Directed by Mikio Naruse • 1953 • Japan
Starring Mieko Takamine, Ken Uehara, Rentaro Mikuni
One of six films that director Mikio Naruse adapted from the novels of Fumiko Hayashi, WIFE is an incisive, unsparing portrait of a decade-old marriage in the process of disintegrating. Opening and closing with the same sequence of the husband (Ken Uehara) silently leaving for work, the real focus of the story—as so often in Naruse’s films—is the wife (Mieko Takamine), who resorts to desperate measures to try and hold her marriage together, even after learning of his infidelity. What plays out is a remarkably clear-eyed domestic tragedy that manages to also convey the greater social stresses of life in postwar Japan.
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Late Chrysanthemums
Directed by Mikio Naruse • 1954 • Japan
Starring Haruko Sugimura, Ken Uehara, Sadako SawamuraSuffused with the sense of autumnal melancholy and nostalgia that its title suggests, LATE CHRYSANTHEMUMS is one of director Mikio Naruse’s most perfectly realized works. In a rare starring role, the gr...
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Sound of the Mountain
Directed by Mikio Naruse • 1954 • Japan
Starring Setsuko Hara, Ken Uehara, So YamamuraMikio Naruse’s THE SOUND OF THE MOUNTAIN (YAMA NO OTO) was one of the director’s personal favorites among his own movies. The story concerns a woman, Kukiko (Setsuko Hara), trapped in a loveless marriage to Ot...
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Flowing
Directed by Mikio Naruse • 1956 • Japan
Kinuyo Tanaka, Isuzu Yamada, Hideko TakamineOne of director Mikio Naruse’s most sublime achievements traces the fortunes of a geisha house struggling to survive in the face of a changing society. As seen through the eyes of the establishment’s new maid (K...
