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Street of Shame (1956)
7.8/10on IMDb
Released
Mizoguchi sets his final film in a Tokyo brothel. Watch how the different women talk about money and make deals with one another. Their overlapping lives give economic weight to a subject that a story about just one woman could too easily reduce to individual misfortune.
More about Street of Shame23
Women of the Night (1948)
7.2/10on IMDb
Released
A war widow and her sister make their way through Osaka in a film shot among the ruins. The locations give this early postwar Mizoguchi a rawness quite different from the composed landscapes of his period stories. Start here for the world he returned to in Street of Shame.
More about Women of the Night24
The Naked Island (1960)
8.0/10on IMDb
Released
A family rows across to the next shore for fresh water and shoulders it back in buckets. Kaneto Shindo makes the work carry the story without spoken dialogue. Give it time to establish that rhythm. The first small changes in the routine can say as much about the family as another movie would need a roomful of conversation to convey.
More about The Naked Island25
Jigoku (1960)
6.7/10on IMDb
Released
A theology student flees the scene of an accident, and Nobuo Nakagawa sends the film into stranger territory as the student's guilt grows. The vision of hell is vivid, grotesque, and graphic. Save it for when you want to see how far Japanese horror could go beyond the quiet dread of Ugetsu.
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Till We Meet Again (1950)
7.0/10on IMDb
Released
Tadashi Imai begins this wartime romance on a crowded Tokyo subway platform during an air raid. As Saburo and Keiko fall in love, the prospect of his conscription gives ordinary meetings urgency. Choose it for the small gestures, especially a farewell that depends on a pane of glass.
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The Rickshaw Man (1958)
7.5/10on IMDb
Released
Toshiro Mifune is a rickshaw puller who becomes a fixture in the lives of a widow and her son. Hiroshi Inagaki gives him a part where devotion matters more than fighting prowess. Choose it for a period film built around the years it can take people to understand what they mean to one another.
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Crazed Fruit (1956)
7.2/10on IMDb
Released
Two brothers and a young woman turn a summer by the water into a tense contest for one another's attention. Notice the energy of the cuts, even in something as ordinary as the brothers rushing into a train station. Ko Nakahira's film is a brisk way into the rebellious youth movies of the decade.
More about Crazed Fruit29
Cruel Story of Youth (1960)
7.0/10on IMDb
Released
Two teenage lovers turn to extortion in postwar Tokyo. Nagisa Oshima makes that setup feel volatile, as if the people the couple targets are only a small part of the world they're up against. See it with Crazed Fruit for two very different ways of looking at young people getting into trouble.
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Giants and Toys (1958)
7.3/10on IMDb
Released
A battle between candy companies looks like an excuse for comedy until Yasuzo Masumura shows what it costs the people pulling off the promotions. The posters and neon fight just as hard for your attention as the companies do for their customers'. Watch this for what early color could do on modern streets.
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Pigs and Battleships (1961)
7.4/10on IMDb
Released
Shohei Imamura sets a couple among small-time gangsters in Yokosuka, a port shaped by the presence of a U.S. naval base. The widescreen bustle makes the place feel too large for any one racket to control. Put it near the end of a viewing run to see a younger filmmaker testing how disreputable a studio movie could get.
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