Movies by Mikio Naruse

Moment of Terror

Moment of Terror

When an only child is struck by a car and dies, the child's mother seeks vengeance against the driver in this thrilling drama. The car was driven by the wife of a company president who is having an affair. The woman's husband manages to buy silence about the incident, but the victim's mother discovers the identity of the driver. After she secures a job in the home of the company president and his philandering spouse, the woman plans to murder the couple's son when he reaches the age of her late son.

Little Peach

Little Peach

Anzukko (Little Peach) is the daughter of a successful writer. She turns down each one of her suitors, until she marries a beginning writer named Ryokichi. Their life quickly sinks into despair.

When a Woman Ascends the Stairs

When a Woman Ascends the Stairs

Keiko, whom everyone calls Mama, narrates her story: she's a hostess on the Ginza, 30, a widow. She describes life's vicious cycle: acting cheerful around drunks, dressing and living well to convey confidence, needing money for these expenses and for her demanding mother and brother, and knowing she's growing older.

Learn from Experience, Part One

Learn from Experience, Part One

Part 1 of a 2-part romance based on a story by noted author Kikuchi Kan. The central character here is Toyomi (played by Takako IRIE, star of Mizoguchi’s "Water Magician), a rich young woman in love with Shintaro (Minoru TAKADA), a rich young man. Unfortunately, Shintaro’s father is in the process of arranging a marriage for him with Yurie (Chieko TAKEHISA), the scion of an even wealthier family. In order to avoid this, the two young lovers flee to Tokyo to live together. When Shintaro comes back to proclaim his intent to marry Toyomi, his ...

Three Sisters with Maiden Hearts

Three Sisters with Maiden Hearts

Three sisters earn money for their bossy mother by being samisen street musicians. This means mainly playing a banjo type instrument for tips in bars...

The Thin Line

The Thin Line

Tashiro coincidentally meets his best friend Sugimoto in a bar very close to the apartment in which Sugimoto’s wayward wife is found dead. Although Tashiro is not a suspect in the police investigation, he is racked with guilt and confesses to his wife, Masako. In an effort to further relieve his tortured sense of guilt, he then confesses to Sugimoto. Neither his wife nor his friend can believe that he could have been involved.

Apart from You

Apart from You

An aging geisha, whose angry teenage son is ashamed of her profession, works alongside a young geisha, resentful of her family for forcing her into a life of ignominy.

Husband and Wife

Husband and Wife

A married couple looking for an apartment move in with the husband's co-worker, a widower. The husband becomes jealous of the widower and his wife.

Lightning

Lightning

The story of Kiyoko, a young woman who has successfully managed to make a break with her dysfunctional family who have been trying to arrange a marriage for her with a disagreeable man whom she has rejected.

Hideko the Bus Conductress

Hideko the Bus Conductress

Okoma, a witty young woman working as a conductor in an old, rickety bus in Kōfu, Yamanashi (rural Japan), has a creative idea that could avert the dwindling number of passengers when her job and the bus company itself are at stake.

Street Without End

Street Without End

Mikio Naruse’s final silent film is a gloriously rich portrait of a waitress, Sugiko, whose life, despite a host of male admirers and even some intrigued movie talent scouts, ends up taking a suffocatingly domestic turn after a wealthy businessman accidentally hits her with his car.

Avalanche

Avalanche

The study of a one-year marriage that begins to crumble. A married man is torn between the love of his wife, and the attraction to a cousin of his wife.

Wife! Be Like a Rose!

Wife! Be Like a Rose!

Kimiko, a Tokyo white-collar working girl, lives with her serious, intellectual, haiku-writing mother. Kimiko seeks to marry her boyfriend but needs her absent father to act as the go-between and negotiate the marriage. Kimiko travels and finds her father living with a second family.

The Whole Family Works

The Whole Family Works

Father of nine children cannot find a job. Despite their aspirations, the children are encouraged by both parents to hold down menial jobs and contribute to the family expenses.

The Approach of Autumn

The Approach of Autumn

A single mother from the country raising a 6th grade boy comes to Tokyo, leaves the boy to live with his uncle's family, runs a struggling grocery store, and works a local inn. The boy befriends a girl, the daughter of the innkeeper.

Brother and Sister

Brother and Sister

The eldest daughter of a rural family Mon returns home from Tokyo pregnant after an affair with a college student Kobata, which causes a scandal that will threaten the marriage prospects of the younger sister San, in her cash-strapped family. The ill-tempered eldest brother Inokichi decides to take on the role of disciplinarian, with harrowing results.

The Other Woman

The Other Woman

In "The Other Woman" the children of a distinguished professor find that the woman they have come to regard as their racy and slightly disreputable Ginza aunt is really their mother.

The Wiser Age

The Wiser Age

Drama about the lives of the five daughters and daughter-in-law of a store owner.

A Woman's Life

A Woman's Life

A woman remember's her own marriage when dealing with the love life of her son.

A Whistle in My Heart

A Whistle in My Heart

The story is about the social problems faced by Japan's indigenous Ainu, mostly centered on the reactions of the characters to their oppressed state.