Tokyo Story-1953

Aka. Tokyo Monogatari, 1953 is one among the best 100 films. It is directed by Ozu. Any film of Ozu suffers considerably in retelling. He is a master of understatement which for a film maker would mean a visual narrative that somewhere hovers between make-believe and reality so finely pared to an extent life and [...]

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The Burmese Harp-1956

The Burmese Harp (ビルマの竪琴, Biruma no tategoto?) was based on a children’s novel written by Takeyama Michio. It is also known as Harp of Burma). This 1956 black-and-white Japanese film was remade in 1985 in colour and with different actors. Both are directed by Kon Ichikawa. The film was nominated for the 1957 Academy Award [...]

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Late Spring-1949

This Japanese film (Banshun in Japanese) is the second of post-war productions from Yasujirō Ozu. Unlike the other famous and more well known to international audience Akira Kurosawa, he prefers to work on much a simpler scale. Yasujiro Ozu is the most Japanese of Japan’s filmmakers, who dispenses with an elaborate plot or action to [...]

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Rashomon-1950

The German filmmaker Werner Herzog said that Rashomon is the closest to “perfect” a film can get. However when first released most Japanese critics called the film a failure: It failed in “visualizing the style of the original stories,” was “too complicated,” “too monotonous,” and contained “too much cursing.” No surprise. No filmmaker is without [...]

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