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Based on three short stories by writer Fumiko Hayashi, “Late Chrysanthemums” traces the lives of four former geishas and the people around them in post-war Japan, a time when the local economy was still struggling but gradually beginning to recover. The story unfolds over a period of four days.

Late Chrysanthemums is screening at Metrograph as part of the Mikio Naruse: The World Betrays Us program

Kin, the most financially successful of the group, has become a ruthless moneylender and real estate speculator. Though materially secure, she is emotionally isolated and embittered, having sacrificed love and motherhood for independence. Her attempts to reconnect with the past, including a visit from a former lover and an encounter with an obsessive ex-client, only reaffirm her disillusionment.

Tamae and Tomi, both widowed, share a small home and rely on each other for emotional support. Tamae struggles with migraines that often prevent her from working as a maid,...

Given Mikio Naruse‘s intense concern with the condition and exploitation of women in a rapidly transforming post-war Japan, it is inevitable that he would take a keen interest in geishas. Among his films centering on these women, “Flowing” – often seen as one of his masterpieces – stands out as a melancholy look at a declining geisha establishment, hit hard by waning interest in traditional Japanese customs.

Flowing is screening at Metrograph as part of the Mikio Naruse: The World Betrays Us program

The story opens with the arrival of a new maid, Rika (Kinuyo Tanaka), at the geisha house. The widow, soon called Oharu by everyone (they could not care less about this working-class woman), offers an outsider’s perspective on the twilight world of the geishas – a world that was likely already beginning to feel outdated even to Japanese audiences of the time. The house is headed by Otsuta...

Japan Society and Metrograph have teamed up to co-present “Mikio Naruse: The World Betrays Us,” a rare 30-film retrospective devoted to the “fourth great” master of Japanese cinema. Co-organized with the Japan Foundation, New York, the two-part series, running May 9 to June 29, will offer the first major New York survey of the landmark filmmaker’s work in 20 years, presented in commemoration of the 120th anniversary of his birth and screened entirely on rare prints imported from collections and archives in Japan. Notable series highlights include all six of Naruse’s adaptations of celebrated feminist author Fumiko Hayashi’s work (Floating Clouds, Repast, Lightning, Wife, Late Chrysanthemums, A Wanderer’s Notebook), as well as some of Naruse’s rarest films, including the New York premieres of three pre-war gems unscreened in previous retrospectives: Morning’s Tree-Lined Street, A Woman’s Sorrows, and Sincerity.

With an oeuvre spanning nearly four decades and...

The now-famous opening sequence of „Floating Weeds” begins with four establishing shots containing the lighthouse at their centre. It is set in daylight, whilst the film closes with a night sequence. Furthermore, the film opens with an image of a lighthouse, whose purpose, after all, is to guide the ships into the harbor, whereas the final shot of the film presents the taillights of a train leaving the seaside port. Thus, the director frames his story with a perfectly cyclical image of movement and change, and encapsulates, through abstract symbolism, many of the typical Ozu conflicts.

The film’s narrative focuses on a travelling kabuki troupe visiting a small town located by the sea. In a chaotic exposition, Ozu jumps between various characters and confuses the viewer as to who exactly is the protagonist of the film. The initial fifteen minutes of “Floating Weeds” consist of shifting...

I learned to talk Ozu in the baths. Chin-deep in hot spring, lips pruning, my mother and my grandmother would wait for women to walk just out of earshot. Then, they offered their verdicts: Setsuko Hara forehead. Those Kinuyo Tanaka cheeks. Wrists made for slipping out wallets, like hers, oh you know, that actress so good with showing appetite—Haruko, yes, Haruko Sugimura. I should specify that we talked Ozu women—he gave us so many shades—because there really was only one Ozu man: Chishu Ryu, the poet of sighs. That’s not quite true, of course. There are wagons of men in the four decades of his films. But in the waters of Hakone and Atami, my mother and her mother weren’t quite interested in dissecting man or brotherhood. Disrobed, we wanted to get to the heart of things, to the kinds of truths, and un-truths, mothers pass on to daughters.

It’s Yasujiro Ozu in light mode, except that his insights into the human social mechanism make this cheerful neighborhood comedy as meaningful as his dramas. Two boys go on a ‘talk strike’ because they want a television set, a choice that has an effect on everyone around them. And what can you say about a movie with running jokes about flatulence . . . and is still a world-class classic?

Good Morning

Blu-ray

The Criterion Collection 84

1959 / Color / 1:37 flat Academy / 94 min. / ohayo / available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date May 16, 2017 / 39.95

Starring: Keiji Sada, Yoshiko Kuga, Chishu Ryu, Kuniko Miyake, Haruko Sugimura, Koji Shitara, Masahiko Shimazu, Isamu Hayashi, Kyoko Izumi, Toyo Takahashi, Sadako Sawamura, Eijiro Tono.

Cinematography: Yushun Atsuta

Film Editor: Yoshiyasu Hamamura

Original Music: Toshiro Mayuzumi

Written by Yasujiro Ozu, Kogo Noda

Produced by Shizuo Yamanouchi

Directed by Yasujiro Ozu

Ozu’s Good Morning is a straight-out delight, being both inconsequential and insightful.

Tokyo Story

Written by Yasujiro Ozu and Kogo Noda

Directed by Yasujiro Ozu

Japan, 1953

December 12 marks 110 years since the birth of the great Japanese master Yasujiro Ozu (and 50 years to the date since his death). So what better way to commemorate the occasion than to revisit what is widely seen as his masterpiece among masterpieces, Tokyo Story, out now on a 3-disc dual format Blu-ray/DVD from The Criterion Collection? There have been few filmmakers treated as well by Criterion as Ozu, with more than a dozen titles available either as standalone discs or as part of a set. This latest edition of Tokyo Story, an update on their DVD release from 2003, is no exception.

The film looks spectacular in its new digital restoration, the sharpness making even more clear the attention to detail Ozu devoted to his compositions; sides, foregrounds, and backgrounds are all layered with authentic texture and...

Yasujirô Ozu’s Tokyo Story from 1953, now available in a superbly packaged Blu-ray edition from Criterion, is a film that subtly captures the dynamics of family life in ways that feel stunningly real. There are moments here of such immediacy and personal truth that it seems impossible for Tokyo Story to be a relic of a bygone age and culture. Yet, due to Ozu’s masterful – one could say otherworldly – powers of observation, this sixty year old glimpse into the everyday lives of the Hirayama family presents the human condition with a universality that still rings true in 2013.

Tokyo Story is the final installment of what film scholars call The Noriko Trilogy; three films Ozu made shortly after WWII that feature a female character named Noriko, played by the charismatic Setsuko Hara. However, the films are not narratively continuous and, in fact, Noriko is a different woman, with different circumstances and conflicts,...