Adam Spieckermann joins us to talk about Ozu's final film, An Autumn Afternoon from 1962. Between Adam S.'s and Pat's areas of expertise and study we have a sprawling talk about Ozu's style and post-war Japanese culture. Also, thanks to a bonus feature on the Criterion DVD we get to indulge in that most joyous of pastimes: complaining about 20th century France's racist exoticism of Asia.

We finish up a trio of Max Ophüls films with The Earrings of Madame De... costarring Vittorio De Sica who apparently acted much more often than he directed, and did both quite well, leading Ophüls to be rather embarrassed at having to direct the famed director.

Our second in a series of Max Ophüls' films adapts a selection of short stories by Guy de Maupassant, climaxing in the third part with one of the most amazing continuous takes I've ever seen. And this is the Criterion Collection! We've seen a lot of amazing continuous takes!

We kick off a string of Max Ophüls films with a sex comedy starring a narrator who may or may not be a metaphor for syphilis? La Ronde is based on an 1897 play by Arthur Schnitzler that was actively suppressed first because it was just too sexy for the general public, and then by the author himself once political backlash against the play morphed into antisemitism because everything is bad. Except this movie. This movie is pretty dang fun.

Keisuke Kinoshita's Twenty-Four Eyes is the story of a Marxist-leaning school teacher in rural Japan who enters her profession during the Depression, teaches through World War 2, and sees nationalism, patriarchy, and capitalism destroy her students her family to the point that she has to quit teaching until she can find hope again. It's anti-war in much the same way The Cranes are Flying is, and it's just as beautiful of a film.