Mikio Naruse: The Auteur as Salaryman
July 3–December 21, 2025
Mikio Naruse: The Auteur as Salaryman offers a rare opportunity to see many of Naruse’s great films chronicling the lives of ordinary people—from his 1935 international hit Wife! Be Like a Rose! (the first Japanese talkie to screen in the United States) to his magnificent movies of the 1960s.
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Mikio Naruse: Floating Clouds (1955)
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Mikio Naruse: When a Woman Ascends the Stairs (1960)
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Mikio Naruse: A Wife’s Heart (1956)
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Mikio Naruse: Lightning (1952)
- Upcoming
Films - Past
Films - Past
Events
Upcoming Films
When a Woman Ascends the Stairs
Mikio Naruse
Japan, 1960BAMPFA Collection
Thursday, July 3 7 PMView DetailsEssential Mikio Naruse. “An elegant essay in black-and-white CinemaScope and tinkling cocktail jazz, this tale of a bar hostess’s attempt to escape her lot could give heartbreak lessons to [Rainer Werner] Fassbinder and [Douglas] Sirk” (Village Voice).
Hideko the Bus Conductor
Mikio Naruse
Japan, 1941Thursday, July 10 7 PMView DetailsHideko Takamine stars as the teenage ticket taker for a bus line that has seen better days in this charming comedy, the first of her seventeen films with Mikio Naruse. Screening with The Whole Family Works, a chronicle of a family’s struggle to make ends meet during the depression and the war with China, the social costs of which are never mentioned but keenly felt.
Lightning
Mikio Naruse
Japan, 1952Saturday, July 12 4:30 PMView DetailsAdapted from a Fumiko Hayashi novel, and starring Mikio Naruse’s favorite actress, Hideko Takamine, this major work illuminates one of the director’s key themes: entrapment within the family system.
Floating Clouds
Mikio Naruse
Japan, 1955Wednesday, July 16 7 PMView DetailsThis epic story of wartime lovers separated by a wretched peace is a richly evocative portrait of postwar Tokyo and an endlessly fascinating character study. It is revered in Japan as the ultimate masterpiece of Mikio Naruse’s career and a high point for star Hideko Takamine.
Flowing
Mikio Naruse
Japan, 1956Saturday, July 19 7 PMView DetailsIt’s hard to find a more impressive trio of actresses than Hideko Takamine, Kinuyo Tanaka, and Isuzu Yamada. Mikio Naruse’s tale of geishas in decline is “a tangle of subtle relationships. . . . Quietly brilliant filmmaking” (Village Voice).
A Wife’s Heart
Mikio Naruse
Japan, 1956Friday, July 25 7 PMView DetailsHideko Takamine plays a young woman working to raise enough money to open her own coffee shop. When her family takes the money to fund her sister’s wedding, she arranges a loan, but her husband is wary of the loan officer (Toshiro Mifune).
Untamed
Mikio Naruse
Japan, 1957Thursday, July 31 7 PMView DetailsOshima (Hideko Takamine) experiences a series of failed relationships as she works toward financial independence and self-realization. “Hideko Takamine’s performance . . . is among her most active and energetic and her character is one of the most liberated in [Mikio] Naruse’s oeuvre.”
Daughters, Wives, and a Mother
Mikio Naruse
Japan, 1960Friday, August 8 7 PMView DetailsDaughters, Wives, and a Mother features a stellar cast in a saga of a comfortable suburban family’s unraveling after the family home is mortgaged.
A Wanderer’s Notebook
Mikio Naruse
Japan, 1962Sunday, August 10 4 PMView DetailsA revealing biopic, based on the journals of Fumiko Hayashi, the writer Mikio Naruse most frequently adapted, and starring his favorite actress, Hideko Takamine, who gives an “amazingly detailed, unglamorized portrait of the writer . . . imbued with a strong passion for life and writing” (National Film Theatre, London).
Yearning
Mikio Naruse
Japan, 1964Friday, August 15 7 PMView DetailsA war widow keeps the family store and her heart in check long after she should have remarried. “Whatever else it is—a critique of the economics of the family, among other things—Yearning is also a poem on the beauty of Hideko Takamine” (Boston Phoenix).
Wife! Be Like a Rose!
Mikio Naruse
Japan, 1935Sunday, August 17 5 PMView DetailsMikio Naruse’s warm, funny-sad tale of a girl who tries to unite her poetess mother and estranged father “is presented with a simplicity and a seriousness. . . . The result is one of the most moving films I know” (The Nation).
Three Sisters with Maiden Hearts
Mikio Naruse
Japan, 1935Saturday, August 23 4:30 PMView DetailsTokyo’s lively Asakusa district comes alive in Mikio Naruse’s wonderful portrait of three modern girls who try to break away into love and marriage. Based on a Yasunari Kawabata novel.
Repast
Mikio Naruse
Japan, 1951Friday, September 5 7 PMView DetailsMikio Naruse’s first adaptation of a Fumiko Hayashi novel eloquently portrays a crumbling marriage. Setsuko Hara stars.
Late Chrysanthemums
Mikio Naruse
Japan, 1954Sunday, September 7 4:30 PMView DetailsA compelling character study of four aging geishas contemplating their troubles with men and money. “A gem. . . . With delicate, unobtrusive strokes, [Mikio] Naruse evokes both the humor and bitterness in his characters’ dilemmas” (San Francisco Chronicle).
Flowing
Mikio Naruse
Japan, 1956Friday, September 12 7 PMView DetailsIt’s hard to find a more impressive trio of actresses than Hideko Takamine, Kinuyo Tanaka, and Isuzu Yamada. Mikio Naruse’s tale of geishas in decline is “a tangle of subtle relationships. . . . Quietly brilliant filmmaking” (Village Voice).
Floating Clouds
Mikio Naruse
Japan, 1955Sunday, September 14 4:30 PMView DetailsThis epic story of wartime lovers separated by a wretched peace is a richly evocative portrait of postwar Tokyo and an endlessly fascinating character study. It is revered in Japan as the ultimate masterpiece of Mikio Naruse’s career and a high point for star Hideko Takamine.
Yearning
Mikio Naruse
Japan, 1964Sunday, September 21 4:30 PMView DetailsA war widow keeps the family store and her heart in check long after she should have remarried. “Whatever else it is—a critique of the economics of the family, among other things—Yearning is also a poem on the beauty of Hideko Takamine” (Boston Phoenix).
Scattered Clouds
Mikio Naruse
Japan, 1967Sunday, September 28 7 PMView DetailsA young woman still grieving over her husband’s death in a car accident meets the driver of the car, and soon fate, and the past, come to call. This is Mikio Naruse’s last film and “one of his strangest and strongest” (Phillip Lopate).
Tsuruhachi and Tsurujiro
Mikio Naruse
Japan, 1938Sunday, October 5 1 PMView DetailsMikio Naruse brings emotion and wit to the story of the relationship between a samisen player and a ballad singer during the Meiji era. “A musical treat” (National Film Theatre, London).
Traveling Actors
Mikio Naruse
Japan, 1940Sunday, October 19 1:00 PMView DetailsThis atypically comic outing for Mikio Naruse follows an itinerant Kabuki troupe, focusing on a pair of actors who play the two halves of a horse—until a real animal is hired for the part.
Mother
Mikio Naruse
Japan, 1952Saturday, October 25 7 PMView DetailsMikio Naruse takes a complex, astringent approach to sentimental material for this story of a widow (Kinuyo Tanaka) struggling to maintain the family business.
Lightning
Mikio Naruse
Japan, 1952Thursday, November 6 7 PMView DetailsAdapted from a Fumiko Hayashi novel, and starring Mikio Naruse’s favorite actress, Hideko Takamine, this major work illuminates one of the director’s key themes: entrapment within the family system.
Wife
Mikio Naruse
Japan, 1953Sunday, November 9 5 PMView DetailsAnother affecting look at the everyday irritations of marriage, but with an atypical twist for Naruse—this time, the husband is the more sympathetic character.
Husband and Wife
Mikio Naruse
Japan, 1953Sunday, November 16 5 PMView DetailsThis thematic sequel to Repast centers on the domestic troubles of a young couple forced to share a flat with an eccentric friend. As always, Mikio Naruse depicts lower-middle-class life with impressive frankness and psychological insight.
Ginza Cosmetics
Mikio Naruse
Japan, 195135mm Archival Print
Thursday, November 20 7 PMView Details“Not to be missed. Kinuyo Tanaka, best known for her roles in the films of [Kenji] Mizoguchi, is sensational in this portrait of a Ginza bar hostess” (Cinematheque Ontario).
Sound of the Mountain
Mikio Naruse
Japan, 1954Sunday, November 23 2 PMView DetailsMistreated wife Setsuko Hara forges a close and complex relationship with father-in-law, So Yamamura, in Mikio Naruse’s adaptation of the famous Yasunari Kawabata novel. “Exquisite” (Boston Phoenix).
Sudden Rain
Mikio Naruse
Japan, 1956Sunday, November 30 2 PMView DetailsThe everyday life of a marriage: “A masterpiece in miniature. . . . [Mikio] Naruse’s complex touches are brilliant” (IFC News).
When a Woman Ascends the Stairs
Mikio Naruse
Japan, 1960BAMPFA Collection
Friday, December 5 7 PMView DetailsEssential Mikio Naruse. “An elegant essay in black-and-white CinemaScope and tinkling cocktail jazz, this tale of a bar hostess’s attempt to escape her lot could give heartbreak lessons to [Rainer Werner] Fassbinder and [Douglas] Sirk” (Village Voice).
The Approach of Autumn
Mikio Naruse
Japan, 1960Sunday, December 7 2 PMView DetailsA young widow and her shy sixth grader relocate to Tokyo. “A rare and masterful focus on children for [Mikio] Naruse” (Film Forum).
The Stranger within a Woman
Mikio Naruse
Japan, 196635mm Archival Print
Friday, December 12 7 PMView DetailsThe unnatural death of the wife of a friend weighs on a man’s conscience in Mikio Naruse’s compelling foray into film noir. Driven by women’s desires and motives, the work departs from the director’s “women’s films” in style but not substance.
Hit and Run
Mikio Naruse
Japan, 196635mm Archival Print
Sunday, December 14 2 PMView DetailsA chronicle of a fatal collision reveals the stark inequalities of Japan’s economic growth in the 1960s, as a working-class single mother (Hideko Takamine) obsessively plots revenge against the wealthy woman responsible for her son’s death.
Summer Clouds
Mikio Naruse
Japan, 1958Sunday, December 21 1:30 PMView DetailsHoping to find independence from her family, a war widow writes stories of her rural life for a Tokyo newspaper in this rare Mikio Naruse title that takes place in the countryside and in color and Cinemascope.
Past Films
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