Showing: masaki kobayashi  
Black River

Perhaps Masaki Kobayashi’s most sordid film, Black River examines the rampant corruption on and around U.S. military bases in Japan following World War II.

Masaki Kobayashi Japan, 1956
DVD

Harakiri

Following the collapse of his clan, unemployed samurai Hanshiro Tsugumo (Tatsuya Nakadai) arrives at the manor of Lord Iyi, begging to commit ritual suicide on his property in Masaki Kobayashi’s fierce evocation of individual agency in the face of a corrupt and hypocritical system.

Masaki Kobayashi Japan, 1962
35 mm, Blu-ray, DVD

The Human Condition

Masaki Kobayashi’s mammoth humanist drama is one of the most staggering achievements of Japanese cinema. A raw indictment of its nation’s wartime mentality as well as a personal existential tragedy, Kobayashi’s riveting, gorgeously filmed epic is novelistic cinema at its best.

Masaki Kobayashi Japan, 1959
35 mm, DVD

I Will Buy You

Masaki Kobayashi’s pitiless take on Japan’s professional baseball industry is unlike any other sports film ever made.

Masaki Kobayashi Japan, 1956
DVD

The Inheritance

On his deathbed, a wealthy businessman announces that his fortune is to be split equally among his three illegitimate children, whose whereabouts are unknown to his family and colleagues.

Masaki Kobayashi Japan, 1962
DVD

Kwaidan

After more than a decade of sober political dramas and socially minded period pieces, the great Japanese director Masaki Kobayashi shifted gears dramatically for this rapturously stylized quartet of ghost stories.

Masaki Kobayashi Japan, 1965
35 mm, Blu-ray, DVD

Samurai Rebellion

Toshiro Mifune stars as an aging swordsman in director Masaki Kobayashi's _Samurai Rebellion_, the gripping story of a peaceful man who finally decides to take a stand against injustice.

Masaki Kobayashi Japan, 1967
35 mm, DVD

The Thick-Walled Room

Among the first Japanese films to deal directly with the scars of World War II, this drama about a group of rank-and-file Japanese soldiers jailed for crimes against humanity was adapted from the diaries of real prisoners.

Masaki Kobayashi Japan, 1956
DVD