No Regrets for Our Youth

Kurosawa’s first postwar film derived from two fresh historical events: the Takigawa Incident of 1933, when a liberal-minded law professor at Kyoto University was dismissed for “communistic thought,” and the case of Hotsumi Ozaki, the only Japanese citizen executed for treason during WWII. No Regrets for Our Youth connects these two unrelated affairs and recounts them through the eyes of Yukie, played by future Ozu regular Setsuko Hara. She undergoes a tumultuous transformation, from pampered, privileged, immature young woman to determined social activist, after her professor father is fired and her boyfriend, one of her father’s students, is arrested for anti-militarist activities. A female protagonist is a rarity in Kurosawa; the director conceded that “it was only here and in Rashomon that I ever fairly and fully portrayed a woman.” Rare too is Kurosawa’s stylistic freedom here, with the film’s flourishes of expressionism and Soviet-style montage. Donald Richie praised this “extraordinary picture” for “its enormous powers of evocation” and “perfection . . . Rarely in the history of cinema has a woman’s character’s been shown in its fullness, its contradictions, its perversities, and its strengths.” B&W, 16mm, in Japanese with English subtitles.. 110 mins.