 | OKASAN (The Mother)
FEBRUARY 21, 2003 (Friday) at 7:30 p.m.
(Japan, 1952, 98 minutes, b&w, 35mm) |
A masterpiece of postwar Japanese cinema, OKASAN is the story of a poor, working class mother with a sick husband who sacrifices herself to support her family in suburban Tokyo. The film defines "Shomin Geki," a Japanese film genre that features realistic depiction of the economic underclass, told with elements of light comedy and melodrama. OKASAN is the best-known work of director Mikio Naruse, hailed by Japanese film historians as an equal of Kurosawa, Ozu and Mizoguchi, but underappreciated in the West.