Travelling Actors (1940) User Reviews

What! And Give Up Show Business?!

[boblipton · 6/10 · 16 October 2019]

Kamatari Fujiwara and Kan Yanagiya play a pantomime horse in a traveling troupe. Fujiwara spent five years as the hind legs, and has now played the front legs for ten. There is no actor, he explains, who can play the front legs of a horse better than he. He is always studying real horses to perfect his technique. Yanagiya has five years experience as the back legs. The troupe is playing the sticks at the moment. When the horse's head is damaged, Fujiwara balks. The substitute head looks too much like a fox. It interferes with his art. So the head of the troupe, in concert with the local man who is sponsoring them, gets a real horse to take their part, and demotes them.

Mikio Naruse's comedy takes a look at show business from the uncertain underside: the tiny distinctions that soothe the ego, the compromises and lies that must be told to placate the sponsors and get some money out of them. Fujiwara and Yanagiya are ridiculous, slow, and pompous. For them, however, it's a tragedy and that humanizes their foolish characters.

Naruse's shaggy horse tale

[kerpan · 10/10 · 13 June 2005]

Tabi yakusha / Traveling Actors (Mikio NARUSE, 1940)

This film like Ozu's "story of Floating Weeds" depicts a troupe of wandering kabuki players traveling through rural Japan. It seems to have been inspired by a tiny element of Ozu's film -- the funny "kabuki horse", animated by two performers -- the master for the front half (played by Kamatari FUJIWARA, of later Kurosawa fame) and the apprentice for the rear (Kan YANAGIYA). At first all goes well, and they makes friends with some accommodating local lady folk (Tamae KIYOKAWA and Sugiko ISE).

Unfortunately, however, their local patron (a somewhat over-important barber, played by Ko MIHASHI) gets drunk and accidentally crushes the horse's head. After the two object to the pathetically repaired head he proffers, the barber decides that their fake horse was no good anyway (despite the audience approval they always received) -- and replaces them with a real horse. The displaced pair take their revenge, after moping awhile, by going on a rampage through the town (initially in their guise of a wild horse) and let the real horse loose. As the film ends, both the real horse and the two actors (now carrying their bits of horse costume) flee the town.

Overall, a charming film. Lighter in tone than Ozu's film, it is more reminiscent of the contemporary work of Hiroshi SHIMIZU (albeit with a more conventional sense of pacing and structure). Some lovely rural cinematography by Seiichi KIZUKA. Also entertaining performances by the two halves of the horse. Especially noteworthy is a scene where Fujiwara demonstrates his mastery of horse noises for the lady-folk -- and Yanagiya unwittingly demonstrates why he is still only an apprentice horse's back end.

When actors are a horse

[Angel_Peter · 1/10 · 10 January 2019]

This is a movie desperately looking for a story. The movie is about a famous group of actors traveling around and mostly based on those that play the horse in the play.

It is most likely a nice movie for some but for me taking half an hour to get the plot line started is far too long time. Especially when the movie is about 70 min. And even then it about 20 more minutes to go anywhere. Maybe my grief with this movie is it seems like it should be a comedy, but it is just awkward in my opinion and not fun.

The movie is filled with self important people. the barber and the two horse actors. I did not see the charm in the story or the characters in the movie. There are better actor movies out there. Try one of those instead.