To celebrate the publication of American Movie Critics: An Anthology from the Silents Until Now (Library of America), Phillip Lopate will discuss how film criticism has changed over the years. The editor of American Movie Critics, Lopate is a New York–based essayist, novelist, and poet whose books include a volume of film criticism, Totally Tenderly Tragically. He has written about movies for The New York Times, Vogue, Esquire, Film Comment, and Film Quarterly.

To complement Lopate's talk, we are delighted to present a reprise screening of Mikio Naruse's Wife! Be Like a Rose! As Lopate wrote in his essay “A Taste for Naruse,” this great director's “forlorn flavor of existence can become addictive,” and for viewers who developed an appetite for Naruse's films during our winter series Taisho Chic on Screen and Scattered Clouds, this is an opportunity to savor.

(Tsuma yo bara no yo ni). Naruse's best-known film of the thirties is a bittersweet comedy in the shomin-geki genre (intimate films about everyday domestic problems) in which Naruse, like Ozu, specialized. The story concerns the efforts of a young office worker to bring her estranged parents back together. She finds her father, who long ago deserted the family to live with an ex-geisha, content and well loved by his common-law wife and children. With its witty young heroine (played by Sachiko Chiba, Naruse's wife) and its "happy ending," Wife! Be Like a Rose! seems atypical of Naruse's films, most of which observe their heroines becoming tougher, if sadder, as they chart their way through an unfriendly world. But in this wonderful film, Naruse utilizes a deceptively simple style to examine from many angles the stifling nature of family life and the many ways that people find to make it livable.