Series Site
July 3–December 21, 2025
“There are no happy endings for Naruse, but there are incredibly enlightened defeats.” —Audie Bock
Mikio Naruse (1905–1969) experienced vast social, political, and technological changes while working to chronicle the daily lives of ordinary people. As scholar Catherine Russell suggested, he was both “auteur” and “salaryman,” finishing ninety-eight films—on time and on budget—in just short of four decades. Money, and the lack thereof, is a central theme of many of Naruse’s films, often a topic of conversation for his protagonists, informing their decisions. Especially empathetic to the plight of women, Naruse excelled at depictions of their struggles, resistance, and endurance, as in his adaptations of the works of popular novelist Fumiko Hayashi, including Repast, Late Chrysanthemums, and her autobiographical A Wanderer’s Notebook.
Working with the great performers of his time, Naruse eliminated surplus dialogue communicating volumes through glances and gestures, his lucid, cinematic style propelling the narrative. Akira Kurosawa described Naruse’s films as being like a deep river, with a quiet surface disguising a raging current underneath. Kurosawa remarked that the flow of Naruse’s shots was so magnificent that the splices seemed almost invisible.
Beginning with a focus on films made with actress Hideko Takamine, who embodies some of the most indelible characters in Naruse’s works—including Keiko in When a Woman Ascends the Stairs, Yukiko in Floating Clouds, Reiko in Yearning, and Oshima in Untamed—this retrospective, which continues through December, offers a rare opportunity to see a broad array of Naruse’s films, from his 1935 international hit Wife! Be Like a Rose! (the first Japanese talkie to screen in the United States) to his magnificent movies of the 1960s.
—Kate MacKay, Associate Film Curator