"Actor: Setsuko Hara"

• Tokyo Story (Blu-ray) | Blu Ray | (15/06/2020) from £14.99   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  The poet of family life Derek Malcolm A constant fixture in critic's polls, Yasujiro Ozu's most enduring masterpiece, Tokyo Story, is a beautifully nuanced exploration of filial duty, expectation and regret. From the simple tale of an elderly husband and wife's visit to Tokyo to see their grownup children, Ozu draws a compelling contrast between the measured dignity of age and the hurried insensitivity of a younger generation. The BFI is proud to release a brand new 4K restoration of this classic film, for audiences old and new to discover. Special Features: New 4K restoration Extras TBC ***FIRST PRESSING ONLY*** Fully illustrated booklet including an essay by Professor Joan Mellen and a biography of Yasujiro Ozu by Tony Rayns

• Late Spring | Blu Ray | (21/06/2010) from £14.99   |  Saving you £5.00 (33.36%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Tokyo Story director Yasujiro Ozu's hugely influential and award-winning masterpiece Late Spring is a tender meditation on family politics sacrifice and the status quo. Noriko (Setsuko Hara) and her father Professor Somiya (Chishu Ryu) live together in perfect harmony but old certainties are put at risk when an interfering aunt raises the question of marriage. Introducing Ozu's popular Noriko character Late Spring poignantly examines the gradual compromise between modernity and tradition and is now available for the first time on Blu-ray from the BFI.

• Tokyo Story (DVD) | DVD | (12/09/2016) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

• Tokyo Story (Blu-ray + DVD) | Blu Ray | (19/07/2010) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  The film that made Ozu's reputation in the west (it was also a big hit in Japan) is plotted a little more schematically than most of his masterpieces but is nonetheless one of his most emotionally piercing films.

• THE COMPLETE (EXISTING) FILMS OF SADAO YAMANAKA (Masters of Cinema) (DVD) | DVD | (20/05/2013) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £24.99

  The brief but prodigious career of Japanese director Sadao Yamanaka resulted in a catalogue of work characterised by an elegant and unforced visual style, fluid editing, and a beautiful attention to naturalistic performances. Although he made 22 films over a six-year period (before dying of dysentery in a Japanese Imperial Army outpost in Manchuria at the age of 28), only three of them survive, collected here for the first time in the West. Tange Sazen: The Million Ry Pot is a gloriously comic adventure yarn as the titular one-eyed, one-armed swordsman becomes embroiled in the hunt for a missing pot that points the way to hidden treasure. In Kchiyama Sshun, a subversively humanistic adaptation of a classic kabuki play, a small but invaluable knife stolen from a samurai leads to a chain of an increasingly complex and troublesome set of circumstances. His last film, Humanity and Paper Balloons, is an unsparing ensemble drama set among the lowest rungs of Japanese society in the 18th century. The Masters of Cinema Series is delighted to present these treasures of world cinema in a long-awaited two-disc DVD set, including rarely-seen fragments of two other lost Yamanaka films. Special Features: New digital transfer of all three films New English subtitle translations Rare fragments of other lost Yamanaka films A lengthy booklet, including Yamanaka's will, excerpts from his diaries, essays by Tony Rayns, Shinji Aoyama, Kimitoshi Sat, and more.

• Late Autumn | Blu Ray | (23/05/2011) from £8.99   |  Saving you £11.00 (122.36%)   |  RRP £19.99

  When nostalgia about college days inspires a group of middle-aged men businessmen to match-make for a widow played by Setsuko Hara (Tokyo Story) and her daughter they have no idea of the strife their careless interference will cause. Late Autumn's examination of familial upheaval moves effortlessly from comedy to pathos and is amongst Ozu's finest post-war films. Included here is Ozu's moving silent drama A Mother Should be Loved (1934). Young Sadao struggles to come to terms with the discovery that he is not the son of his father's widow. His fragile acceptance of this is soon disrupted.

• Ozu - The Melodrama Collection (2 DVD set) | DVD | (18/06/2012) from £16.99   |  Saving you £13.00 (76.52%)   |  RRP £29.99

  The BFI presents three films by Japanese master director Yasujiro Ozu. Melodrama is not a word usually associated with Ozu's quietly poetic oeuvre but his post-war Early Spring (1956) and Tokyo Twilight (1957) combine darker elements with his idiosyncratic style to create powerful dramas. Also available for the first time on DVD in the UK is Ozu's rare silent Woman of Tokyo (1933), a tragic tale of misunderstood sacrifice. Extra features: Newly commissioned score for Woman of Tokyo by Ed Hughes Comprehensive booklet with newly commissioned essays and extensive film credits

• Early Summer | Blu Ray | (19/07/2010) from £8.99   |  Saving you £11.00 (122.36%)   |  RRP £19.99

  When family friends and colleagues pressure Noriko - played with enigmatic brilliance by Setsuko Hara (Tokyo Story Late Spring) - to marry they provoke a surprising decision with wide-reaching consequences. Available for the first time on Blu-ray Yasujiro Ozu's Early Summer is wonderfully poised ensemble work which presents the intricacies and contradictions of three generations who have lived through the end of an era and are looking towards the new.

• Twenty-Four Eyes | DVD | (20/02/2006) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Keisuke Kinoshita's Twenty-Four Eyes - which beat Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai as Kinema Junpo's Best Film of 1954 and won the Golden Globe for Best Foreign Film in 1955 - is one of Japan's most beloved films. In 1999 it was picked by Japanese critics as one of the ten best Japanese films of all time. Both a huge commercial and critical success this deeply affecting anti-war film has according to the critic Sato Tadao ""wrung more tears out of Japanese audiences than

• Ozu - The Noriko Trilogy (Late Spring / Early Summer / Tokyo Story) | DVD | (06/12/2004) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £39.99

  A collection of classic movies from lauded Japanese director Yasujiro Ozu. Regarded by many as the world's finest director and renowned for his formalist style Yasujiro Ozu made his first film in 1927 and went on to direct 55 films before his death in 1963. It was only during his final years however that his genius as a film-maker was recognized in the West alongside such contemporaries as Buuel Bergman and fellow countryman Akira Kurosawa. This box set features three works b

• The Idiot | DVD | (14/11/2005) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Akira Kurosawa's The Idiot is his only adaptation of a Fyodor Dostoevsky novel and was a cherished project on which it is claimed he expended more effort than on any other film. A darkly ambitious exploration of the depths of human emotion it combines the talents of two of the greatest Japanese actors of their generation - Toshiro Mifune and Setsuko Hara. The Idiot is perhaps the most comprehensive of all of Kurosawa's works a tone which is heightened b

• The End Of Summer | DVD | (26/01/2004) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  This penultimate film by Japanese master director Yasujiro Ozu examines the difficulties faced by the Kohayagawa family as they struggle to adapt their traditional values to a rapidly changing post-war Japan. As the family's generations-old sake making business begins to fail in the face of increasingly fierce competition Manbei the incorrigible elderly patriarch rekindles an affair with an old flame much to the disapproval of his daughter Fumiko. He is further distracted by his a

• The Japanese Masters Collection | DVD | (09/10/2006) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £39.99

  Floating Weeds (Dir. Yasujiro Ozu 1959): Floating Weeds is one of the final films directed by the legendary Japanese filmmaker Yasujiro Ozu. A remake of one of his own silent features it tells the story of a travelling Kabuki acting troupe led by Komajuro who arrive in a small coastal town. There Komajuro is reunited with his former lover Oyoshi and their illegitimate son who is unaware that the itinerant actor is his father. But the reunion provokes the jealousy of Sumiko Komanjuro's current mistress who plots a devastating revenge. Beautifully composed and surperbly played 'Floating Weeds' is one of Ozu's most affecting poignant and powerful films. The End Of Summer (Dir. Yasujiro Ozu 1961): This penultimate film by Japanese master director Yasujiro Ozu examines the difficulties faced by the Kohayagawa family as they struggle to adapt their traditional values to a rapidly changing post-war Japan. As the family's generations-old sake making business begins to fail in the face of increasingly fierce competition Manbei the incorrigible elderly patriarch rekindles an affair with an old flame much to the disapproval of his daughter Fumiko. He is further distracted by his attempts to marry off his other two daughters: Akiko the eldest and a widow with a small son and Noriko the youngest who is still single. A sublime bittersweet elegy for a vanishing world The End of Summer is beautifully shot in muted colour elegantly acted and masterfully directed by one of the 20th Century's greatest filmmakers. The Lady of Musashino (Dir. Kenji Mizoguchi 1951): Mizoguchi's dissection of the Japanese reaction to the aftermath of war as a fastidiously moral woman faces upheaval with the changing times brought about by the new post-Imperial period... The Life of Oharu (Dir. Kenji Mizoguchi 1952): In feudal Japan the daughter of a samurai Oharu falls in love with a man below her station. Expelled from the castle in Kyoto her family tries to regain respectability but Oharu is forced into a new life as a concubine and then a fallen woman ever hoping to preserve some semblance of purity in a corrupt world...

• Ozu - Tokyo Twilight / Equinox Flower / Good Morning | DVD | (24/04/2006) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £39.99

  A collection of classic movies from lauded Japanese director Yasujiro Ozu. Regarded by many as the world's finest director and renowned for his formalist style Yasujiro Ozu made his first film in 1927 and went on to direct 55 films before his death in 1963. It was only during his final years however that his genius as a film-maker was recognized in the West alongside such contemporaries as Buuel Bergman and fellow countryman Akira Kurosawa. This box set features three works

• Mikio Naruse - Three Films | DVD | (04/12/2006) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £49.99

  Presented here in a lavish box set along with an accompanying book the Masters Of Cinema series presents three of Mikio Naruse's finest films Repast (1951) depicts the lives of common people in this instance to capture the pungent atmosphere of fading love. Set shortly after World War II and concerning a struggling marriage between salaryman Hatsunosuke (Ken Uehara) and his wife Michiyo (Setsuko Hara) it focuses on the emotional crisis of the bored housewife. The repetitive tedium of her domestic life is brought into focus by a visit from Hatsunosuke's niece Satoko (Yukiko Shimazaki ) on whom Hatsunosuke lavishes much attention. Adapted from a novel by Kawabata Yasunari the first Japanese author to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature Sound Of The Mountain (1954) is one of Naruse's best-known and most respected films typifying his preferred genre of shomin-geki (films about the daily lives of ordinary people). Set in the ancient seaside town of Kamakura Kawabata's home the film depicts the increasingly close relationship between a childless young woman Kikuko (Setsuko Hara) and her father-in-law Shingo (So Yamamura) to whom she turns as her own marriage to the neglectful and philandering Shuichi (Ken Uehara) disintegrates. The more Shuichi destroys his marriage the closer Shingo and Kikuko become. The third film Flowing directed in 1956 (the year that prostitution was outlawed in Japan) explores the inner workings of a changing world as traditional geishas faced the impending decline of their hidden way of life and the looming spectre of prostitution. It depicts the story of a widow Rika (Kinuyo Tanaka) who is forced to work for a living and becomes a maid in a struggling Tokyo geisha house where Tsutayakko (Isuzu Yamada ) its proud mistress tries to save the house from becoming either a restaurant or a brothel. It is through Rika a surrogate for the viewer that we are introduced to the various geishas who drink and fight worry over the lack of clients and attempt to stave off imminent extinction.

• Ozu - Vol 4 | DVD | (29/01/2007) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £29.99

  Late Autumn (aka: Akibiyori): Ayako Miwa (Yoko Tsukasa) gives up thoughts of marriage in order to care for her widowed mother Akiko (Setsuko Hara). However Akiko wishes her daughter to marry even though she will be left alone into old age and when the well-meaning relatives of her deceased husband step into the fray suitors are simultaneously sought for both generations of the Miwa family! An Autumn Afternoon (aka: Sanma No Aji): Widower Shuhei Hirayama (Chishu Ryu) gradually comes to realize that his 24 year-old daughter should not be obliged to look after him for the rest of his life and so prepares to arrange a marriage for her.

• Tokyo Story | DVD | (25/08/2008) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  The film that made Ozu's reputation in the west (it was also a big hit in Japan) is plotted a little more schematically than most of his masterpieces but is nonetheless one of his most emotionally piercing films.