Where Ichikawa skewered patriarchal family values in Her Brother, in this savage satire he hoists the matriarchal system on its own apron strings. Raizo Ichikawa (“in his best role yet”-Variety) is the scion of an Osaka merchant family whose traditional power is matrilineal. Instructed by his overbearing mother and grandmother to give them an heiress for the family business, he stands by helplessly as wife after wife is thrown out of the house for producing sons. Driven to a life of dissipation-his mistresses also fail to produce daughters-in the end he is just too tired to care. Ichikawa’s frighteningly funny picture of the matriarchy’s efforts to perpetuate itself was received as antifeminist, if not downright misogynistic, but Joan Mellon suggests that the target once again is “the institution of the family [which] places its own survival ahead of the needs and feelings of individuals.” If this looks forward to The Makioka Sisters, so does Donald Richie’s comment, “We find this cruel matriarchal story…told in terms of the most transcendental beauty.”

1.27GB | 1h 47mn | 704×288 | avi

https://nitro.download/view/E76BB74DDB99919/Bonchi.avi

Language(s):Japanese
Subtitles:None

The post Kon Ichikawa – Bonchi (1960) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Slant Magazine wrote:
At first, Yearning appears to be a typically late-Narusian offering, a low-key and observational drama that obsessively details Reiko’s day-to-day routines. In addition to keeping her small business afloat, Reiko must deal with her meddling in-laws, who have their minds set on selling the grocery store, and also attend to Koji, who inexplicably indulges in a rebellious cycle of petty crime and violence. One of Naruse’s great talents is in making the mundane mysterious so when Koji declares, seemingly out of nowhere, that he’s been in love with Reiko for years, it takes more than a few moments to acclimate to the film’s suddenly malleable emotional terrain, even though, in retrospect, it makes perfect psychological sense. It’s a shock to witness how charged and raw the duo become after Koji’s admission, and Naruse’s camera, under the guiding eye of cinematographer Jun Yasumoto, never blinks, maintaining a harsh, voyeuristic presence as the characters move, like increasingly frenzied celestial bodies, through a space made unfamiliar because of a naked confessional moment.

Jonathan Rosenbaum wrote:
The film clarifies why Akira Kurosawa, Kenji Mizoguchi, and Yasujiro Ozu are all better known than Naruse: his turf is the lower middle class, and his chronically unfulfilled characters are typically unexceptional. Yet one can’t predict what any of them will do from one moment to the next, and despite the seeming simplicity of this tragic story, its psychological complexity is bottomless. No less remarkable are the abrupt, unsentimental editing and the remarkable mise en scene (in black-and-white ‘Scope), which shows the characters’ increasing entrapment even as it moves from claustrophobic interiors to scenic wide-open spaces.

Midareru.AKA.Yearning.1964.576p.Bluray.AAC.x264-BEVS.mkv

General
Container:  	Matroska
Runtime: 	1h 38mn
Size: 	1.90 GiB
Video
Codec: 	x264
Resolution: 	1024x422 
Aspect ratio:  	2.40:1
Frame rate: 	23.976 fps
Bit rate: 	2 631 Kbps
BPP: 	0.254
Audio
#1:  	Japanese 1.0ch AAC @ 132 Kbps

https://nitro.download/view/94E50F931C721D4/Midareru.AKA.Yearning.1964.576p.Bluray.AAC.x264-BEVS.mkv

Language(s):Japanese
Subtitles:English

The post Mikio Naruse – Midareru AKA Yearning (1964) first appeared on Cinema of the World.