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by Mehdi Achouche

Watching “Night River” (also known with the better title of “Undercurrent”), you understand why director Kozaburo Yoshimura (1911-2000) has so often been compared to Kenji Mizoguchi – although that has often been at Yoshimura's expense. Both delivered post-war melodramas often centering on strong, independent-minded female characters being repressed by their families and the social order. Yoshimura (who started as Ozu's assistant director) even took over from Mizoguchi after the latter's death and directed “An Osaka Story” in 1957. The year before, he made “Night River”, penned by feminist screenwriter (and frequent Naruse collaborator) Sumie Tanaka, and adapted from a novel by Hisao Sawano. The story is set in Kyoto and can be seen as part of an informal set of melodramas that Yoshimura directed in the 1950s. These films follow the lives of hard-working women in a rapidly modernizing post-war Kyoto, including the powerful “Clothes of Deception” (1951), “Sisters...

Ozu Yasujiro, the leading Japanese film director behind classics including “Tokyo Story” and “Late Spring,” has had his double birth and death anniversaries – Ozu died in 1963 on the day of his 60th birthday, a little more than a year after the release of his last film “An Autumn Afternoon” – celebrated throughout 2023 at places as varied as the Cannes Film Festival, Los Angeles’ Margaret Herrick Library and the Taiwan Film & Audiovisual Institute.

But it falls to October’s Tokyo International Film Festival to put on this year’s biggest and most comprehensive reconstruction of Ozu’s surprisingly varied career.

Working in conjunction with the National Film Archive of Japan, the festival will present an extensive retrospective that covers almost all the films that Ozu directed (TIFF/Nfaj Classics: Ozu Yasujiro Week) from Oct. 24-29.

Ozu spent his entire career, from camera assistant in 1923 to renown director in 1962, as an employee of major Japanese studio Shochiku,...

Season 2 of the Emmy-winning comedy “Hacks,” the debut of Colin Firth’s true-crime drama “The Staircase” and the streaming return of “The Matrix: Resurrections” all await HBO Max subscribers in May. If you’re looking for something new to watch or wondering what’s on HBO Max this month, not to worry, we’ve got the full rundown.

There are several must-watch new TV shows on both HBO and HBO Max this month, new and returning. Acclaimed Jean Smart comedy “Hacks” returns for Season 2 on May 12. As for the new debuts, May sees the premieres for HBO Max’s “The Staircase” on May 5, starring Colin Firth as Michael Peterson in the true-crime limited series, as well as the HBO premiere of Steven Moffat’s (”Doctor Who”) series adaptation of “The Time Traveler’s Wife” on May 15.

New films this month include the streaming return of “The Matrix: Resurrections” and streaming premieres...

A film studio since 1920, Japan’s Shochiku has a back catalogue filled with works by master directors including Ozu Yasujiro and Kinoshita Keisuke as well as 1960s New Wave leaders Oshima Nagisa and Shinoda Masahiro and studio stalwart Yamada Yoji, maker of the enduringly popular Tora-san series.

Shochiku has been digitally remastering its classics in 4K for some time now and is bringing to FilMart four of the most recently restored titles in this ongoing project.

At (almost) the same time, the Hong Kong International Film Festival is laying on a ten-film tribute to the studio as a main plank of its 45th edition. Titles include: “The Masseurs and a Woman” (1938); Mizoguchi Kenji’s 1939 “The Story of the Last Chrysanthemum”; Kinoshita’s “Twenty-Four Eyes” (1954); Ozu’ “Equinox Flower” (1958); Kobayashi Masaki’s 1962 “Harakiri”; “Love Affair at Akitsu Spa” (1962); Yamada classic “The Yellow Handkerchief” (1977); Berlinale-winning “Gonza The Spearman” (1986); Oshima’s final feature “Gohatto...

3 February 2021 (Hong Kong) – The 45th Hong Kong International Film Festival will mark the 100th anniversary of Shochiku Cinema with a retrospective programme, showcasing ten masterpieces from ten revered Japanese maestros, including Ozu Yasujiro, Shimizu Hiroshi, Imamura Shohei, and Oshima Nagisa.

Founded in 1920, Shochiku is one of Japan’s oldest and most successful studios. A media giant that prided itself first and foremost as a director’s studio, Shochiku offered creative freedom with which formative filmmakers crafted their signature styles to perfection. From Japan’s first sound film, first colour film, first Oscar-winning film to the world’s longest-running film series, Shochiku transformed the cinematic landscape, leading to Japanese cinema’s rising profile globally.

The ten classics in this selection reflect Shochiku’s remarkable achievements over a century. Shimizu and Ozu, two pillars at the studio renowned for their spontaneous style, are exemplified in The Masseurs and a Woman (1938) and the...

When we think of an Ozu film, there is a couple of themes and motifs that immediately spring to our mind. Family conflicts and tensions between parents and their children are inherently woven into most of the narratives from the Japanese director. They are usually accompanied by a trademark set of feelings, especially those of resentment, melancholy, neglect, but also of nervous hope. “Late Autumn” was yet another film fitting precisely within these aforementioned categories.

The film opens with a sequence in a temple – characters gathered there to commemorate the passing of their friend, Miwa. Fast forward a couple of hours, and Miwa’s daughter Ayako (Yôko Tsukasa) proclaims during a celebratory dinner that she is looking for a husband. Three men sitting opposite to her are friends of the deceased. Mamiya (Shin Taburi), Taguchi (Nobuo Nagamura) and Hirayama (Ryuji Kita) quickly volunteer to help her with finding the right match.

The first film in Ozu’s oeuvre shot in colour, “Equinox Flower” depicts the younger generation in a more sympathetic light than the earlier works of the Japanese master. Based on the novel by Ton Satomi under the same title, “Equinox Flower” touches upon the typical Ozu themes of generation clashes and the omnipresent tensions between tradition and modernity.

Wataru Hirayama (Shin Saburi) is a businessman who looks for a proper husband for his daughter. In a speech at a friend’s wedding, he addresses the issue of arranged marriages. “You are lucky this is not happening in your generation” he seems to say to the newlyweds. Ironically, when later in the film a young man, Masahiko Taniguchi (Keiji Sada) enters his office to ask him for his daughter’s hand, Hirayama is conflicted, to say the least. Because Hirayama didn’t get to choose his daughter’s husband,...

For those accustomed to the bittersweet greatest hits of Japanese auteur Yasujirô Ozu’s later period familial dramas, the lesser known 1952 social satire The Flavor of Green Tea Over Rice reminds one of a wider range than some of his revered titles would indicate. Seeing as this more obscured title arrived just a year prior to 1953’s ineffably devastating Tokyo Story (review), with its poignant intergenerational rifts, makes the latter title all the more unprecedented. Likewise, the coterie of titles marked by seasonal or time-oriented motifs which would follow in quick succession (Early Spring; Tokyo Twilight; Equinox Flower; Good Morning; Late Autumn; The End of Summer; An Autumn Afternoon) speaks to Ozu’s own dislike for the themes and motifs used here.…...

With a seemingly endless amount of streaming options — not only the titles at our disposal, but services themselves — we’ve taken it upon ourselves to highlight the titles that have recently hit platforms. Every week, one will be able to see the cream of the crop (or perhaps some simply interesting picks) of streaming titles (new and old) across platforms such as Netflix, iTunes, Amazon, and more (note: U.S. only). Check out our rundown for this week’s selections below.

Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story (Alexandra Dean)

The tell-all “autobiography” Ecstasy and Me: My Life As A Woman was exactly what Hedy Lamarr’s agent wanted to make quick money. But it wasn’t her life. Whether her ghostwriter’s words were true or not, the story dealt with everything she hoped wouldn’t define her legacy. Sadly she never had the chance to set the record straight with...

http://criterioncast.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/Eclipse-Viewer-Episode-59-Late-Ozu-Part-2.mp3

This podcast focuses on Criterion’s Eclipse Series of DVDs. Hosts David Blakeslee and Trevor Berrett give an overview of each box and offer their perspectives on the unique treasures they find inside. In this second episode of a three-part series, David and Trevor are joined by Matt Gasteier to discuss the first three color films directed by Yasujiro Ozu: Equinox Flower, from Eclipse Series 3: Late Ozu, along with Good Morning and Floating Weeds. released as spine-numbered editions in the Criterion Collection.

About the films:

Master filmmaker Yasujiro Ozu directed fifty-three feature films over the course of his long career. Yet it was in the final decade of his life, his “old master” phase, that he entered his artistic prime. Centered more than ever on the modern sensibilities of the younger generation, these delicate family dramas are marked by an exquisite...

Italian actress Claudia Cardinale to be guest host for the section at the 70th Venice International Film Festival where William Friedkin will receive a lifetime achievement honour.

Claudia Cardinale, best known for roles in Once Upon a Time in the West and Fellini’s 8 ½, is to be the guest host of Venezia Classici, the section devoted to restored films and to documentaries about cinema of the 70th Venice International Film Festival (August 28 – September 7.

The section, introduced last year, features a selection of classic film restorations completed over the past year by film libraries, cultural institutions or production companies around the world.

Cardinale will attend the screening of Vaghe stelle dell’Orsa, Luchino Visconti’s 1965 film in which she starred that won the Golden Lion at the 30th Viff and has been restored by Sony Pictures Entertainment.

It is is one of the four classics restored this year that has been conserved at the Historic Archives of the...