The award-winning Japanese film The Life of Oharu, set in the 17th and 18th centuries, will be screened at Cornell Cinema tonight and Saturday.
Cornell Cinema's summer series of restored foreign film classics presents
The Life of Oharu, a noted Japanese film set
in the 17th and 18th centuries. It will be screened at 9:35 p.m. tonight, July 10,
and Friday, July 11, at 7:30 p.m. in Willard Straight Theatre.
Loosely based on the novel by Ibara Saikaku, The Life of Oharu chronicles the downfall of Oharu, a woman who, born of upstanding parents, finds herself serving as a lady-in-waiting until an illicit meeting with a samurai gets her banished from the noble court. Her father sells her to be a mistress to a lord whose wife is barren, but Oharu finds herself again cast off as soon as she bears a child. Her hapless life continues as she is denied entrance into a convent.
The Life of Oharu is the masterpiece that launched director Kenji Mizoguchi's international reputation in 1952 after it won awards at the Venice Film Festival. Mizoguchi has gone on to become one Japan's most-noted filmmakers.
Sunrise, considered by movie critics to be one of the greatest films of all time, will be shown Saturday, July 12, at 7:15 p.m. at Willard Straight Theatre. This silent film is a love story in which a temptress from the city shatters the idyllic country existence of a young couple by convincing the husband to drown his wife. The movie won three of the first Academy Awards ever given: best actress for Janet Gaynor, best cinematography and best artistic quality for production.
Other offerings this month from Cornell Cinema include A Tickle in the Heart, a documentary about three brothers who began playing klezmer music 60 years ago, long before the worldwide revival of klezmer music. The film records the trio's engagements in Florida, Berlin and back to the Hasidic neighborhoods of Brooklyn and New York's Lower East Side. The documentary, which won raves from many critics, will be shown July 17 at 7 p.m. and July 22 at 7:30 p.m. Also featured this month are Le Samouri (July 23 at 7:30 p.m., July 24 at 9:45 p.m. and July 25 at 7:30 p.m.) and Flamenco (July 24, 26 and 29 at 7:30 p.m.)
Tickets to all performances are $4.50; $4 for students, senior citizens and children under 12. All films are shown in Willard Straight Theatre.