Taisho Chic on Screen
11/5/05 to 12/11/05
-
Mr. Thank You, December 10|© Shochiku Co., Ltd.
- Upcoming
Films - Past
Films - Past
Events
Past Films
The Golden Bullet
Saturday, November 5 21:00Donald Sosin on Piano. Introduced by Akira Tochigi. This saga of murder, detection, and double identity recalls the picaresque adventures of Fantomas and other French crime serials, which were popular in Japan. With short To the Reborn Imperial Capital by Airship.View DetailsSouls on the Road
Saturday, November 5 18:00Donald Sosin on Piano. Introduced by Fumiaki Itakura. Neorealist in tone, Murata's fascinating film (based partly on Gorky's Lower Depths) was Japanese cinema's first modern work, and its first work of social criticism. Denmei Suzuki stars.View DetailsEternal Heart
Sunday, November 6 15:30Donald Sosin on Piano. Introduced by Akira Tochigi and Fumiaki Itakura. Shimizu's romantic melodrama is notable for its stylish modernist sets. With short The Sumida River.View DetailsRebirth of the Capital
Sunday, November 6 18:30Donald Sosin on Piano. Introduced by Akira Tochigi. This city symphony documents Tokyo's recovery after the Great Kanto Earthquake.View DetailsThe Water Magician
Saturday, November 12 20:50Michael Mortilla on Piano. Takako Irie stars in Mizoguchi's tale of delicate passion and crushing irony, detailing a woman's plight in Meiji-era Japan.View DetailsPublic Manners: Sightseeing in Tokyo
Saturday, November 12 19:00Michael Mortilla on Piano. A fascinating look at Tokyo in 1925, after the Great Kanto Earthquake. With the most complete extant version of Mizoguchi's Tokyo March.View DetailsWinter Camellia
Saturday, November 12 17:00Michael Mortilla on Piano. From 1921, this Western-influenced melodrama directed by Ryoha Hatanaka is a key example of Japan's "pure film" movement.View DetailsThe Lady and the Beard
Sunday, November 13 19:15Michael Mortilla on Piano. Ozu satirizes Taisho chic and nostalgia in this gleefully ribald comedy about a collegian who passionately loves his beard and despises all modern ways. But then he shaves . . .View DetailsApart from You
Sunday, November 13 17:30Michael Mortilla on Piano. A story of two geishas, one aging, one starting out, shows "Naruse's genius for combining a lyrical realism with his feminist sentiments."-William M. Drew. With a fragment from Mizoguchi's Rising Sun.View DetailsZigeunerweisen
Saturday, November 19 20:10Seijun Suzuki weds French Surrealism to Japanese ghost story, hypnotically evoking the late 1920s as a period of changing mores in Japan akin to Weimar Germany.View DetailsOur Neighbor, Miss Yae
Saturday, November 19 18:30Shimazu was an early master of understated irony, and this picture of a middle-class family was "carefully calculated by the director to give the effect of eavesdropping on life itself."-Donald RichieView DetailsThe Neighbor's Wife and Mine
Saturday, November 19 17:00Japan's first talkie is filled with sounds, as Gosho constructs a satirical comedy around the distractions experienced by a middle-class couple in their new home.View DetailsWalk Cheerfully
Sunday, November 20 19:00Judith Rosenberg on Piano. Ozu's stylish comedy of petty thieves, con men, and flappers.View DetailsCastle of Wind and Clouds
Sunday, November 20 17:00Judith Rosenberg on Piano. Beautifully choreographed fight scenes highlight this tale of treachery, conspiracy, and doomed love in a samurai clan. With a fragment from Daisuke Ito's Slashing Swords.View DetailsKageroza
Saturday, November 26 20:35Set in 1926, a watershed year on the cusp of the Taisho and Showa eras, Seijun Suzuki's sequel to Zigeunerweisen concerns a playwright, a businessman, and a ghost. It has been hailed for its "luminous images and fierce eroticism."-London Film FestivalView DetailsWife! Be Like a Rose!
Saturday, November 26 19:00Naruse'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 NationView DetailsThree Sisters with Maiden Hearts
Saturday, November 26 17:20Tokyo's lively Asakusa district comes alive in Naruse's wonderful portrait of three modern girls who try to break away into love and marriage. Based on a Kawabata novel.View DetailsFoghorn
Sunday, November 27 18:10Judith Rosenberg on Piano. Minoru Murata's brooding tale of power, passion, and violence evokes 1870s Yokohama in darkly atmospheric images.View DetailsWoman of Tokyo
Sunday, November 27 17:00Judith Rosenberg on Piano. Ozu's Depression-era melodrama rehearses his later style in "a subtle riot of discordant formal devices."-Village VoiceView DetailsThe Downfall of Osen
Saturday, December 3 20:35"Mizoguchi's female icon of the '30s, Isuzu Yamada . . . [in] the essential Mizoguchi fable about a worthy woman destroying herself for a worthless man."-Village Voice. Our print has recorded benshi narration and orchestral score.View DetailsA Page of Madness
Saturday, December 3 19:00Gabriel Thibaudeau on Piano. Kinugasa's early avant-garde masterpiece uses techniques we would normally associate with German Expressionism and Russian montage to create a hallucinatory story of love set entirely in an insane asylum. "As intense, mysterious, poetic, and technically inventive as Dr. Caligari."-The ObserverView DetailsCrossroads
Sunday, December 4 18:15Gabriel Thibaudeau on Piano. Teinosuke Kinugasa's experimental films from the '20s have a place in any international history of the avant-garde. Here, his virtuosic style animates a tale of innocence betrayed in 18th-century Yoshiwara.View DetailsActress
Sunday, December 4 16:00The story of 20th-century Art Theater actress Sumako Matsui is emblematic of a woman who refused to conform to traditional Japanese values of the period. Kinugasa directs this star turn for the great Isuzu Yamada, "a complete performer."-David OwensView DetailsJapanese Girls at the Harbor
Sunday, December 4 14:00Gabriel Thibaudeau on Piano. "A knockout. Shimizu's stunning tale of passion, crime, and decadence [is an] exhilarating triumph of . . . experimental style [and] also a precious portrait of the great port city of Yokohama."-Village VoiceView DetailsOsaka Elegy
Saturday, December 10 21:30In an Osaka sparkling with the seductive allure of capitalism, Mizoguchi depicts the humiliations of a switchboard operator who adapts to the times. Isuzu Yamada stars in "Mizoguchi's most brilliant pre-war film."-Joan MellenView DetailsThe Dancing Girl of Izu
Saturday, December 10 19:00Live Musical Accompaniment by Mark Izu and Friends. Gosho's beautiful, fresh adaptation of Yasunari Kawabata's novel about the romance between a dancer in a touring troupe and a college student, set in the mountain resorts of the Izu peninsula.View DetailsMr. Thank You
Saturday, December 10 17:20"Mr. Thank You is the driver of a bus chugging its way through the hills and villages of rural Japan. Shooting entirely on location, Shimizu merrily tracks along the winding paths, accompanied by some favorite American tunes to while away the journey. Irresistible."-NFT, LondonView DetailsWhat Did the Lady Forget?
Sunday, December 11 18:30A thoroughly modern niece disrupts the lives of a professor and his socialite wife in Ozu's splendid satire on Tokyo's suburban bourgeoisie. "Wry, affectionate, and ironic."-Donald RichieView DetailsSisters of the Gion
Sunday, December 11 17:00In this famous melodrama, Mizoguchi strips away the romantic veneer of the geisha business, both in the story and in a stark visual style that capitalizes on visual elements of the Gion district.View Details
© 2024 The Regents of the University of California, all rights reserved