A real estate broker is overwhelmed by the goodness of a penniless but spiritually enriched artist and his family, changing his outlook on life. —filmex
Universally considered one of the greatest Japanese directors, Keisuke Kinoshita worked almost his entire career for Shochiku, the Japanese studio that also housed Yasujiro Ozu. Shochiku was that studio most devoted to what the Japanese call shomin-geki, stories of everyday life; yet while Ozu developed a rigorous, austere style that he perfected from film to film, Kinoshita was constantly changing, challenging himself to adapt to new subject matter and ways of storytelling. The director of Japan’s first color feature film, the charming musical satire Carmen Comes Home, could move just a few months later on to the bold experimentation just a few months later of A Japanese Tragedy, a work whose jumbled timeframe and insertion of newsreel footage anticipates the modernist films of the Sixties. He made bold use of traditional Japanese art forms such as kabuki (The Ballad of Narayama) and brush painting (The River Fuefuki), but could… read more
I loved the unusual editing style, as it evoked a mood of uncertainty and curiosity that commented on Igawa's character.