(Iwashigumo). Naruse usually dealt with "downtown" subjects, but for his first color and widescreen film, he turned to a rural setting with a lyrical, open-air feeling and a surprising use of natural images. The story, however, is Naruse all over, about a war widow, Yae (Chikage Awashima), who attempts to alleviate the stifling boredom of farm life by writing stories about her agricultural village for a Tokyo newspaper, in the process falling in love with a married journalist. Her stories are mostly about her own family, landowners made poor by postwar land reform; as Audie Bock has noted, the modernization that gives Yae a taste of freedom threatens her family's downfall. Nor is freedom all it's cracked up to be, as usual. Whether in city or country, the Naruse heroine is caught between a rock (the failed comforts of the extended family) and a hard place (marriage—in this case, someone else's).

• Written by Shinobu Hashimoto, from a story by Den Wada. Photographed by Masao Tamai. With Chikage Awashima, Michiyo Aratama, Kumi Mizuno. (128 mins, In Japanese with English subtitles, Color, 35mm, 'Scope, Courtesy of The Japan Foundation, permission Toho)