Setsuko Hara
Actor · 1920 – 2015 · Yokohama, Kanagawa, Japan
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Setsuko Hara (June 17, 1920 – September 5, 2015) was a Japanese actress who appeared in six of Yasujirō Ozu's films, most notably as Noriko in the "Noriko Trilogy": Late Spring (1949), Early Summer (1951), and Tokyo Story (1953). Her other films for Ozu were Tokyo Twilight (1957), Late Autumn (1960), and finally The End of Summer in 1961. She was born Masae Aida in Yokohama, Kanagawa prefecture. She came to prominence as an actress at an early age, in the 1937 German-Japanese co-production Die Tochter des Samurai (Daughter of the Samurai), known in Japan as Atarashiki Tsuchi (The New Earth), directed by Arnold Fanck and Mansaku Itami. She also starred in films by Akira Kurosawa, Mikio Naruse, and other prominent directors. She was called "the Eternal Virgin" in Japan and is a symbol of the golden era of Japanese cinema of the 1950s. She suddenly quit acting in 1963 (the same year as Ozu's death), and led a secluded life in Kamakura, refusing all interviews and photographs. Her last major role was Riku, wife of Ōishi Yoshio, in the 1962 film Chushingura. She was the inspiration for the protagonist of the 2001 movie Millennium Actress. Description above from the Wikipedia article Setsuko Hara, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
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Movie8.1DramaThe elderly Shukishi and his wife, Tomi, take the long journey from their small seaside village to visit their adult children in Tokyo. Their elder son, Koichi, a doctor, and their daughter, Shige, a hairdresser, don't have much time to spend with their aged parents, and so it falls to Noriko, the widow of their younger son who was killed in the war, to keep her in-laws company.
Movie8.0DramaNoriko is perfectly happy living at home with her widowed father, Shukichi, and has no plans to marry -- that is, until her aunt Masa convinces Shukichi that unless he marries off his 27-year-old daughter soon, she will likely remain alone for the rest of her life. When Noriko resists Masa's matchmaking, Shukichi is forced to deceive his daughter and sacrifice his own happiness to do what he believes is right.
Movie7.5DramaThe family of an older man who runs a small sake brewery become concerned with his finances and his health after they discover him visiting an old mistress from his youth.
Movie7.1HistoryDramaAfter their lord is tricked into committing ritual suicide, forty-seven samurai warriors await the chance to avenge their master and reclaim their honor.
Movie7.7DramaTwo sisters learn about the existence of their long-lost biological mother, but the younger is unable to accept the fact that she was abandoned as a child.
Movie7.6DramaIn post-WWII Osaka, a middle-aged woman is forced to examine her dreary life and marriage when her husband's young and flirtatious cousin arrives for a brief stay to escape an arranged marriage.
Movie7.0DramaRomanceA gentle, war-shattered ex-soldier, Kinji Kameda, arrives in wintry Hokkaidō and is pulled into a volatile tangle of love and pity between the disgraced Taeko Nasu, the proud Ayako, and his possessive friend Akama. Kameda’s saintly compassion exposes everyone’s wounds, steering the quartet toward jealousy, violence, and inexorable tragedy. Adapted from Dostoevsky’s novel.
Movie5.5FantasyActionThe legend of the birth of Shintoism. In Fourth Century Japan, the Emperor's son Ouso expects to succeed his father on the throne, but Otomo, the Emperor's vassal, prefers Ouso's stepbrother, and conspires to have Ouso die on a dangerous mission he has contrived. But Ouso prevails in the mission and returns to his father's castle under a new name, Prince Yamato Takeru. Otomo plots to have the Prince sent into even greater danger, but Otomo is unaware that the gods have favored the Prince and the outcome is far from what any of them expected.
Movie7.7DramaComedyA woman and her daughter are each forced to contend with an increasing pressure to marry, particularly from three men who knew her late husband.
Movie6.8DramaAfter her anti-fascist professor father is dismissed, Yukie navigates love, political repression, and wartime upheaval—ultimately forging her own path in pre- and post-WWII Japan.
Movie8.0ComedyDramaFollowing the Second World War, the lives of various people in a poverty-stricken area of Tokyo are entertwined. Pachinko parlor girls, shoeshine boys, a maker of costume jewelry, and a streetcorner artist all struggle to make their livings and to find happiness in difficult surroundings.
Movie6.8ActionWarStalwart soldiers of the Japanese Empire – Japanese and Korean alike – stand in defense of a military outpost threatened by "bandits."
MovieDramaThe film centers a compassionate teacher (Setsuko Hara) who teaches at a Tokyo grade school where students curse and gamble. The school has a pond on-premises that she's in charge of and cares for. The pond holds a number of carp, but someone is snatching them. The teacher forms a special bond with a child who lives in abject poverty.
Movie7.8DramaIn postwar Tokyo, Noriko lives with her extended family. Although she enjoys her career and her social life, her more traditional family worries about her single marital status at the advanced age of 28. 40-year-old business associate Takako proposes, Noriko's family press her into accepting, but when her widowed childhood friend Kenkichi returns to the neighborhood, she finds her heart leading in another direction.
MovieDocumentaryMusic
Movie8.5DramaA skilled country doctor's talents are such that he can even perform operations as difficult and novel as removing a patient's kidney for the first time in Japan. Unfortunately for him, however, his wife's addiction to gambling is of such a magnitude that he is down to selling his underwear to make money. The image sticks and he becomes known as the 'underwear doctor.' On the other hand, his successful surgery's patient is so grateful he himself wants to become a physician.
Movie6.7DramaFumiko and Ryōtarō Namiki's marriage has gone stale, with both constantly arguing over what to do on a day off, or about her cutting out recipes from the newspaper before he finishes reading it. Their animosities are witnessed by Fumiko's niece Ayako, who visits to complain about her own husband's inattentiveness, and their new neighbours, the Imasatos.
Movie7.1DramaContinuation of The Blue Mountains: Part I. Released a week later.
Movie7.4DramaAn ingratiating bride develops warm ties to her father-in-law while her cold husband blithely slights her for another woman.
MovieDramaMarried for almost a decade, a couple with a son have their life thrown for a loop when the wife Isoko comes across a photo of her university professor husband Asakichi with a younger woman named Terue, alongside a gift and a letter. When the husband is confronted he admits to merely loving his wife non-romantically, prompting her to take her son and leave the house. While she returns to her previous job and is staying at the company's dormitory, her husband is being visited by the other woman, who wants to tend to him, and his students.
Movie7.3DramaSanae is left a widow after her prestigious husband dies, but holds the proceeds of a million yen insurance policy. Being childless, her former in-laws have no objection to her return to her own family.
Movie4.0DramaCrimeThe woman prison has a cast all with a story of their own and with no dull or routine day. There is an employee who is divorced after her husband had an affair. She loves the jailed criminals and almost sees them as family. One day at a workshop someone faints while working hard to make money because she has a poor boyfriend. Another inmate is knocked up Another is a mother and has her child with her.
Movie8.0DramaA childless lawyer and his wife take in the quiet daughter of an imprisoned client, whose presence eventually creates romantic tension with the husband. The household dynamic is further disrupted by the arrival of a bold friend from Osaka and the wife's chance encounter with a former flame.
Movie8.0DramaIn a household of three the husband is a salaryman who lives with his younger sister and wife in Tokyo. He is returning home late in the evenings because he plays go, or a Japanese version of chess, with his boss. The wife and sister are unhappy about this. The man's co-worker advises him to stop the late evenings out with the boss, but the man cares less. His sister works at a foreign firm and speaks English. When a man who had earlier visited her workplace returns and asks her out for dinner, she rejects him by lying about a husband. He had made impolite comments about her in English during his earlier visit not realizing she understands him.