The first of Kawashima’s Daiei Studio collaborations with Wakao centers on the life of a Tokyo geisha named Koen and her relationships with various men. Starting out with no singing or dancing talents, the young, free-spirited Koen is initially eager to please and happy to do what she is told. With time and experience, however, she gradually begins to notice a change in herself and questions what she wants out of life. Played with subtle shifts in emotion, Wakao’s delicate performance earned her the Kinema Junpo Award and Blue Ribbon Award for Best Actress.
Tag: 1960s
Fast-moving impressions of the Big Sur, the water, the ocean, and the Ladies, as part of the landscape, swimming, or running nude, against the sun or part of the sun.
Based on the novel of the same name by Ferenc Molnár, the film concerns two groups of boys that each claim rights to a vacant lot for their own club’s use. Eventually they decide to settle it like adults: by going to war. They elect generals, hold a summit meeting, agree on the terms of combat… and then they fight.
Lena Horne’s famous song “Now!”, which was banned in the U.S. in the 1960s, was an angry call for struggle against racism. This film uses Horne’s song as the vehicle for a montage of film and photographic images from the U.S. civil rights movement. These images of racial struggle and oppression in the United States convey the heroism and pathos of the black protagonists of the Civil Rights movement, and the brutality of white police and Klansmen and the system they represent. Santiago Alvarez responds to the song’s escalating rhythm by moving between images to evoke the violence with which American society was being torn apart by white supremacy, and the intensity of the African-American struggle to right these injustices.
Jane Fonda rehearses for the stage play Fun Couple, which is her first starring role on Broadway. As the daughter of the famous Henry Fonda, Jane strives to prove her acting chops in live theater; for her, the real measure of success. The film follows Jane through demanding rehearsals, testing the play for live audiences and, finally, opening night in New York. Though her show opens to devastating reviews, Jane’s love of acting, her determination and her resilience shine through the biting criticism. Takes viewers backstage and behind the scences with a surprisingly endearing young actress. Jane captures the earliest stirrings of the star Jane Fonda would become.
A humorous and satirical comedy, which places a man from the year 2222 one day in the (then) present day life in GDR, East Germany under Communist regime. Using a crystal for mind reading he uncovers some improprieties and moral weaknesses in the “Beautiful future” professed by VEB (“Volkseigener Betrieb” – “State Owned Holdings”).
Kazmierz Dziewanowicz’s hobby is very strange. He collects people who was born on the 29 of February. One day he sees that in his colection there are two men with the same name, the same birth place, the same date of birth and the same parents. In the middle of the night somebody kills him. The Intelligence Agency begin an investigation.