is a 1958 Japanese
period film
A historical drama (also period drama, costume drama, and period piece) is a work set in a past time period, usually used in the context of film and television. Historical drama includes historical fiction and romances, adventure films, and swas ...
directed by
Keisuke Kinoshita
was a Japanese film director and screenwriter. Ronald Berganbr>"A satirical eye on Japan: Keisuke Kinoshita" ''The Guardian'', 5 January 1999. While lesser-known internationally than contemporaries such as Akira Kurosawa, Kenji Mizoguchi an ...
and based on the 1956 novella of the same name by
Shichirō Fukazawa. The film explores the legendary practice of ''
ubasute
is a mythical practice of senicide in Japan, whereby an infirm or elderly relative was carried to a mountain, or some other remote, desolate place, and left there to die. Kunio Yanagita concluded that the ubasute folklore comes from India’s ...
'', in which elderly people were carried to a mountain and abandoned to die.
Cast
*
Kinuyo Tanaka as Orin
*
Teiji Takahashi
was a Japanese film actor. He appeared in more than twenty films from 1950 to 1959. Takahashi died in a traffic accident.
Career
Born in Tokyo, Takahashi graduated from the Japanese Film School (Nihon Eiga Gakkō) and joined the Shochiku
( ...
as Tatsuhei
*
Yūko Mochizuki
was a Japanese film and theatre actress who already had long stage experience, first with light comedies, later with dramatic roles, before making her film debut. Mochizuki often appeared in the films of Keisuke Kinoshita, but also worked for pro ...
as Tamayan
*
Danko Ichikawa as Kesakichi
*
Keiko Ogasawara as Matsu-yan
*
Seiji Miyaguchi
was a Japanese actor who appeared in films of Akira Kurosawa, Yasujirō Ozu, Mikio Naruse, Tadashi Imai and many others. He succumbed to lung cancer at the age of 71.
Distinctions
One of Kurosawa's iconic '' Seven Samurai'', Miyaguchi won the ...
as Matayan
*
Yūnosuke Itō
was a Japanese film actor. He appeared in more than ninety films from 1947 to 1979.
Career
Itō made his film debut at Toho in 1946, and although mostly a prominent supporting actor—playing memorable figures such as the novelist in Akira Ku ...
as Matayan's son
*
Ken Mitsuda as Teruyan
Reception
The film featured in competition at the
19th Venice International Film Festival and divided critics between those who thought it a masterpiece and those who thought it poor.
The film won three
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, ...
s, including
Best Film
This is a list of categories of awards commonly awarded through organizations that bestow film awards, including those presented by various film, festivals, and people's awards.
Best Actor/Best Actress
*See Best Actor#Film awards, Best Actress#F ...
; it was
submitted as the Japanese entry for the
Best Foreign Language Film
This is a list of categories of awards commonly awarded through organizations that bestow film awards, including those presented by various film, festivals, and people's awards.
Best Actor/Best Actress
*See Best Actor#Film awards, Best Actress#F ...
at the
31st Academy Awards
The 31st Academy Awards ceremony was held on April 6, 1959, to honor the best films of 1958. The show's producer, Jerry Wald, started cutting numbers from the show to make sure it ran on time. He cut too much material and the ceremony ended 20 ...
, but was not chosen as one of the five nominees.
In a June 1961 review in ''
The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
'', A.H. Weiler called the film "an odd and colorful evocation of Japan's past that is only occasionally striking"; "It is stylized and occasionally graphic fare in the manner of the
Kabuki
is a classical form of Japanese dance- drama. Kabuki theatre is known for its heavily-stylised performances, the often-glamorous costumes worn by performers, and for the elaborate make-up worn by some of its performers.
Kabuki is thought ...
Theatre, which is realistically staged, but decidedly strange to Western tastes."
Roger Ebert
Roger Joseph Ebert (; June 18, 1942 – April 4, 2013) was an American film critic, film historian, journalist, screenwriter, and author. He was a film critic for the ''Chicago Sun-Times'' from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, Ebert beca ...
of the ''
Chicago Sun-Times
The ''Chicago Sun-Times'' is a daily newspaper published in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Since 2022, it is the flagship paper of Chicago Public Media, and has the second largest circulation among Chicago newspapers, after the '' Chicago ...
'' rated the film a maximum 4 stars, and added it to his Great Movies list in 2013, making it the final film he added to the list before his death.
Restoration
During the
2012 Cannes Film Festival
The 65th Cannes Film Festival was held from 16 to 27 May 2012. Italian film director Nanni Moretti was the President of the Jury for the main competition and British actor Tim Roth was the President of the Jury for the Un Certain Regard sectio ...
,
a digitally restored version of the film was screened out of competition, as part of the festival's Cannes Classics selections.
In a 2013 review of
The Criterion Collection
The Criterion Collection, Inc. (or simply Criterion) is an American home video, home-video distribution company that focuses on licensing, restoring and distributing "important classic and contemporary films." Criterion serves film and media scho ...
release of the Blu-ray Disc version of the restored film,
Slant Magazine
''Slant Magazine'' is an American online publication that features reviews of movies, music, TV, DVDs, theater, and video games, as well as interviews with actors, directors, and musicians. The site covers various film festivals like the New Yo ...
's Jordan Cronk said Kinoshita, a "less celebrated" practitioner in the ''
jidaigeki
is a genre of film, television, video game, and theatre in Japan. Literally meaning "period dramas", they are most often set during the Edo period of Japanese history, from 1603 to 1868. Some, however, are set much earlier—'' Portrait of H ...
'' genre,
"takes one of Japan's most chronicled cultural tools, Kabuki theater, as a stylistic blueprint to interpret both a work of literary renown and a legend of ancestral import. And yet for all its solemn reverence (both spiritually and socially), it's one of the era's most radical experiments. Shot exclusively on soundstages
A sound stage (also written soundstage) is a soundproof, large structure, building, or room with large doors and high ceilings, used for the production of theatrical film-making and television productions, usually located on a secured movie or ...
, save for one brief final scene, the film consolidates two distinct mediums, theater and cinema, into an analysis of both aesthetic functionality and affinity. By not masking his chosen conceptual conceit (and indeed, by heightening it), Kinoshita is free to explore the formulations and possibilities of both modes of presentation.
Cronk concludes "Kinoshita respects the source material and conventions of the culture he's depicting so much, ...that the film plays more like a cinematic
elegy
An elegy is a poem of serious reflection, and in English literature usually a lament for the dead. However, according to ''The Oxford Handbook of the Elegy'', "for all of its pervasiveness ... the 'elegy' remains remarkably ill defined: sometime ...
than cosmetic theater. When the film cuts in its final scene to actual location footage, it isn't jarring so much as relieving, a chance to exhale after an exhausting journey."
See also
*
''The Ballad of Narayama'' (1983 film).
References
External links
*
*
*
*
''The Ballad of Narayama: Abandonment''an essay by Philip Kemp at the
Criterion Collection
The Criterion Collection, Inc. (or simply Criterion) is an American home-video distribution company that focuses on licensing, restoring and distributing "important classic and contemporary films." Criterion serves film and media scholars, cine ...
{{DEFAULTSORT:Ballad of Narayama, The
Films directed by Keisuke Kinoshita
Jidaigeki films
Shochiku films
1950s Japanese-language films
Best Film Kinema Junpo Award winners
1958 films
1958 drama films
Films with screenplays by Keisuke Kinoshita
1950s Japanese films