Love Letter (1953)
- General info
- Available formats
- Synopsis:
This valiant melodrama is the brilliant debut as a moviemaker of the great Japanese actress Kinuyo Tanaka, who also has a small role in the story. Based on a screenplay by Keinosuke Kinoshita, "Love Letter" explore the wounds of war, the limits of love and the need to forgive. A sad and troubled man, Reikichi Mayumi (Masayuki Mori), finds a new job five years after the end of WWII. He will write love letters for other people, which was not uncommon in post-war times (remember the starving poet Lope Veiga - Fernando Rey - in Spanish masterpiece "Cielo negro"). His ideas about love and his personal principles will be tested when he reconnects with his former girlfriend, Michiko (Yoshigo Kuga), a woman with a dark past marked by war and the further occupation of her country by the US military forces. - Actors:
- Masayuki Mori, Yoshiko Kuga, Jûkichi Uno, Jûzô Dôsan, Chieko Seki, Shizue Natsukawa, Kyôko Anzai, Yumi Takano, Kikuko Hanaoka, Harumi Kajima, Ichirô Kodama, Ryuzo Oka, Toshikazu Hara, Sayoko Ôno, Chiyoko Kuni, Akiko Kamishiro, Naoko Kubo, Sanae Mitsuoka, Yôko Mihara, Yôko Fujikawa
- Directors:
- Kinuyo Tanaka
- Producers:
- Ichiro Nagashima
- Writers:
- Keisuke Kinoshita, Fumio Niwa
- Aka:
- Koibumi
- Genres:
- Classics, Drama, Romance
- Countries:
- Japan
Reviews (1) of Love Letter
Ghostwritten Grief: Kinoshita’s Postwar Elegy - Love Letter review by griggs
Love Letter echoes Ozu in its quiet framing and small, telling gestures, yet it is fully Kinoshita’s. Kinuyo Tanaka plays a woman hired to ghostwrite letters for war widows, her own loss quietly shaping every word. Where Ozu would hold the shot, Kinoshita pushes in—using multiple cameras and close-ups to intensify the emotion.
The power lies in ordinary details: a dictated line, a pause before speaking, a sidelong glance. Beneath these moments runs the ache of a country still stitching itself back together after the war. Its influence carried forward, surfacing decades later in Godzilla Minus One, especially in its handling of grief, post-war trauma, and its stark production design.
A film of restraint and precision, it turns small acts into revelations and leaves behind not piety, but the raw texture of survival.