Flag in the Mist / Kiri no hata (1965)

Flag in the Mist is an engrossing example of a kind of movie we rarely associate with Japanese cinema. Like so many Japanese films, it starts as one thing and then shifts into something else entirely, but in this case, the shift is hard to describe in any detail without some significant spoilers, so I …

Chikamatsu’s Love in Osaka / Their Own World / Naniwa no koi no monogatari (1959)

Chubei has been adopted into a family to learn the business and eventually marry the daughter. Dragged by a friend/customer to the pleasure quarter, he is trapped reluctantly into spending his first night with a woman, the popular and lovely courtesan Umegawa. They fall in love, and when a rich man tries to buy Umegawa, …

Zero Focus / Zero no shoten (1961)

One week after her marriage, a young wife sees her new husband off on the train, supposedly to wrap up business at a branch office of his ad agency before moving permanently to Tokyo. He never returns and she sets out to find him. Before she's done, she uncovers a web of secrets and murder …