User reviews

During the World War II, the management of a war industry of optical instruments for weapons requests an effort from the workers to increase the productivity during four months. The target for male workers is an increase of 100% of the production, but the female workers, led by the dedicated Tsuru Watanabe (Yôko Yaguchi), ask the direction to surpass their goal from 50% to 70%. Along the period, the women have to overcome illness and their personal problems to complete their quote.

"Ichiban Utsukushiku" is a war propaganda and tribute to the Japanese female workers in times of war by Akira Kurosawa recommended only for fans of this great director. The plot is boring in many moments, but I liked to see the humanization of the nationalist Japanese workers and this unusual perspective from a people that were sooner defeated in the war. The winners usually write the history from their perspective and this film is a rare testimony from the Japanese point of view. Watanabe is an enlightened character with her dedication and positive leadership. My vote is six.

Title (Brazil): "A Mais Bela" ("The Most Beautiful")

Propaganda films are usually of interest to me because of the situation and time period they were made in and their point of view not because of plot or sublime character development. Rarely do the characterizations, I currently cannot think of one, go beyond one or two dimensions. This is because the point of the propaganda film regardless of origin is to rally the troops and align their sense of duty. This movie is no different in that regard. But there are several key differences from the typical propaganda film that makes this film more interesting. The most interesting approach was the documentary approach Kurosawa took. Though he used actresses he did all he could to remove the artificiality of their craft to create a realistic portrait of the young girls at that time who were working in military construction. I felt this movie was effective in that regard. The tempered acting to those that are used to the Noh influenced acting of his later films. Another surprise is that this is one of two films of Kurosawa where the protagonist is a woman. The other one is No Regrets For Our Youth (1946) with Setsuko Hara.

The least interesting aspect of the film is the story. It is about a group of young women in an optical instrument factory that have to push up production to fill the need for the optical lens. While the men were asked to increase their production a hundred percent, the women were asked to do 50 percent. This insulted the women and they asked that they do a more respectable number like 66 percent (would a higher number have been insulting to the men?). The hardships created by this are numerable as the women face sickness, injury, mental breakdown and general crabbiness.

The movie is too episodic and heavy on the "team spirit" motif (not that Kurosawa had much of a choice), but it eventually settles on the titular protagonist in Tsuru Watanabe (Yoko Yaguchi) who embodies the spirit (kokoro) of an ideal worker. Her mother is dying, but her father and her mother want her to stay in the factory working so that Japan will not lose face. What is subversive is that she is a stubborn individualist. When she loses track of lens that she did not finish correcting, she goes through the monument task of finding it, and regardless of the pain it causes her, the lack of sleep and her supervisors telling her she does not need to do it – she does it anyways.

I do not agree with Donald Richie in his The Films of Akira Kurosawa when he states "Twenty years later it is almost impossible for us to think a lost lens this important." She states that she worries that lost lens might result in the death of Japanese soldiers (and possibly in her mind a battle and ultimately the war). It does not matter if she is correct in this thinking, it only matters that she feels that way. Anyone who has any degree of OCD can relate to this. Once the mind gets fixed with an idea that may haunt them it is easy to understand the monomania which consumes her until she finds her mistake.

One thing that surprised me when hearing it in the film, and the fact that Kurosawa got away with putting into the score (he mentions this in his autobiography), is the insertion of "Semper Fidelis" by John Philip Sousa.

Has anyone seen any other Kurosawa film where he uses as many horizontal wipes? After the picture he married the main actress Yoko Yaguchi. It was love at first sight. Kurosawa stated "She was a terribly stubborn and uncompromising person, and since I am very much the same, we often clashed head on." I do wonder how well they got along over the years though.

I think this film can satisfy not only Akira Kurosawa fans but fans of social realist cinema and of course those looking for propaganda films of WWII. If someone is just getting into Japanese cinema this probably could be passed on for quite a long awhile. But for completists (those reading this) they will want to see this. But then again completists want to see everything.

Like SANSHIRO SUGATA PART 2, this film was never released in the U.S. for political reasons. There's not any blatantly anti-American content, as in SSP2, but THE MOST BEAUTIFUL, filmed by government request, was a pro-Imperialist propaganda document.

Kurosawa gamely attempts to weave together a story which functions both as propaganda and as a tender coming-of-age story, but isn't entirely successful. This would have been a demanding proposition even for a seasoned pro, let alone a young director like Kurosawa, directing only his second feature.

The story follows a group of young girls working in an armaments factory in the latter days of WWII. The girls must increase production sharply. The girls suffer hardships of all sorts. One, Tao, emerges as the leader of the group. Through the travails of helping her coworkers meet their quotas, Tao learns courage, fortitude and compassion.

If all this sounds a little boring, that's because it is. Kurosawa's visual signatures are seldom seen. At least the performances are good, especially Yoko Yaguchi as Tao. Takashi Shimura has a thankless, do-nothing role as the foreman of the factory.

Seriously, The Most Beautiful is not in the mode of a particularly strident or aggressively anti-American or West saga, and I'm not even sure if America or the "Enemy" in sort of quotes are even mentioned once. In fact, the strength of the film is on Kurosawa's interest in the drama that would be found in the daily interactions of a factory like the one we see in this film, as the women are expected to reach a "Quota" in this emergency time of action. This expectation leads to what is actually more natural in such an environment: anxiety, stress, and, in what one could say is the most propagandistic aspect of the production, that work has to continue until morale improves! But hey, as Top Gun showed us, perhaps a team-spirited volleyball game is in order.

I think Kurosawa, whatever he had to do to appeal to the Studio/Governmental Powers That Be of the period, took the opportunity here to create a story that was not negatively drawn, as in we aren't seeing something that is meant to make people rush out and grab their guns or point fingers, rather it's about a collective (dare I say) positively drawn portrait of women who Can Do This (no don't insert that image of the woman with her bicep here).

It is simplistic when it comes down to it, and I would never claim this is a film that should be seen by non Kurosawa completionists (full disclosure, I came to this having only one or two of his works left to see), but I was pleasantly surprised that it is mildly engaging for the attention to performances and a kind of melancholy that the characters are fighting against. And yes, a lot of this comes down to "No, no, don't send me home because of X reason, I can keep working," and that drum is beat a number of times. And if you are wondering, there are at least half a dozen scenes of women breaking down in tears over what they may have done to (emotionally) slight a fellow co worker, and that is looked at in the film's pov as something that is like the gravest problem.

But I liked that Kurosawa depicts the issues for the characters as more interpersonal - or, I should really say in a larger sense, he let's these women like Noriko and Watanabe *be* human beings with some dimension despite the ultimate goal of this being to boost morale for the women watching at home. I could picture this as being without any personality and simply about beating the drum of "Do The Work For Your Country" and it isn't that. When a character gets sick, for example, this is looked at by the director as worthy of a sensitively drawn storyline, and it defines many of the people around this character as she struggles to try to get better - and then later when another character is sick more often than not and how this information becomes a focal point for another character.

This is all to say while Kurosawa can't help but get into repetition in the depiction of certain scenes - a group scene of laughing turning into a dramatic moment because a couple of girls are not laughing along happens at least three or four times here - he takes the scenes seriously as a dramatist, treats the emotional lives with sincerity (giving the actresses something to play, especially when one is shown as dead tired working on a project), and even crafts with his collaborators some kinetic camera movements and editing. It's a minor work that is marred by its sociological context, but an interesting one all the same.

(1944) The Most Beautiful (In Japanese with English subtitles) DRAMA

Propaganda piece of film making during the time when the Japanese declared war against America, Great Britain and China. And instead of focusing on the war itself - it focuses the story on a small group of young teenage female workers working on an optics factory, making optical lenses for the Japanese cause! That if the girls wanted to earn almost as much pay as the men then they should prove to management that they're able to increase their productivity with the men as well! While attempting to doing this, a lot of troubles and tribulations start to arise such as sicknesses, a broken leg and a death in a family- all of this as a result of living away from their families to contribute to the war effort! This is a fascinating character study from director Akira Kurosawa about a particular time in Japanese history, if one were to be curious enough about what the Japanese did during that time of war and at the same time being totally cut away from England and especially the United States, that some would sing on the streets chanting their propaganda song every day before going to work for instance and the propaganda slogans on the walls on the factory, all of this was happening while at war with Japan during WWII. And in comparison to other propaganda films such as Germany's "Triumph of the Will" and the American movie from The Duke, John Wayne "The Green Berets"- this one is probably one of the most "subtle" one of all!

Can outright propaganda lead to a great film experience? I think so. Mikhail Kalatozov's Soy Cuba was nothing but propaganda for the Cuban Revolution, and it's a remarkable watch. The problem in general, I think, is that the demands of propaganda and drama are almost always diametrically opposed. Drama requires certain stakes and potentialities that propaganda is naturally resistant towards. It also requires a certain level of subtlety that is anathema to propaganda. You don't need a subtly driven message of duty to one's country, you need to hit your audience over the head with duty to Imperial Japan against America and Britain. That lack of subtlety combined with the fact that there is no antagonist really derails any sort of audience investment in the actions of the characters in Akira Kurosawa's second film, a film specifically made for propaganda purposes, funded by the Japanese government in the middle of World War II.

The story is about a group of female workers in a factory that specializes in lenses for the military. We never see an American or Brit, instead we just follow the girls as they try to deal with life during a four months period where production must increase over quotas. Something felt off about this film from the beginning when Watanabe (Yoko Yaguchi) cries to management that it's unfair that the men's quota went up by 100% but the women's quota only went up by 50%. Surely management, led by the director of the plant (Takashi Shimura), doesn't think so little of the women and their commitment to the cause. Surely they can raise the women's quota to 67%. When Watanabe comes back and tells all the girls of her successful negotiation, they all break into cheers. Do I believe that Japanese women would feel great senses of duty to the Empire and the cause? Yes, I do. Do I believe that they would endeavor to work as hard as possible? Yes. The issue is that it's all too easy. There's never a dissenting voice in the group about the work they have to do or the pressures on them. Management is kindly patriarchal and never harsh. There's no real drama here. It's all just dedication to the cause.

The bulk of the movie tracks the girls' morale against the output with a very clear relationship between them being happy and them meeting their goals over the four months. The pieces that feel like drama are a girl, Suzumura (Asako Suzuki) getting slightly sick and her father coming from the country to Tokyo to take her home with the rest of the girls crying as she leaves with her begging their forgiveness for missing work. There's another girl, Koyama (Haruko Toyama) who constantly runs a slight fever at night, but Watanabe covers for her so that she can work while protecting her from other physical activity. When the woman who runs their dorm, Mizushima (Takako Irie), leaves for a few days to try and bring Suzumura back, the other girls turn on Watanabe, with her quietly accepting the verbal assault until Toyama tells everyone the truth about her low-grade fever and how it's all for the cause of helping them meet their quota. These bits of drama amount to little of interest because the characters are so uniform and everything is brought up and forgotten in minutes. All of these girls are completely interchangeable because they have no real character or desire other than to help increase output for the cause.

The ending of the film is dominated by a single event where Watanabe, in her job as an inspector of the lenses after production, misplaced a lens she hadn't fully inspected. If she doesn't find it and it goes out, there could be Japanese lives at risk, so she spends all night looking, eventually finding it with little more than a pat on the back by management. They're happy she worked so hard and not mad at all for her for the mistake. It's all very sanitized.

And that really points to a problem with propaganda like this. None of the girls can have any question about the cause or being overworked or have problems with management. Problems have to be with people who aren't dedicated to the cause (a father figure far removed from the factory) while it can't be anyone in the factory because that could imply there are saboteurs in actual factories. Without any real antagonists, problems have to come from misunderstandings between like-minded individuals. It's just not that interesting.

The most interesting thing about the film is two-fold. The first is the look at a real optics factory in Imperial Japan. It's almost a pseudo-documentary about the manufacture of lenses in a certain way. The second is Kurosawa's eye. There are times when the film is quite nice to look at. They're fewer and further between than in Sanshiro Sugata, but they are there. There's a shot of the girls gathered round a pair of barrels that's quite striking, and there's a small moment where one of the girls goes outside in the middle of the night into the vegetable garden they keep with the moon featured prominently in very nice ways.

Otherwise, the movie is kind of a drag. There's no real drama. The characters are thin and interchangeable. This was a burgeoning artist working under a tight artistic regime that demanded a storytelling mode that wasn't really amenable to compelling cinema.

Before I begin, I should point out that because this is a "lesser" Kurosawa film, I don't think it's yet available from an American distributor. The version I saw was Chinese and that caused serious problems--similar to the problems I had watching SANJURO SUGATA (PART I AND II). All three of these films are early Kurosawa works and PART II and ICHIBAN UTSUKUSHIKU are clearly anti-American WWII propaganda films, so I guess it isn't surprising that it is hard to find an American distributor. But, to put it bluntly, the subtitles are a nightmare!! What they did was translate the film into Chinese and then into English. A lot is lost in the translation and many lines of dialog simply make no sense--with double-negatives and seemingly random words here and there. Some lines are "time to get relaxing" and "Disgusting, always hurt others" and "I am confident of the children". You certainly cannot blame the film makers for these flaws--just poor recently added subtitles.

The plot is about a group of mostly women who work for a war industry--precision optics for binoculars and sighting equipment. You see the workers try hard to meet quotas as well as cope with problems such as illness or family issues.

As for the quality of the film, it's not surprising that there are some serious discrepancies in the ratings. Like many great directors, I notice that some ALWAYS rate all of the directors films high--even though it's clear that Kurosawa (like most directors) was not a master director early in his career. Now I adore Kurosawa's films, but don't think I am being disloyal to his memory by disliking this film. Sure, there are some decent performances here and there, but the film is such blatant propaganda that it looks more like a recruiting film for the government--and significantly more so than the typical Hollywood products of the same time period (at least in these cases there was an attempt to entertain and tell a story). There's lots of marching, lots of young patriotic people doing team sports, lots of personal sacrifice and lots of chants about the need to work harder. As such, there really isn't much plot and the film is a chore to watch.

Now I am NOT saying that the film is without merit. Considering it's a part of our history, it should be preserved and seen. Plus devoted fans who want to see every Kurosawa film may want to see this. But just expect it to be all that watchable for the average person--they'll most likely find it all very slow and preachy.

By the way, my score of 3 reflects the poorly subtitled version I saw. With better subtitles or if you understand Japanese, the film would no doubt be a bit better.

That doesn't mean that The Most Beautiful is a terrible film, because it isn't(in fact I haven't seen a terrible Akira Kurosawa film, and this is trying not to be biased). It just falls short compared to a lot of Kurosawa's- one of my favourite directors- best work, Seven Samurai, Ran and Ikiru being my favourites. For an early Kurosawa film it looks great and is strikingly shot, if a little ordinary-looking compared to what Kurosawa did later. The music is appropriately rousing and patriotic and the acting is very good indeed, particularly from Yoko Yagushi. The cast do work very well together which makes the women's plight more relatable, and there are agreed a number of touching scenes. Kurosawa's direction is mixed here, it is competent but with a sense that he was still finding his feet understandably. The technical skill is there if not the story compared to later. The story is very well-intended but could have been much more compelling, some of the pacing plods which can make the story dull. The film also does a far better job in the more sensitive parts than the intense ones, the latter of which getting rather heavy-handed mainly with having one main theme that repeats itself a lot that it feels too much. The script is not as tightly structured or as easy-to-fully-comprehend than most Kurosawas, far from bad but with not as much of an emotional core as one would want. And it's not helped by the subtitles, that are stilted and with a sense of them being written afterwards without always fitting very well. Lastly, it was sad to see one of Japan's finest actors Takashi Shimura being given so little to do. In conclusion, nowhere near among Kurosawa's best but still should be seen at least for interest value. 5/10 Bethany Cox

Ichiban utsukushiku (1944) 'THE MOST BEAUTIFUL' is Akira Kurosawa's tribute to Japanese Women who supported the war effort (WWII) at the 'Home-Front'. It is analogous to films made in other countries at that time. The nations that participated in the conflict all called upon Women too help in the manufacturing process. Some successfully like Great Britain, Soviet Russia and the U.S.A. Others like China, Fascist Italy or Nazi Germany less so, with Imperial Japan falling in between. Not from lack of effort, but of resources.

Like LETTERS FROM IWO JIMA (2006) the film shows the war from the Japanese perspective. This is a propaganda film. That does not invalidate its message compared with the other participants in the conflict, it is just another point of view, made in wartime. The Women work in a optical factory which could pass for a 'Dickensian Workhouse'. Their work is important and they know it. The pressure of increased productivity with limited resources is clearly shown. It effects them all emotionally, physically and psychologically. The Men of the factory for the most part are unseen drones, except for the managers of the plant. They take a sensitive interest in the well being of their Female staff, without taking advantage of them. The War is largely unseen, but you know it is out there and getting closer all the time. The Director could see the end was coming, even if the Imperial General Staff could not.

The principal cast of Women actors are largely unknowns whose careers were brief before and after this film. They are all convincing in their roles and give believable characterizations. The only 'Star' recognizable too Western audiences would be the great TAKASHI SHIMURA. SHIMURA was a 'jake of all trades' for the TOHO Studios, Japan. His acting range spanned Business Men, Criminals, Detectives, Samurai and Scientists. Films of note, SHICHININ NO SAMURAI (1954) 'The Seven Samurai', GOJIRA (1954) 'Godzilla', CHIKYU BOEIGUN (1957) 'The Mysterians' and YOJIMBO (1961) 'Yojimbo, The Bodyguard'.

Those who have TCM or a well stocked local Library can take advantage of the films of AKIRA KUROSAWA and they should.

This film is just a tedious attempt at morale boosting and not worthy of the assembled talent who produced it. The English subtitles were horrible. They appear to be translations of Chinese translations! The principal characters are all "assigned" Chinese names when they clearly refer to each other in the dialogue by their Japanese names. Kurosawa-san must have been recruited to aid the war effort which, by 1944, was obviously going badly but even his prodigious talent couldn't save this project. The acting is spotty as well. The main characters are credible but they are surrounded by a wooden supporting cast. Perhaps if the subtitles/translations were better, the film would have been more palatable- but I doubt it.

This is a great movie - a must-see. I saw it without subtitles, and my Japanese wasn't good enough to catch most of the dialog, but the raw emotional power of the cast and of the imagery made it easy to follow - completely engrossing, in fact. The story is about a group of women factory workers in WWII Japan, and how each one must overcome whatever personal hardship they face to help the group succeed. The sense of being swept up in a titanic struggle, and the almost superhuman selflessness and group cohesion that that breeds, are the same themes treated in "Twelve-O'clock High". The two movies would make an enlightening double feature. One image sticks with me: although it's not focused on, throughout the movie you see the women carefully taking off their shoes and placing them neatly by the door as they come in to the dormitory, and you see them carefully put them on as they leave. During one scene, when a girl is returning from the hospital, everyone rushes to greet her. Kurosawa cuts to a shot of the shoes, as they are thoughtlessly trampled by the women eager to meet their friend.

It was interesting to read other people's views on this - I thought it was rather a good film. Of course, it's a long way from Kurosawa's best, but I think it's the best of his early (pre-Drunken Angel) films, and quite as good as one or two of his later ones (eg Scandal and The Quiet Duel; and maybe Drunken Angel and The Idiot, which were cut to ribbons by the studios).

Of course it's a wartime propaganda film, but the propaganda is mostly either implicit in the story itself, or part of the background (it takes place in a munitions factory, so of course there are propaganda posters up on the walls, and of course there are messages from the bosses encouraging the workers to produce as much as possible - it would be unnatural if there weren't), and Kurosawa concentrates on telling that story. The result is that, for me, the propaganda never intrudes.

The Japanese were falling on hard times militarily when this was made. I suspect the spartan nature of the society was attributable to desperation. This is a propaganda film, showing how a group of children are robbed of their childhood to make lenses for optical equipment. Of course, they march and sing patriotic songs and seem to love their work. The sad thing is that they become so caught up in their basic brainwashed states that they are willing to become little automatons. Anyone who doubts the effort is shamed in front of her peers. I suppose Kurosawa saw something in the imperialist tactics of his leaders, but this film is purely self serving. One positive. He got to hone his craft. Visually it is quite well done. But dull as a rock.

If you study this film then you can learn much about Japan, World War Two, and Akira Kurosawa. This is the only film he made that was meant to be propaganda, but his earlier film Sanshiro Sugata actually played to themes more useful to a nation at war. If you make a film that matches the zeitgeist of your country, that's great. But be forewarned that your country's government may then ask you to inspire the people to fight on, and you would then make a propaganda film, which is what may have happened to Kurosawa. This fact shouldn't make you reject The Most Beautiful because cinema in all countries in WW2 was used in the war effort. Japan was no exception.

Kurosawa in interviews after the war revealed his dislike of the government censors. Toward the end of the war, Japanese were preparing for the possibility of the entire nation receiving an order from the Emporer to commit suicide, called "the Honorable Death of the 100 Million." Kurosawa didn't dispute that he would have followed the Emporer's directive, but did say that he and his colleagues jokingly agreed they would first go and kill all the censors.

The plot and action of the film is described elsewhere. There are things to watch for carefully as you view the film.

If you're in a university setting then there is one absolute advantage that you have -- access to a professor of management and organizational behavior. Why? Well, The Most Beautiful is practically a docu-drama on management science. The scientific methods of production and organizational management are more clearly documented in this film than in any other I can recall, anywhere. It also compares things like Stakhanovism to Hawthorne experiment studies and displays the early beginnings of total quality management and quality assurance methods later developed by Deming. If these terms are unfamiliar to you, then you need a professor of management science to watch the film and help you see what Kurosawa was putting in. Then consider that the film was released to the Japanese public, which assured that it would be viewed by American military intelligence organizations and the OSS.

Some specifics to look for in no particular order: the background music includes a sampling from Semper Fi, the USMC theme song; there's little talk of enemies but when they're mentioned, the British are named ahead of Americans; the factory managers back a young woman's rejection of her father's instruction to come home and take the place of his deceased wife, which is a break with tradition (almost the equivalent of bra-burning in wartime Japan); and, backgrounds are set in wartime Japan and reveal details of the industrial infrastructure.

There are many films by Kurosawa that feature sickness and health care in their plots. This one, Drunken Angel, Ikuru, The Quiet Duel, and Red Beard come to mind. Dodes' ka-den and Ran might also qualify as their main characters suffer from afflictions of the mind. Kurosawa's biggest films are Rashomon and The Seven Samurai, but his films with health and medicine in the plot are more prevalent in his career.

One caveat to The Most Beautiful is that it is long and does reflect the tastes of Japanese audiences who like their drama very obvious. Forgive yourself if you find Japanese drama becomes too boring in some places. The films can be very enjoyable and interesting, provided you approach them with the understanding that they are far different from what we experience as entertainment today.

Typical of Japanese war-time propaganda, the film suggests that Japan's fascist ideology, its inculcation of fanatical obedience, its vast perpetration of unthinkable atrocities in a systematic manner, and its aggressive military expansionism can all be replaced by Japan's supposed victimization. Rather telling in this respect is the song that the girls repeatedly sing to boost morale, a song that recalls that barbarian Mongol conquerors once tried to invade Japan from China, but that the perpetrators of such heinous deeds of aggression could not possibly co-exist under the same sky with the innocent and pure Japanese-- this, of course, is being sung during a war that was begun when an utterly unprovoked Japan invaded China and slaughtered untold numbers of its population mercilessly.

All of this would be something that one could simply shrug off as the past blindness of war, but films such as these are more disturbing today than, say, Triumph of the Will because while Germany was forced to confront the horrors it had unleashed upon the world, most Japanese films even today (and textbooks for that matter) still tend to view Japan as a victim in the war (see, for instance, Kurosawa's own Rhapsody in August so many decades later). Assisted by the policies of the American post-war occupation, Japan has never had to come to terms with what it did to the planet, and what in human history can possibly more disturbing than a lack of accountability for the worst sins humanity can commit? And by the way, I say all of this despite the fact that Kurosawa is probably my favorite director.

This film was interesting to check out because it's Kurosawa, and for the little window it gives into Japan in 1944, not because it's an objective piece of realist cinema, but because of the extraordinary context. The film is geared towards recognizing the Japanese equivalent of America's 'Rosie the Riveter,' as well as boosting their morale. The women in this case work in the manufacturing facility to make lenses for targeting weapons, and take on a difficult production goal (though it's made clear that it's still less than their male counterparts lol). Over the course of the film, we see their progress against this goal, often literally in the form of a graph, making for a pretty dry story and eroding interest pretty quickly.

In a plodding, heavy-handed way, the film delivers the message to act selflessly for the greater good, to work hard to achieve factory targets, to maintain high quality, to remain cheerful, to understand that even away from combat, they are on a battlefield of their own, and to remember their homes and the homeland they're all collectively fighting for. Notably, it also messages for them to trust their superiors, including the men who oversee their work condescendingly, tut-tutting over what they're doing (including long-time Kurosawa collaborator Takashi Shimura). It's what any nation does when at war, emphasizing sacrifice, obedience, and the greater good of the nation.

"The Most Beautiful" in this case refers to the beauty of these virtues, and I like how the film shows the positive contribution of women. I don't mind that it's trying to drill all of its messages home to viewers, but there just wasn't enough to the story to keep it interesting. The soil each worker brings from home and puts in a communal garden leads to the film's strongest scene, where we get a sentimental flashback into one of their hometowns, nostalgically reminding the target audience of the home country they were all fighting for, and what they would return to when the war was over. It was pretty touching, as was the quiet determination of one of them to continue working after hearing her mother had died. Unfortunately these moments were too small and came too late, the first at the 65 minute point.

I'm glad I saw the film more to imagine what the 34 year old director was going through at the time, and to see the woman he would marry, Yoko Yaguchi, who plays the leader of the workers. She would be with him until her death four decades later. The most beautiful for Kurosawa, indeed.

Akira Kurosawa made it for his wife and the second of his career. But I didn't expect it to be a huge hit and totally hard to chew on.

Militaristic overtones aside, the drama in this one can be held up as mediocre and uninspired, and aside from Akira Kurosawa's own brilliant audiovisual approach, it can almost be described as a disaster of a film. If you compare it to the emotional evocation of the characters in the film, you can't beat Bergman at all, and if you compare it to what poetry there is in the dull plot of a boring movie, you can't beat Tarkovsky. This is not a comment on its militaristic overtones, but rather on the actual lack of performance. But I'm still a little shocked by the use of jump cuts even before Godard.

But if you look at it in terms of the film's inherent thoughtfulness, it's a total loss. All of the women's "beauty" in the film is predicated on a militaristic context, and any discussion of beauty under this premise becomes a reproduction of militarism over and over again. What is even more unbearable is the one-sided and empty image of women in the film, worthy of a male director to write women's movies, is it only Antonioni in this point can be a little bit to restore the status of the male director's posture.

The best propaganda movie ever made. Every element of Japanese artfulness has gone into this picture. The finest in visual composition and dramatic exposition have both been harnessed to create this film, but it is not art but propaganda. It's impossible not to regard this film without realizing that this was meant to manipulate the population to suffer and sacrifice in order for the war machine to fight, kill and conquer. Compare Ichiban Utsukushiku to the German Jew Suss or the un-released Titanic or the American Hangmen Also Die or Mrs. Miniver or any of the combat films made by the waring nations and they are dreadfully crude by comparison. Maybe it can only be approached by something like Minnelli's The Clock for overall design concept and subtlety of purpose. Then again The Clock isn't full blown propaganda like Kurosawa's Ichiban Utsukushiku. How could the director, Kurosawa, (it was his second credited film) not become the great International master he became?

Considering all the highly prized works Kurosawa Akira is best known for, it's easy to forget that he and his contemporary countrymen and filmmakers were commonly pressed into contributing, in one manner or another, to the war effort of Imperial Japan. Kurosawa, at least, seems to be on record as decidedly regretting such involvement, which makes it interesting that he accordingly regarded this one picture especially well. I can understand that sentiment; we can come to hate a job that we've worked, but still take pride in our effort and the labor we performed at the time. With Kurosawa's apparent opinion of 'The most beautiful' in mind, however, as well as the nature and context of the film, it's a little awkward to say that the latter quite outshines the former as we watch. Despite everything it's not that there's absolutely no value herein; rather, it's that the difference is fairly easily discernible between those later works into which the man poured his heart as an artist, and this propagandist piece that he was impelled by his government to create.

In and of itself there are some nice touches throughout the feature, like themes of people coming together in a time of need, and caring for each other within a community; the importance of morale and high spirits to be able to function as a person; and (more or less) criticizing the suggestion that women are inherently less capable than men. The cast, including Kurosawa's future wife Yaguchi Yoko, give earnest, warm performances. Small slivers of humor rear their head throughout - some of them intentional, and others ironic and unintentional in light of the course of history. In fact, while hardly remarkable, this is fairly well made in most ways, including the editing. And when it comes to guiding his actors into emotive performances, and orchestrating larger scenes with an ensemble, Kurosawa's direction shows glimmers of the promise that would be fulfilled when he was again able to make movies of his own volition, free of the bounds of rigid dicta. There is even some welcome detail written into the scenes and characters, and brought out in select shots.

Even as I type such words of praise, however, I feel that I'm straining to reach for them. It's not that this is specifically bad. But it's soulless. Switch around some minutiae that provide indication of the setting, and this could just as well be a corporate training video, a bland fluff piece made for workers at McDonald's, Wal-Mart, or Mars to promote a positive, fruitful work environment. Watch for the banners and slogans posted around the factory or dormitory that are meant to inspire workers' productivity. Watch for scenes where the workers are encouraged to engage in outside activities together, predating the modern corporate obsession with verbiage insisting that their workforces are a "team" or even a "family." Watch for the eagerness with which workers are desperate to work, or to continue working, despite illness or even the needs of their actual family. Watch for the underhanded messaging ingrained within workers that even the slightest oversight or error may spell ruin, and that "sometimes you have to work yourself ragged," and "test yourself" for work.

We all have to eat, and for hopeful young actors, appearing in bit parts or even ads on TV or the Internet is sometimes a major portion of the rocky road to success. Yet imagine if a director like Martin Scorsese agreed to make a full-length feature singing the praises of Amazon, and encouraging warehouse workers to sacrifice their families and their health for the benefit of the company. That is the gist of 'The most beautiful.' The United States also produced such wartime propaganda, and the United Kingdom, and those films were just as schlocky, and have aged just as poorly. There is artistic merit in these eighty-five minutes, but it is overwhelmed by the foremost forthright messaging of espousing patriotism, and spurring citizens to take up duties to advance the national cause. As the imperial government's intent far and away supersedes any opportunity Kurosawa may have had here to pursue his creativity as a filmmaker, the lasting value the movie bears is as a curiosity, as a relic of another time, and as an outlier in the oeuvre of someone so esteemed. If you're looking for a classic Kurosawa masterpiece, this isn't it. If you're a cinephile seeking in every nook and cranny for everything you can get your hands on, or maybe a history buff with an interest in such ephemera, then have at it.

A curious film from Kurosawa, given what came later, this is a nationalist film about a group of young women who are working at an optical instruments factory who are given the task to greatly increase productivity for the good of the country and the war effort. It shows them rarely at play, mostly very focused at work. Takako Irie plays the dorm mother, a somewhat sympathetic character. This film is more inherently Japanese than most of Kurosawa's later work, its almost a propaganda film. However, there is also some heart in the characters, and that is what makes it a recommended film. You sense the young ladies anguish over being sick and having family difficulties, making them unable to work. So, not essential viewing but still watchable and Kurosawa fans should check it out.