Leofwine_draca THE MOST BEAUTIFUL is a WW2 propaganda movie from Japan. It has few redeeming values apart from a level of realism you don't normally see in such productions, but the story is very slight and the events depicted are so slowly-paced as to make it a chore to sit through. The story follows a group of female workers at a factory making periscopes, and it narrows in on a handful of characters as they encounter conflict and personal struggle in their bid to do their best for their country. Sentimental stuff, then, but with more grit than syrup. This is only of interest for the presence of director Akira Kurosawa, forced to do his bit for the war cause, but compared to Hitchcock's rival wartime propaganda, this is low key and relatively uninteresting.

TrappedInTheCinema https://trappedinthecinemablog.wordpress.com/2016/07/21/the-most- beautiful-1944/In 1943, Akira Kurosawa's debut film 'Sanshiro Sugata' was released. A very competent and very promising film, it contained elements of Japanese wartime propaganda. With his second film 'The Most Beautiful' (or 'Ichiban Utsukushiku' if you're feeling particularly pretentious), those elements of propaganda were turned up to eleven. The 'plot' takes place in a wartime factory, populated predominantly by female volunteers, producing optics for aircraft. There are various strands that run throughout the film. The quota of production that the women need to make goes up 50%, and so they complain. They wanted it to go up by two-thirds! Every little thing to help the mother nation. One women makes a faulty lens, and becomes distressed that she may cause a Japanese plane to crash. Another falls ill and is distraught, not for her own health, but that she cannot work for the greater good any longer. All the strands revolve around people desperate to work exceptionally hard for the Japanese war effort, the be all and end all of their lives. There is nothing about the film indicative of Kurosawa's work. Any visual tropes he had developed in Sanshiro Sugata, characteristic of his future work, are gone. There is no moving camera. There is no sense of thrill. The 'drama' is utterly bland and forgettable. It is the least beautiful Kurosawa I have seen. The only entertainment comes from seeing the utterly hollow propaganda – one year from Japan's defeat in the war – that is professed throughout the film. Before the film begins, a pre-title invites us to "Attack And Destroy The Enemy". Which is nice of them. And later, when a group of women are singing uplifting songs to raise morale, the subtitles helpfully explain that they are vowing to "do our best to help to destroy America and Britain" and hoping that the enemy "disappear to the bottom of the sea". How charming. Whilst this is amusing, it is laughing at the film rather than with it. So the film cannot be credited. But even through the propaganda, it might have been possible to have an interesting study of female volunteer factory workers in Japan. But even then, nothing can be learned (other than that they existed) as the film feels so false. Frankly, the only reason to watch The Most Beautiful is if you are a Kurosawa completist. And even then it should probably be the last one you watch.

Hoagy27 This early Kurosawa film has a definite split personality: lovely visuals, lousy story. The story is a standard, forgettable, wartime, stiff-upper-lip heart-warmer. Although Kurosawa also wrote the script it was, after all, 1944 and one of his first pictures. On the other hand, the directing, sets, cinematography and other visuals are quite good. Bits of real life extrude through the soap,scenes and sets are framed artistically and the faces...! One could find lots of worse things to do with 85 minutes. I suggest watching it with the sound & subtitles off. My three star rating is solely for the visuals. Everything else gets nothing.

gghgm 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.