Madame Butterfly

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Nick M In a word, this was bad. It's a reimagining of Madame Butterfly that is objectively worse than the original story. It adds unnecessary dramatic tension, and then immediately undercuts itself in a few key places involving the character of the Bonze. The acting is dry and stiff, and Cio-Cio-San (sorry... O-Take-San for some reason) suffers from a lack of character development and humanization that is unforgivable in a tragedy that requires us to feel deeply for her. One of the worst transgressions appears at the end of the picture. In the opera, her maid Suzuki (here, Harake) learns the truth about Pinkerton (*sigh* Olaf Anderson) and attempts to shield Cio-Cio-San from the truth that her husband not only abandoned her, but remarried. The film, however, makes the inexplicable decision to have Harake bring in his new wife to meet O-Take-San and her child by Olaf without any attempt to brace her mistress for this shocking reveal. And the new wife just kind of stands there and looks off set as if to say, "What am I doing here?" The other thing that is really sticking in my craw is that a couple of key plot points were shoehorned in with ludicrous, completely fabricated Japanese customs. Marriages only last for 999 days? Children are given to the state when these marriages dissolve? What is this tripe? The story was butchered, the film doesn't work, the cinematography is unimaginative, the acting is stilted, and how in the heck did Fritz Lang emerge as one of the most celebrated directors of the 1920s with this bungled of a beginning? Rated 1.5/5 Stars •  Rated 1.5 out of 5 stars 10/11/24 Full Review Audience Member Other than its production design, this is an underwhelming film. Lang's fascination with Japanese culture shows, but so does his lack of understanding. Rated 2.5/5 Stars •  Rated 2.5 out of 5 stars 01/30/23 Full Review Read all reviews

Madame Butterfly

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