The Eclipse Viewer – Episode 71 – Kinuyo Tanaka Directs [Part 2]

This podcast focuses on the Eclipse Series, box set editions of lost, forgotten, or overshadowed films recently revived by the Criterion Collection. Hosts David Blakeslee and Trevor Berrett give an overview of each set and offer their perspectives on the unique treasures they find inside. In this first of three episodes covering the recently issued Blu-ray edition of Eclipse Series 48: Kinuyo Tanaka Directs, David and Trevor discuss two films: Forever a Woman (1955) and The Wandering Princess (1960).

Kinuyo Tanaka was already one of Japan’s greatest actors—celebrated for her collaborations with auteurs such as Kenji Mizoguchi, Yasujiro Ozu, and Mikio Naruse—when she took a brave leap by embarking on a directing career in a studio system that actively discouraged female filmmakers. The six features she made over the course of a decade center on women characters who refuse to conform to restrictive roles as they seek independence. With compassion and insight, Tanaka critiques the social conditions and forces that shape her heroines’ struggles: sex work and social shaming, the expectation of passively entering arranged marriages, taboos surrounding illness and the female body, imperialism, and religious persecution and forbidden love.

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• Cinematographically Speaking
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• Eye on the Screen
• Japan on Film
• Webs of Significance
• Windows on Worlds

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