The Film Society of Lincoln Center Presents
A Special Retrospective of The 43rd New York Film Festival
The Beauty of the Everyday: Japan's Shochiku Company at 110 September 24 October 20, 2005
This project is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts, which believes that a great nation deserves great art.
This year's New York Film Festival Retrospective The Beauty of the Everyday: Japan's Shochiku Company at 110 is virtually a pocket history of Japanese cinema. While some fifteen of the forty-five films in the retrospective are devoted to Japanese filmmaker masters, such as Ozu, Naruse, and Mizoguchi, more than two dozen of the films are by directors far less well-known in the West.
The Castle of Sand / Suna no Utsuwa Yoshitaro Nomura, 1974; 140m Two detectives, Imanishi and Yoshimura, are assigned to the murder of a 60-year-old man whose body was found dumped in a railroad yard. It turns to be that of a former policeman, Miki; the murder now seems even more mysterious, as Miki was well liked by all and had been on holiday when he was killed. The detectives visit all the places to which Miki has traveled, with little luck, but then they read an account buried in a lengthy report of how Miki years before had befriended a destitute, leprous man and his young son. Amazingly, that boy had grown up to become Eiryo Waga, a rising star in the music world. Could such an eminent figure have anything to do with the murder? Sadly, Yoshitaro Nomura passed away this past April; for years one of Shochiku's most popular and reliable directors, he worked successfully in a variety of genres but especially made his mark with The Castle of Sand, based on a best-selling novel. A real delight, the film contains many of the classic features of the detective film the pairing of a veteran and a rookie, the investigation as a voyage of discovery, wonderfully eccentric supporting characters but under Nomura's sure direction they take on a whole new life.
ONLY ONE Screening: Sun Sept 25: 9:00pm
