Three Sisters with Maiden Hearts

"That turned out good"

Naruse Mikio’s first talkie, Three Sisters with Maiden Hearts, made use of not only the actors’ voices but a variety of music as well. Each of the sisters dealt with poverty in their own way. This was a women-centric film and Naruse dealt with the female characters in a sympathetic manner without pandering. That’s not to say there was no melodrama, it wouldn’t have been a 1935 film without buckets of angst.

Chieko tells her new boyfriend how her mother sent her older sisters Oren and Osame to work when they were eight. The mother trains 3 other young women how to play the samisen and sends them out like she had her older daughters to the street and dingy hostess clubs and bars. Chieko is the youngest and favored child who dances in a revue. The neighborhood boys derogatorily call her a “modern girl,” due to her wearing western style clothes. Osame bears the brunt of her mother’s vitriol and tries to protect the other girls. Simply buying a magazine or food with their earnings instead of turning them all over to the mother can earn a beating. Osame wants Chieko to leave with her boyfriend and get away, much as their older sister Oren had. The women have tried to steer clear of the criminal element in their part of town, but the sisters are on a deadly collision with the gangsters as two try to make their way out.

Naruse displayed the claustrophobic boundaries of poverty. Leaving town or seeking a new place to live, all required money, money the women didn’t have. They earned very little playing in the clubs and bars and spent more time fending off the advances of drunken men. Only Chieko with her “wealthy” boyfriend and kinder treatment from the mother fared well. Even she lamented that her mother hadn’t had the courage to commit suicide with the lot of them when they were younger. Oren’s husband had TB and he refused to let her go back to the seedy side of town to work preferring to live in abject poverty. Osame tried to play peace maker for everyone involved even while she worked in a job she hated. There was nothing glamourous about her work in the dim light that smelled of booze, sweat, and cigarettes.

Like many directors when they were first able to use sound in their films, Naruse made liberal use of it. Samisens played with women and men singing. The revue had a band playing while the women danced and sang. There was whistling, sound effects counting down the minutes, and a soundtrack of heartbreaking music. The version I watched was in desperate need of restoration. Many of the frames were faded and blurred and occasionally the frames would go black. The performances were strong, never delving into histrionics regardless of the situation. Hosokawa Chikako is usually first in the cast list, but Oren didn’t appear on screen until 40 minutes into the film. Tsutsumi Masako as kind and gentle Osame carried much of the story on her slight shoulders. Selfless to a fault, no one had her back in the dangerous world she lived in. Umezono Ryuko as the relatively spoiled Chieko gave an energetic but restrained performance. Often the “modern girl” in these early films could be annoying, yet Umezono and Naruse kept Chieko all too aware of the pain around her, but with hope for escaping it.

Three Sisters with Maiden Hearts could have used a few more minutes to flesh out some plot elements, but overall, it was an entertaining if bittersweet first talkie for Naruse Mikio. In Asakusa, crime and selfishness did pay, while those who were generous paid a higher price.

6 February 2025

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