Naruse: Three Films By Mikio Naruse - Volume 1 Box Set (Masters Of Cinema)

Presented here in a lavish box set, along with an accompanying book, the Masters Of Cinema series presents three of Mikio Naruse's finest films

Repast (1951) depicts the lives of common people, in this instance to capture the pungent atmosphere of fading love. Set shortly after World War II, and concerning a struggling marriage between salaryman Hatsunosuke (Ken Uehara) and his wife Michiyo (Setsuko Hara), it focuses on the emotional crisis of the bored housewife. The repetitive tedium of her domestic life is brought into focus by a visit from Hatsunosuke's niece, Satoko (Yukiko Shimazaki ) on whom Hatsunosuke lavishes much attention.

Adapted from a novel by Kawabata Yasunari, the first Japanese author to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, Sound Of The Mountain (1954) is one of Naruse's best-known and most respected films, typifying his preferred genre of shomin-geki (films about the daily lives of ordinary people). Set in the ancient seaside town of Kamakura, Kawabata's home, the film depicts the increasingly close relationship between a childless young woman, Kikuko (Setsuko Hara), and her father-in-law, Shingo (So Yamamura), to whom she turns as her own marriage, to the neglectful and philandering Shuichi (Ken Uehara), disintegrates. The more Shuichi destroys his marriage, the closer Shingo and Kikuko become.

The third film, Flowing, directed in 1956 (the year that prostitution was outlawed in Japan), explores the inner workings of a changing world, as traditional geishas faced the impending decline of their hidden way of life and the looming spectre of prostitution. It depicts the story of a widow, Rika (Kinuyo Tanaka), who is forced to work for a living and becomes a maid in a struggling Tokyo geisha house, where Tsutayakko (Isuzu Yamada ), its proud mistress, tries to save the house from becoming either a restaurant or a brothel. It is through Rika, a surrogate for the viewer, that we are introduced to the various geishas, who drink and fight, worry over the lack of clients, and attempt to stave off imminent extinction.