UCLA Film & Television Archive presents

NARUSE MIKIO
Saturday, November 5 – Friday, December 2

Naruse Mikio (1905-1969) is widely regarded as one of the giants of pre-New Wave Japanese cinema.  But unlike his contemporaries Kurosawa, Mizoguchi and Ozu, his films remain largely unseen in this country.  This relative obscurity is ironic considering that Naruse's WIFE, BE LIKE A ROSE! (1935) was the first Japanese film to have a theatrical release here.  In place of Kurosawa's bravado and Mizoguchi's melodrama, Naruse's films are shot through with an austere but lyric stoicism presented with a sublime simplicity.

Naruse grew up in dire poverty, quitting school at the age of 15 to go to work following the death of his father. More or less by chance, he ended up working in the prop department of major studio Shochiku, gradually working his way up the ladder throughout the 1920s as he absorbed the craft of filmmaking.  He began directing silent films there in 1930 but soon moved to Photo-Chemical Laboratories (PCL) when his ambitious attempts at experiment with film form found no support at Shochiku.  At PCL Naruse made his first major film, WIFE, BE LIKE A ROSE!  Shortly after this success, his marriage to actress Chiba Sachiko began to fall apart, and his career fell into a slump (which Naruse attributed to the breakup) that lasted through the 1940s.

In the 1950s and 1960s, he hit his stride at Toho with a string of “woman's films.”  Unlike the formal innovation of his pre-war films, Naruse's later masterpieces display a supremely simple and profoundly moving visual style.  While before the war Naruse typically wrote his own scripts, this later phase of his career is typified by collaborations with women screenwriters, often adapting the work of women authors, especially Hayashi Fumiko.  (Five of the films in our retrospective are adapted from her work.)

Like his contemporaries Ozu and Mizoguchi, Naruse again and again presents female protagonists in his examinations of Japan's rapid social change.  Like the women in Sirk's melodramas, Naruse's female protagonists are constantly aware of their precarious economic and social situation.  While Ozu's camera gazes serenely as tradition is replaced by modernity, Naruse adopts a tough-minded pessimism, perhaps determined by his unhappy childhood.  As critic Audie Bock puts it, “There are no happy endings for Naruse, but there are incredibly enlightened defeats.”  The Archive is proud to present this touring retrospective of an underappreciated master on the centennial of his birth, featuring new prints from Toho.

*All films in Japanese with English subtitles
 
SUN 11/27  7:00 pm
WHEN A WOMAN ASCENDS THE STAIRS  (Onna ga kaidan wo agaru toki)
(1960)
One of Naruse's most acclaimed works, this film represents the summit of his collaborations with actress Takamine Hideko. Takamine plays a widow working as a hostess in the bars of Tokyo's Ginza district. The title refers to her daily climb up to the bars where she endures the attentions of a stream of exploitative men. By 1960, the elegance of the traditional world of the geisha had been replaced by the dog-eat-dog Ginza bar milieu. After a string of literary adaptations, Naruse crafted perhaps his most elegant film from an original screenplay. The film's power stems from the simplicity of its images and Takamine's masterful underplaying.
Toho. Producer/Screenwriter: Kikushima Ryuzo. Cinematographer: Tamai Masao. With: Takamine Hideko, Mori Masayuki, Dan Reiko, Nakadai Tatsuya. 35mm, 86 min.
 
YEARNING  (Midareru)
(1964)
In YEARNING, Takamine Hideko plays a war widow who almost single-handedly rebuilds her husband's family's store after it is bombed. Her hard work goes unappreciated by the family except for her brother-in-law, a troubled young man twelve years her junior. As the store is once again threatened with ruin in the 1960s, this time by a new supermarket, widow and brother-in-law suddenly find themselves falling desperately for each other. This tale of forbidden love is keenly played against the changes in Japanese society, typified here by the supermarket. Better known as a romantic leading man, Kayama Yuzo gives a sensitive performance as the brother-in-law.
Toho. Producers: Fujimoto Sanezumi, Naruse Mikio. Screenwriter: Matsuyama Zenzo. Cinematographer: Yasumoto Jun. With: Takamine Hideko, Kayama Yuzo, Mimasu Aiko, Kusabue Mitsuko. 35mm, 100 min.

FRI 12/2 7:30 pm
MOTHER  (Okaasan)
(1952)
This tale of a Tokyo family struggling at the end of World War II focuses on the family's matriarch. Tanaka Kinuyo is memorable as the title character, desperate to keep her family together as it is threatened by illness, poverty and malicious gossip. Her ultimate defeat provides a heartbreaking portrait of the social collapse of the immediate postwar years that bears comparison to Italian neo-realism. While no sentimental tearjerker (especially next to other Japanese “mother pictures” of its era), MOTHER is one of Naruse's most nakedly emotional films.
Shin Toho. Producer: Nagashima Ichiro. Screenwriter: Mizuki Yoko. Cinematographer: Suzuki Hiroshi. With: Tanaka Kinuyo, Mishima Masao, Kagawa Kyoko, Enami Keiko. 35mm, 98 min.
 
THE WHOLE FAMILY WORKS  (Hataraku ikka)
(1939)
The Ishimura family barely ekes out a living by combining the wages of parents and children alike, but their economic survival is threatened when the family's four sons begin to rebel against their overbearing father. Weaving together several plotlines with a skillful blend of realism and melodrama, THE WHOLE FAMILY WORKS prefigures Naruse's masterpieces to come and calls into question the oft-repeated opinion that the wartime years represent a slump between his earlier work and the postwar melodramas. In fact, the film's suggestion of a parallel between wartime militarism and patriarchal repression was daring for its time.
Toho. Producer: Takeyama Masanobu. Screenwriter: Naruse Mikio. Based on the novel by Tokunaga Sunao. Cinematographer: Suzuki Hiroshi. With: Tokugawa Musei, Honma Noriko, Ubukata Akira, Ito Kaoru. 35mm, 65 min.
 
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VENUE:   Films screen at the James Bridges Theater in Melnitz Hall, located on the northeast corner of the UCLA Westwood campus, near the intersection of Sunset Boulevard and Hilgard Avenue.

 

Tickets are also available at the theater starting one hour before showtime: $7 general admission; $5 students, seniors and UCLA Alumni Association members with ID.

Cost : $8

www.cinema.ucla.edu