Jul 8, 2013 — With its marvelous, distinctive camera work, Kenji Mizoguchi’s searing drama is as technically remarkable as it is humane.

Jul 9, 2013 — Today, we mostly know the great Japanese star Kinuyo Tanaka for her ability to disappear into roles in such films as The Life of Oharu, Ugetsu, and The Ballad of Narayama. But in the late 1940s, she was a personality...

Jan 26, 2017 — Repertory PicksThis Saturday, as part of its monthlong series celebrating the career of legendary Japanese actor Toshiro Mifune, Chicago’s Gene Siskel Film Center will screen Kenji Mizoguchi’s 1952 The Life of Oharu on 35 mm. Adapted from poet-novelist Ihara Saikaku’s...

Mar 8, 2024 — Though the Taiwanese director began working in commercial genres, even his earliest mainstream films contain the seeds of the inimitable style that would establish him as one of the world’s most important filmmakers.

Mar 17, 2022 — New restorations of the six films directed by the renowned actress will screen from coast to coast.

Dec 14, 2017 — Emotion Pictures: International Melodrama is a sixty-two film series now running at the Film Society of Lincoln Center in New York through January 7. “Sam Fuller famously defined cinema as ‘emotion,’ and just about every variety of it may be...

Oct 20, 2008 — Though he had been directing films since the silent era, Kenji Mizoguchi didn’t become an international sensation until after the Second World War, benefiting from a new fascination with Japan’s cinematic output.

May 27, 2020 — Walking, like breathing, is something we do without thinking, an activity so commonplace that pedestrian has as its second meaning uninspired, ordinary, dull. Movies, however, reveal this action as more than just the original mode of getting from here to...

Apr 28, 2026 — As the 1950s began, Kinuyo Tanaka found herself at a turning point. She had been acting in films since she was fourteen, becoming one of Japan’s most beloved, admired, and prolific women stars. Now in her early forties, she saw...

Jun 7, 2017 — Japanese New Wave director Masahiro Shinoda discusses how Kenji Mizoguchi seamlessly weaves together harsh realism and spellbinding fantasy in his masterpiece Ugetsu.