Learn from Experience, Part II (1937)
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Country: Japan
Genres: Drama, Romance
Release: 1937-11-11
Director: Mikio Naruse
Writers: Fumitaka Iwasaki , Kan Kikuchi
Language: Japanese
Stars: Minoru Takada , Takako Irie , Chieko Takehisa , Sadao Maruyama , Yuriko Hanabusa
Runtime: 79 min
Awards: N/A
AKA: Learn from Experience, Part II , Les vicissitudes de la vie II (France, French Republic) , Learn from Experience, Part II (United Kingdom) , Kafuku kôhen , Learn from Experience, Part II (United States of America) , Kafuku kôhen (Japan)
Plot: This movie was released six weeks after LEARN FROM EXPERIENCE PART 1. Why a two-part movie? It looks like a matter of length. Together these movies take two and a half hours, which would have been a major epic, not a pot boiler. It was derived from a novel by Kan Kikuchi, and if you've ever seen any soap operas, you know that there has to be a satisfactory conclusion. I suspect it was handled a lot better in the novel.Anyway, at the end of the last movie, Takako Irie has gotten pregnant and decided not to tell Minoru Takada, out of some combination of self torture, revenge, and making a novelette into a novel. In the new movie, she gets a job at a store. Who walks in, but Chieko Takehisa, who's going to marry the man. They become great friends, and eventually, Miss Takehisa invites her friend and baby daughter to stay with her while her husband is in France. Eventually, of course, we all know he will walk in and be thunderstruck.It's not as good as the first movie. Takada is still a self-important fool, the coincidences too unlikely, and the solution too neat. The performances are still first-rate, even if the script has clearly been compressed by having parts of it narrated by letter.So, is one movie or two? If one, does the second half wreck the first? Personally, I find the first movie perfectly satisfactory on its own. Miss Irie is going to raise the baby on her own, the father will never know, and that's how things are.
IMDB:tt0029074