In 1959, Yasujiro Ozu remade his 1934 silent film: A Story of Floating Weeds in color and sound with the cinematographer Kazuo Miyagawa (Rashomon, Ugetsu). Setting his later version in a seaside location, Ozu otherwise preserves the details of his elegantly simple plot wherein an aging actor returns to a small town with his troupe and reunities with his former lover and illegitimate son, a scenario that enrages his current mistress and results in...

A revealing look at the acclaimed director featuring extensive clips from his greatest films and includes interviews with James Coburn and Clint Eastwood along with longtime associate Teruyo Nogami, actresses Machiko Kyo and Isuzu Yamada, actor Tatsuya Nakadai, director Kon Ichikawa and critics Tadao Sato and Donald Richie.

"By the time he made Ugetsu, Kenji Mizoguchi was already an elder statesman of Japanese cinema, fiercely revered by Akira Kurosawa and other younger directors of a younger generation. And with this exquisite ghost story, a fatalistic wartime tragedy derived from stories by Akinari Ueda and Guy de Maupassant, he created a touchstone of his art, his long takes and sweeping camera guiding the viewer through a delirious narrative about two villagers whose...

Okuyama, after being burned and disfigured in an industrial accident and estranged from his family and friends, agrees to his psychiatrist's radical experiment: a face transplant, created from the mold of a stranger. As Okuyama is thus further alienated from the world around him, he finds himself giving in to his darker temptations.