Mikio Naruse — Director (61)
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Movie

The Song Lantern (1943) IMDb TMDB
歌行燈
director: Mikio Naruse actor: Shōtarō Hanayagi / Eijirō Yanagi …
other title: Das Lied der Laterne / La Chanson de la lanterne …
A self-absorbed young actor humiliates an elderly Noh performer, who then commits suicide. His act of cruelty compels his father to disown him, leading the once promising actor to a life on the streets. But his desire to win back the respect of his father and the affection of the dead actor's daughter pushes him toward a more noble existence. Naruse employed a delicately structured mise-en-scene in this family melodrama, which evokes the work of Josef von Sternberg.
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Ginza Cosmetics (1951) WikiData IMDb TMDB
銀座化粧
director: Mikio Naruse actor: Kinuyo Tanaka / Ranko Hanai …
other title: Le Fard de Ginza / Camareras de Ginza …
A few days in the life of a quiet geisha, single mother of a smart young boy, in the lively Tokyo quarter of Ginza. A woman devoted to others' needs, she'll end by taking part herself in one of the many disguises of Ginza.
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Movie

Okuni and Gohei (1952) WikiData IMDb TMDB
お國と五平
director: Mikio Naruse actor: Michiyo Kogure / Tomiemon Otomo …
other title: Okuni et Gohei / Okuni y Gohei …
A high-born woman named Okuni travels around the country with Gohei, a samurai retainer who is in service to her. They are in search of Tomonojo, who has killed the man who was Okuni’s husband and Gohei’s master, and they cannot return to their lord’s home until they have fulfilled their duty of hunting down and killing Tomonojo.
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Moment of Terror (1966) WikiData IMDb TMDB
ひき逃げ
director: Mikio Naruse actor: Hideko Takamine / Yōko Tsukasa …
other title: Délit de fuite / Delito de fuga …
When the only son of a working class woman is fatally struck by a car driven by the adulterous wife of a company president in a hit-and-run, the victim's mother changes her identity and infiltrates the couple's home to work as their maid, plotting to murder their similarly-aged son.
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Five Men in a Circus (1935) WikiData IMDb TMDB
サーカス五人組
director: Mikio Naruse actor: Heihachirō Ōkawa / Hiroshi Uruki …
other title: Cinq types au cirque / サーカス五人組
The main focus is on the 5 member band of a small circus as it runs into problems while touring rural Japan. It also pays lots of attention to the two daughters of the aging and irascible ringmaster-circus owner. The high points are the sound (and score) and cinematography featuring a lot of vertiginous panning (appropriate - as high wire trapeze artists are also an important element in the film). A fascinating side-light on 30s Japan.
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Avalanche (1937) WikiData IMDb TMDB
雪崩
director: Mikio Naruse actor: Noboru Kiritachi / Ranko Edogawa …
other title: 雪崩 / Nadare
The study of a one-year marriage that begins to crumble. A married man is torn between the love of his wife, and the attraction to a cousin of his wife.
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The Lovelorn Geisha (1960) WikiData IMDb TMDB
夜の流れ
director: Mikio Naruse / Yūzō Kawashima actor: Yōko Tsukasa / Isuzu Yamada …
other title: Courant du soir / Corriente nocturna …
A woman and her daughter are in love with the same man, a chef at the restaurant that the mother manages. He is slightly crippled from frostbite in his years in Siberian labor camps and considers himself 'already dead'.
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Wife! Be Like a Rose! (1935) WikiData IMDb TMDB Douban
妻よ薔薇のやうに
director: Mikio Naruse actor: Sachiko Chiba / Yuriko Hanabusa …
other title: Frau, sei wie eine Rose! / Ma femme, sois comme une rose …
Kimiko, a Tokyo white-collar working girl, lives with her serious, intellectual, haiku-writing mother. Kimiko seeks to marry her boyfriend but needs her absent father to act as the go-between and negotiate the marriage. Kimiko travels and finds her father living with a second family.
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Brother and Sister (1953) WikiData IMDb TMDB NeoDB
あにいもうと
director: Mikio Naruse actor: Machiko Kyō / Masayuki Mori …
other title: Frère aîné, sœur cadette / Hermano y hermana …
The eldest daughter of a rural family Mon returns home from Tokyo pregnant after an affair with a college student Kobata, which causes a scandal that will threaten the marriage prospects of the younger sister San, in her cash-strapped family. The ill-tempered eldest brother Inokichi decides to take on the role of disciplinarian, with harrowing results.
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The Thin Line (1966) WikiData IMDb TMDB NeoDB
女の中にいる他人
director: Mikio Naruse actor: Keiju Kobayashi / Michiyo Aratama …
other title: Lo straniero dentro una donna / L'Étranger à l'intérieur d'une femme …
Tashiro coincidentally meets his best friend Sugimoto in a bar very close to the apartment in which Sugimoto’s wayward wife is found dead. Although Tashiro is not a suspect in the police investigation, he is racked with guilt and confesses to his wife, Masako. In an effort to further relieve his tortured sense of guilt, he then confesses to Sugimoto. Neither his wife nor his friend can believe that he could have been involved.
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The Whole Family Works (1939) IMDb TMDB Douban NeoDB
はたらく一家
director: Mikio Naruse actor: 徳川夢声 / 本間敦子 …
other title: 工作家庭 / はたらく一家 …
Father of nine children cannot find a job. Despite their aspirations, the children are encouraged by both parents to hold down menial jobs and contribute to the family expenses. Eventually ...@
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Movie

A Wanderer's Notebook (1962)
放浪記
director: Mikio Naruse actor: Hideko Takamine / Akira Takarada …
other title: Hourou-ki / Chronique de mon vagabondage …
Considered one of the finest late Naruses and a model of film biography, A Wanderer’s Notebook features remarkable performances by Hideko Takamine – Phillip Lopate calls it “probably her greatest performance” – and Kinuyo Tanaka as mother and daughter living from hand to mouth in Twenties Tokyo. Based on the life and career of Fumiko Hayashi, the novelist whose work Naruse adapted to the screen several times, A Wanderer’s Notebook traces her bitter struggle for literary recognition in the first half of the twentieth century – her affairs with feckless men, the jobs she took to survive (peddler, waitress, bar maid), and her arduous, often humiliating attempts to get published in a male-dominated culture.
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Movie

Sound of the Mountain (1954) IMDb TMDB
山の音
director: Mikio Naruse actor: Setsuko Hara / Sō Yamamura …
other title: Berggrollen / Le Grondement de la montagne …
An ingratiating bride develops warm ties to her father-in-law while her cold husband blithely slights her for another woman.
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Yearning (1964)
乱れる
★ 9.4 (5 ratings) director: Mikio Naruse actor: Yumi Shirakawa / Hideko Takamine …
other title: Tormento / Midareru - Sehnsucht …
War widow Reiko rebuilds and runs the grocery shop in the house of her husband's family. Many years later, their business is threatened by a newly built supermarket and Reiko's in-laws plan to convert their small shop into a supermarket, to her detriment.