The Portrait (1948)

 Keisuke Kinoshita's "The Portrait"


I'm finding the films of Keisuke Kinoshita to be rather interesting. I've only seen the 3 he has done from 1946 to 1948, most recently with 1948's "The Portrait." His works are always solid and it often strikes me how he is not ever mentioned with post-war Japanese cinema along with contemporaries like Akira Kurosawa, Kenji Mizoguchi, and Yasujiro Ozu. Perhaps this is not the case in Japan, but I have scoured the internet here in the U.S. for some Kinoshito content, but have come up short more often than not.

As far as my most recent watch, 1948's "The Portrait," I found it to be interesting and engaging. It centers on the mistress of a man who is attempting to take advantage of a family living in a house he owns. As the realtor moves in to try and get the family to move out so he can sell it, the mistress begins to be won over by the kindness of the family and begins to look at herself and her life differently. 

The most striking element of the film plot-wise is the complete and utter kindness and joyous nature of the family they are attempting to evict. They seem to have a love of life that befuddles the mistress and the home owner. In fact, their love of life and their complete compassion and kindness begin to become infectious, affecting everyone around them. One of the members of the family is a painter who paints the mistress' portrait. As the mistress is getting her portrait painted, she continues to speak about how the woman in the picture is a more idealized version of who she is. The person she is, she feels, is not respectable enough to receive any sort of dignity. The more she sees an idealized version of herself in the portrait, the more she comes to actualize that idealized woman and believe in her own ability to change her perspective on life.

To me, this is the entire crux of the film. The 'portrait' version of you is not without reach. You can manifest the kind of person you want to be. You can view life and the people around you with far more passion and joy. 



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