A Fond Face from the Past

01/18/1941

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0hr 34min

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Drama

STORY

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.

CAST & CREW

    Cast

  • Ranko Hanai
  • Takashi Kodaka
  • Tsuruko Mano
  • Kinji Fujiwa
  • Taizō Fukami

    Director

  • Mikio Naruse

INFORMATION

    Production Companies

  • Toho Eiga Co., Ltd.

    Production Countries

  • Japan

LANGUAGES

  • Japanese