Harvard Film Archive Spotlights Japanese Director Mikio Naruse

A retrospective of the filmmaker’s works, from Floating Clouds to Flowing

Two women in traditional kimonos, one lighting a cigarette, in a scene from Apart from You.

Apart from You | PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF THE HARVARD FILM ARCHIVE

The Harvard Film Archive’s retrospective “Floating Clouds…The Cinema of Naruse Mikio,” through November 3, offers 45 films, many capturing shōshimin-eiga (the dramas of ordinary people). The director, active between 1930 and 1967, is known for a desolate, yet not unrealistic, outlook. Many narratives “magnified the movements within human relationships as intimate responses to historical change,” notes the archive’s contributing writer Kelley Dong. After World War II, his works often highlighted women and their experiences with love, work, and family, as in Floating Clouds, Sound of the Mountain, and Flowing. Existentialism shone through, too. Scattered Clouds, his final film, reflects on the modern idea, Dong writes, “that the solitude of independence invokes both immeasurable pleasure and devastating grief because it marks the death of the past.”

Read more articles by Nell Porter-Brown

You might also like

A Paper House in Massachusetts

The 1920s Rockport cottage reflects resourceful ingenuity.

This Connecticut Mine Was Once a Prison

The underground Old New-Gate Prison quickly became “a school for crime.”

A Harvard Art Museums Painting Gets a Bath

Water and sunlight help restore a modern American classic.

Most popular

How MAGA Went Mainstream at Harvard

Trump, TikTok, and the pandemic are reshaping Gen Z politics.

Harvard art historian Jennifer Roberts teaches the value of immersive attention

Teaching students the value of deceleration and immersive attention

Shakespeare’s Greatest Rival

Without Christopher Marlowe, there might not have been a Bard.

Explore More From Current Issue

Julie Riew, wearing a white dress, playing guitar and singing into a microphone on stage.

Bringing Korean Stories to Life

Composer Julia Riew writes the musicals she needed to see.

Vivian W. Rong sitting on bench outdoors.

Highlighting Harvard Magazine’s Fellows

The 2025-2026 Ledecky and Summer Undergraduate Fellows

People sit in lawn chairs near a rustic barn at Cider Garden in New Salem on a sunny day.

CiderDays Festival Celebrates All Things Apple

Visiting small-batch cideries and orchards in Massachusetts