Writing
Commemorating the 120th anniversary of Ozu Yasujiro's birth, six up-and-coming filmmakers remade six of his early silent films as a contemporary mini-series.
Brothers Keiji and Ryoichi move to a new neighborhood in the Tokyo suburbs after their father, an office clerk, is promoted. The boys join the local gang as lowly new kids and emerge as natural leaders after defeating a bully. While visiting the home of their father's boss, the brothers witness the ridicule their father endures to please his superior. Angry and embarrassed, the boys find their naive ideas about power being challenged.
Japanese silent film from 1928. Kinema Junpo ranked it among the ten best Japanese movies of the year.
A hen-pecked man works as his artist wife's model and a house-husband. When her patron flirts with her and humiliates him, he decides to get revenge by trying his own hand as a painter. Considered to be a lost film.
Japanese film from 1933, adapted from Masao Kume's serialized newspaper novel.
Based on the Sakatayama double suicide
A middle-aged father has just married off his third daughter, but still has his nine year old son to raise whom he resents as he was unwanted.
Japanese home drama starring Kinuyo Tanaka.
A professor, Komiya, and his bossy wife, Tokiko, are to look after Setsuko, their high-spirited niece from Osaka. Despite being a minor, Setsuko is a liberated woman who does whatever she wants, including smoking. She even convinces Koyima to take her to a geisha house. When she gets rather tipsy, the professor calls Okada, one of his students, to take her home. The wife becomes suspicious of Setsuko when she sees Okada bringing her home.
A young man falls for one of the geisha working in the house where he lives. However, the romance doesn't find favour with his father or current girlfriend. Considered to be a lost film.
"The Dancing Girl of Izu" tells of the story between a young male student who is touring the Izu Peninsula and a family of traveling dancers he meets there, including their youngest girl. The student finds the naïve girl attractive even though he eventually has to part with the family after spending memorable time together.
An older sister and brother (Mieko Takamine and Masayoshi Otsuka) come to visit their grandfather (Takeshi Sakamoto) who lives deep in the mountains. As for their parents, father was serving in the South Seas and mother died of illness on her way home. So, the brother, who is still young, will live alone with his grandfather whilst the sister goes away to study to become a teacher.
No description available.
University friends Ben and Shūichi unknowingly vie for the attention of the beautiful Chieko while on a skiing trip.
This pair of gentle yet witty and inventive comedies from the director of The Neighbour's Wife and Mine typify both the formal experimentation of early Japanese sound cinema and the social milieux that Shochiku tended to depict. 'Virtually plotless, and feeling more like comic sketches than fully developed stories,' writes Arthur Nolletti, Jr, 'these light comedies, or farces, take a wholly trivial matter (often a socially embarrassing situation) and use it as a springboard for a succession of gags.' Much of the films' distinction comes from the wit of Gosho's direction, the imaginative use of the new sound technology and the charm of the acting, particularly of the heroines (Kinuyo Tanaka in Bride; Hiroko Kawasaki in Groom). Yet in both films, Gosho finds room for some shrewd observation of character and environment, subtly exploring the values and assumptions of the suburban petit bourgeoisie.
1944 war movie
When a woman unfairly suspects her husband of flirting with a shop assistant, she decides to flirt with their landlord to get revenge. Considered to be a lost film.
Japanese silent film from 1932.
Japanese silent film from 1927. A landmark in the careers of two up-and-coming stars: director Heinosuke Gosho and, newly promoted to a starring role, seventeen-year-old Kinuyo Tanaka.
