MovieChat Forums > Biruma no tategoto (1957) Discussion > Poor acting by minor characters

Poor acting by minor characters

posted 16 years ago by JidThorax
5 replies | jump to latest

I know this film is extremely well-regarded by many people, and perhaps it is to them that I pose this question: Did you not think the performances turned in by the admittedly peripheral characters were--in a word--bad? Roles of a dozen or so spoken lines don't really have much of an impact on a film; they neither make nor break it. But perhaps because some of those minor lines were spoken in English I found them jarringly bad. It wasn't just the English-speaking actors, either. Tanie Kitabayashi, the then 45-year-old Japanese actress who played the old woman, seemed not to have memorized her lines. I was shocked to find that she had been in no less than 96 Japanese productions! Perhaps she brought her "A" game to those roles. But even she outshone the English-speaking and incidental Burmese actors. Quibbles, to be sure, but still...

[–] bigmikey-3 16 years ago

Considering the year this movie was made, little more than a decade after the end of the war, it's amazing it was made at all. This had to be a tough film to make, with the intenses pain and suffering of the war still fresh on everbody's minds. If you watch other Japanese movies from that same time period, you will find similar acting styles. Today, it comes off as almost over acting, but that's because todays styles are less dramatic, at least for the most part. If you understand the differences between now and then, you will find the actors in this film did a wonderful job. Like my father use to say - listen to what people are saying, not to how they are saying it.

[–] kpjf 16 years ago

You know i have found this to be the case in almost every asian film when there's english spoken; it doesn't sound right or the actor sounds strange. I don't know if it's the actor's fault or that it just simply sounds odd, next to say, Japanese. Maybe they go for cheap actors because it's only a small role i don't know, but nearly every asian film i have seen with some minor american their acting seems crap, or their voice is stilted. Even when that english guy spoke he didn't sound like he was speaking normally, it was as if he was trying to speak very clearly and it didn't come out as being natural - it was almost like he was a robot. However I don't think this problem in any way exclusive to this film.

Like my father use to say - listen to what people are saying, not to how they are saying it.

Well, that is okay in life, but part of acting is the way you deliver your lines. Take Bogart; he was great at doing that
ie timing, and he had that way of speaking etc so i feel that this is extremely important, because it is clearly part of acting, otherwise we could all be actors reading lines out in any fashion. So, although this may ring true in life, in films this couldn't be further from the truth.

[–] jadow81 16 years ago

JidThorax wrote:

Tanie Kitabayashi, the then 45-year-old Japanese actress who played the old woman, seemed not to have memorized her lines.

I think you are mistaken here (unless you are joking).
Her character is not a Japanese, but a Burmese who learned the language from Japanese officer who stationed there some time ago (as explained at 1:35-36).
But her Japanese is far from fluent, so she keeps trying to find out how she should put it. As such, I think her performance here is actually good. (If Burmese saw this movie they might say she doesn't look Burmese, though.)

kpjf wrote:

nearly every asian film i have seen with some minor american their acting seems crap

I agree.
But some American film I have seen with minor Asians their acting seems crap. especially in old TV shows.

That said, I guess those non-Japanese roles in this movie were played by amateurs (not even 'cheap' actors).

There's a Japanese sci-fi movie called "Sayonara Jupitor" which includes lots of non-Japanese cast. Most of them were American soldiers stationed at the bases in Japan. They were hired on their holidays.
I guess similar method was used in "Burmese Harp" too.

(BTW, when I saw "Poor acting by minor characters" title of this thread,
I thought it's about Burmese locals, such as the boy who plays harp, the priest who offered a boat to Mizushima.)

[–] ShiiStyle 15 years ago

The old woman is meant to be a Burmese grandmother who learned "bad" Japanese from the generals. If she sounds like she didn't memorize her lines, that means she did an excellent job.

[–] longshanks-5 10 years ago

Well, one of the things about the British characters is that many of them are played by Australians. The British officer who gives instructions about moving the urns of British ashes is clearly not British, at all, but Australian, and there are a couple of other actors who are obviously not really British.