Film Music and Male Desire in Kinoshita Keisuke’s <i>Here’s to the Young Lady</i> (1949) and <i>The Tattered Wings</i> (1955)

<p>Kinoshita Keisuke’s film music tends to be preoccupied with skillful and effective use of melodies in melodrama. In Here’s to the Young Lady (1949) and The Tattered Wings (1955), however, there are scenes in which multiple melodies converge to create dissonance. Furthermore, although they are distinct characters, both films feature a male protagonist of the same name, ‘Ishizu Keizō.’ Moreover, an intertextual connection or continuity can be identified between the two films: In Here’s to the Young Lady, the narrative concludes with the protagonist departing Tokyo for his hometown, while The Tattered Wings opens with the protagonist returning to his hometown. The purpose of this paper is therefore to analyze these films intertextually in order to connect their music to the motif that runs through both works.</p><p>To achieve this, I will identify the shared motif of ‘men who loved and failed’ in the two films, and analyze the texts focusing on Kinoshita’s use of overlapping melodies. It will be argued that the excessive soundtracks sear into the textual fabric Keizō’s impulse to resist the narrative progression and foreground his desire to return to a lost idealized past. Through my analysis, I will conclude that the film music is linked to male desire in these two works and it leaves behind traces that are not absorbed in the signification of the films.</p>