Floating Weeds (1959) on Netflix
A kabuki troupe reaches a seaside town, where its master, Komajuro Arashi, visits Oyoshi and their son Kiyoshi, who thinks Komajuro is his uncle. Sumiko, the lead actress, grows jealous.
- Netflix3.6/5
- IMDb7.9/109,893 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes96%
Trailer
Plot summary
During the summer of 1958, a kabuki troupe arrives by ship at a small seaside town on the Inland Sea. Komajuro Arashi, its aging lead actor and owner, leaves the others to publicize the show while he calls on Oyoshi, a former mistress of his who runs a small eatery. Their grown son, Kiyoshi, sorts mail at the town post office and is putting money aside for university study; he has been raised believing Komajuro is an uncle, and the two go fishing together. Sumiko, the troupe's lead actress and Komajuro's girlfriend, hears where he has been going and grows jealous. She turns up at the eatery, and he chases her off and breaks with her.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Floating Weeds (1959)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Before Floating Weeds, Ozu planned to remake A Story of Floating Weeds for Shochiku in 1958 as A Ham Actor, with Eitarō Shindō and Chikage Awashima as the leads, Masami Taura and Ineko Arima as the young leads, and Isuzu Yamada as the former mistress; a mild winter in Niigata delayed it.
- Kōji Mitsui, credited as Hideo Mitsui, was brought in to play Kichinosuke, the troupe member whose amorous escapades drive a subplot; he had played the protagonist's son in the 1934 version. It was his seventh and final film for Ozu.
- Nakamura recalled that he and Machiko Kyo both got sick with colds after filming the confrontation scene between their characters in the rain.
- Ozu built a small joke into the staging to show the troupe is not polished: when Gantetsu says the wild geese are flying south he points off-stage into the auditorium, so Sumiko, as Chuji, turns stage left to speak of the moon behind the western mountains and is actually facing east.
