Tetsuro Tamba portrays Kotaro Takamura, one of Japan’s most celebrated artists. A poet and sculptor, Takamura is married to Chieko, who has artistic aspirations of her own. She gradually comes to realize that her husband has all the talent in the family; as she sinks deeper into depression, Takamura tries to comfort her by writing several poems in her honor. She descends into insanity, while Takamura manifests his despair into some of his greatest artistic achievements.
Director: Noboru Nakamura. AKA Portrait of Chieko / 智恵子抄
Writers: Joe Hirose (screenplay), Noboru Nakamura (screenplay), Haruo Satô (novel), Kotaro Takamura (poem).
Stars: Tetsurô Tanba, Shima Iwashita, Takamaru Sasaki, Kinuko Obata, Jin Nakayama, Yoshi Katô, Taketoshi Naitô, Nobuo Kaneko, Ayako Hôshô, Eiji Okada, Yôko Minamida, Nobuko Tashiro, Tetsuo Ishidate, Mikijirô Hira, Hiroshi Akutagawa, Kakuko Motoyama, Minori Terada, Kaori Shima.
Cinematographer: Hiroshi Takemura.
Composer: Masaru Satô.
1968 Academy Awards – Nominated for an Oscar for Best Foreign Film.
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Many thanks to SalineLibations @KG for the beautiful rip and to kagetsuhisoka & bLoodZ also from KG for the excellent English subtitles. It’s been a long time coming with this one looking for a copy for several years with not a lot of hope of ever finding it until I heard it aired on Japanese TV, finally a recording was located last year and then the subtitling work began, I wanted to help a bit with this to try to make this process faster and easier for the translators but due to different reasons I couldn’t help so I had to leave others take care of it. As always the amazing KG fansubbers were able to take care of it and they have now delivered the goods so here it is finally, the last Oscar nominated film that was missing on the internet with English subtitles it’s finally available for everyone to watch and enjoy, feels surreal. Thanks again to everyone involved who contributed in making this happen ❤️
Wow. This has been so long on my wish list and I watched it as soon as I could.
Utterly brilliant in every respect.
A big contribution to film history, here.
Many thanks for making this available. I’ve written a review and included a link to your site at https://martindowsing.blogspot.com/2023/11/portrait-of-chieko-chieko-sho-1967.html
I only just discovered this film and TWIN SISTERS OF KYOTO (KOTO). They’re masterpieces! Both were nominated for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar in their respective years, so why have they been neglected so long? And why is their director, Noboru Nakamura so obscure in this country? Nakamura’s right up there with Ozu and Naruse. Shima Iwashita is right up there with Setsuko Hara and Hideko Takamine. Nakamura is mentioned only in passing in one of Donald Richie’s books on Japanese film but not either of these films. In my library of other books on Japanese film, only one devotes space to Nakamura and these films: “A Critical Handbook of Japanese Film Directors,” by Alexander Jacoby. Why isn’t Criterion devoting attention to this director? Why did Shochiku make subtitled prints for the Academy and then do nothing with them afterwards? Nakamura’s work was conspicuously absent from the Japanese film festivals I used to attend regularly in New York 40 and 50 years ago. These would have been major discoveries.