Akutaro

When Konno Togo, an adolescent boy in 1920s Japan, is expelled from his high school in Tokyo for fighting and womanizing, his mother sends him to boarding school in the countryside, hoping the change of scenery will mend his rebellious ways. But it isn’t long before he finds new fights to pick and begins eyeing the principal’s daughter. Simultaneously harking back to the youth comedies of Ozu and Naruse from the 1930s and foreshadowing Suzuki’s own Fighting Elegy, Akutaro is a rarely screened watershed film in the director’s career, and his first collaboration with his longtime set designer Kimura Takeo.

Curated by Will Carroll (CMS) as part of the Film Studies Center’s Graduate Student Curatorial Program.

(Seijun Suzuki, Japan, 1963, 95 minutes, 35mm print courtesy of The Japan Foundation)