The Story of the Last Chrysanthemums (aka The Story of the Last Chrysanthemum without the plural, aka The Story of the Late Chrysanthemums) is a 1939 film directed by Kenji Mizoguchi.
Kikunosuke "Kiku" Onoe is the scion of the well-known Onoe family of actors. His father Kikugoro is a kabuki legend and Kiku is expected to be his heir. Unfortunately, Kiku is a bad actor who is only in his father's troupe due to nepotism. His father's associates kiss up to Kiku in his presence while cruelly mocking Kiku when his back is turned.
The only person unwilling to flatter Kiku is Otoku, wet nurse to Kiku's little baby brother. She tells him to his face that he is a ham and the others don't respect him. Kiku is startled and gratified by this honesty, and he and Otoku fall in love. Unfortunately Kiku's snobby family refuses to countenance him dating a wet nurse, and Kiku is kicked out of the house. Kiku and Otoku marry and he continues to work as an actor, but he has to take lesser and lesser jobs, and he grows to resent his wife as his situation deteriorates.
Tropes:
- As You Know: Some detail about the family and why Otoku is toting a baby around is clarified when a character says to Kikugoro, "People say that the birth of your own son has turned you against your adopted son."
- Bittersweet Ending: Kiku makes his comeback to kabuki stardom, and is welcomed back into the bosom of his family, with his father even admitting that he was wrong about Otoku and accepting Otoku as Kiku's wife. But it's too late for Otoku, who is terminally ill with tuberculosis. In the last scene she dies, while Kiku is making a triumphant riverboat parade, at the head of his father's troupe, as fans along the riverbank cheer.
- Blatant Lies: The madam in a geisha house tells Kiku that "Your performance tonight was a great success. Our guests were just praising you." This coming just moments after said guests were ruthlessly mocking Kiku's bad acting.
- Comforting Comforter: A bitter Kiku slaps Otoku in the face and stalks off. Later, she finds him lying down outside, his head on a wooden box. She slips a pillow under his head and then begs forgiveness for being reluctant to give him drinking money earlier.
- Fallen-on-Hard-Times Job: Working with his uncle in Osaka is a step down from his father's elite troupe, but things get really bad for Kiku when he has to take a job with a traveling theatrical group. It's a cut-rate operation where the producer routinely stiffs his talent. Kiku says sarcastically that him being a Large Ham doesn't matter because the yokels in the provinces don't know any better.
- Geisha: Two of them fight over Kiku early in the film, showing just how much of a pampered life he leads.
- Incurable Cough of Death: When Otoku starts coughing 2/3 of the way through the movie, Kiku imagines she's caught a bad cold. Naturally, at the end of the movie she's dead of TB.
- Kabuki Theatre: The whole story concerns a pampered young actor in a kabuki troupe who has to take on some Fallen on Hard Times Jobs after a falling out with his family.
- Large Ham: Someone in the Kikugoro trope derisively calls Kiku "salted ham". Otoku tells him straight up that yes, he is a hammy actor. Seeing as how kabuki isn't exactly known for subtlety in acting, Kiku really must be a gigantic ham.
- Misery Builds Character: When appealing to Kiku's old friend Fuku to give Kiku a job, Otoku says that the last few shitty years of his life—a second-rate theater troupe, a crappy traveling troupe, losing even that job and being reduced to sleeping in a flophouse—have made Kiku the former Large Ham into a much better actor. She is right, as everybody realizes when Kiku gets another shot at the Tokyo stage.
- The Oner: There are many long takes without cuts. The scene where Otoku candidly tells Kiku he's a bad actor runs for six minutes, with the camera following the two of them as they stroll down a boardwalk.
- Parental Marriage Veto: Kiku's father categorically refuses to let him marry Otoku, instead kicking him out of the house.
- Pretty Boy: Kiku. In fact his job in kabuki is an "onnogata", a male actor that plays female roles.
- Time Skip: A "Four Years Later" card transitions to Kiku playing with a third-rate traveling troupe.
- Uptown Girl: A romance between a wet nurse and the pampered son of a famous acting family.
- Would Hit a Girl: Kiku and Otoku are just barely getting by with him working for a crappy traveling troupe. When she won't give him the money to go drinking—she needs his meager salary to replace his clothes and shoes—he slaps her.
