Setsuko Hara (Japanese: 原節子; born Masae Aida on June 17 1920 in Yokohama, Kanagawa prefecture) is a famous Japanese actress who appeared in many of Yasujiro Ozu's films. She also starred in pictures by Akira Kurosawa, Mikio Naruse and other prominent directors. She is called "the Eternal Virgin" in Japan and is a symbol of Japanese film's golden era of the 1950s. She suddenly quit acting in 1962, and has since led a secluded life in Kamakura, refusing all interviews and refusing to be photographed (making Japanese-cinema scholar Donald Richie refer to Hara as the "Greta Garbo of Japan"). Her final role was Riku, wife of Oishi Yoshio, in a film of Chūshingura. She later became the inspiration for the protagonist of the 2001 movie Millennium Actress. [1]
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Created by dipity on Feb 7, 2008
Last updated: 11/18/09 at 01:19 PM
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Tokyo Story (東京物語,Tokyo monogatari?) is a 1953 Japanese movie by Yasujiro Ozu. It tells the story of a mother and father who travel to the bustling metropolis of Tokyo to visit their children, but find they are too absorbed in their own lives to spend any time with their parents.
Two elderly parents from the small seaside town of Onomichi in southwest Japan pay a visit to their busy children in Tokyo — a journey which, before the introduction of the bullet train, took almost a day — only to find themselves being neglected by them. The children genuinely wish to spend time with their parents, and do to an extent, but as they have lives and families of their own they find it difficult to maintain a balance between the two. Only the couple's widowed daughter-in-law, played by Setsuko Hara, goes out of her way to entertain them.
Like most of Ozu's films, Tokyo Story is not melodramatic or structured around Hollywood plot points; its pacing is slow (or, as David Bordwell...
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0046438
The Idiot(白痴,Hakuchi?) is a 1951 Japanese film by director Akira Kurosawa. It is based on a Fyodor Dostoevsky novel of the same name. Hakuchi was shot in black and white at an aspect ratio of 1.37:1. It was Kurosawa's second film for the Shochiku studio, after the previous year's Scandal. Originally intended to be a two-part film with a running time of 265 minutes, Hakuchi was severely cut by the studio, against Kurosawa's wishes, after a single poorly-received screening of the full-length version. The director's cut has never been released, and thus the theatrical release is a 166 minute cut omitting 100 minutes. According to renowned Japanese film scholar Donald Richie, there are no existing prints of the original 265 minute version. Kurosawa would return to Shochiku forty years later to make Rhapsody in August, and, according to Alex Cox, is said to have searched the Shochiku archives for the original cut of Hakuchi, to no avail.Speaking about the film and about Dostoevsky,...
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0043614
Early Summer (麦秋,Bakushū?) is a 1951 film by Yasujiro Ozu. Noriko lives contentedly in an extended family household that includes her parents and her brother's family, but an uncle's visit prompts the family to find her a husband. Like most Ozu films, Early Summer deals with many issues ranging from communication problems between generations and the rising role of women in post-war Japan. The youngest generation is shown as spoiled brats, the middle generation is shown as one that either embraces or rejects change, and the oldest generation is shown as one that regrets change but realizes that it must happen. Stars Setsuko Hara.
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http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0043313
Repast(めし,Meshi?) is a 1951 film by Mikio Naruse, starring Setsuko Hara. It is set in postwar Osaka and it is about a woman who has moved from Tokyo (her father is a well-known professor) to settle down with her husband. Dissatisfied with his efforts to improve their household life, she returns to Tokyo for a time....,
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0043801
Late Spring (Japanese: 晩春, Banshun) is a 1949 Japanese film by Yasujiro Ozu. Many consider this extremely chaste film between a father and his marriageable daughter his finest achievement.
The story concerns Noriko, who lives happily with her widowed father and seems in no hurry to get married. Her father, a professor, however, wants to see her settled and conspires with his sister to trick Noriko into pursuing an arranged marriage. The film stars Setsuko Hara, in her first of many collaboration with Ozu.
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http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0041154
No Regrets for Our Youth (わが青春に悔なし,Waga seishun ni kuinashi?, aka No Regrets for My Youth) is a Japanese film written and directed by Akira Kurosawa in 1946. It is based on the Takigawa incident of 1933.
The film stars Setsuko Hara, Susumu Fujita, and Denjirō Ōkōchi. Fujita's character was inspired by the real-life Hotsumi Ozaki, who assisted the famous Soviet spy Richard Sorge and so became the only Japanese citizen to suffer the death penalty for treason during World War Two.
The film is in black-and-white and runs 110 minutes.
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http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0039090
Setsuko Hara was born
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