Mikio Naruse Collection Details

[Highly rated reviewer]

An outstanding collection

Excellent work by James Quandt at the Canadian Film Institute means that Mikio Naruse can now take his place alongside the other Japanese masters with whom we are familiar in the west. This collection of his films is actually even better than those being offered by Eureka, with the film usually considered his masterpiece, 'Floating clouds' (a woman struggles to exist in post-war Japan), a superb late soap, 'When a woman ascends the stairs' (a bar-manager wonders what she's going to do as she gets too old to continue with the work); and a characteristically austere mid-period drama, 'Late chrysanthemums' (a quartet of ex-geishas struggle without the regular income their work provided them).

Naruse is most similar to Ozu in style, although he lacks that master's impish sense of humour, although his concentration on women's place in society is bound also to remind us of Mizoguchi, although he lacks that master's absolute fluency. Most of his dramas (certainly these three) are concerned with contemporary issues, and are played out without recourse to melodrama or artificial effects. Meditations on a very recognizable world, they are whole-heartedly recommended to anyone prepared to share in their slow, careful rhythms.