 Anderson, Joseph L.; Richie, Donald (1982). The Japanese Film: Art and Industry (Expanded ed.). Princeton (N.J.): Princeton University Press. p. 68. ISBN 0691007926. Retrieved 12 December 2017.
  4. 1 2 Richie, Donald (2005). A hundred years of Japanese film : a concise history, with selective guide to videos and DVDs/ Donald Richie (Revised ed.). Tokyo, New York, London: Kodansha International. p. 91. ISBN 4770029950. Retrieved 12 December 2017.
  5. Nowell-Smith, Geoffrey, ed. (1997). The Oxford history of world cinema. Oxford: Oxford University Press. p. 416. ISBN 0198742428.
  6. 1 2 Bernardi, Joanne (2001). Writing in light : the silent scenario and the japanese pure film movement. Detroit [Mich.]: Wayne state university press. p. 318. ISBN 0814329616. Retrieved 12 December 2017.
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