From Harvard Film Archive:

Lesser known to US audiences than Japanese contemporaries Ozu and Mizoguchi, with whom he is often compared, Naruse Mikio (1905-1969) was an equally prolific, subtle and consummate, yet increasingly restrained stylist whose eighty-nine films—of which sixty-nine survive— spanned from the silent era through the 1960s. Although Naruse worked skillfully across genres in the 1930s, during the post-WW2 period he began to almost exclusively direct work in the broad categories of the “women’s film” and “shomin-geki”, films focused on the daily dramas of contemporary lower-middle-class life, with a frequent emphasis upon directly challenging gender inequality. Naruse’s vast oeuvre is united by his commitment to a realist approach to melodrama focused on the seemingly ordinary lives of complicated characters whose depths are gradually revealed as they navigate the social, economic and psychological tangles of human relationships—the stories masterfully held within a unique, evenly paced, entrancing rhythm. Also guiding Naruse’s cinema is a refusal to sugarcoat or mask the disappointments of life and love in a world indifferent to the cruel vicissitudes of human drama. 

Co-presented by The Japan Foundation, the Harvard Film Archive joins venues across the continent (BAMPFA, Metrograph, TIFF and Vancouver Cinematheques) in paying tribute to one of Japan’s overlooked masters. The HFA’s series will be the most extensive of the North American retrospectives, featuring forty-five film prints (all but one on 35mm) from the Japan Foundation and National Film Archive of Japan, with new prints of key silent films made for the HFA by Shochiku and Imagica. Starting in mid-summer and lasting into November, the HFA series will include a special highlight of Naruse’s six adaptations of feminist author Hayashi Fumiko (Floating Clouds, Repast, Lightning, Wife, Late Chrysanthemums, A Wanderer’s Notebook) as well as some of Naruse’s rarest films, several enjoying New England premieres, including Morning’s Tree-Lined Street, A Woman’s Sorrows, Sincerity, Hit and Run and Stranger Within a Woman. 

Full schedule and tickets available on their website here.

JSB members can get a $3 discount on tickets! Visit the Member Portal for the code.