Twenty-Four Eyes on DVD

Stephen Simpson from Croydon, England [Highly rated reviewer] , 13/03/2006

“Twenty-Four Eyes” is about the relationship between a group of students and their teacher, at various points in their lives and with major historical events, such as World War II, always in the background. It is similar to all those inspirational teacher films, but filtered through a distinctly Japanese sensibility. The pace is deliberate (the running time is two-and-a-half hours), the plot is sometimes sentimental, and the stunning locations are superbly photographed. The young, mostly non-professional cast also deserve special mention for their unaffected performances. I understand that “Twenty-Four Eyes” is held in great affection in Japan and was surprised to learn that it beat “Seven Samurai” to some major awards in 1954, including the Golden Globe for best foreign film and the prestigious Kinema Junpo award in Japan.

  6 out of 6 people found this review helpful

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jonathangrahamprice from London , 06/04/2006

A gentle study of the effects of the latter half of the 20th Century on a school teacher and her pupils in a small fishing community, Keisuke Kinoshita's "Twenty-Four Eyes" is smothered by a sentimentality that belies its inherent charm.

Protracted scenes of children singing and children crying and children waving threaten to overwhelm the rare moments of genuine pathos and compromise the film's delicate profundity relegating, this release to an audience of only the hardest-core japanese cinephile.

  3 out of 4 people found this review helpful

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A customer from UK , 23/06/2008

This is one of those films everyone wants to watch but most have not got round to doing it in Japan.

The film is so old that I (who is Japanese) needed to use English subtitles from time to time to understand the storyline fully. When I was watching the film, I felt like I was watching a foreign film as it is so different from modern Japan. It starts with a portrait of a good old peaceful country side in west Japan, but the dark shadow of the war creeps in...

It is a long film, and unless you are in the right mood you won't enjoy it. Set aside a rainy afternoon when you just want to curl up on a sofa with a nice drink to warm your hands to watch this one.

The main actress, Hideko Takamine, plays the heroin from her early 20s into late 40s. Imagine, this film was shot in 1954 - Takamine who was 30 years old at that time played 40-something without any help from special effects whatsoever. In one of her books, she recalls that she tried to express the age by mere her facial expressions and her posture.

Takamine is still very well and now mainly writes columns on travels, her life after retirement and cooking (her self-written biography won an equivalent of Booker Prize). She is happily married with a famous director who she met when she was filming Twenty-Four Eyes. And she is still in touch with the people who played the kids!

  1 out of 1 person found this review helpful

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Savage from London, England [Highly rated reviewer] , 27/10/2006

I had been eager to see this film for years, knowing a little of its enormous reputation in its Japanese homeland, and although there are some (perhaps inevitable) disappointments, it's clearly a remarkable achievement.

The opening half-hour borders on the whimsical, as a thoroughly modern miss arrives to teach at the island junior school around which much of the plot takes place. And the final half hour is just about unwatchable as everyone collapses in tears at the slightest provocation: if you don't laugh heartily in response, then you have a heart of stone.

In between, though, the film is immense, condensing Japan's inter-war years into the experiences of the first class taught by the new arrival (brilliantly played by Hideko Takamine). Without ever explicitly taking sides, the director indicts the entire political class, effortlessly demonstrating the loss of a whole generation to mindless militarism and callous sexism.

For more than an hour at its heart, you will know exactly why this film is so revered in Japan.

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