2005 NEW YORK FILM FESTIVAL SIDEBAR - Special Retrospective

The Film Society of Lincoln Center Presents

A Special Retrospective of The 43rd New York Film Festival

The Beauty of the Everyday:
Japan’s Shochiku Company at 110
September 24 – October 20, 2005

This project is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts,
which believes that a great nation deserves great art.

This year’s New York Film Festival Retrospective— The Beauty of the Everyday: Japan’s Shochiku Company at 110— is virtually a pocket history of Japanese cinema. While some fifteen of the forty-five films in the retrospective are devoted to Japanese filmmaker masters, such as Ozu, Naruse, and Mizoguchi, more than two dozen of the films are by directors far less well-known in the West.

Ornamental Hairpin / Kanzashi
Hiroshi Shimizu, 1941; 70m
Based on a short story by Masuji Ibuse, Ornamental Hairpin is powerful evidence that Shimizu at his best belongs in the very top tier of Japanese directors; this exquisite gem of a film charts the emotional interplay of its characters with such subtlety and grace that it’s hard to imagine it was made during WWII. A motley assortment of guests is spending the summer at a hot springs: they include a taciturn scholar, an older gentleman accompanied by his grandchildren, a newlywed couple, and a soldier recovering from an injury. All seems pleasant and uneventful enough until one day the soldier cuts his foot in the bath after stepping on a woman’s hairpin. Suddenly everyone at the inn becomes animated with news of the accident, and soon the owner of the hairpin, Emi, comes all the way from Tokyo to reclaim her treacherous property and apologize. Yet it soon becomes clear that she’s in no hurry to get back home. Kinuyo Tanaka is Emi, and Chishu Ryu, the omnipresent father figure in Ozu’s films, is the soldier.

Screenings:
Sun Sept 25: 4:15pm
Thurs Sept 29: 4:30pm