JAPANESE FILMS SEEN

1949 film by Yasujiro Ozu

A bad day gets worse for young detective Murakami when a pickpocket steals his gun on a hot, crowded bus. Desperate to right the wrong, he goes undercover, scavenging Tokyo’s sweltering streets for the stray dog whose desperation has led him to a life of crime. With each step, cop and criminal’s lives become more intertwined and the investigation becomes an examination of Murakami’s own dark side.

Three humorous love stories set in rural Japan.

Saburo and Keiko fall in love with each other but the tide of war separates them.

1950 film by Akira Kurosawa

The Angry Street includes a great deal of location shooting in the rebuilt city, including downtown streets, residential neighborhoods, the campus of the University of Tokyo, and the high life of jazzy dance halls. Sudo (Hara Yasumi) and Mori (Uno Jukichi) are two university students who make money by picking up rich girls in dance clubs and conning them into giving them cash. Mori is the brains of the operation, and Sudo is the suave dancer who picks up the girls. Over the course of the film, Sudo becomes involved with three different girls and is drawn into the gangster milieu, which he seems unable to resist even though he is responsible for his mother, grandmother, and sister, Masako (Wakayama Setsuko). In this world of bad boys and girls, Masako is the pillar of strength and moral virtue who finally enables Mori to straighten out.

The third film that Naruse made in 1950, White Beast (Shiroi yaji, 1950), was described by Kinema Junpo critic Tsumura Hideo three years later as "so indescribably miserable as to haunt me even today." Tsumura represents the bulk of Japanese critics of the time, who felt that Naruse experienced a terrible slump throughout the 1940s and this film seemed to be the "bottom of the ocean." The critical establishment was clearly not prepared to accept a woman's prison film featuring former prostitutes recovering from venereal diseases, unwanted pregnancies, and estranged lovers. With its catfights, hysterical tantrums, film noir lighting, and dramatic music, White Beast is indicative of the new influences of the Hollywood psychological thriller on Naruse. Caged (John Cromwell, 1950) initiated a cycle of women's prison movies in the United States that may or may not have been shown in Japan, but the stylistics of White Beast draw on the same paranoid woman's films and film noir conventions that preceded the American cycle.

A bar girl tries to pass her three children, each from a different father, to rural relatives.

Setsuko is in an unhappy marriage to Mimura, an unemployed, alcoholic engineer. She had always been in love with Hiroshi but both failed to propose when Hiroshi left for France a few years ago. But now he's back and Mariko tries to reunite them, although she too is secretly in love with Hiroshi.

Brimming with action while incisively examining the nature of truth, "Rashomon" is perhaps the finest film ever to investigate the philosophy of justice. Through an ingenious use of camera and flashbacks, Kurosawa reveals the complexities of human nature as four people recount different versions of the story of a man's murder and the rape of his wife.

A young woman takes up her new job as the servant of a noblewoman and soon discovers that underneath her facade of luxury lies great unhappiness.

Following the death of Mr Masago, his wife Satomi loses the family's cosmetics company to Mr Mogy due to huge amount of withdrawal debt caused by her husband. Mogy blackmails Satomi's sister Hinako into marrying him, so he will not send Masago to jail, and Satomi wrongly understands that Hinako is dating Mogy.

Tora-chan and Miike are working on the side of a tuna steamship and manage to run afoul of the short-tempered captain. But the captain makes plenty of trouble on his own!

Shinnosuke is introduced to Shizu as a prospective marriage partner, but he falls in love with her widowed sister Oyu. Convention forbids Oyu to marry because she has to raise her son as the head of her husband's family. Oyu convinces Shinnosuke and Shizu to marry so that she can remain close to Shinnosuke.

In post-war Japan, Michiko, a disillusioned young woman trapped in a loveless marriage, confides in her younger cousin, Tsutomo, and the two become close, but decide not to consummate their affair. He instead becomes involved with the flirtatious Tomiko, who is also conducting an affair with Michiko's husband. When Michiko finds that her husband has abandoned her, she decides to take her fate into her own hands.

1951 film by Mikio Naruse

The troubled relationship between a writer and his ballet teacher wife, who has for years loved another man, finally leads to the breakup of the family.

1951 film

1951 film by Akira Kurosawa