Mizoguchi’s 30th film is the earliest surviving example of his work, and his only film of the 1920s to survive complete. Song of Home finds the director already concerning himself with the collision of traditional and modern values. The film is structured around the contrast of two country-bred boys: a coach driver who has never left his home, and a student who returns from Tokyo with city-slicker affectations and Western jazz records. Produced by the Ministry of Education, the film has a simplistic lesson-plan at its heart, but what lingers in the mind after viewing are its more ineffable qualities: The dulcet, lyric, evocation of a disappeared rural past.
Directed by Kenji Mizoguchi
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Cast
Shigeru Kido
Naotaro Takeda
Masujirô Takagi
Naotaro's father
Sueko Ito
Naotaro's mother
Mineko Tsuji
Okinu
Kentaro Kawamata
Junichi Okamoto
Shiro Kato
Junichi's father
Shizue Matsumoto
Junichi's mother
Michiko Tachibana
Taro Maesaka
Hiromichi Kawata
Elementary school principal
Ichirō Shibayama
School inspector
Yutaka Mimasu
American scholar
Fusako Hoshi
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