Woman in the Dunes
One of the sixties' great international art-house sensations, WOMAN IN THE DUNES was for many the grand unveiling of the surreal, idiosyncratic worldview of Hiroshi Teshigahara.
Eiji Okada plays an amateur entomologist who has left Tokyo to study an unclassified species of beetle that resides in a remote, vast desert; when he misses his bus back to civilization, he is persuaded to spend the night in the home of a young widow (Kyoko Kishida) who lives in a hut at the bottom of a sand dune. What results is one of cinema's most bristling, unnerving, and palpably erotic battles of the sexes, as well as a nightmarish depiction of everyday Sisyphean struggle, for which Teshigahara received an Academy Award nomination for best director.
Winner of the Jury Prize at the 1964 Cannes Film Festival.
Running Time
148 mins
Year
1964
Kanopy ID
1113335
Filmmakers
Features
Languages
Subjects
Show More
Related videos
Late Spring
One of the most powerful of Yasujiro Ozu's family portraits, LATE SPRING (Banshun) tells the story of a widowed father who feels compelled to marry off his beloved only daughter. Eminent Ozu players Chishu Ryu and Setsuko Hara command this poignant tale of love and loss in postwar Japan, which…
Ikiru
Considered by some to be Akira Kurosawa's greatest achievement, IKIRU presents the director at his most compassionate--affirming life through an exploration of a man's death.
Takashi Shimura portrays Kanji Watanabe, an aging bureaucrat with stomach cancer forced to strip the veneer off his existence and find meaning in his final…
An Autumn Afternoon
Yasujiro Ozu's final film was also his final masterpiece, the gently heartbreaking story of a man's dignified resignation to both life's ever-shifting currents and society's gradual modernization.
Though widower Shuhei Hirayama (Ozu's frequent leading man Chishu Ryu) has been living comfortably for years with his grown daughter, a series of…
Pale Flower
In this cool, seductive jewel of the Japanese New Wave, a yakuza, fresh out of prison, becomes entangled with a beautiful and enigmatic gambling addict; what at first seems a redemptive relationship ends up leading him further down the criminal path.
Bewitchingly shot and edited, and laced with a fever-dream-like…
Tokyo Story
A profoundly stirring evocation of elemental humanity and universal heartbreak, TOKYO STORY is the crowning achievement of the unparalleled Yasujiro Ozu.
The film, which follows an aging couple's journey to visit their grown children in bustling postwar Tokyo, surveys the rich and complex world of family life with the director's…
Branded to Kill
When Japanese New Wave bad boy Seijun Suzuki delivered this brutal, hilarious, and visually inspired masterpiece to the executives at his studio, he was promptly fired.
BRANDED TO KILL tells the ecstatically bent story of a yakuza assassin with a fetish for sniffing steamed rice (the chipmunk-cheeked superstar Joe Shishido)…
Harakiri
Following the collapse of his clan, an unemployed samurai (Tatsuya Nakadai) arrives at the manor of Lord Iyi, begging to be allowed to commit ritual suicide on the property. Iyi's clansmen, believing the desperate ronin is merely angling for a new position, try to force his hand and get him…
When A Woman Ascends the Stairs
What might be Japanese filmmaker Mikio Naruse's finest hour--a delicate, devastating study of a woman, Keiko (played heartbreakingly by Hideko Takamine), who works as a bar hostess in Tokyo's very modern postwar Ginza district, who entertains businessmen after work. Sly, resourceful, but trapped, Keiko comes to embody the conflicts and…
The Insect Woman
Born in a rural farming village in 1918, Tome survives decades of Japanese social upheaval, as well as abuse and servitude at the hands of various men. Yet Shohei Imamura, ever the cinematic "entomologist," refuses to make a victim of her, instead observing Tome (played by the extraordinary Sachiko Hidari)…
Tokyo Drifter
In this jazzy gangster film, reformed killer Tetsu's attempt to go straight is thwarted when his former cohorts call him back to Tokyo to help battle a rival gang.
Director Seijun Suzuki's onslaught of stylized violence and trippy colors is equal parts Russ Meyer, Samuel Fuller, and Nagisa Oshima--an anything-goes,…
Equinox Flower
Later in his career, Ozu started becoming increasingly sympathetic with the younger generation, a shift that was cemented in EQUINOX FLOWER, his gorgeously detailed first color film, about an old-fashioned father and his newfangled daughter.
The Human Condition: Parts 5 & 6
Masaki Kobayashi's mammoth humanist drama is one of the most staggering achievements of Japanese cinema.
Originally filmed and released in three parts, the nine-and-a-half-hour THE HUMAN CONDITION (Ningen no joken), adapted from Junpei Gomikawa's six-volume novel, tells of the journey of the well-intentioned yet naive Kaji (handsome Japanese superstar Tatsuya…
Comments (2)
WOW.
No mention of Kobo Abe?