is a 1963 Japanese

drama film In film and television, drama is a category or genre of narrative fiction (or semi-fiction) intended to be more serious than humorous in tone. Drama of this kind is usually qualified with additional terms that specify its particular super ...

directed by

Susumu Hani is a Japanese film director, and one of the most prominent representatives of the 1960s Japanese New Wave. Born in Tokyo, he has directed both documentaries and feature films. He won the Directors Guild of Japan New Directors Award for his firs ...

. It was entered into the 14th Berlin International Film Festival where

Sachiko Hidari was a Japanese actress and film director. Life Hidari was born in Asahi, Toyama, as the eldest of 8 children. She graduated from Tokyo Women's College of Physical Education and gave her film debut in 1952 in ''Wakaki hi no ayamachi''. Betw ...

won the

Silver Bear for Best Actress The Silver Bear for Best Actress (german: Silberner Bär/Beste Darstellerin) was an award presented at the Berlin International Film Festival from 1956 to 2020. It was given to an actress who has delivered an outstanding performance and was chos ...

award.

Plot

A middle-class woman in Tokyo, Naoko Ishikawa (

) lives with her husband in a shining new apartment building on a hill overlooking a slum. As her husband Eiichi (

Eiji Okada was a Japanese film actor from Chōshi, Chiba. Okada served in the Imperial Japanese Army during World War II and was a miner and traveling salesman before becoming an actor. Internationally, his best-remembered roles include Lui ("him" in Fre ...

) becomes more entangled in his life as businessman, Naoko looks for ways to expand her own life even as her husband's life shrinks in scope and intimacy. She loses her sense of security when she becomes acquainted with poverty in her neighborhood. She finds herself strangely drawn to a rag-picker, Ikona (Kikuji Yamashita) who lives down below in a tin shack with a blind child and a dog, and the sheltering comforts of her middle-class existence inexorably fall away.

Cast

- Naoko Ishikawa *

Kikuji Yamashita was a Japanese Surrealist painter associated with the postwar avant-garde art movement in Japan. His artworks were featured prominently in the 2010 documentary film ''ANPO: Art X War'' by American documentary filmmaker Linda Hoaglund. Early lif ...

- Ikona *

- Eiichi Ishikawa * Akio Hasegawa - Laundry Boy * Yoshimi Hiramatsu - Nakano * Setsuko Horikoshi - Old lady of book store * Takanobu Hozumi - Doctor * Hiromi Ichida - Nurse * Mariko Igarashi - Blind girl * Hiro Kasai - Ghetto guy * Shûji Kawabe - Detective * Toshie Kimura - Sasaki * Masakazu Kuwayama - Laundry owner * Toshio Matsumoto - Laundry man *

Yukio Ninagawa was a Japanese theatre director, actor and film director, particularly known for his Japanese language productions of Shakespeare plays and Greek tragedies. He directed eight distinct renditions of ''Hamlet.'' Ninagawa was also emeritus of the ...

- Balloon guy *

Kazuya Oguri is a masculine Japanese given name. Possible writings Kazuya can be written using different kanji characters and can mean: *一八, "one, eight" *一矢, "one, arrow" *一也, "one, to be" *一夜, "one, night" *和也, "harmony, to be" *和矢, ...

Miyoko Takahashi Miyoko (written: is a feminine Japanese given name. Notable people with the name include: *Miyoko Akaza, Japanese actress *Miyoko Asada, Japanese actress * Miyoko Asahina, retired female long-distance runner *Miyoko Asō, Japanese voice actress * ...

- Ghetto woman

Awards

In 1964,

also won the

at the 14th Berlin International Film Festival for her film ''

The Insect Woman is a 1963 Japanese drama film directed by Shōhei Imamura. It was entered into the 14th Berlin International Film Festival, where Sachiko Hidari won the Silver Bear for Best Actress award. It was also awarded numerous national film prizes. Plo ...

'' directed by Shohei Imamura. The film was nominated for Golden Bear, but won OCIC Award and Youth Film Award for best feature film. In Japan, Hidari won Best Actress at Blue Ribbon Award,

Mainichi Film Award The are a series of annual film awards, sponsored by Mainichi Shinbun (毎日新聞), one of the largest newspaper companies in Japan, since 1946. It is the first film festival in Japan. History The origins of the contest date back to 1935, ...

and

Kinema Junpo Award , commonly called , is Japan's oldest film magazine and began publication in July 1919. It was first published three times a month, using the Japanese ''Jun'' (旬) system of dividing months into three parts, but the postwar ''Kinema Junpō'' ...

References

External links

* 1963 films 1963 drama films Japanese black-and-white films Films directed by Susumu Hani 1960s Japanese-language films 1960s Japanese films Japanese drama films {{1960s-Japan-film-stub