Floating Clouds -- The Naruse Retrospective

The Harvard Film Archive is screening a major retrospective of the director, Mikio Naruse, who is considered one of Japan’s great film artists, up there with Ozu and Kurosawa, if not as well-known. I’m looking forward to exploring some films in this series.

The first one is this Sunday, and is widely considered one of Naruse’s greatest masterpieces: Floating Clouds.

“A devastating adaptation of Hayashi Fumiko's final novel, Floating Clouds match-cuts between softened memories and brutal reality, past and present, sun-kissed images of French Indochina and a post-war Japan cloaked in shadows. Ignominy has overtaken Tokyo, where two former workers for the Imperial Forestry Ministry—Kengo, a married officer (Mori Masayuki) and Yukiko, a typist (Takamine Hideko)—reignite their wartime affair in a doomed attempt to revivify a past distorted by the ripe promise of endless imperial capital. Arguably Naruse's most famous and acclaimed film and perhaps his most formally ambitious, Floating Clouds was described in Ozu Yasujiro's diary as a "real masterpiece." – Kelley Dong on the Harvard Film Archive website.

Directed by Naruse Mikio.
With Takamine Hideko, Mori Masayuki, Okada Mariko.
Japan, 1955, 35mm, black & white, 123 min.
Japanese with English subtitles.

It is possible this will sell out, so you might consider ordering your ticket in advance.

After the film, we’ll meet upstairs on the ground floor by the entrance and then head out for a bite and conversation.