Wife Be Like a Rose
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Wife Be Like a Rose
1935. Japan. Directed by Mikio Naruse. With Sachiko Chiba, Sadao Maruyama, Yuriko Hanabusa, Tomoko Ito. "Hailed by Japanese critics, who voted it to the top spot in the annual Kinema Junpo critics’ poll, this is the most famous of Naruse’s prewar films, and the earliest to find exposure in the West, having been screened in New York as early as 1937. Four decades later it was hailed by Noel Burch as 'Naruse’s single masterpiece,' and it is certainly among the finest and most complex of the director’s films. Having been denied the opportunity to make sound films at Shochiku by hostile studio boss, Shiro Kido, Naruse migrated to P.C.L. Wife Be Like a Rose decisively demonstrates his stylistic and tonal originality, although his subject is a familiar one for the period: the clash between tradition and modernity, and between the countryside and the city. These themes are movingly mediated through the interpersonal drama: an intricate triangular romance and through the relationship of a young woman to all three participants, her mother, father and her father’s new lover." In Japanese; English subtitles. 74 min.