Items31The creator’s order
  1. 1Ugetsu (1953)Ugetsu (1953) 8.1/10 on IMDbReleased Mar 26, 1953Kenji Mizoguchi sends a potter seeking his fortune across a lake in the middle of a civil war. The mist around the boat makes the crossing feel as though it could end in a different world. Start here for the ease with which his camera moves from the devastation of war into a ghost story.0
  2. 2Floating Clouds (1955)Floating Clouds (1955) 7.6/10 on IMDbReleased Jan 15, 1955A typist and a married man fall in love in wartime French Indochina. Back in Japan, the distance between his promises and what he will actually do keeps growing. Mikio Naruse gives Hideko Takamine room to show why someone might recognize the pattern and still go back.0
  3. 3Harakiri (1962)Harakiri (1962) 8.6/10 on IMDbReleased Sep 15, 1962A masterless samurai asks a powerful clan for permission to die in its courtyard. Masaki Kobayashi makes that formal request the beginning of a long reckoning. Watch how differently the courtyard feels once the visitor has told his side of the story.0
  4. 4Gate of Hell (1953)Gate of Hell (1953) 7.1/10 on IMDbReleased Oct 30, 1953Teinosuke Kinugasa puts brilliant color to work in a tale of a warrior who becomes obsessed with a married lady-in-waiting. The court costumes are worth watching for on their own. Their elegance makes the warrior's pursuit feel more sinister as it pushes through the rituals of court life.0
  5. 5Sansho the Bailiff (1954)Sansho the Bailiff (1954) 8.3/10 on IMDbReleased Mar 31, 1954Two children are sold into slavery after being separated from their mother. Mizoguchi makes a story about living by an exiled father's example out of their separation. Come to it after Ugetsu for a slower tragedy that puts an even more difficult decision in a daughter's hands.0
  6. 6The Life of Oharu (1952)The Life of Oharu (1952) 8.1/10 on IMDbReleased Apr 17, 1952A woman who once served at the imperial court looks back at the life that brought her to poverty. Kinuyo Tanaka carries Mizoguchi's long view of Oharu with very small changes in manner as her standing changes. It is a good companion to Forever a Woman, where Tanaka gets to tell a woman's story from…0
  7. 7When a Woman Ascends the Stairs (1960)When a Woman Ascends the Stairs (1960) 8.0/10 on IMDbReleased Jan 15, 1960The stairs in the title are the ones Keiko climbs to go to work as a Ginza bar hostess. Naruse shows her feet on the steps as if it were any other night. That repetition gets at what leaving the job would cost her, and what she gives up each time she puts off the decision.0
  8. 8Forever a Woman (1955)Forever a Woman (1955) 7.7/10 on IMDbReleased Nov 23, 1955A poet learns that she has breast cancer and keeps writing through treatment. Kinuyo Tanaka directs, with Yumeji Tsukioka giving the poet an impatience and hunger that hold their own against the hospital routine. It makes an absorbing change from the historical suffering Tanaka often played herself.0
  9. 9Twenty-Four Eyes (1954)Twenty-Four Eyes (1954) 7.9/10 on IMDbReleased Sep 15, 1954Hideko Takamine plays a teacher who gets to know twelve children in a rural community on Shodoshima. Keisuke Kinoshita stays with them long enough to see what the war does to the futures they once imagined. The songs the teacher shares with them make the earlier classroom scenes all the more…0
  10. 10The Burmese Harp (1956)The Burmese Harp (1956) 8.0/10 on IMDbReleased Jan 21, 1956In Kon Ichikawa's war film, the first thing that travels between enemies is a song. Follow a Japanese soldier in Burma as he takes a different path from the men he served with. It is a patient, mournful choice for a viewer more interested in what someone owes the dead than in military strategy.0