The Criterion Collection
Apr 24, 2015 — Atypical in style and subject, Yasujiro Ozu’s early crime dramas show a future master brilliantly experimenting with camera and editing.
Feb 17, 2015 — It was never, of course, Yasujiro Ozu’s intention that An Autumn Afternoon (1962) should be the final film of his thirty-five-year career as a writer-director. Indeed, before he died on his sixtieth birthday, in December 1963, he had made notes...
Dec 16, 2014 — The prolific and popular Keisuke Kinoshita made his fascinating first movies at a time of great difficulty and censorship, yet their spirit and brilliance shine through.
Short Takes
Aug 7, 2013 — In 1958, in the midst of his most fecund cinematic period, Yasujiro Ozu made his first color film, the splendid Equinox Flower. Like so many of Ozu’s films, this poignant drama is about the subtly difficult emotional landscape navigated by...
Apr 17, 2013 — Four of the great Japanese director’s lesser-known, early films show the coming into being of a political artist.
Apr 10, 2013 — Teinosuke Kinugasa’s landmark color film is a visual feast that has finally been vibrantly restored.
Feb 5, 2013 — Keisuke Kinoshita’s most experimental film is a resplendent, kabuki-inspired, folk-derived drama about mortality.
Essays
Nov 6, 2012 — When Akira Kurosawa made Rashomon (1950), he was a forty-year-old director working near the beginning of a career that would last fifty years, produce some of the greatest films ever made, and exert a tremendous and lasting influence on filmmaking...
Short Takes
Feb 27, 2012 — Cover of Shochiku promotional booklet for Three Outlaw Samurai, 1964
Dec 13, 2011 — Seijun Suzuki’s delirious, absurdist deconstruction of the crime genre is the strangest film the director made at Nikkatsu, Japan’s oldest film company.