1951-1960

  • Mikio Naruse – Meshi AKA Repast (1951)

    1951-1960ArthouseDramaJapanMikio Naruse
    Meshi (1951)
    Meshi (1951)

    In many of his most successful films, Naruse depicted common people, living their lives. With Repast the director set his characters to the task of navigating their way amidst a pungent atmosphere of fading love. Set shortly after World War II, Repast is about 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 tedium of her domestic life – consumed by repetitive tasks such as cooking and cleaning – is brought into focus by a visit from Hatsunosuke’s niece, Satoko (Yukiko Shimazaki). Satoko’s arrival, and the amount of attention Hatsunosuke devotes to her charms, leads to further unhappiness for Michiyo, who is forced to confront her future. In the hands of master director Naruse, this adaptation of an unfinished novel by Fumiko Hayashi offers a fascinating exploration of married life, from the habitual routine of everyday existence to the hope for a better tomorrow that may or may not keep such relationships alive. Eureka VideoRead More »

  • Kenji Mizoguchi – Yôkihi aka The Empress Yang Kwei Fei aka Princess Yang Kwei-fei (1955)

    1951-1960DramaJapanKenji MizoguchiRomance
    Yôkihi (1955)
    Yôkihi (1955)

    Yôkihi is a panoramic period romance about the legendarily beautiful and graceful common-born woman loved by the last T’ang Emperor Xuan Zong. The pure love shared by the royal couple is offset by the political turmoil and corruption of the 8th century, as a dynasty breathes its last dying gasps.Read More »

  • Karel Kachyna – Prace AKA Slingboy (1960)

    Karel Kachyna1951-1960Czech RepublicDramaWar
    Prace (1960)
    Prace (1960)

    A touching story of a Czech boy who is liberated from a concentration camp and then picked up by a Czechoslovak Army laundry unit under Soviet command. He becomes the unit’s mascot, and is given the nickname “prace” or “slingshot bearer” after Czech boys who had fought with slingshots in the Czech Hussite armies of the 15th century. The boy, along with a little Slovak girl whom the unit also rescues up along the way, participate in the liberation of his homeland.Read More »

  • Noboru Nakamura – Natsuko no Boken AKA Natsuko’s Adventure in Hokkaido (1953)

    Noboru Nakamura1951-1960AdventureClassicsJapan
    Natsuko no Boken (1953)
    Natsuko no Boken (1953)

    Quote:
    After World War II, Fuji Photo Film Co. Ltd. developed and launched colour film stocks, with which the first Japanese natural colour features Carmen Comes Home (1951) and Natsuko’s Adventure in Hokkaido were produced by Shochiku; the latter has seldom been presented as its existing print is an incomplete one. Adapted from an early serial fiction by Yukio Mishima, it is a melodrama with women as subjects—a genre Nakamura was best at, with excellent representation of Mishima’s persevering characters. Born to a prestigious family, Natsuko is not impressed by any one of her suitors. Determined to spend her life serving god, she sets off to a convent in Hakodate, Hokkaido and meets along the way a young bear-hunter with whom she begins an adventure. A few scenes are missing in this print, one of which near the end is without a soundtrack; lines in the original script are inserted in these scenes to make up for these defects, which do not discount the film’s status as a valuable film capturing Hakodate in its glorious and vibrant colours.Read More »

  • Michael McCarthy – Operation Amsterdam (1959)

    Michael McCarthy1951-1960ActionUnited KingdomWar
    Operation Amsterdam (1959)
    Operation Amsterdam (1959)

    A British army officer teams with two members of the Dutch underground for a covert mission to Amsterdam to lift a stash of diamonds before the city is overrun by Nazi occupiers in this action-packed wartime heist drama.Read More »

  • Jean Negulesco – The Best of Everything (1959)

    Jean Negulesco1951-1960DramaRomanceUSA
    The Best of Everything (1959)
    The Best of Everything (1959)

    Amanda Farrow is a waspish, hard edged editor in a paperback publishing house. Jaded and embittered, she is involved in a disappointing affair with a married man and tends to take out her frustrations on the girls under her charge, including Gregg Adams, an aspiring actress who is involved with a Broadway stage director, David Savage, and an ambitious young secretary Caroline Bender, who has just been jilted by her boyfriend and has turned to one of the editors, Mike Rice, for consolation. April Morrison is a young typist who is seduced by rich playboy Dexter Key and soon finds herself pregnant and abandoned by her unsympathetic lover.Read More »

  • Kon Ichikawa – Shokei no heya AKA Punishment Room (1956) (HD)

    Kon Ichikawa1951-1960AsianDramaJapan
    Shokei no heya (1956)
    Shokei no heya (1956)

    Katsumi is a university student who has no respect for his hardworking parents, his professors, or even his friends. He helps one friend obtain a loan to finance a dance, by humiliating his father at the bank where he works. He drugs and rapes Akiko, one of the girls in his class. She becomes infatuated with him, even though he remains aloof. He enjoys goading a rival gang in the pool hall. Finally, when facing the gang, he goes too far in trying to prove his courage. Written by Will GilbertRead More »

  • Kon Ichikawa – Nihonbashi AKA Bridge of Japan (1956) (HD)

    Kon Ichikawa1951-1960AsianDramaJapan

    Ichikawa’s 1956 adaptation of Nihonbashi was the first to take the work of Kyoka Izumi— until then regarded as a writer of common tragic melodramas—and re-evaluate it as a sanbi-ha work of decadence, aestheticism, and intrigue. Ichikawa’s film presents the tragic plot of the young geisha who is unable to enact her love for a man publicly in any way other than a histrionic story of torment, a heart-rending tale of lovers being crushed by fate. Instead Ichikawa shows the contest of wills that transpires as two geisha, Oko (Chikage Awashima) and Kiyoha (Fujiko Yamamoto) fight for the top spot in Nihonbashi, the pinnacle ot the Tokyo geisha world. Nihonbashi is an elegant, if steely, exposition of manners. The young doctor, Shinzo Katsuragi (Ryuji Shinagawa), is the object of affection for both women, but appears to be more the choice reward for the plotting and thieving of these two early modern superwomen, than a lover they swoon over.Read More »

  • Richard Brooks – Blackboard Jungle (1955)

    Richard Brooks1951-1960ClassicsDramaUSA
    Blackboard Jungle (1955)
    Blackboard Jungle (1955)

    Synopsis:
    War veteran Rick Dadier is one of three new teachers hired at North Manual High School, an inner city boys school. This is his first teaching assignment, which he needs to support himself and his insecure pregnant wife, Anne. Despite Principle Warnecke’s assertions to the contrary, Dadier quickly learns that the rumors of student discipline problems at the school are indeed true. The established teachers at the school try to counsel the newcomers, all inexperienced in such situations, as how best to handle the rowdy students. Regardless, Dadier tries to exert discipline in his class, which provokes a violent response. Dadier believes the student leaders against him are Artie West, but more specifically Gregory Miller, who he thinks uses the fact of being black as a means of racial provocation. Dadier has to decide either to leave and teach at a “real” school, or stay and figure out how to get through to his students. If he decides to stay, he has to figure out who the real disruptive influences are, especially as they have resorted to attacks of a personal nature that affect especially Anne.Read More »

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