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We’re honored and delighted
to present as a Special Sidebar of the 43rd New York
Film Festival a celebration of Japan’s Shochiku
Company on the occasion of its 110th anniversary.
Founded in 1895 as a theatrical producer, Shochiku
soon became aware of the growing attraction of cinema,
but decided to move away from the conventional theatricality
of Japanese film and instead to introduce narrative
and shooting styles they had admired in American and
European films, finding its stride with Souls
on the Road (1921), a masterpiece that featured
many real locations, naturalistic acting and interwoven
narratives. By the early 30s Shochiku had established
itself as the home of the shomin-geki, tales
of everyday life most often set among the working
or middle classes. Yasujiro Ozu, Heinosuke Gosho,
Yasujiru Shimazu, and Hiroshi Shimizu are seen as
the architects of the Shochiku shomin-geki
style. When a “national policy” directive
was aimed at the film industry, Mizoguchi’s
extraordinary The Loyal 47 Ronin was meant
to be Shochikuís great contribution. Other works such
as Keisuke Kinoshita’s Army were so
clearly ambiguous about the war that the authorities
actually discouraged him from making any more films.
After the war Shochiku would produce some of the key
works of what would become known as the Japanese New
Wave from such figures as Nagisa Oshima, Masahiro
Shinoda and Kiju Yoshida, revolutionizing the visual
style and subject matter of Japanese and, eventually,
Asian cinema. Chief among recent directors is Yoji
Yamada, a director who, like Ozu, has literally spent
his entire career at Shochiku. Yamada devised that
series that would prove the commercial lifeblood of
Shochiku: Tora-san, the smiling Japanese everyman
incarnated by Kiyoshi Atsumi, featured in 48 films
over 25 years. Apart from Tora-san, Yamada found time
to create other fine works, including his most recent
samurai epic, The Hidden Blade, in its U.S.
premiere as part of this series. Finally, on the international
front, Shochiku has co-produced four of Taiwanese
director Hou Hsiao-hsien’s films, including
his marvelous Café Lumiere, a tribute
to Yasujiro Ozu by that master’s greatest contemporary
disciple. —Richard Peña
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Weíre delighted to begin our tribute to Shochiku with the U.S. premiere of the latest work by its most eminent contemporary director, Yoji Yamada. The
Hidden Blade returns Yamada to the world of fading samurai glory where two marginally employed samurai try to put their past behind them and settle down.
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Sat Sept 24: 7:00 pm (intro by Yoji Yamada)
SOLD OUT - standby line day of screening.
Sun Sept 25: 6:00 pm (Q&A with Yoji Yamada)
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Shochiku actually began as a theatrical production company,
and it has been continuously involved in theater ever since. Now taking
advantage of new high-definition digital technology, Shochiku is beginning
a campaign to make great contemporary kabuki productions available in film
theaters and other venues. Nezumi Kozo, one of Shochiku’s most popular
recent kabuki productions, is based on the story of a real-life bandit from
the Edo period (19th century).
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SUN SEPT 25: 12 NOON
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Widely considered one of the Japanese cinema’s first major
works, Souls on the Road begins as two convicts, just released from prison, look
up a friend to discover that he, his wife and child are living in dire poverty.
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Sun Sept 25: 2:30 pm
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A motley assortment of guests
is spending the summer at a hot springs. One day a soldier
cuts his foot on a woman’s hairpin. Soon the owner of the
hairpin comes all the way from Tokyo to reclaim her treacherous
property and apologize.
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Sun
Sept 25: 4:15 pm
Thu
Sept 29: 4:30 pm
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Two detectives are assigned to the murder of a former policeman, Miki. They find out how Miki had befriended a destitute, leprous man and his young son. Amazingly, that boy had grown up to become Eiryo Waga, a rising star in the music world. Could such an eminent figure have anything to do with the murder?
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Sun
Sept 25: 9:00 pm (intro by Yoji Yamada)
Sun
Oct 16: 1:00 pm
Wed
Oct 19: 3:20 pm |
For Japan’s first all-talking film, director
Gosho set about filming the story of a writer who is having
trouble working because the woman next door allows a jazz band
to rehearse in her house. Gosho had to have the jazz band on
hand at all times, playing off-camera while other scenes were
being filmed.
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Mon
Sept 26: 3:00 pm
Mon
Sept 26: 6:00 pm
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A young, high-school-aged boy from a middle-class family develops a crush on his pretty next-door neighbor and soon a romance seems to be blossoming, but the girl has an older sister who also takes notice of the handsome boy next door.
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Mon
Sept 26: 4:30
Tue
Sept 27: 2:30
Wed Sept 28: 6:00 pm |
Otoku asks her brother Bunkichi to speak with her son Seiichi, a young man for whom sheís sacrificed everything but who now seems to be headed for a wastrel life. Bunkichi admonishes the boy to study harder, but it seems his uncleís advice may already be too late.
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Tue
Sept 27: 4:00 pm
Thu
Sept 29: 9:00 pm |
Kihachi, the head of an itinerant acting
troupe, is visiting a small town where he fathered a son with
the local café owner years before. Kihachi tries to hide his
identity from his now college-educated son lest his lowly status
shame him. But his jealous mistress has other ideas: she schemes
to bring about a confrontation. The result is one of his most
intensely atmospheric and beautiful films.
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Tue
Sept 27: 6:15 pm
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Omitsu is a young woman with a small child who has been deserted by her husband. She works as a popular waitress in a dockside bar, but still has difficulty making ends meet. One day she comes home to find her husband has returned. He promises to find work so that she can become an ordinary housewife again, but even with the help of the older couple next door he fails to come up with anything.
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Tue
Sept 27: 8:30 pm
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Shimizu’s tale of teenage athletes was
meant to be a hymn to the martial spirit, but instead it's
an amusing, knowing look at adolescent anxieties.
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Wed
Sept 28: 2:30 pm
Wed
Sept 28: 7:40 pm
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Shimazu fashioned a story that explores what happens when the intense but brief sensation of pleasure threatens to be transformed into something deeper and more long-lasting. Relatively plotless, the film moves between several characters, but the real star is the district of Asakusa itself, as gilded a cage as has ever been put on screen.
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Wed
Sept 28: 4:00 pm
Wed
Sept 28: 9:10 pm |
Kiku is trying to make it as an actor who specializes in female roles. Only the family maid, Otoku, dares to tell him how bad he is. Kiku draws close to her and eventually the two begin an affair. Otoku is soon dismissed, but Kiku follows her, and for years the two wander Japan with small theater troupes as Kiku gradually perfects his art. Yet just when Kiku is beginning to achieve a hard-earned success on stage, his family reappears with different ideas about his future.
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Thu
Sept 29: 1:45 pm
Thu
Sept 29: 6:15 pm
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The film looks at a family that for generations has produced
career military officers. With the outbreak of the war a young man long plagued
by ill health but who through a great effort grows strong enough to follow in
the family’s footsteps.
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Fri
Sept 30: 2:45 pm
Mon
Oct 3: 6:40 pm |
The Anjos are well-placed, influential
people; the U.S. Occupation Forces, in the move toward
greater democratization, strip the Anjos of their wealth
and mansion. On the night before they’re supposed to vacate
the premises, the family throws one final party, inviting
friends, family and hangers-on to bid farewell not only
to them but to a way of life.
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Fri
Sept 30: 4:30 pm
Mon
Oct 3: 8:30 pm |
One of the greatest glories of film
history. Each shot in Mizoguchi’s version of this perennial
Japanese favorite is magnificently composed, creating a
constant visual tension between the characters and spaces
they inhabit.
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Fri
Sept 30: 6:30 pm
Mon
Oct 3: 2:00 pm |
A father schemes to make his daughter
interested in getting married. A pure masterpiece, and
the template for Ozu’s later films.
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Tue
Oct 4: 1:00 pm
Sat
Oct 8: 4:30 pm
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A hard-hitting, poignant look at postwar
Japan as seen through the life of an Osaka prostitute.
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Tue
Oct 4: 3:10 pm
Tue
Oct 4: 9:30 pm |
Innkeeper Sokichi acts as matchmaker for a young man, not realizing his own daughter also loves him.
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Tue
Oct 4: 4:45 pm
Tue
Oct 4: 8:00 pm |
Making inventive use of many real locations,
Shimizu’s searing melodrama examines the harsh life options
for a group of friends from a Yokahama girls’ school.
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Tue
Oct 4: 6:20 pm
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Life and love in corrupt postwar Tokyo, as a young couple struggles against both the law and the mob.
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Wed
Oct 5: 2:00 pm
Wed
Oct 5: 6:15 pm |
Accused of having an affair in the tabloids, a popular singer takes her case to court.
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Wed
Oct 5: 4:00 pm
Sat
Oct 8: 2:15 pm |
Based on the Ibuse novel, Shibuya’s masterpiece
chronicles an aging doctor in a bombed-out neighborhood.
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Thurs
Oct 6: 1:15 pm
Thurs
Oct 6: 7:15 pm |
Japan’s first color feature stars Hideko
Yakamine as a nightclub stripper who pays a visit to the
folks back home.
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Thurs
Oct 6: 3:15 pm
Thurs
Oct 6: 9:10 pm |
One of the pioneers of the period film,
Ito returned to the fore with this thrilling swordsman’s
tale.
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Thurs
Oct 6: 5:00 pm
Sat
Oct 8: 12:00 noon |
The flagship of the New Wave, a color and Scope epic of aimless youth in a prospering postwar Tokyo.
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Fri
Oct 7: 1:00 pm
Fri
Oct 7: 7:10 pm |
Tatsuya Nakadai enjoyed his first starring
role in this tough exposé of vice and corruption around U.S.
military bases
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Fri
Oct 7: 3:00 pm
Fri
Oct 7: 9:10 pm |
A hard-boiled yakuza, just out of prison, meets a beautiful, upper-class woman who hangs out in gambling dens for thrills.
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Fri
Oct 7: 5:15 pm
Sun
Oct 9: 7:20 pm
Tue
Oct 11: 2 pm |
Oshima’s passionate look at the growing
radicalization of Japan’s student protest movement.
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Sat
Oct 8: 6:45 pm
Sun
Oct 9: 2:15 pm |
In the closing months of the war, a fatally
ill student arouses the sympathy of an innkeeper’s daughter.
A New Wave classic.
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Sat
Oct 8: 9:00 pm
Sun
Oct 9: 12:00 noon |
With a tour-de-force performance
by Naomi Fujiyama, Face follows a young woman
on the run after killing her sister. ND/NF 2001
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Sun
Oct 9: 4:30 pm (Q&A)
Tue
Oct 18: 4:00 pm
Wed
Oct 19: 1:00 pm
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A wandering ronin, aided by two renegades, decides to join the fight against a despotic local magistrate.
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Sun
Oct 9: 9:20 pm
Tue
Oct 11: 4:00 pm |
A conscript (Tora-san’s Kiyoshi Atsumi)
from a poor background writes the Emperor asking if he can
stay in the army when his service is up.
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Wed
Oct 12: 2:00 pm
Wed
Oct 12: 6:15 pm |
Epic saga of an idealistic land-owning family dealing with militarism, war, social change and economic reform.
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Wed
Oct 12: 8:15 pm |
The movie that started the most successful series in film history: a traveling salesman comes home, raising the suspicions of friends and family.
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Thurs
Oct 13: 1:30 pm
Thurs
Oct 13: 7:30 pm |
Deeply moving tale of a family trying to create a new life for themselves in northern island of Hokkaido.
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Wed
Oct 12: 4:00 pm
Thurs
Oct 13: 3:20 pm
Thurs
Oct 13: 9:20 pm |
When his police colleague gets killed, Azuma (Takeshi Kitano) goes off to seek his own brand of justice.
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Thurs
Oct 13: 5:30 pm
Sat
Oct 15: 9:15 pm
Thurs
Oct 20: 3:00 pm |
Imamura’s return to feature films was
this astonishing study of a serial killer made famous by
his daring escapes from the police.
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Fri
Oct 14: 1:00 pm
Fri
Oct 14: 6:30 pm
Sun
Oct 16: 6:30 pm |
Cult director Fukasaku creates a comedy
only he could make: a stunt man takes all kinds of crazed
assignments to enhance a fading samurai star’s career.
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Fri
Oct 14: 3:45 pm
Fri
Oct 14: 9:15 pm
Sun
Oct 16: 9:15 pm |
One of the
classic samurai films: Hanshiro sets out to avenge
a companion denied the chance for an honorable death.
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Sat Oct 15: 1:30 pm
Sat
Oct 15: 6:30 pm
Tue
Oct 18: 8:40 pm |
Oguri’s tense, haunting study of a marriage
on the verge of unraveling after the husband reveals in infidelity.
NYFF 1991
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Sat Oct 15: 4:10 pm
Mon
Oct 17: 4:20 pm
Mon
Oct 17: 8:50 pm |
An aging widower with two married children worries about the future of his youngest son, unsettled without any clear direction in life.
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Mon
Oct 17: 2:00 pm
Mon
Oct 17: 6:30 pm
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The daughter of a slain yakuza boss is saved by a female assassin. Three years later she returns for revenge, but her former savior is now her enemy.
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Tue
Oct 18: 2:00 pm
Tue
Oct 18: 6:30 pm
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Hou’s touching homage to Ozu follows a
young woman who resolutely decides to go her own way in contemporary
Tokyo. NYFF 2004
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Wed
Oct 19: 9:00 pm
Thurs
Oct 20: 1:00 pm
Thurs
Oct 20: 5:00 pm |
