Teiji Takahashi

This haunting, kabuki-inflected version of a Japanese folk legend is set in a remote mountain village where food is scarce and tradition dictates that citizens who have reached their seventieth year must be carried to the summit of Mount Narayama and left there to die. The sacrificial elder at the center of the tale is Orin (Kinuyo Tanaka), a dignified and dutiful woman who spends her dwindling days securing the happiness of her loyal widowed son with a respectable new wife. Filmed almost entirely on cunningly designed studio sets, in brilliant color and widescreen, The Ballad of Narayama is a stylish and vividly formal work from Japan’s cinematic golden age, directed by the dynamic Keisuke Kinoshita.

A young salary man and his wife struggle within the confines of their passionless relationship while he has an extramarital affair.

A woman leaves her abusive husband and moves in with her father, who is also sheltering another daughter, pregnant from a dead-end affair.

Despite dispensing advice in a calm manner to strangers, a businessman clashes with his elder daughter over her choice of a husband.