Izumi (1956)

Izumi (Fountainhead)
Directed by Masaki Kobayashi
Written by Zenzô Matsuyama from a story by Kunio Kishida
1956/Japan
Shôchiku Eiga
First viewing/Hulu

Water is the driving force of all nature. — Leonardo da Vinci

This movie demonstrates that love triangles can be just as tedious in Japanese as they are in English.  Pity.

I don’t have the character names in front of me.  This botany student goes with his professor to study plants in the mountains.  While there he witnesses the water war going on between some farmers who would like to improve their rice fields and a villa owner on whose property lies the only reservoir.  The student decides he will search for an additional water source.

We spend almost all our time on a second story, however.  The student falls for the villa owner’s beautiful secretary.  The owner is also taken with her.  The secretary can’t make up her mind.  In the meantime, a waiflike girl who met the student one time in a garden two years ago can’t forget him.  His friends try to make a match between the pair but the student is not interested.  We fumble around inconclusively for the next one and a half hours.

Kobayashi is one of my favorite directors.  He had a dud script on his hands.  At no time did I care who the characters ended up with.  Most of the time I was baffled by their actions.  I kept waiting for the water feud and the corrupt businessmen who wanted to turn the villa into a hotel to come back into the picture.  That could have made an interesting movie.