Theoretically, I should hate this. This is, basically, a propaganda film for an imperialist, belligerent nation. It's almost absurd the lengths the characters go to to give of themselves for the state, and their reasons for this--to support the men fighting the war--certainly puts it into a context that makes this level of sacrifice seem disturbing. The militarism of the imperial state is one of the most horrifying aspects of the concept of human government, and this film openly supports it.

It also has the distinctly unpleasant plot point that the women admit they can't produce as well as the men. It's just accepted, completely and totally, that as women, they would not be able to fashion lenses as fast…

Propaganda cinema fascinates me for the same reasons that differentiating oneself from a perceived enemy fascinates me. When fighting a war, who is right, who is wrong? I'll return to this question in a moment, but allow me to preface some things with a personal detour. 

Growing up in a staunch religious organization made it easier when I was younger to believe in a kind of unwavering patriotism. For many years I was conditioned to believe that my values, my family, my religion and my country were promoting the ethical and the good, while dissenting voices were promoting the unethical and the bad. From the perspective of tribal solidarity, this posture made a lot of sense as a child, but…

Can we support Akira Kurosawa for making The Most Beautiful? It is a clear and obvious propaganda film, in support of imperialist Japan. Kurosawa's debut film, Sanshiro Sugata, was a tribute to Japan's spiritual and traditional values. Whilst no doubt made because it espouses those patriotic sentiments, at least Sanshiro Sugata functions as a sports drama more than anything with a message. The same cannot be said for The Most Beautiful. It is filled with propaganda songs and pledges, and explicit calls to fight the British and Americans. Propaganda is not always bad (art is inherently political) but state-sanctioned, pro-imperialist propaganda is undoubtedly insidious. Kurosawa made this film when he was in his 30s, and a man of his genius…

To watch films from prior eras, especially films made under the auspices of wartime governments that were opposed to your own, once upon a time, is to allow history into your heart. I unstick myself from the present, from its color and vfx, its swooshing trailers and clickbait, its Top Tens, its endless regress into Disney's cosmic gullet—and finally, from compulsively opting-in to the caffeinated onrush of the cultural present.

Strapped into the vise of wartime censors, Kurosawa's second feature is haunted by an oppressive productivity graph that recurs over and over, reminding us that the only narrative needle his characters are trying to move is whether or not they make their emergency production quota at a military optics factory…

The Worst of the Best: Akira Kurosawa

The Most Beautiful is history's screaming hell-drawn foreshadowing, told in gentle examples of indoctrinated humanity. That degree of humanity exists solely for propagandistic purposes, but it speaks to the victims of influence from the monsters just beyond the horizon of their homes, their cities, and their country. Unintentionally and rather horrifyingly, Akira Kurosawa directs a Japan darkly-lit and motioning toward the very destruction of what is being celebrated here. So much of what exists in The Most Beautiful feels like a prelude to this big revelation, one that time wrought, one that for a brief time eliminated any reason for this film to exist. Its poeticism in the light of tragedy feels so…

I have what strikes me as a surprising amount of thoughts about this film, apparently near-universally viewed as Kurosawa’s worst. Not sure I’ll type all of those thoughts into a phone in the middle of the night with three fingers in Band-Aids.  Watanabe and her crew would be disgusted by lack of dedication.

There’s something deeply unsettling about watching a top-echelon artist (and I don’t necessarily disagree with the view that Kurosawa was the finest purely visual filmmaker ever) using his formidable skills in service of wartime propaganda, especially on behalf of a hostile nation to the viewer’s own.  It’s challenging to be confronted by flawless composition and editing techniques (surely the greatest techniques in Kurosawa’s visual vocabulary) and simultaneously…

When I watch a propagandist feature, I want to feel like I could possibly entertain becoming a patriot to whatever country is trying to shove it's hopelessly pathetic brainwashing. Alas, my brain has not been washed in years, and this film utterly failed to provide even the faintest scrubbing. I don't know how this movie would have motivated anyone to jump on the sword for Imperialist Japan. It's sexist, soulless, and boring.

All of the characters are mindless servants to a Japanese war machine. The story is paper-thin. And Akira Kurosawa's direction is apparent in only the smallest of moments when he tries to provide a documentary-like experience for the audience. Kurosawa must have been buckling under the weight of…

Propaganda piece about young women working in an optics factory during World War II.

Not the most subtle piece of film-making ever made, nor are the themes remotely nuanced, but that's not really the intent. It's all honor, duty, guilt, and sacrifice for the factory workers, though they do find some time to squeeze in a little volleyball and marching practice. The camera looks on admiringly as one woman stays up all night working to correct an error, and all her co-workers and supervisors stay up all night in moral support. What does that do for the next day's productivity, I wonder?

There's some nice quick editing of close-ups during the first volleyball game. The scene where the two bickering…

the most beautiful is one of kurosawa’s very early films and a “film of the people”.

when you take a very good look at it, this sentiment stands true; it gives you a semi-documentarian approach on the plight of the working woman during world war 2. filmed at nippon kogaku factory (a facility with historical value to both the war and the meaning of the film itself), a surreal look at this emotional rollercoaster of a life for these women is one that will take you on the same ride.

i do want to include the fact that i don’t align with the political ideologies that this nation aligned with at this time; the beginning of imperial expansion into china…

For an artist, what could be worse than having your film cut down by governmental restrictions? Apparently for Kurosawa, it was being hired by that same government to make a wartime propaganda film. The result is the Most Beautiful, a film which is frankly anything but.

Let's be clear from the start, I don't blame Kurosawa for any of this. We all do what we have to in order to survive, and it seems entirely likely that without the sacrifices in these early pictures, his career would not have survived long enough to make his later masterpieces. But this film is bad.

The main problem is that in creating a propaganda film, the main purpose is not one of artistry,…

Maybe one of the least essential of Kurosawa’s films, The Most Beautiful does serve as a great historical piece of cinematic propaganda and another example of AK being able to craft a clever film despite the limitations he had to face (Japanese censors and lack of funding in this case). While not as outright propogand-ish as, say, Leni Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Will, if you know enough about WWII Japan you can really glean a lot of what the national mood was at the time this was made (not to mention the sort of misogynistic view that Japan had of women that still persists systemically in Japan today). I won’t comment on the story—which smacks too much of factory system capitalism for…