Screening – Twenty-Four Eyes

Imported 35mm Print. Equally known for her longstanding relationship with director Keisuke Kinoshita as with Mikio Naruse, Hideko Takamine remains eternally bound to her role in the immensely popular 1954 epic Twenty-Four Eyes, Kinoshita’s heralded anti-war masterpiece. Posted to teach in a remote fishing hamlet nestled within the sun-drenched isles of the Inland Sea, schoolteacher Hisako Oshi (Takamine) takes special devotion to her class of first graders, a group of 12 schoolchildren—the titular “twenty-four eyes”—who grow and mature alongside their pacifist teacher in the ensuing two decades, facing hardship, joy and tragedy as Showa’s imperialism and the fervor of wartime patriotism begin to take hold. Kinoshita’s humanist drama is elegant and sprawling, a powerful work that reflects on the darkest period of Japanese history.