On today’s episode we discuss one of Mikio Naruse’s greatest films, Lightning (1952). Naruse paints a despairing portrait of a dysfunctional family dynamic whose sourness does not preclude the possibility of transcendent experience. This episode was initially recorded in October 2022 and we are presenting it to you in light of its recent screening in New York. Lightning is not one of the Naruse films on Criterion Channel, but it is available via the Internet Archive. You can find a link to the full film below.
Our latest episodes on Naruse’s films are being released in conjunction with the retrospective in New York that Japan Society and Metrograph are hosting – “Mikio Naruse: The World Betrays Us.” The retrospective is also set to travel to Berkeley. BAMPFA will be hosting from July 3 to December 21, 2025. We include the links to the retrospective schedules below:
- Link to full film - Lightning (Japanese Title: Inazuma) - https://archive.org/details/inazuma_202104
- New York’s Mikio Naruse retrospective - Mikio Naruse: The World Betrays Us
- Metrograph Schedule - https://metrograph.com/category/mikio-naruse/
- Berkeley’s Mikio Naruse retrospective at BAMPFA - https://bampfa.org/program/mikio-naruse-auteur-salaryman
- A Mikio Naruse Companion by Dan Sallitt - https://mikionaruse.wordpress.com/
- Mikio Naruse: A Master of Japanese Cinema by Audie Bock - https://www.worldcat.org/title/17227763
- Japanese Film Directors by Audie Bock - https://www.amazon.com/Japanese-film-directors-Audie-Bock/dp/0870113046
Hosted by Aret Frost and Tony Huang (@Tghuang)
Consultant: Ryan Swen (@swen_ryan)
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