"In Twenty-Four Eyes the cost of war is counted in wrecked hopes and wasted human potential. In the broadest sense the film is a denunciation of a system that stifles individual growth and transforms personal ambition into unflinching devotion to the state. In 1928, when Miss Oishi (Hideko Takamine), a shockingly modern and progressive woman, begins her tenure as an elementary school teacher (in a small Inland Sea village), the future seems to hold limitless possibilities for her twelve first-grade pupils. When the story ends, in the late 1940s, this promise has been wrecked by war, poverty, and restrictive tradition. (This is a) frankly sentimental, yet angry study of personal frustration and defeat" (Stuart Rosenthal, PFA Calendar 1978). "There was a deliberate dropping of experiments in form and technique to meet realism head-on in one of Japan's greatest lyrical pictures. The film was also a triumph of casting, using amateur children picked up on the spot with an excellent matching of the child actors who played the various children at different age levels, and incorporating a truly beautiful performance by Hideko Takamine as the teacher" (Anderson and Richie, The Japanese Film).