Ep. 329: Edo Choi on Mikio Naruse at Metrograph: When a Woman Ascends the Stairs, Scattered Clouds, Wife! Be Like a Rose!, and more

Welcome to The Last Thing I Saw, with your host, Nicolas Rapold. There are retrospectives that remain close to one’s heart and for me, one such was an immersion in Mikio Naruse’s work many years ago at Film Forum. Fortunately, film history can repeat itself in a good way: Metrograph and Japan Society have teamed up for a Naruse retrospective on his 120th anniversary. I spoke with Edo Choi, a film programmer at Metrograph and past guest on the program, about Naruse’s rich and perhaps still underappreciated body of work, as well as its context within Japanese cinema. Among the films discussed: When a Woman Ascends the Stairs, Wife! Be Like a Rose!, Floating Clouds, and perhaps one of the great swan songs, Scattered Clouds, before Naruse’s death in 1969.

Mikio Naruse: The World Betrays Us continues through the end of the month at Metrograph. For listeners outside of New York, select films are available on the Criterion Channel.

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Photo by Steve Snodgrass