Fifty Years of Janus Films: March 2-April 7, Los Angeles CA

Source: The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) Since 1957, Janus Films has been a renowned force in American art house film distribution with provocative, stylish, adult dramas made by the likes of Bergman, Truffaut, Antonioni, Ray, Kurosawa, Wajda, and Eisenstein. Janus also owns the acclaimed home video company The Criterion Collection. The Los Angeles County Museum of Art pays tribute to the Janus Films 50th anniversary with a six-week film series running from March 2 - April 7. Twenty-three great foreign films are being shown, all presented in stunning new 35mm prints struck expressly for the 50th anniversary. The complete schedule, showtimes, ticket information and more can be found on the LACMA website. The lineup includes three films of interest to Japanese movie fans... Saturday, March 10– 7:30 PM RASHOMON 1950/b&w/88 min; Screenplay: Akira Kurosawa, Shinobu Hashimoto; Director: Akira Kurosawa; Cast: Toshirô Mifune, Masayuki Mori, Machiko Kyô, Takashi Shimura, Minoru Chiaki Along with Bergman and Truffaut, Kurosawa has always ranked high in the Janus pantheon, and RASHOMON-- his first great success and grand prize winner at the 1951 Venice Film Festival-- is an electrifying film brimming with action that, in Kurosawas words, "goes into the depths of the human heart as if with a surgeons scalpel laying bare its dark complexities and bizarre twists." In the forests of medieval Japan, a bandit (Mifune) accosts a nobleman traveling with his beautiful wife. By late afternoon the nobleman is dead, the wife has been raped, the bandit has vanished, and the only witness is an elderly woodcutter. In the ensuing interrogations, each of the four characters relates a different version of the "truth." 7:30 PM HIGH AND LOW (Tengoku to Jigoku) 1963/b&w and color/143 min/TohoScope; Screenplay: Akira Kurosawa, Eijiro Hisaita, Ryuzo Kikushima, Hideo Oguni; Director: Akira Kurosawa; Cast: Toshiro Mifune, Kyoko Kagawa, Tatsuya Nakadai Opening "high" above Yokohama in the modernist glass house of a wealthy shoe manufacturer (Mifune) who is negotiating a ransom for the life of his chauffeurs son, Kurosawas morally and socially complex thriller then shifts "low" as Mifune descends into the crowded alleys and tenements in pursuit of the kidnapper. An action-packed last act on a speeding train provides a heart-stopping conclusion. Friday, March 23– 7:30 PM KWAIDAN (Kaidan, GHOST STORY) 1965/color/161 min/TohoScope; Screenplay: Yoko Mizuki; Director: Masaki Kobayashi; Cast: Keiko Kishi, Tatsuya Nakadai, Katsuo Nakamura Visually beautiful and meticulously crafted, Masaki Kobayashis lavish production is based on four ghost stories by the American expatriate Lafcadio Hearn. "Black Hair" tells of a man who imagines he has found his beloved first wife in their former home. In "Woman in the Snow," two woodcutters caught in a blizzard are confronted by a ghostly, female figure; only one woodcutter escapes. In "Hoichi the Earless," the grizzliest tale, the body of a blind singer is invaded by ghosts from a twelfth-century clan war. And in the final story, "In a Cup of Tea," a warrior challenges a stranger to a duel when he spies the mans reflection in his teacup.