The Ball at the Anjo House

Starring legendary actors Setsuko Hara and Masayuki Mori, this especially acclaimed effort from Kōzaburō Yoshimura (working with his frequent scribe Kaneto Shindō) chronicles the fallout from Japan’s defeat in World War II and its effects on a single family. While the family mourns that their old way of life and its attendant comforts are gone forever, the eldest son plans one final ball at the family’s home, where a slew of tensions, resentments, and confessions boil over. The historian Donald Richie has compared Shindō’s script to Chekhov, but it’s the precision of Yoshimura’s camera and mise-en-scène that have elevated this film to endure as a key Japanese film of the immediate postwar period. Print courtesy of the Japan Foundation.