Nobel Prize winning novelist Yasunari Kawabata was the source for Naruse's earlier Three Sisters with Maiden Hearts and also contributed to Repast (PFA, April 19). In Sound of the Mountain Naruse adapts one of the writer's best known works into a knowing, profoundly moving account of a woman's loneliness, and one of the finest of the “marriage cycle” films (Repast, Husband and Wife, etc.) about disintegrating relationships in a changing world. Set in the ancient seaside town of Kamakura (near Tokyo) where the novelist himself lived, the story tells of the deep and complex relationship that develops between Kikuko, a young wife betrayed by her philandering husband, and Shingo, her father-in-law, with whom the couple live. When the husband's mistress insists on having his child, Kikuko responds by having an abortion of her own. Audie Bock writes, “A subtle study of the inwardly-aimed aggressions that emerge in a society that does not view divorce as an option when a married couple feel trapped by each other. Setsuko Hara as the wife brilliantly portrays the other possibilities in a young woman's life so carefully omitted from her roles in Yasujiro Ozu's films.”