The Films of Yoshishige Yoshida (1962-1964) Volume 2 - NTSC - English Subtitled (3 Disc)

Each disc is English Subtitled
Remastered Video
Japanese audio 2.0

(Disc 1) Akitsu Springs [Akitsu onsen]- 1962 – color 16×9

A haunting tale of unrequited love, The Affair at Akitsu is one of the most beloved Japanese melodramas of the postwar studio era. Yoshida’s first adapted screenplay uses the vivid background of war-torn Japan to suggest its archetypal characters of the spirited, selfless woman – mesmerizingly embodied by Mariko Okada – and the cynical intellectual drawn to her beauty as twin figures for the hope and resignation simultaneously born of Japan’s inevitable defeat. A deeply affecting and exquisitely beautiful film, Yoshida and Okada’s first collaboration announced the abiding interest in resilient heroines and pointedly feminist ideas that would remain a constant across the many films made throughout their long partnership.
This marks Yoshishige Yoshida’s first collaboration with his future wife, legendary Japanese actress ‘Mariko Okada’.

(Disc 2) 18 Roughs – [Arashi o yobu juhachi-nin] (1963) B/W 16×9

The last of Yoshida’s taiyozoku films focuses on a gang of proletariat ruffians enraged with a world that offers them no means to advance except though violence. Pitted against the destructive gang is an idealistic youth determined to stop them from wrecking his town—and to protect the young waitress he has come to love. Exemplary of the Shochiku New Wave is the film’s use of stark black and white widescreen cinematography as a means to deliberately aestheticize and distanciate its sordid, violent story and underscore the urgent social problem message contained within it. “Laborers considered as ‘things’ that simply, not even respected as workers. The absurdity of their presence, and of us who allow this state of affairs. It seemed opportune to me to describe this without offering any clear explanations. A critical essay addressed to the social cinema of the time.”

(Disc 3) Escape from Japan [Nihon dasshutsu] (1964) Color 16×9

Yoshida’s last film with Shochiku.
It’s the story of a roadie whose ambition is to migrate to America and study singing, an examination of the Americanized youth of the 1960s who longed for the United States, their idealized land of riches and freedom.