Dear friends and readers,
This marks the end of our translation project. Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner was Ichigo’s last post on her Japanese blog before she passed away two years ago. Moving forward, periodic posts will be written by family members to carry on her spirit.
Thanks for reading.
Matt Drayton (Spencer Tracy) is a publisher of a liberal newspaper in San Francisco. He loves his wife Christie (Katharine Hepburn) and daughter Joey (Katharine Houghton, a niece of Katharine Hepburn), and raised his daughter teaching against racial discrimination. While traveling Hawaii, Joey meets and falls in love with John Prentice (Sidney Poitier). Joey and John decide to marry and visit Joey’s parents to tell them of their decision. Even to the parents who oppose racial discrimination, it is not easy to embrace Joey’s decision immediately. The mother wants to accept John—who is accomplished, handsome, and a perfect gentleman—but the father isn’t ready, and his beliefs are being tested. John will leave to New York after having dinner together. He, in contrast to Joey who never doubted the support of her parents, knows the harsh reality of racism, and tells Matt that he will give up on this marriage unless both of Joey’s parents embrace it. Matt must tell them whether or not he supports their marriage by dinner in a few hours. In addition, John’s parents—without knowing John is engaged to a white girl—are coming from Los Angeles to join the dinner to celebrate their engagement.
Although the Japanese title “An Uninvited Guest” sounds good in Japanese, I think it is not a good translation that properly reflects the theme of the movie. The title comes from what excited Joey says to their cook—“Guess who’s coming to dinner! Monsignor Ryan! Please add one more”—when Monsignor Ryan, who is a close friend and advisor of the parents, hears and congratulates Joey and John on their decision, and wants to join them for dinner. Thus, the Japanese title meaning someone showed up for the dinner without an invitation is wrong. In other words, the parents’ belief against racial discrimination resulted in the dinner to which all of the guests were formally invited. If they had taught their daughter that blacks were inferior and not to be treated equally, Joey would not have talked to John, and would not have fallen in love with him because she would not have opened her heart to him. The Draytons’ life attitude invited John and his parents who wish for John’s happiness, as well as Monsignor Ryan. Although it was surely an unexpected development for the Draytons, the dinner after all was stemmed from their philosophy. The title “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner” captures the not probable, but possible surprises of life. Due to their rejection of racial discrimination, Matt and Christie allowed for this rare, but possible event for the 1960s to happen.
The movie was produced and directed by Stanley Kramer, who also directed Judgment at Nuremberg and was a strong advocate of social justice. Thus, it was no surprise that he made a movie addressing the racial discrimination, one of the biggest issues in the 1960s. It may be unbelievable now, but in the year of 1967 when this movie was made, as many as 17 states prohibited interracial marriage, and those who violated this were sent to prison as criminals. I have deep respect for the courage of Stanley Kramer for making this movie during those days. Importantly, this movie, instead of being political propaganda, achieved being a high quality human drama since Kramer focused on depicting universal wisdom in life, instead of anti-racism belief.
First, the love between husband and wife is depicted. Both Joey’s and John’s parents who married more than 30 years ago still love each other and maintain mutual understanding and trust. Without the parents’ lasting marriages, the audience would feel that the excitement of Joey and John may not last once reality comes into play. The sustaining mutual love of parents gives the audience a secure feeling regarding the future of the young couple. The love between Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn, who were partners in their real life, overflows from the screen.
Next is the depiction of the love between parent and child. It is very profound and interesting. First, the child simply reflects the way of life of her parents, as seen by Joey. However, even more interesting are John’s words. John’s father says to John, “Every day, I carried a heavy load for many miles, and I raised you through great hardship. You owe me,” but John clearly states, “Father, I owe you nothing. From the day you brought me into this world, you owed me everything you could ever do for me, as I will owe my son if I ever have another.” In most societies, it may be accepted that, “Because a parent raises a child through hardships, the child should obey what the parent says and should look after the parents,” but I agree with John’s words. A person cannot select their parents, but a parent can select their child because they usually can choose whether or not to have a child. The ultimate love of a parent would be, once a parent decides to have a child, the parent does everything they can for the child without expecting any reward from the child. People should be devoted to bringing up the next generation without the expectation of compensation. However, the interesting thing is that the child who is brought up like this often gives back unconditional love to their parents without being asked.
Lastly, you don’t need someone’s approval to live. If the people around you give you approval, life is certainly easier, but the message is that, even without approval, as long as you clearly understand the height and difficulty of the hurdle, you can get through life on your own, and you should not make getting approval life’s first priority. Matt states this at the end:“There’ll be 100 million people right here in this country who will be shocked and offended and appalled, and the two of you will just have to ride that out, maybe every day for the rest of your lives… You’ll just have to cling tight to each other and say, ‘screw all those people’!”
This movie tells a five hour story in approximately two hours. The story is dense and fast-paced in a good way—much like High Noon—and the performances by the actors are wonderful. Katharine Hepburn expresses all emotions—“surprise,” “disappointment,” “giving up,” “determination,” “understanding,” “supportive,” “happiness” –with just her eyes; her “acting with eyes” is amazing, but even more amazing is Spencer Tracy. Because of his thick glasses, he is not able to use his “eye power” throughout the movie, and he never acts dramatically; yet, every change in emotion is transmitted, and it is slightly scary how much so. This movie was Spencer Tracy’s final work, and Katharine Hepburn received her second Oscar with this movie.
As mentioned before, interracial marriage was illegal in 17 states across America in 1967, but around the time this movie was being screened, the Virginia v. Richard Loving case—which was appealing for the overturning of Loving’s imprisonment for the marriage to a black woman—was being judged in the U.S. Supreme Court; the case ended with the judgment that the law prohibiting interracial marriages was unconstitutional, and interracial marriage finally became legal across the whole country. It was 102 years after the liberation of slaves was officially established with the approval of the 13th Amendment in the U.S. Constitution in 1865.
This movie is based on the memoirs of Traudl Junge, one of Hitler’s personal secretaries that lived with Hitler in the bunker of the Führer Headquarters in Berlin, Germany, who served Hitler until his suicide, typed Hitler’s suicide note, and witnessed Hitler’s death.
Since 1930, Hitler always used two secretaries, but due to an increase in workload, he hired a third secretary, Gerda Christian, in 1937. It is said that this woman was extremely beautiful. Since Christian took an extended vacation in order to marry Eckhard Christian, a member of the Armed Forces Command Staff and the lieutenant colonel of the Air Force, in 1942, Traudl Junge was hired to take Christian’s place. In this movie, a beautiful actress performs as Junge and it is depicted that Hitler likes her among the many applicants and hires her. One reason may be that she was from Munich, where the Nazis were formed and the headquarters for Nazi activity was located. Berlin was an area with strong sympathy for communism, as well as an area in which Nazis historically had difficulties in winning elections. After Christian returned from her honeymoon, Junge remained as Hitler’s secretary and became a loyal and close associate of Hitler’s.
Adolf Hitler had an underground bunker built into the Führer Headquarters in 1935. Later in 1943, since the war situation had deteriorated considerably, he had a new Führerbunker with increased defensive function built, and connected the two underground bunkers with stairs. The underground bunker was built with concrete walls four meters thick to tolerate attack, and was partitioned into about 30 rooms. Hitler lived here starting from January 1945, in the final stage of World War II. Hitler and his mistress Eva Braun, Nazi #2 Goebbels and his family, the SS leaders, and their secretaries and chefs lived here. Amid the final days of warfare in the streets of Berlin, Hitler committed suicide here on April 30, 1945.
After Hitler’s death, Junge was arrested by the Allies during her escape, but it is said she was soon released without being interrogated deeply. Since then, she continuously claimed that she knew nothing, so one might expect there not to be any astonishing historical truth from her memoirs. Also, as the youngest secretary, one might think she does not know much political intelligence. Thus, one might expect a movie made from her point of view to be about Hitler being a kind boss while the commissioned officers that pampered Hitler’s favorite woman were wonderful uncles, and about her not wanting to give up the life in the safe underground bunker, where they drank wine, had delicious meals, and slept in late.
When Hitler gave the order for his four secretaries to leave due to the deterioration of the war situation, the two older secretaries escaped, but Junge and Christian said, “I share life and death with the Führer until the end,” and refused the order. Junge later stated, “I don’t know why I made such a decision,” but after all, for a young person without a real feel for death, I think it is 50% pure youthful indiscretion to think, “When the time comes, I’m not afraid to die,” and 50% youthful foolishness that the man, who until now had almighty power and had given her a comfortable environment to live in, could not be defeated. Instead of being thrown into the war in Berlin without any protector or friends, I think she felt safer being surrounded by people who (she thought) will protect her.
This movie is made from the point of view of a woman who didn’t know the truth about the Nazis or the lives of people who suffered outside, yet was nevertheless a young woman in possession of good instinct. Even though she behaves amicably to everyone as a secretary, she carefully observes who will betray and who will stay loyal to her boss Hitler. This movie is 40% from her point of view, and it depicts how people behave when faced with the danger of losing their lives after the fall of absolute authority. Since that is insufficient, another 30% depicts historically significant Nazi figures at the time, and since that is not quite enough, the lives of citizens suffering from war are also depicted. Therefore, this movie doesn’t have a single protagonist, and the viewpoint of the story shifts throughout the movie. Although Junge appears many times, she doesn’t play an important role in the story. Two-thirds of this movie is Hitler repeatedly shouting about his disappointment in his close associates, and it wouldn’t be this way if Hitler were the protagonist. The profoundness of this movie starts after the death of Hitler. It vividly depicts how people behaved immediately following Hitler losing his power. Some followed Hitler to death with suicide. Some ran away, and were arrested by the Allies and executed at a trial. Some who tried to escape were executed by their comrades as a traitor to the nation, while others executed citizens for being communists as a warning to the general public before the Soviet Army entered. Commissioned officers started openly smoking—something Hitler strictly prohibited—and some drank wine and got drunk. Those who attempted to escape ran toward the south part that was occupied by the American army; their greatest fear was to be arrested by the Soviet Army.
For someone like me who doesn’t know many details about Nazis, this movie is a treasure chest of information, but the most significant piece of information was that Hitler committed suicide in the end. This after all is not surprising, although some believe in urban legends about Hitler, analogous to the theory of Yoshitsune (a famous samurai) escaping death and becoming Genghis Khan. Some believe that someone sacrificed his own body for Hitler to be burned with gasoline in order to make the burned body impossible to identify while Hitler snuck away in a secret passage. People can’t believe such a self-preserving man would choose death.
However, this movie depicts that the reason Hitler wanted his body burned was not to fake his death, but because he did not want his body displayed publicly after his death (Hitler knew Mussolini was mercilessly executed by the partisan and was hung in public) and for his clothes to be displayed in a museum exhibit. Pride was most important to him. His biggest fear was to be shamefully on display. In the movie, some of his close associates recommend, “You should do an unconditional surrender for the sake of the nation before it is too late,” but he could never permit this because of the shame it would bring. Those who recommended this are nearly shot. Because his rejection of this idea was so strong, I wonder if some people who recommended this were actually executed. He had lost the idea of “citizens” or “for the nation.” In the movie, when an officer suggests, “We must protect the citizens, especially the women and children,” Hitler declares, “With this critical battle now in our territory, the concept of citizens does not exist.” He doesn’t have the sentiments of, “I accept whatever will happen to me; I only want to save the citizens,” or, “I accept the punishment for my mistakes, but don’t punish the people who obeyed my orders.” His mind was preoccupied with figuring out how he could die with honor.
There certainly seem to be tunnels that he could have used to run away. SS Major Otto Günsche completes Hitler’s final command to have his dead body burned, and attempts to escape with SS Colonel Wilhelm Mohnke, Junge, and Christian through the underground tunnels, but they aren’t able to escape in the end. Christian gives up trying to escape and stays with Major Günsche and Colonel Mohnke. This movie does not depict when the Soviet Army arrested them, and the movie ends with a scene of Junge biking away and escaping to Munich.
Christian is given only a small part in this movie, and there is almost zero information about her. After some hardships, Christian escaped to an area occupied by America, but Major Günsche and Colonel Mohnke were taken by the Soviet army, and they each served 10 years in labor camps in USSR and East Germany, respectively. It is said that Christian called Major Günsche a “lifetime friend.” She divorced her husband soon after the war, and was able to be reunited with Major Günsche 10 years later.
Once, this movie was celebrated as a masterpiece and won many awards in the West; but this movie has already slipped into obscurity, and it has become difficult to obtain it on DVD. It seems that movie director Sergei Parajanov—once regarded as an internationally renowned maestro—has also slipped into obscurity. In this movie, he used techniques that were novel for the time and astonished viewers, similar to his close friend director Andrei Tarkovsky (Ivan’s Childhood). However, because the next generation of directors in many countries imitated and often used these new techniques, it is very difficult today to see and appreciate the newness; also, the reputation of this movie within the Soviet Union was bad due to Sergei Parajanov being one of the victims who were buried under the political oppression of the Soviet Union administration.
Sergei Parajanov was born in 1924 in Georgia (in Japan, people tend to call it Grúziya in the Russian style, but the Georgian government demanded that it be internationally called Georgia in the English style), and studied cinematography at the All-Union State Institute of Cinematography in Moscow. He is ethnically Armenian.
Georgia is on the south side of the Caucasus Mountains, which connects the Black and Caspian Seas, and it has Russia to the north, Turkey to the south, and Armenia and Azerbaijan as neighbors. Since ancient times, this area was an important traffic route used by many ethnicities, and it was the focus of Russia’s plans for southern expansion; under the 1783 Treaty of Georgievsk, the eastern part of Georgia became a protectorate of Russia. Georgia, as a pious Greek Orthodox Church nation, needed Russia’s support in order to prevent Islam nations—such as Turkey and Persia, who feared Russia moving south—from invading Georgia. In other words, Georgia decided that it was necessary to rely on Russia in order to protect itself from the threat of Muslim Persia and Turkey—the Islamic power that coexisted in the Caucasus area. In 1801, Georgia—caught up in internal turmoil—was annexed into Russia. Later, in 1832, aristocrats in Georgia developed a plan to overturn Russian control, but it was soon suppressed by Russia. When the Russian Revolution broke out, Georgia declared independence from Russia, but the Soviet Union suppressed this, and Georgia became a part of the Soviet Union. Partly because Stalin was from Georgia, Georgia—until it declared its independence in 1991—was relatively obedient to the central government of the Soviet Union, and was not considered to be a problem child by the Soviet Union.
Sergei Parajanov married a Ukrainian woman and continued artistic activities in Ukraine, but gradually his avant-garde artistic style became considered to be anti-establishment, and he began to be oppressed by the Soviet Union socialist administration. In the Soviet Union, only movies that used a socialist and realistic style and praised socialism were allowed; avant-garde and surrealist movies, like those of Sergei Parajanov, were considered degenerate and dangerous movies that were hiding something. Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors was showered with high praises all over the world, but it was unpopular in the Soviet Union. Sergei Parjanov was increasingly oppressed by government authorities, and in 1974, he was imprisoned for the crime of homosexuality. Regarding his imprisonment, European directors including Federico Fellini, Roberto Rossellini, Luchino Visconti, François Truffaut, and Jean-Luc Goddard organized a protest campaign; Sergei Parajanov was released three years later, but even after that, he received relentless oppression from Soviet Union authorities, so it became impossible to make a movie. Due to this cruel situation, he later immigrated to Armenia.
Ukrainian Mykhailo Kotsiubynsky wrote the original Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors. Mykhailo Kotsiubynsky was born in 1864 in Ukraine—which was under Russian control at that time—and was part of a literature movement that focused on traditional Ukrainian culture, which was under severe oppression by the Russian Empire in those days. West Ukraine was under the control of the Austro-Hungarian Empire at the time; since more Ukrainian cultural activity was allowed there than in Russia-controlled areas, he published his books in West Ukraine. Director Sergei Parajanov is not Ukrainian, but perhaps he felt a sort of commonness with Mykhailo Kotsiubynsky who was involved in the Ukrainian literature revival movement.
Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors is the Ukrainian version of the story of Romeo and Juliet, where a young boy from a mountain tribe in West Ukraine falls in love with the daughter of the rival family that killed his own parents. The movie depicts in vivid color the life of people who are Greek Orthodox—a religion that was strictly prohibited by the Soviet Union in those days; this movie suggests that religion was the standard for living, and that people lived in fear of supernatural phenomenon such as ghosts. The depiction of religion alone appears to be enough to rub socialist authorities—who banned all religions (but adhered religiously to Marxism)—the wrong way. Moreover, this movie goes beyond any possible acceptable range by depicting Ukrainians—who were hated by Soviet authorities for having been a threat to Russia, such as with the revolt of the Cossack soldiers, and attempting independence when the Soviet Union was established.
The Duchy of Kiev existed in the area of current Ukraine, but it was destroyed in the 13th century by the Mongolian Empire. After the Mongolian Empire, this area belonged to the Grand Duchy of Lithuania to the north and the Kingdom of Poland to the west, but gradually a semi-military community called Cossacks developed, and they began to resist control by foreign powers. However, due to the Truce of Andrusovo in 1667, Ukraine was divided; West Ukraine was placed under the control of Poland—later the Austro-Hungarian Empire—and East Ukraine was placed under the control of Russia. Taking advantage of the collapse of the Russian and Austro-Hungarian Empires in World War I, Ukrainians living in West Ukraine declared their independence as the West Ukrainian People’s Republic; Poland opposed this, and thus the Polish-Ukrainian War began. The Polish side was supported by France, Britain, Romania, and Hungary. Against this, West Ukraine appealed for support from the Ukrainian People’s Republic to the east. However, the Ukrainian People’s Republic government could not dispatch reinforcements since they were fighting against the Soviet Red Army; in the end, West Ukraine was occupied by Poland, and the West Ukrainian People’s Republic collapsed.
The Ukrainian People’s Republic to the east was put under Soviet Union control; the Soviet Union led by Lenin and Stalin adopted hostile policies toward Ukraine. One reason was that Ukraine was a fertile agricultural nation, so the socialist policy that was based on factory workers was not applicable to the economic system of Ukraine. Because the socialist policies that did not fit Ukraine’s reality were enforced, the agriculture of Ukraine suffered devastating damage, and a great many people died of famine. Stalin’s Great Purge also started from Ukraine.
In World War II, Ukraine—due to its close proximity to Germany—suffered enormous damage, and among the Soviet Union, Ukraine was the greatest victim of World War II. It is said that 1 in 5 Ukrainians died in the war. People’s stance during the war was also complicated in this area; there were some people who supported the Soviet Union side, while other people supported the German side. Also, there were people who joined the anti-Soviet, anti-German Ukrainian Insurgent Army, and fought for Ukraine’s independence. Ukraine, with the collapse of the Soviet Union, became a new independent nation in 1991, but Ukraine and Russia are still tied together in many ways. The government is also torn between the anti-Russia faction and the pro-Russia faction.