User reviews

How do you improve a masterpiece? (You can't.)

Yasunari Kawabata, Nobel Prize winner in literature, creates an elegant, almost dream-like quality in the short novel, Snow Country. It reads quickly, but must be savored slowly to appreciate the nuances of denied love, and wasted beauty. The film's director, while faithful to most of the dialog, must feel the need to flesh out certain scenes, and to delete some scenes. The result may be a more understandable movie, but does not impart the same emotional depth as in the novel.

Black and white photography enhances the starkness of snow country, and the film gives an insight into 1930's Japanese social structure. 8 stars out of 10.

The winter snow scenery is spectacular! Keiko Kishi who plays the geisha is quite beautiful and does a splendid job acting in a difficult role. The film takes place in the 1930's at a mountain spa. It is well known that the geishas who work at spas are are more likely to be prostitutes than are the geishas who work in Kyoto. In this story sex causes complications which are less likely to occur if the relationship of the geisha was just as a singer and dancer.

Ryo Ikebe who plays the male lead is married and is the strong silent type. Needless to say the poor geisha hasn't got a chance of winning him.