Machiko Kyô

  • 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 »

  • Tadashi Imai – Yoba AKA The Possessed (1976)

    Tadashi Imai1971-1980DramaHorrorJapan
    Yoba (1976)
    Yoba (1976)

    Oshima, a rich girl married Shinzo, and her cousin girl Sawa has been jealous of Oshima deeply. Sawa cursed Oshima so Shinzo could not hold her and do anything at all. Shinzo hated Oshima, and he made love with Sawa.Read More »

  • Kôji Shima – Sasameyuki AKA The Makioka Sisters (1959)

    1951-1960AsianDramaJapanKôji Shima

    This is the second of three major film adaptation of Junichiro Tanizaki’s famous novel from the 1940s, the first one being the 1950 version directed by Yutaka Abe, the latter one being Kon Ichikawa’s The Makioka Sisters from 1983. Shima’s version stars Machiko Kyo, Fujiko Yamamoto, Junko Kano and Yukiko Todoroki in the roles of the sisters. The novel (and the films) follow the lives of the wealthy Makioka family of Osaka from the autumn of 1936 to April 1941, focusing on the family’s attempts to find a husband for the third sister, Yukiko. It depicts the decline of the family’s upper-middle-class, suburban lifestyle as the specter of World War II and Allied Occupation hangs over the novel.Read More »

  • Daisuke Itô – Shunkin monogatari AKA Story of Shunkin (1954)

    1951-1960ClassicsDaisuke ItôDramaJapan

    Based on the novel by Junichiro Tanizaki. Story of the beautiful blind daughter of a wealthy businessman who falls in love with a servant.Read More »

  • Kon Ichikawa – Ana AKA Hole In One (1957)

    1951-1960ComedyDramaJapanKon Ichikawa

    Eccentric film about female reporter fired for writing about police corruption. To make money she hides while a weekly magazine offers a prize for her discovery. A bank embezzler and his underlings take advantage of her disappearance to pin the theft on her, as well as the murder of the weak link in their gang. Meanwhile, the cop she got fired is now a private detective and he gets involved in the investigation. Another example of Ichikawa’s mixing of farcical genre filmmaking with perspicacious visual design. Comic highlights include an intentions of murder scene in which each shot reveals the gap in knowledge between potential perpetrator and victim, and the role of unseen objects in accidentally protecting the latter from the former. Another cynical film that finds in cinema a model for the superficial image society of 1950s Japan.Read More »

  • Akira Kurosawa – Rashômon (1950)

    1941-1950Akira KurosawaClassicsDramaJapan

    Quote:
    This landmark film is a brilliant exploration of truth and human weakness. It opens with a priest, a woodcutter, and a peasant taking refuge from a downpour beneath a ruined gate in 12th-century Japan. The priest and the woodcutter, each looking stricken, discuss the trial of a notorious bandit for rape and murder. As the retelling of the trial unfolds, the participants in the crime — the bandit (Toshiro Mifune), the rape victim (Machiko Kyo), and the murdered man (Masayuki Mori) — tell their plausible though completely incompatible versions of the story.Read More »

  • Hiroshi Shimizu – Odoriko aka Dancing Girl (1957)

    1951-1960AsianDramaHiroshi ShimizuJapan

    In Asakusa, Tokyo, a couple of a violinist Yamano and a revue dancer Hanae lives in poverty. One day Hanae’s little sister rolls into their apartment and begins to stir things up with her riotousness.Read More »

  • Kenji Mizoguchi – Ugetsu monogatari aka Ugetsu [Kadokawa 4K remaster] (1953)

    1951-1960DramaJapanKenji Mizoguchi

    An ambitious potter (Masayuki Mori) and his devoted spouse (Kinuyo Tanaka) as well as a kindred couple (Eitaro Ozawa, Mitsuko Mito) are torn apart by the civil-war chaos of 16th-century Japan. Both men realize their material dreams but at a tragic cost to their respective mates. In particular, Mori’s shallow success is reflected in his delirious romance with a ghostly noblewoman (Machiko Kyo), an affair that will drive him to the brink of madness. One of the most poignant evocations of the illusory nature of worldly desires and missed opportunities and one of the most haunting depictions of the supernatural ever committed to celluloid. Winner of the 1953 Venice Film Festival Silver Lion Award.Read More »

  • Kon Ichikawa – Anata to watashi no aikotoba: Sayônara, konnichiwa AKA Goodbye, Hello (1959)

    Kon Ichikawa1951-1960AsianDramaJapan

    There is little to nothing written in English about this film, and in fact of the entire Cinemateque Ontario Ichikawa Kon tome the only mention of Goodbye, Hello was in the extensive filmography. This was one of the films Ichikawa made for Daiei that he co-wrote with his wife Wado Natto, the pair being one of world cinema’s great husband and wife collaborations. Ichikawa worked with the cinematographer for Goodbye, Hello, Kobayashi Setsuo, on some of his best looking films: Ten Dark Women, Fires on the Plain, and An Actor’s Revenge. Actress Kyo Machiko was certainly a familiar face in Ichikawa’s films, starring in Odd Obsession and The Pit. Judging by cast and crew alone, this looks like prime Ichikawa, and I personally find this period of his filmmaking (late 50s, early 60s) the most interesting.Read More »

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