Boobirt Stylish but barely mediocre overall

Rijndri Load of rubbish!!

Megamind To all those who have watched it: I hope you enjoyed it as much as I do.

Dirtylogy It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

Dustin Dye In a material war, what your side lacks in material, you must make up for with spirit. Or so the Japanese told themselves during the war, and that is the driving point behind "The Most Beautiful.""The Most Beautiful" is the second film directed by internationally acclaimed Japanese filmmaker, Akira Kurosawa. Like "Sugata Sanshiro" before it, "The Most Beautiful" is a product of World War II. However, while one could characterize "Sugata Sanshiro" simply as a film with subject matter that was deemed safe for the time, "The Most Beautiful" is pure propaganda.The film follows a group of girls working in an optic lens factory during World War II. The girls' leader is one Watanabe-san (Yoko Yaguchi, Kurosawa's wife), a kind of Japanese Rosie the Riveter (Tokyo Rosie the Riveter?). When the factory's chief, Ishida-san (Takashi Shimura, "Seven Samurai") raises the girls' quota by 50 percent, the girls gripe that it wasn't raised by 100 percent like the boys'. The girls exert themselves to exceed their quota.The girls work to the point of exhaustion. This leads to mistakes and petty bickering. The girls play volleyball and sing patriotic songs to raise their morale.Akira Kurosawa was one of Japan's greatest directors and storytellers. This film is distinctly Kurosawa with the director's characteristic wipes and long takes. However, as a piece of storytelling, "The Most Beautiful" is a failure. That is not to say that there are no humorous moments or likable characters, but no character experiences the kind of dynamic change that drives good fiction.The film focuses mainly on the Watanabe character, who remains static throughout. She is the hardest, most dedicated worker at the beginning of the movie, and she remains so at the end. She sacrifices sleep to find a defective lens, and even stays away from her dying mother's bedside to work. No conflict can shake her dedication. There are minor external conflicts throughout the movie that Watanabe-san straightens out nicely by virtue of her dedication to her job."The Most Beautiful" is an important film in terms of historical context. Rarely do we get to see propaganda from the other side, and this film is a good illustration of extreme Japanese values at an extreme moment in Japanese history. The Japanese realized that they were at a technological disadvantage to the Allied Powers, but insisted that they could win by virtue of their spirit (apparently they weren't counting on American boys having spirit too). Militaristic slogans adorn the factory. The girls adhere to Zen Buddhist values as they emphasize hard work above all else, while the boys sing a militaristic song hoping for the "destruction of America and Britain."While "The Most Beautiful" is an important work in a historical sense, it is unworthy of Kurosawa's later, greater films.

crossbow0106 A curious film from Kurosawa, given what came later, this is a nationalist film about a group of young women who are working at an optical instruments factory who are given the task to greatly increase productivity for the good of the country and the war effort. It shows them rarely at play, mostly very focused at work. Takako Irie plays the dorm mother, a somewhat sympathetic character. This film is more inherently Japanese than most of Kurosawa's later work, its almost a propaganda film. However, there is also some heart in the characters, and that is what makes it a recommended film. You sense the young ladies anguish over being sick and having family difficulties, making them unable to work. So, not essential viewing but still watchable and Kurosawa fans should check it out.

pdbarrett It was interesting to read other people's views on this - I thought it was rather a good film. Of course, it's a long way from Kurosawa's best, but I think it's the best of his early (pre-Drunken Angel) films, and quite as good as one or two of his later ones (eg Scandal and The Quiet Duel; and maybe Drunken Angel and The Idiot, which were cut to ribbons by the studios).Of course it's a wartime propaganda film, but the propaganda is mostly either implicit in the story itself, or part of the background (it takes place in a munitions factory, so of course there are propaganda posters up on the walls, and of course there are messages from the bosses encouraging the workers to produce as much as possible - it would be unnatural if there weren't), and Kurosawa concentrates on telling that story. The result is that, for me, the propaganda never intrudes.

Local Hero Typical of Japanese war-time propaganda, the film suggests that Japan's fascist ideology, its inculcation of fanatical obedience, its vast perpetration of unthinkable atrocities in a systematic manner, and its aggressive military expansionism can all be replaced by Japan's supposed victimization. Rather telling in this respect is the song that the girls repeatedly sing to boost morale, a song that recalls that barbarian Mongol conquerors once tried to invade Japan from China, but that the perpetrators of such heinous deeds of aggression could not possibly co-exist under the same sky with the innocent and pure Japanese-- this, of course, is being sung during a war that was begun when an utterly unprovoked Japan invaded China and slaughtered untold numbers of its population mercilessly.All of this would be something that one could simply shrug off as the past blindness of war, but films such as these are more disturbing today than, say, Triumph of the Will because while Germany was forced to confront the horrors it had unleashed upon the world, most Japanese films even today (and textbooks for that matter) still tend to view Japan as a victim in the war (see, for instance, Kurosawa's own Rhapsody in August so many decades later). Assisted by the policies of the American post-war occupation, Japan has never had to come to terms with what it did to the planet, and what in human history can possibly more disturbing than a lack of accountability for the worst sins humanity can commit? And by the way, I say all of this despite the fact that Kurosawa is probably my favorite director.