Metrograph

For his first film in both color and widescreen, Naruse shifted his typically urban focus to the verdant and expansive rice fields of Atsugi, near Yokohama, and the farmers who cultivate them. Here, the strong-willed war widow Yae (a stirring Chikage Awashima) stands astride the forces of progressive land reform, represented by the alluringly handsome city journalist Okawa (Isao Kimura), and those of entrenched family patronage, embodied by her bitterly obstinate older brother Wasuke (Ganjiro Nakamura). Nakamura’s fully inhabited performance as a man who refuses to change with the times imbues Naruse’s pastoral melodrama with an elegiac soul.