(Musume, tsuma, haha). The writer and critic Susan Sontag was a great admirer of this drama about a middle-class Tokyo family thrown into crisis by a car accident and an insurance windfall. A splendid cast (including the redoubtable Tatsuya Nakadai) carries off a film of narrative complexity, appropriately shot in CinemaScope. Chris Fujiwara wrote in Film Comment: "[This] is another film in which Naruse compares the ideal of life—what the characters suppose themselves to be living—with its reality. . . . Again and again in Naruse's films, the internal coherence of the family is an illusion that's exposed the moment a crisis loosens the bonds among the family members (instead of doing what people like to believe a crisis does, bringing them together)."

• Written by Toshiro Ide. Photographed by Jun Yasumoto. With Setsuko Hara, Hideko Takamine, Ken Uehara, Masayuki Mori. (121 mins, In Japanese with English subtitles, Color, 'Scope, 35mm, Courtesy of The Japan Foundation, permission Toho)