Details and tickets purchase information: 
https://harvardfilmarchive.org/calendar/tsuruhachi-and-tsurujiro-2025-08
Harvard students admitted free to regularly priced shows.

Directed by Naruse Mikio. 
With Hasegawa Kazuo, Yamada Isuzu, Fujiwara Kamatari
Japan, 1938, 35mm, b/w, 89 min. 
Japanese with English subtitles

A backstage musical cloaked in restraint and a funereal aura, Tsuruhachi and Tsurujiro follows its titular musical duo—a shamisen player (Yamada Isuzu) and shinnai singer (Hasegawa Kazuo), respectively—through a cycle of ups and downs so turbulent that it casts the entire performing arts scene in a grim light. Though the onstage pair have collaborated since childhood, theirs is a complicated partnership replete with artistic disagreements and unacknowledged yearnings, all of which come to a breaking point with the introduction of a wealthy patron, Mr. Matsuzaki (Okawa Heihachiro), who yearns for Tsuruhachi’shand in marriage. The breakups and reunions that occur send the narrative careening in a number of unexpected directions, including an underwhelming rural solo tour for Tsurujiro that descends into alcoholic stupor, but the film is at its best when basking in the chemistry of stars Yamada and Hasegawa, whose convincing musical performances are filmed with rapt and reverent attention. – Carson Lund

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