"I have always believed since I was a child that beautiful things were true."-Keisuke KinoshitaKeisuke Kinoshita, who died earlier this (corr: last) year at the age of 86, was a giant of Japanese cinema, but a "gentle" one: his films, while strikingly observant and in no way naive, often are characterized by a certain haunting innocence. One of several directors of his generation who began to realize their talent directly after the war with novel experiments in style, Kinoshita was sometimes called the Japanese René Clair, as adept at satiric comedy as he was known for delicate lyricism. But both comedy and beauty are a thin veil for stinging portraits of individuals-usually women, often young people-suffering at the hands of rigid social conventions. Kinoshita's characters are often memorable for their purity of feeling. His clear-eyed observation of human behavior recognized the value and the tragic imperfection of human interaction and social ties. The war experience inevitably formed his view of Japanese history and society, and he went on to create the great antiwar film Twenty-four Eyes, at once utterly realistic about homefront repression and a five-hankie weeper. Experience also sharpened his films about the postwar adjustment: A Japanese Tragedy is both a triumph of the haha-mono, or "mother drama," and an unsparing undermining of the family genre. Today's films like The Family Game and The Funeral have nothing on Kinoshita's Carmen satires, in which 1950s hypocrisy is filtered through the life of a naive showgirl. Our memorial tribute to Kinoshita presents a selection of his major works showing the range of this director who invariably experimented with a new form in each film, and was master of all.The series is programmed at PFA by Mona Nagai. This series is sponsored by the Consulate General of Japan, San Francisco. We would especially like to thank Steven Goldman of the Japan Information Center at the Consulate. Once again we are indebted to The Japan Foundation and the Kawakita Memorial Film Institute. Friday October 1, 1999
