Keisuku Kinoshita was one of several young Japanese directors who began to realize their talent just after the war with novel experiments of style. His Ballad of Narayama, based on the same legend as was Shohei Imamura's recent film, won the prestigious Kinema Jumpo Critics' Choice award for 1958. Kinoshita applies techniques of Kabuki theater to the age-old tale, into which are woven elemental conflicts of hunger and plenty, age and youth, cruelty and kindness, and the traditional Japanese preoccupation with filial duty. According to folk legend, there existed remote mountain areas where, in times of famine, villagers abandoned their oldest citizens to the elements so that the young might have enough food to survive. When seventy-year-old Orin begs her son to take her to the mountaintop, he does so with great reluctance. Kinoshita is less concerned with the barbarous custom (“absolutely unauthenticated” according to Japanese film historian Donald Richie), than with the struggles of the son and the other villagers, each of whom deals with the problem differently. Note: The color has faded in our otherwise excellent print.