Completed - JAPANESE - Social issues, Historical, Drama - 123 minutes
Nakamura Kinnosuke showcased his acting brilliance in multiple roles as the successive heads of a family through seven generations from a samurai in the warring states periods to an office worker in the present day. The film was selected by the 13th Berlin IFF and won the Award of the Golden Bear.
Year of production : 1963 Director(s) : Tadashi IMAI Writer(s) : Norio NANJYO, Naoyuki SUZUKI, Yoshitaka YODA Cast : Kinnosuke NAKAMURA, Oka SATOMI, Kyoko KISHIDA, Misako WATANABE, Yoshiko MITA, Kei SATO, Choichiro KAWARASAKI, Seichiro SAWAMURA, Kei YAMAMOTO, Masao ODA, Yoshi KATO
The attempted suicide of his fiancée prompts a Japanese salary-man to read his family chronicles and look back at the life of his ancestors. They were samurai, the military nobility caste who carried out acts of violence at the behest of feudal lords, but suffered even more so under their cruelty, often forced into ritual suicide (seppuku). The women were under constant threat of kidnapping and rape, and the men subjected to arbitrary disfigurement and homosexual slavery … In a radical departure from the usual romanticisation of the samurai, director Tadashi Imai – using period sets and sometimes graphic images – made a film fundamentally critical of medieval Japan’s feudal system and the inhumane samurai code called bushido. In addition, the final two of the eight episodes in the film draw parallels between that and kamikaze pilots of World War II, as well as Japan’s modern achievement-oriented society. Bushido zankoku monogatari was awarded the Golden Bear at the 1963 Berlin International Film Festival. World premiere of the digitally restored version.
Country(ies) : JAPAN
Berlinale 2020 (Classics/Golden Bear)