Japan Society and Metrograph to Host 30-film Mikio Naruse Retrospective

Japan Society and Metrograph will co-present Mikio Naruse: The World Betrays Us, a 30-film retrospective devoted to Naruse, the “fourth great” master of Japanese cinema, from May 9 through June 29.

Co-organized with The Japan Foundation, New York, the two-part series will offer the first major New York survey of this signal studio-era filmmaker’s work in 20 years, presented in commemoration of the 120th anniversary of his birth and entirely on rare prints imported from collections and archives in Japan.

Notable series highlights include all six of Naruse’s adaptations of celebrated feminist author Fumiko Hayashi’s work (Floating Clouds, Repast, Lightning, Wife, Late Chrysanthemums, A Wanderer’s Notebook), as well as some of Naruse’s rarest films, including the New York premieres of three pre-war gems not presented in previous retrospectives: Morning’s Tree-Lined Street, A Woman’s Sorrows, and Sincerity.

Opening on May 9th with Naruse’s undisputed masterpiece Floating Clouds, Japan Society will present the second John and Miyoko Davey Classic Film Series Mikio Naruse: The World Betrays Us - Part I through Sunday, May 31st, which culminates with his devastating late work Yearning (1964). In addition, Naruse scholar Catherine Russell, author of The Cinema of Naruse Mikio: Women and Japanese Modernity will present a lecture at Japan Society on the 31st. Part II opens at Metrograph on Thursday, June 5th with Naruse’s best known film When a Woman Ascends the Stairs (1960) and closes on Sunday, June 29 with his swan song Scattered Clouds (1967).