Japanese Film Series

In connection with the College's 1964-65 program, "Japan, Classical and Contemporary," Dartmouth College Films and the Dartmouth Film Society scheduled a comprehensive selection of Japanese films to be shown throughout the school year.

It commenced with a series of five films of the great but little-known director, Yasujiro Ozu (1903-1963), considered the most Japanese of all film artists of his country. It was followed by Shiosai (The Sound of Waves), directed by Taniguchi from a story by Mishima, whose drama The Rose and thePirates will be presented by the Dartmouth Players in the spring term.

Susumu Hani's elaborate parable of the problems of modern Japan, A FullLife, was a Film Society offering. Kenji Mizoguchi's The Life of O-Haru followed, introduced by Mary Evans Richie, film critic of the Japan Times of Tokyo.

On April 6 the Japanese film scholar and director, Kenji Kanesaka, will introduce The Ballad of Narayama, a color and CinemaScope version of a favorite Kabuki play. The full version, running two and one-half hours, of Akira Kurosawa's The Seven Samurai is to be presented by the Film Society May 1 and 2. The film program concludes with Mugibue (Grass Whistle), from a well-known Japanese novel by Muroo concerning adolescent problems.

The majority of these films, representing varied facets of Japanese film production of the last twenty years, have never received general American showing.