Details and tickets purchase information: 
https://harvardfilmarchive.org/calendar/husband-and-wife-2025-07
Harvard students admitted free to regularly priced shows.

Directed by Naruse Mikio. 
With Uehara Ken, Sugi Yoko, Mikuni Rentaro
Japan, 1953, 35mm, b/w, 87 min. 
Japanese with English subtitles

Husband and wife Isaku and Kikuko are looking for a place to live just as Isaku’s coworker Ryota loses his wife, and they form an experimental household, with Kikuko ultimately caring for both the widower and her husband. As tensions quietly bubble, Kikuko and Ryota share a joyful, energetic camaraderie in contrast with Isaku’s lackluster outlook; he remains ignorant of his wife’s work or emotional needs. Their contrasting dispositions come to a crux in the film’s climax during which the heightened emotional stakes jolt him out of his blind pragmatism. As with other films during this era, Naruse’s characters may not cross transgressive lines, but he gives them ample opportunity, allowing temptation to push their true feelings ever closer to verbalization and definitive action. This state of suspension also reveals their financial and social realities—especially in the case of the married woman—of innumerable compromises and dashed dreams. Yet, after the dust settles, the director always lets a little ray of hope illuminate the silver linings, however slender. – Brittany Gravely

Harvard Film Archive special film series FLOATING CLOUDS… THE CINEMA OF NARUSE MIKIO co-sponsored by the Reischauer Institute