A Fond Face from the Past

A Fond Face from the Past

1941 · 34 min · ★ 6.0 · Drama

A Fond Face from the Past is also set in a rural community, specifically a village outside Kameoka, near Kyoto. In some ways this short, thirty-six-minute film is Naruse's most moving negotiation of the militarist restrictions of the time, perhaps because it is also his most direct engagement with the culture of war. When a newsreel comes to Kameoka featuring a local man named Yoichi, it causes some excitement in the community and, of course, in Yoichi's own family. First of all his mother makes the newsreel (Nippon News, no. 14), which begins with the same marching music that opens his own film, followed by a curious baby judging context in Los Angeles featuring two hundred Japanese babies. Released in January 1941, almost a year before the pacific war begins, this “found footage” is indicative of Japanese imperialist ambitions beyond Asia long before Pearl Harbor.

Directed by Mikio Naruse · Written by Mikio Naruse

Your Rating

Where to Watch

Rent or Buy

Cast

Make it a double feature

1h 33m together

A Fond Face from the Past

Avalanche

Both from Mikio Naruse.

More from Mikio NaruseSee all →

Yearning

Yearning · 1964

MovieDramaRomance

War widow Reiko rebuilds and runs the grocery shop in the house of her husband's family. Many years later, their business is threatened by a newly built supermarket and Reiko's in-laws plan to convert their small shop into a supermarket, to her detriment.

When a Woman Ascends the Stairs

When a Woman Ascends the Stairs · 1960

When a Woman Ascends the Stairs

Keiko, whom everyone calls Mama, narrates her story: she's a hostess on the Ginza, 30, a widow. She describes life's vicious cycle: acting cheerful around drunks, dressing and living well to convey confidence, needing money for these expenses and for her demanding mother and brother, and knowing she's growing older.

Two in the Shadow

Two in the Shadow · 1967

Two in the Shadow

MovieRomanceDrama

A man is involved in a fatal car accident, and though he is blameless, his company transfers him to a remote branch in a small town. Before he leaves, he gives the man's widow a large sum of money that she uses to move back to her hometown.

Floating Clouds

Floating Clouds · 1955

Floating Clouds

MovieDramaRomance

A married Japanese forester during WWII is sent to Indochina to manage forests. He meets a young Japanese typist and promises to leave his wife. He doesn't and after the war, she turns up and the affair resumes.

Repast

In post-WWII Osaka, a middle-aged woman is forced to examine her dreary life and marriage when her husband's young and flirtatious cousin arrives for a brief stay to escape an arranged marriage.

Untamed Woman

Untamed Woman · 1957

A woman marries, gives birth to a stillborn child, and divorces, falls in love with a hotel-keeper, only to find herself subordinated to his drive for success, takes up with a tailor who cannot console himself with her strong personality.

Every-Night Dreams

Every-Night Dreams · 1933

Every-Night Dreams

In Depression-era Tokyo, the life of a single mother and her young son are disrupted by the return of her ex-husband, who fathered the child and walked out on her years earlier.

A Wanderer's Notebook

A Wanderer's Notebook · 1962

A Wanderer's Notebook

Based on the life and career of novelist Fumiko Hayashi, she bitterly struggles for literary recognition in the first half of the 20th-century – her affairs with feckless men, the jobs she took to survive (peddler, waitress, bar maid), and her arduous, often humiliating attempts to get published in a male-dominated culture.

The Wiser Age

The Wiser Age · 1962

Drama about the lives of the five daughters and daughter-in-law of a store owner.

A Woman's Life

A Woman's Life · 1963

A woman remembers her own marriage when dealing with the love life of her son.

Mother

A teenaged girl witnesses her widowed mother's attempt to sustain her family.

Apart from You

Apart from You · 1933

An aging geisha, whose angry teenage son is ashamed of her profession, works alongside a young geisha, resentful of her family for forcing her into a life of shame.

Avalanche

Avalanche · 1937

The study of a one-year marriage that begins to crumble. A married man is torn between the love of his wife, and the attraction to a cousin of his wife.

Spring Awakens

Spring Awakens · 1947

Slice of life film centered on a couple of years in the life of a rural high school girl.

Sudden Rain

Sudden Rain · 1956

Fumiko and Ryōtarō Namiki's marriage has gone stale, with both constantly arguing over what to do on a day off, or about her cutting out recipes from the newspaper before he finishes reading it. Their animosities are witnessed by Fumiko's niece Ayako, who visits to complain about her own husband's inattentiveness, and their new neighbours, the Imasatos.

The Angry Street

The Angry Street · 1950

The Angry Street

MovieCrimeDrama

University students Sudo and Mori make money by picking up rich girls in dance clubs and conning them into giving them cash. Mori is the brains of the operation, and Sudo is the suave dancer who picks up the girls. Sudo becomes gradually involved with three different girls and is drawn into the gangster milieu, which he seems unable to resist even though he is responsible for his mother, grandmother, and sister Masako. In this world of bad boys and girls, Masako is the pillar of strength and moral virtue who finally enables Mori to straighten out.

More Like This

Couldn't load this row right now.

Rate this film

Your ratings make Midnight smarter