Directed by Mikio Naruse • 1955 • Japan
Starring Hideko Takamine, Masayuki Mori, Mariko Okada
“Short is the life of flowers, infinite their sorrows . . .” Director Mikio Naruse’s most famous film in Japan is a haunting portrait of obsessive love in a ruined world. Set amid the bombed-out landscapes of postwar Japan, FLOATING CLOUDS stars the director’s frequent collaborator, the heartbreaking Hideko Takamine, as a woman who returns from working in French Indochina with hopes of resuming her relationship with a married man (Masayuki Mori) with whom she had an affair—leading them both into a self-destructive spiral of hurt and anger. Drifting dreamily in and out of present reality and memories, it builds with quiet force toward one of Naruse’s most exquisitely devastating finales.
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Flowing
Directed by Mikio Naruse • 1956 • Japan
Kinuyo Tanaka, Isuzu Yamada, Hideko TakamineOne of director Mikio Naruse’s most sublime achievements traces the fortunes of a geisha house struggling to survive in the face of a changing society. As seen through the eyes of the establishment’s new maid (K...
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When a Woman Ascends the Stairs
Directed by Mikio Naruse • 1960 • Japan
Starring Hideko Takamine, Masayuki Mori, Reiko DanWHEN A WOMAN ASCENDS THE STAIRS might be Japanese filmmaker Mikio Naruse’s finest hour, a delicate, devastating study of a woman, Keiko (played heartbreakingly by Hideko Takamine), who works as a bar hoste...
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Yearning
Directed by Mikio Naruse • 1964 • Japan
Starring Hideko Takamine, Yuzo Kayama, Mitsuko KusabueOne of Mikio Naruse’s supreme achievements, this transcendent melodrama weaves a heartrending story of an extended family tragedy growing out of the Second World War. The great Hideko Takamine stars as...
