Chikamatsu monogatari (The crucified lovers) 1954 - An essential tale of tragic romance

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IMDB Rating: 8,2

Director: Kenji Mizoguchi
Main Cast: Kazuo Hasegawa, Kyoko Kagawa, Eitaro Shindo, Eitaro Ozawa

"In the 1950s, Kenji Mizoguchi was on a roll. He won two successive Golden Lions at the Venice Film Festival - an unprecedented feat - and produced three unqualified masterpieces: Life of Oharu, Ugetsu, and Sansho Dayu. The Crucified Lovers, made the same year as Sansho, stands as Mizoguchi's last great film. For this film - about star-crossed lovers, based on a puppet play by Monzaemon Chikamatsu - he returns to familiar themes: avaricious, duplicitous men; pious, long-suffering women; and the cruel vagaries of fate. Unlike his previous postwar films, the lead male character, Mohei, does not seem consumed by greed, vengeance, or vanity. Yet compared to the purity and devotion of lead female - a near constant in Mizoguchi's oeuvre - Mohei still seems weak in comparison. The film unfolds with marvelous fluidity, gathering momentum until the lovers' gruesome end. The blissful smiles on the faces of Osan and Mohei as they are led to crucifixion is one of the most striking images in Mizoguchi's long catalogue. Technically, Mizoguchi fills this film with striking photography and elegant camera movement. Though perhaps lacking the lyricism of Ugetsu and the grandeur of Sansho Dayu, The Crucified Lovers is a breathtaking work." - www.allmovie.com

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La strada 1954 - Being among the most studied films of late Italian Neo-Realism and a classic of the first rank.

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IMDB Rating: 8,1

Director: Federico Fellini
Main Cast: Anthony Quinn, Giulietta Masina, Richard Basehart

"La Strada is often considered one of the masterpieces of 20th century filmmaking, a sad and poignant remembrance of innocence lost and of the roads that each of us must choose. As with much of the work of director Federico Fellini, man is viewed as suspended between the heavens and the earth, adroitly symbolized here by Il Matto/The Fool (Richard Baseheart), a high-wire circus performer. Fellini's motifs are among the most influential of all post-WWII filmmakers. Giulietta Masina's Chaplin-like Gelsomina is among the screen's most poignant and tragic performances, and she, like the entire film, is aided by Nino Rota's evocative score. The bubbly, waiflike Gelsomina is a simpleton sold to the gruff, bullying circus strongman Zampanò (Anthony Quinn) as a servant and assistant. Treated no better than an animal, Gelsomina nonetheless falls in love with the brute Zampano. When they join a small circus they meet Il Matto (Richard Basehart), a clown who enchants Gelsomina and relentlessly taunts Zampanograve;, whose inability to control his hatred of Il Matto (literally, "the Fool") leads to their expulsion from the circus and eventually to the film's fateful conclusion. Masina is heartbreaking as the wide-eyed innocent, whose generous spirit and love of life leads her to try to "save" Quinn's unfeeling, brutal Zampanò. Though the film resonates with mythic and biblical dimensions, Fellini never loses sight of his characters, lovingly painted in all their frailties and failings. Fellini's lyrical style reaches back to the simple beauty of his neorealist films and looks ahead to the impressionistic fantasies of later films, but at this unique period in Fellini's career, they combine to create a poetic, tragic masterpiece.
The movie was the winner of the first official Academy Award for Best Foreign-Language Film, awarded in 1956."

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Sansho dayu (Sansho the bailiff) 1954 - An unforgettably sad story of social injustice, family love, and personal sacrifice

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IMDB Rating: 8,3

Director: Kenji Mizoguchi
Main Cast: Kinuyo Tanaka, Yoshiaki Hanayagi, Kyoko Kagawa, Eitaro Shindo

"On its French release in 1960, Sansho the Bailiff was ranked by Cahiers du cinéma as the best film of the year, topping such classics as Breathless, L'avventura, and Psycho. Critics were struck by the film's gorgeous photography, elegant camerawork, and exotic settings and by Kenji Mizoguchi's signature use of imagery that quietly evokes a spiritual transcendence above the suffering of the material world. Unlike Akira Kurosawa's frequent use of close-ups and fast-paced editing, Mizoguchi, here as elsewhere, keeps his camera distant and his takes long, resulting in a contemplative style in which the characters' suffering and pain seem vivid, yet small compared with the immutability of the landscape. The result is a film that is thoroughly engaging up to its devastating finale. Though it was initially more popular in the West than in Japan, this masterpiece has since been widely recognized as one of Mizoguchi's most beautiful works.
The subjugated plight of women in Japanese society was always a subject close to Mizoguchi's heart--never more so than in Sansho Dayu, one of the towering late masterpieces of his final years. Its intensity, compassion, dramatic sweep and breathtaking formal beauty place it among his greatest films. The story is set in the harsh feudal world of 11th-century Japan. A provincial governor is demoted and exiled for showing too much clemency to those he rules; travelling to join him, his wife is kidnapped and forced to become a courtesan and her children are sold into slavery. They grow up under the harsh regime of the bailiff Sansho while their mother (the great actress Kinuyo Tanaka, in a performance of heartbreaking desolation) yearns hopelessly for them. Working with his favourite cameraman, Kazuo Miyagawa, Mizoguchi films this tragic story in long, intricate takes, rarely resorting to close-ups. The visual elegance and formal restraint of his style make the film all the more emotionally harrowing, and the final scene, on a desolate and windswept island, must be one of the most unbearably moving endings in all cinema."

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Shichinin no samurai (Seven Samurai) 1954 - Unanimously hailed as one of cinema's greatest masterpieces

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IMDB Rating: 8,7

Director: Akira Kurosawa
Main Cast: Toshiro Mifune, Takashi Shimura, Keiko Tsushima, Yukiko Shimazaki, Daisuke Kato

"Widely considered one of the greatest films ever made, Seven Samurai was both the apex of Akira Kurosawa's long career and the high-water mark of the Japanese period drama. The film's action rivets the viewer in spite of the three-hour-plus running time: the battle sequences, among the best ever filmed, are immediate and visceral; and the characters are complex and so well-rendered that the viewer grieves when one dies. Like few other historical films, it captures not only the physical look of the time but also its essence. Like Jean Renoir's masterpieces Grand Illusion (1937) and The Rules of the Game (1939), Seven Samurai illustrates the collapse of social distinctions and the growing irrelevance of old traditions in dangerous and chaotic times. Kurosawa questions the division between samurai and bandit, between good and evil. In one scene, peasant-born Kikuchiyo heatedly argues that the samurai have been abusing and exploiting the peasants for centuries. In this framework, the samurais' acts of bravery, selflessness, and honor seem absurd, if not pointless. The peasants' choice of the samurai over the bandits is merely one of a lesser evil. Once the bandits are gone, the samurai will no longer be needed. This is underscored in the film's poignant end, when the surviving three samurai leave the village, receiving neither acclaim nor reward, as the villagers plant rice. American audiences were so impressed with Kurosawa's epic masterpiece that it was remade into John Sturges' Magnificent Seven (1960)." - www.allmovie.com

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Les vacances de Monsieur Hulot (Mr. Hulot's holiday) 1953 - The film that launched Tati's onscreen alter ego

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IMDB Rating: 7,6

Director: Jacques Tati
Main Cast: Jacques Tati, Louis Perrault, André Dubois, Nathalie Pascaud

"Already familiar to many, especially following his acclaimed directorial debut Jour De Fete, Jacques Tati came into his own and reached new levels of popularity with 1953's Les Vacances De Monsieur Hulot. The first film to introduce his much-loved alter ego Monsieur Hulot, it sets the pattern for future appearances of the character, throwing the bumbling hero unwittingly into the middle of the action and letting the ensuing mishaps provoke humor ranging from gentle observations to fairly biting satire. The setting this time is a stuffy resort community fond of the peace and quiet that Hulot interrupts without fail. Nearly dialogue-free and driven more by episode than plot (like all of the Hulot films), standout set pieces include a disrupted funeral, an interrupted game of cards, and - one of Tati's signature bits - a game of tennis played with rules that can politely be called unconventional.
Tati directs, and in a way what that really means is that he composes this movie with a perfect eye and ear for the comic possibilities in everything: composition, lighting, minimal marble-mouth dialogue, certain sounds (a duck call, a door repeatedly opening and shutting). This is a superior work that ranks among all-time classic comedies." - www.allmovie.com

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Madame de... (The earrings of Madame de...) 1953 - A sad, elegant film from the French master

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IMDB Rating: 7,9

Director: Max Ophüls
Main Cast: Danielle Darrieux, Charles Boyer, Vittorio De Sica

"A wonderful companion piece to director Max Ophüls' La Ronde, Madame de... spins a similar tale of serial affairs among the rich and idle. But its darker tone has rightfully earned its status as the filmmaker's great triumph. A minority camp would give the nod to Lola Montès. The pair of earrings which pass from hand to hand come to symbolize deception and greed, pawns in silly games of love. Ophüls connects his characters with a camera (directed by his frequent collaborator Christian Matras) which glides in and out of well-appointed rooms, suggesting that there are no degrees of separation in this world. Few filmmakers could match Ophüls' talent for exposing the need among the wealthy and titled to keep up appearances." - www.allmovie.com

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Ugetsu monogatari 1953 - A subtle blending of realistic period reconstruction and lyrical supernaturalism

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IMDB Rating: 8,1

Director: Kenji Mizoguchi
Main Cast: Masayuki Mori, Machiko Kyo, Kinuyo Tanaka, Mitsuko Mito

"Based on a pair of 18th century ghost stories by Ueda Akinari, the film's release continued Mizoguchi's introduction to the West, where it was nominated for an Oscar and won the the Venice Film Festival's Silver Lion award (for Best Direction). Displaying all of the hallmarks of Kenji Mizoguchi's quietly affecting style, this landmark film has been one of the most highly praised Japanese movies, garnering the admiration of such directors as Jean-Luc Godard and Jacques Rivette. Mizoguchi's fluid camerawork expands this otherworldly tragedy into a profound meditation on the transience of human life. In one of the film's most noted scenes, Genjuro relaxes in a hot spring as his beautiful spirit-lover disrobes. The camera coyly pans away, tilts downwards, and tracks along the ground. The barren ripples of ground dissolve to a Zen rock garden; then the camera tilts up to reveal the couple picnicking at a lakeside park. In this one elegant device, Mizoguchi evokes not only the passage of time but also emptiness and impermanence, as he passes the viewer through an unpeopled space. His signature lyricism frames unfolding human dramas as one small part of life's immutable ebb and flow. A brilliant summation of Mizoguchi's motifs and visual poetry, Ugetsu remains one of the masterpieces of world cinema." - www.allmovie.com

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Tokyo monogatari (Tokyo story) 1953 - The compelling contrast between the older and younger generation

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IMDB Rating: 8,3

Director: Yasujiro Ozu
Main Cast: Chishu Ryu, Chieko Higashiyama, So Yamamura, Setsuko Hara, Haruko Sugimura

"Tokyo Story is widely considered both the best film of Yasujiro Ozu's long career and among the finest films ever made. It paints a quiet, nostalgic view of traditions and values lost in a changing society, seen through the lens of a single family's experiences. Old virtues, such as honoring one's parents, are pushed aside in the unrelenting tumult of the modern city. Tokyo Story showcases Ozu's idiosyncratic style in its maturity. Throughout the film, he shoots through a 50 mm lens at a constant low angle, subordinates spatial continuity to the composition of a given shot, and punctuates the film with shots of empty space. Instead of using flashy cinematic devices, he focuses on the nuances of everyday life, which has the odd effect of lifting the film from mere melodrama to a meditation on the fleeting nature of human existence. Tokyo Story shows a master director at the peak of his talents, producing one of the classics of world cinema." - www.allmovie.com

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Le salaire de la peur (The wages of fear) 1953 - A powerful study of greed and failure

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IMDB Rating: 8,3

Director: Henri-Georges Clouzot
Main Cast: Yves Montand, Charles Vanel, Folco Lulli, Peter van Eyck, Vera Clouzot

"Together with Diabolique, The Wages of Fear (Le Salaire de la Peur) earned Henri-Georges Clouzot the reputation as a 'French Hitchcock'. Le Salaire de la Peur is among the most suspenseful films of the 1950s, notable for slowly building character development and atmosphere before its dramatic climax. The first half of the film slowly, methodically introduces the characters and their motivations. The second half - the drive itself - is a relentless, goosebump-inducing assault on the audience's senses. In its original 148-minute version, the story lags in spots as director Henri-Georges Clouzot indulges some anti-United States propaganda. Not surprisingly, the film was re-edited for release in the U.S., and many critics preferred the faster pacing and more focused narrative. International acclaim came quickly, including the Grand Prix at the Cannes Film Festival. Yves Montand gives one of his best performances, though current-day audiences may find his character's chauvinism and condescension toward women unappealing. The female lead is strikingly played by Véra Clouzot, the director's wife. She had only a brief film career but appeared in two classics, this film and Les Diaboliques, which was also directed by her husband.
The Wages of Fear was remade by William Friedkin as Sorcerer (1977)." - www.allmovie.com

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Umberto D. 1952 - A heartbreaking proclamation of humanity

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IMDB Rating: 8,2

Director: Vittorio De Sica
Main Cast: Carlo Battisti, Maria Pia Casilio, Lina Gennari

"A masterpiece of Italian neorealism, Vittorio De Sica's Umberto D. would also prove to be the last great film from the movement. This poignant story about a poor retiree facing eviction dutifully follows the neorealist template, with its plotless narrative, location shooting, and nonprofessional actors. Not unlike the movement's other exemplars, Umberto D. doesn't entirely sidestep sentimentality. Indeed, any movie about an old man and his faithful - and amazingly well-trained - dog is bound to come across as cute or cloying at certain points. Nonetheless, the purity of expression is undeniable. De Sica captures the vicissitudes of a difficult life with unblinking earnestness and affectless nobility. His moral outrage tempered by his eloquent style, De Sica laces this social tract with a touch of tenderness; it's a graceful movie about callousness and despair. It's a film of unexpected beauties as well. One scene in particular stands out, a seemingly extraneous bit about the landlady's maid rising for the day and doing her early morning chores.
Considered one of the high points of Italian neo-realist cinema, Umberto D. provides the ultimate example of the movement's unadorned, observational style, which emphasizes the reality of events without calling attention to their emotional or dramatic impact. The unschooled, natural performances also contribute to the film's feeling of verisimilitude, particularly the lead performance by non-actor Carlo Battisti.
Neither advancing the movie's plot nor its political agenda, this sublime scene comes closest to approximating the stated neorealist dictum of capturing dailiness unvarnished. Apparently, the dailiness was too much for some: despite winning international praise, De Sica's portrait of an indifferent society was savaged by some politicians for presenting a negative view of Italy to the world." - www.allmovie.com

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Jeux interdits (Forbidden games) 1952 - The horrors of war through the eyes of children

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IMDB Rating: 7,8

Director: René Clement
Main Cast: Georges Poujouly, Brigitte Fossey, Amédée, Laurence Badie

"It should come as no surprise that filmmaker Rene Clement spent five years in search of financing for this unsparing look at the ravages of war on children. It's not that the violence in the film is so intense; even both of the story's young protagonists, Paulette and Michel Dolle, survive without a scratch. But the portrait Forbidden Games paints of its adult characters is unsparingly disdainful; this is not exactly a tribute to the imperishable spirit of the French people during wartime. Paulette and Michel have their own way of dealing with war, by building a cemetery for animals in an abandoned mill. Michel's parents and older siblings and their neighbors, the Grouards, have their way, too, by sniping at each other and jockeying for position among the community as to who is perceived as the most generous - or least selfish. The Dolles' decision to take in Paulette is based in part on their fear that if the Grouards do the same, they'll earn another civilian medal. There is more than one set of forbidden games being played here: The secret that Paulette and Michel share runs parallel to an affair between Michel's teenaged sister, Berthe, and the Grouard's son, Francis, a soldier on leave. But even here, the children come off as more noble than their furtively groping adult counterparts. For a story with the potential to drip with easy sentimentality (generous peasant family takes in adorable war orphan), Forbidden Games offers something more bracing: a clear-eyed view of the innocence of children and the myopia of adults amid the ravages of war. Unsentimental and yet heartbreaking, Forbidden Games demonstrates the strategies of children who witness war to deal with the constant presence of death. It's also a bitter condemnation of the selfishness of adults who could offer their charges more love and protection.
Nothing else in Clement's career matched the achievement of this classic." - www.allmovie.com

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Saikaku ichidai onna (The life of Oharu) 1952 - The film that brought Mizoguchi a belated international fame

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IMDB Rating: 8,1

Director: Kenji Mizoguchi
Main Cast: Kinuyo Tanaka, Tsukie Matsuura, Ichiro Sugai, Toshiro Mifune

"Though maybe not director Kenji Mizoguchi's most perfect film (Ugetsu and Sansho the Bailiff usually garner this title), Life of Oharu is arguably his most important work. When it won the 1952 Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival one year after Akira Kurosawa's Rashomon did the same, Oharu not only solidified the reputation of Japanese cinema but also ended Mizoguchi's decade-long artistic tailspin and freed him from studio constraints, allowing him to create his later masterpieces. Yet the film was almost not completed thanks to cost overruns and Mizoguchi's fanatical perfectionism. Based on a 17th century farcical classic by libertine playwright Sakiku Ibara, both the play and the film details the fall of a woman from imperial courtesan to untouchable. Yet while Sakiku uses Oharu's decline as a means to satirize Japan's rigid feudal culture, Mizoguchi strips away all parodic elements and views her tortured life as noble and sacred. As in his other works, Mizoguchi presents a woman's suffering vividly and sympathetically, framing it in long takes and fluid camera movements in a coolly contemplative style. The result is a film that seems aloof yet packs a remarkably strong emotional punch. Quiet and profound, Life of Oharu is a masterful work by a filmmaker reaching the pinnacle of his creative powers." - www.allmovie.com

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Ikiru (Doomed/To live) 1952 - An intensely lyrical and moving film, one of Kurosawa's own favorites

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IMDB Rating: 8,4

Director: Akira Kurosawa
Main Cast: Takashi Shimura, Shin'ichi Himori, Haruo Tanaka, Minoru Chiaki

"This contemporary drama from Akira Kurosawa, better known for such sweeping samurai epics as The Seven Samurai (1954), is arguably his best film and the most articulate vision of his existential philosophy. The film's protagonist seems to spring directly from the writings of Jean-Paul Sartre or Leo Tolstoy's The Death of Ivan Ilych: a tragic, pathetic figure who has so immersed himself in daily routine that he never learned to live. Only when confronted with his own imminent demise does he give his live meaning by building a playground over an open sewer in an impoverished section of town. The film is structured in a peculiar bifurcated arrangement: it begins as a straightforward plot that, halfway through, shifts into a fragmented narrative recounted in flashbacks by mourners at Watanabe's funeral. In the second half, we witness Watanabe's dogged struggle through the lenses of his baffled co-workers' own unexamined lives. Initially viewing his efforts with suspicion if not contempt, his workers fail to give Watanabe any credit for his single-handed effort to build the park. This section of Ikiru becomes compelling and ironic thanks to Kurosawa's deft depiction of Watanabe's inner state in the first half. Ikiru opens with an X-ray of Watanabe-a literal manifestation of his interior world. The rest of the section, through a tour-de-force of impressionistic and expressionistic cinematic devices, shows Watanabe's slow awakening from his quarter-century stupor to learn what it is to live. Takeshi Shimura delivers a staggering performance as Watanabe; his large pleading eyes and hangdog face burn a haunting image in the viewer's mind long after the film ends. The emotional force of Ikiru leaves the viewer feeling both transformed by Watanabe's evolution and contemplative about one's own life." - www.allmovie.com

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Journal d'un curé de campagne (Diary of a country priest) 1951 - Isolation of the soul

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IMDB rating: 7,8

Director: Robert Bresson
Main Cast: Claude Laydu, Jean Riveyre, Nicole Ladmiral, Adrien Borel, Rachel Berendt

"An austere look at the experiences of a young priest in a small French parish, Robert Bresson's masterly Le Journal d'un curé de campagne (Diary of a Country Priest) presents a powerful, complex exploration of faith underneath a deceptively simple exterior. Drawn from a novel by Georges Bernanos, the film centers on the priest of Ambricourt (Claude Laydu), a withdrawn, devout young man whose social awkwardness leaves him isolated from the community he is meant to serve. Further problems derive from the priest's ill health, which limits him to a diet of bread and wine and hinders his ability to perform his duties. Growing sicker and increasingly uncertain about his purpose in life, the priest undergoes a crisis of faith that threatens to drive him away from his village and from God. Bresson presents his spiritual tale in a minimalist, unadorned style, relying on a rigorous series of stripped-down shots and utilizing non-actors in many of the supporting roles. The approach may initially seem distancing or ponderous to a contemporary audience, but the cumulative impact of the brilliant visuals and Laydu's powerful, restrained performance is unquestionable. Almost universally acclaimed, this searching drama is generally considered one of Bresson's finest works and a crucial classic of world cinema." - www.allmovie.com

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Los olvidados (The young and the damned) 1950 - Gritty realism in the world of juvenile delinquents

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IMDB rating: 8,1

Director: Luis Bunuel
Main Cast: Estela Inda, Miguel Inclan, Alfonso Mejia, Roberto Cobo, Alma Delia Fuentes

"The winner of two Cannes Film Festival awards, Luis Buñuel's Los Olvidados (aka The Forgotten Ones and The Young and the Damned) was the director's first international box-office success. Yet Buñuel showed no signs of curbing the outrageous iconoclasm that made him famous in Europe and South America; one of the more lasting images of the film is the clash-of-cultures shot of a glistening new skyscraper rising above the squalid slums of Mexico City. The story concerns a gang of juvenile delinquents, whose sole redeeming quality is their apparent devotion to one another. Part of the film's perverse fascination is watching Buñuel's street punks cause misery to those less fortunate. The audience immediately identifies with Pedro (Alfonso Mejía), the youngest gang member, who evinces a spark of decency; yet Pedro, like the others, remains a victim of circumstances far beyond his control.Throughout, Buñuel maintains an objective tone; it is our responsibility, not his, to judge the gang members. In Buñuel's universe, mothers turn their backs on their sons and sleep with their friends, blind beggars play sexual games with young girls, wealthy men proposition young boys, and cripples are so venomous that one feels little or no sympathy for them when they're attacked. The film's sole compassionate adult, the warden of a juvenile home, is decent and caring but ineffectual, an easily surmounted obstacle to the corruption of the outside world.
Seasoned with haunting dream sequences, Los Olvidados was the opening volley in what would turn out to be Buñuel's most creative period." - www.allmovie.com

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Rashomon 1950 - A highly influential world-cinema masterpiece

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IMDB rating: 8,4

Director: Akira Kurosawa
Main Cast: Toshiro Mifune, Machiko Kyo, Masayuki Mori, Takashi Shimura

"Rashomon's winning the Golden Lion in the 1951 Venice Film Festival is one of the key events of world cinema. Not only did it establish director Akira Kurosawa as one of the masters of the medium, but it compelled European and American audiences to look seriously at non-Western cinemas. Without Rashomon, the international critical successes of Kenji Mizoguchi, Satyajit Ray, and others are difficult to imagine. The film's structure, which replays the same event though different characters' eyes, layers ambiguity atop ambiguity. The film comes precariously close to nihilism - the denial of all objective truth and the utter senselessness of existence. Yet Kurosawa pulls back from the abyss in the film's final moments. Though most of Rashomon is adapted from two short stories by famously misanthropic Japanese author Ryunosuke Akutagawa, Kurosawa himself penned the final sequence, an elegant summation of his signature humanism. The truth may be inscrutable, even unknowable, Kurosawa argues, but hope and compassion remain. This vision struck a chord in European audiences for whom the horrors of war were still fresh and the existentialist philosophies of Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus were gaining popularity. Kurosawa's dynamic editing and swaggering camerawork seemed vibrant and sophisticated for a national cinema thought at the time to be second-rate, and the film proved influential to several generations of filmmakers. Ingmar Bergman included a sequence in The Virgin Spring (1960) strongly reminiscent of the film's most memorable sequences - the woodcutter's walk through the forest - and Alain Resnais acknowledged Rashomon's influence on the bold plot structure and existential content of his art-house classic Last Year at Marienbad (1961). In both artistic achievement and historical importance, Rashomon remains one of the masterpieces of cinema." - www.allmovie.com

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Nora inu (Stray dog) 1949 - A stunning piece of international film noir

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IMDB rating: 7,8

Director: Akira Kurosawa
Main Cast: Toshiro Mifune, Takashi Shimura, Keiko Awaji, Eiko Miyoshi

"In his third film with Kurosawa, Toshiro Mifune plays young police detective Murakami. One summer day on a crowded bus in Tokyo, his gun is stolen by a pickpocket. Rather than face the shame of reporting his gun missing, he chooses to go out and find it himself (there were not many weapons on the streets of Tokyo immediately following WWII). While trying to locate the gun, he discovers an entire criminal underworld. He is eventually helped on his journey by superior officer Sato (Takashi Shimura), who seems to suggest that the young detective is indulging in his own criminal desires. The search becomes even more desperate when Murakami finds out that his gun has been used in several crimes, including murder. He then develops an obsession with finding both the gun and the killer." - www.allmovie.com

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http://uploaded.net/file/or5xsabo/Str.Dg.1949.BRRip.480p.TBD.part1.rar 
http://uploaded.net/file/fs4tgy9h/Str.Dg.1949.BRRip.480p.TBD.part2.rar 
http://uploaded.net/file/18fm68mp/Str.Dg.1949.BRRip.480p.TBD.part3.rar 
http://uploaded.net/file/arxp7ccm/Str.Dg.1949.BRRip.480p.TBD.part4.rar

Banshun (Late spring) 1949 - Yasujiro Ozu's second postwar production

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IMDB rating: 8,0

Director: Yasujiro Ozu
Main Cast: Chishu Ryu, Setsuko Hara, Yumeji Tsukioka, Haruko Sugimura

"Elegantly shot and quietly powerful, Late Spring is considered one of Yasujiro Ozu's finest films, along with Tokyo Story (1953) and Early Summer (1951). Like those films, Spring stars beautiful, enigmatic Setsuko Hara as Noriko, a woman reluctant to abandon her widowed father for marriage. And like most Ozu films, Spring subtly details the clash between the values of traditional Japan and those of contemporary society. Either Noriko leaves her father and enters the confining yet socially sanctioned world of marriage or she stays with him and enters the alienated labor pool like her thoroughly modernized friend Aya. Yet the film could just as easily be read as a wistful elegy to lost freedom. Though Ozu shoots the film with his trademark idiosyncratic restraint - including wide and low camera angles, mismatched eyelines, and long shots of unpeopled spaces - the camera is remarkably mobile during the first half of the film. Noriko is seen enjoying herself on a bicycle ride with a handsome young man and later exulting on a train trip. As Noriko progresses towards marriage, the camera confines her, echoing her own social entrapment. By the end of the film, Noriko's presence is replaced with a wedding portrait, while her father sits alone in an empty house. Late Spring is a remarkably moving film by one of world cinema's finest masters." - www.allmovie.com

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Naniwa ereji (Osaka elegy) 1936 - One of Mizoguchi's first true masterworks

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IMDB rating: 7,5

Director: Kenji Mizoguchi
Main Cast: Isuzu Yamada, Seiichi Takegawa, Chiyoko Okura, Yoko Umemura

"At a time when heartwarming family dramas were the norm, Osaka Elegy (1936) delivered an unprecedented dose of hard reality to Japanese cinema. Considered Kenji Mizoguchi's finest pre-war work, along with Sisters of the Gion, this drama is a searing critique of social hypocrisy that moves the viewer without stooping to sentimentality. As in much of Mizoguchi's work, women suffer at the hands of men who are portrayed as vain, callous, and weak. Yet there is little room for the sort of wistful transcendence found in such later masterpieces as Life of Oharu (1952). Instead, there is an accusing finger pointed at society. The commentary in this film proved too sharp for some, and in 1940 the Japanese militarist government banned it as too pessimistic. Actress Isuzu Yamada delivers a stunning performance as the perpetually unfortunate Ayako, while Minoru Miki's cinematography deftly captures the glitz and squalor of Tokyo in the 1930s. For Mizoguchi, Osaka marked a significant turning point in his long and illustrious career: it was his first of many collaborations with screenwriter Yoshikata Yoda and his first film to showcase the elegant visual style made famous in such later classics as Ugetsu (1953) and Sansho the Bailiff (1954). Osaka Elegy is a devastating work by a master approaching the pinnacle of his abilities." - www.allmovie.com

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Zangiku monogatari (The story of the last chrysanthemum) 1939 - A powerful look at the depersonalization of women

IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0032156/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1
IMDB rating: 7,8

Director: Kenji Mizoguchi
Main Cast: Shotaro Hanayagi, Kokichi Takada, Gonjuro Kawarazaki, Kakuko Mori

A mid-career masterpiece from the great Mizoguchi, whose focus on the mistreatment of women in Japanese society was filtered through the experience of his sister's prostitution, it's known in Japan as a shinpa tragedy, one concerned with a woman who endures her fate in tears. Here, the forbidden love between a young man from a powerful family of kabuki actors and a low-caste wet nurse forms the basis for one of the director's most moving works. When the talented but undisciplined young actor Shotaro Hanyagi is banished from the family for refusing to abandon the woman, on her advice, they leave their native Tokyo that he might perfect his technique, far from his family's influence. The first film that the director felt was truly his own, it employs the fluid sequence takes and crabbing, or diagonal tracking shots, of which he was one of the medium's masters. Forced to shoot the 40-year-old actor in long shots to make him appear younger for the earlier scenes, the director was so impressed by the detached, meditative quality they afforded, that they would become a mark of his style. - http://www.allmovie.com/movie/story-of-the-late-chrysanthemums-v47122/

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