FILM ACTOR TAKASHI SHIMURA: SINGING LOVEBIRDS

Celebrating Japan's Most Versatile Performer

Seitan 110 Nen Eiga Haiyu Shimura Takashi：Oshidori Uta Gassen
生誕110年 映画俳優 志村喬：鴛鴦歌合戦
Directed by Masahiro Makino (マキノ正博)
Japanese with English subtitles | 69 mins
Venue: National Film Center | Nov. 13: 19:00
Trailer: Seitan 110 Nen Eiga Haiyu Shimura Takashi：Oshidori Uta Gassen
Official website: www.momat.go.jp/fc/exhibition/shimura2015-9/
Tariff:  General: ￥520, Student/Senior: ￥310, Elementary and Junior-high: ￥100
Advance tickets: NA
Talk event: NA

Marking the 110^th anniversary of the actor’s birth, Tokyo’s National Film Center is paying tribute to the great Takashi Shimura with a lineup of 15 unforgettable films, including two with English subtitles. If you missed the screenings of Akira Kurosawa’s dark and disturbing Drunken Angel (1948), you still have to chance to see Masahiro Makino’s musical comedy Singing Lovebirds (1939).

Shimura, perhaps the most versatile actor in Japanese history, appeared in more than 200 films over the course of a 50-year career. Although he’s most well-known overseas for his roles in 21 of Kurosawa’s 30 films — including Ikiru (1952) and Seven Samurai (1954) — Japanese-film fans will know him for his work in the very first Godzilla (1954), Masaki Kobayahi’s Oscar-nominated Kwaidan and Kihachi Okamoto’s Japan’s Longest Day (1967), and three of the films in the long-running It’s Tough Being a Man series.

In Singing Lovebirds, reportedly the most frequently revived Japanese prewar musical film, Shimura plays Kyōsai Shimura, a ronin who now makes his living making umbrellas. He is obsessed with antiques, and spends all his money to acquire them, although most turn out to be fakes. After he sinks deeply in debt to the local playboy lord, he accepts money to sell his daughter off to him as a concubine.