Heinosuke Gosho

A woman adopts the child of her husbands’ ill mistress and raises her as her own.Read More »

A rarely seen but important 1965 work by Heinosuke Gosho.

Some remarks by Arthur Nolletti, in his book The Cinema of Gosho Heinosuke: Laughter Through Tears:

Gosho’s most critically acclaimed film of the 1960s… Ranked seventh in Kinema Jumpo’s “Best Ten” poll, it is rightly considered to be one of his most powerful works. Set on the Shimokita Peninsula in the northernmost area of Honshu, the film tells a stark and harrowing tale. Oshima Ayako (Yoshimura Jitsuko), a young woman in her teens, lives in a small, impoverished fishing village. Her father, Matsukichi (Yoshida Yoshio), is too ill to work. As a result, her mother, Kikuno (Sugai Kin), sells her to a nearby brothel. There she quickly is stripped of her innocence and illusions…Read More »

Followed by Shindo: kohen Ryota no maki, available here:
The eldest daughter of a noble family is in love with an aviator while being courted by a fellow aristocrat she thinks is a dullard.Read More »

The eldest daughter of a noble family is in love with an aviator while being courted by a fellow aristocrat she thinks is a dullard.Read More »

Plot: Heinosuke Gosho evokes in this film the family conflicts engendered by the eternal problem of a father who projects his professional desires on the life of his son. The sister Machiko is the essential link that will allow everyone to apologize to each other and achieve reconciliationRead More »

Synopsis:
Mr. Mito (Shuji Sano), a Tokyo businessman, is demoted and sent to Osaka. There, he finds lodging in the titular inn, and makes the acquaintance of many of the town’s citizens. Notable among them are the maids at the inn, a hard-drinking geisha, and a mysterious woman Mito encounters at the mailbox. In Japan, director Gosho’s name is synonymous with melancholy and finding laughter through tears; An Inn at Osaka bears up that reputation. The struggle to stay afloat in life, especially financially, is a running theme of the film, as all of the characters struggle with looming poverty and gnawing loneliness, but it all ends with a kind of quiet triumph.Read More »

Five friends make a pact to stick together through school, agreeing to graduate at the same time and to marry at the same time…Read More »

Synopsis
Before the war, Nogami, a doctor who devotes himself to the caring of the poor, meets Akiko during a theatrical representation. She’s a sheltered girl from a wealthy bourgeois family who finds herself drawn to him and his humanitarian ideals.Read More »

Quote:
“Rooted in “salaryman” comedy and family drama, Burden of Life represents a marked advance over Gosho’s previous three shomin comedies. It placed sixth in the 1935 Kinema Jumpo polling, and has been praised by Burch for its seriousness and slice-of-life quality. Concurring with this judgment, John Gillett finds the film “imbued with a naturalistic tone and ‘lived in’ visual texture quite beyond American and European cinema.” David Owens is similarly enthusiastic, adding, “As is typical of the best Japanese directors, Gosho concentrates on developing characters rather than plot. Each of the family members is carefully drawn and each grows before us as an individual, surpassing the sort of character typing that was usual for family melodramas.” These comments effectively sum up the film’s most notable achievement.”Read More »