The Blue Sky Maiden (Blue Sky Daughter)

Masumura made a lot of films, only the more unconventional of which are well known in the West. I saw this at the BFI, and doubt it has a DVD release. There is no hint here of the perversities of Blind Beast or the gore of Red Angel. That said, Masumura’s interest in awkward family dynamics is front and centre, even if the genre is melodrama, and the ending happy.

Or so it may seem. Yuko is a Cinderella who finds a Prince Charming, but given everything we see of Tokyo living you wonder whether she was better off staying true to her roots and choosing the local boy from her village (her teacher, but that’s ok apparently). Yuko is illegitimate, and her father did her a favour when he sent her away from his nightmare of a family. Masumura is very good at showing that the fault ultimately lies with him. He was never reconciled to the loveless marriage he was talked into, and his indifference turned his wife into a harpy and his children into brats.

Yuko marries for love, but it’s another posh boy. There’s a subtle class divide bisecting the characters in the film, which Yuko steps over. A philosophy grad, Masumura’s sympathies lie closer to the philosophy-spouting delivery boy, as well as the hard-pressed family maid and the striving teacher-come-artist.

The plot comes from a novel, and Masumura handles the twists deftly. There’s a good deal of fancy camerawork where wide shots move into to closeups and back. And a satisfying shape to the film is provided by the opening and closing scenes on the shore, where blue sky thinking is embraced as a survival mechanism and then discarded when no longer needed. It’s accomplished, in other words, and goes to show that Masumura was good at this sort of thing. There’s a reason he made so many movies.