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Repast.Mikio Naruse was radical in his dedication to the mundane. Whether employing the devices of melodrama or abandoning plot almost entirely, he maintained a lucid, unsparing focus on the everyday routines and pressures, compromises and disappointments that quietly erode his characters, the way drops of water wear down a stone. Naruse made films about women’s bruising emotional lives, but above all about women’s work: the thankless domestic chores of wives, the constrained roles of geisha and bar hostesses, and the various labors of maids, shopkeepers, bus conductors, office workers, farmers, and even artists.Naruse’s genre was shoshimin eiga, “common-people dramas” about the pinched and precarious world of the lower-middle classes. His characters tend to live in cramped houses with scuffed tatami mats and battered shoji screens. Among the pleasures of films such as Mother and Lightning (both 1952) are the weathered texture and raffish shitamachi atmosphere of working-class neighborhoods with their narrow,...

It is difficult to make a story about a failing marriage humorous. Yet, director Mikio Naruse made this possible, balancing bleakness and humor in his comedy-drama “Sudden Rain.” The film adapts a play by Kunio Kishida, with a screenplay by Yoko Mizuki, who previously collaborated with Naruse on features such as “Sound of the Mountain” and “Floating Clouds.”

The Whole Family is screening at Metrograph as part of the Mikio Naruse: The World Betrays Us program

Within a house located in a Tokyo suburb lives an unhappy childless married couple. Fumiko, a burdened housewife, frequently spends her days at home, while her indifferent husband, Ryotaro, works as a salaryman and returns home primarily concerned about dinner while managing his stomach issues. Their marriage is marked by frequent arguments, often sparked by trivial annoyances. However, the couple’s quarrels eventually escalate into clear animosity. Several outsiders, including the wife’s niece...

‘Morning’s Tree-Lined Street’ starts with Chiyo, a 22-year-old country girl, coming to Tokyo in search of a better future. As she arrives in the city, the big buildings, clean roads, and well-dressed, good-looking people seem to welcome her at first. A triumphant music plays in the background, and it seems the great Japanese dream of making it big in life is just around the corner. But soon the illusion shatters as Chiyo sees the other side.

Morning’s Tree-Lined Street is screening at Metrograph as part of the Mikio Naruse: The World Betrays Us program

At first, she encounters a homeless man on the street, and when she arrives at the address of her old friend Hisako, she realizes that it is not so easy to make it big in this big city. Hisako, who came to Tokyo much like Chiyo, is now working as a hostess in a shady bar under an alias,...

Between 1926 and the late 1930s, Japan slowly transitioned from silent films to talkies. With this gradual shift, filmmakers were evolving their craft to usher in a new era of cinema. One such director, Mikio Naruse, was already making a name for himself with works like “Apart from You” and “Every-Night Dreams.” Yet, he was eager for artistic growth, likely amplified by his dissatisfied working relationship with Shochiku, leading to his departure. After moving to P.C.L (Photo Chemical Laboratories), later evolved into Toho, Naruse thrived and went on to direct his wonderful film “Wife! Be Like a Rose!.”

Wife! Be Like a Rose! is screening at Metrograph as part of the Mikio Naruse: The World Betrays Us program

Released in 1935 and based on Minoru Nakano’s shinpa play “Two Wives,” “Wife! Be Like a Rose!” was one of the earliest Japanese films to receive a theatrical release in the United States,...

Japan Society and Metrograph have teamed up to co-present “Mikio Naruse: The World Betrays Us,” a rare 30-film retrospective devoted to the “fourth great” master of Japanese cinema. Co-organized with the Japan Foundation, New York, the two-part series, running May 9 to June 29, will offer the first major New York survey of the landmark filmmaker’s work in 20 years, presented in commemoration of the 120th anniversary of his birth and screened entirely on rare prints imported from collections and archives in Japan. Notable series highlights include all six of Naruse’s adaptations of celebrated feminist author Fumiko Hayashi’s work (Floating Clouds, Repast, Lightning, Wife, Late Chrysanthemums, A Wanderer’s Notebook), as well as some of Naruse’s rarest films, including the New York premieres of three pre-war gems unscreened in previous retrospectives: Morning’s Tree-Lined Street, A Woman’s Sorrows, and Sincerity.

With an oeuvre spanning nearly four decades and...