Four Seasons of Children: Spring/Summer and Autumn/Winter

In this sequel to Children in the Wind, Hisoshi Shimizu unfolds the further adventures of the two brothers, Zenta and Sanpei. Against the poetic background of the four seasons, the boys deal with their father’s death, are forced to find work, and weather it all with their inherent optimism. For critic John Gillett, Four Seasons “is an expressive fusion of all Shimizu’s thematic and stylistic preoccupations: distant shooting of figures placed in a living, open-air landscape, a loving regard for children, and a traveling camera which always reveals. The passage of time is conveyed in sequences of limpid, lyrical impressionism which look forward to early Satyajit Ray.”