Oshidori utagassen (Singing Lovebirds). 1939. Directed by Masahiro Makino

Film

Singing Lovebirds. 1939. Japan. Directed by Masahiro Makino. With Chiezo Kataoka, Takashi Shimura, Haruyo Ichikawa. Courtesy Nikkatsu Corporation

Oshidori utagassen (Singing Lovebirds). 1939. Japan. Directed by Masahiro Makino. Screenplay by Koji Edogawa. With Chiezo Kataoka, Takashi Shimura, Haruyo Ichikawa. In Japanese; English subtitles. 69 min.

Masahiro Makino’s breezy musical comedy about a ronin (masterless samurai) and three coquettish suitors was billed as “the rare operetta in which jazz bursts into the period film”—precisely the sort of well-crafted genre picture that Makino and his cinematographer Kazuo Miygawa produced with seeming effortlessness before the war.

35mm print courtesy the National Film Center; The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo; and Nikkatsu.

This film accompanies Kazuo Miyagawa: Japan’s Greatest Cinematographer.

Sat, Apr 14, 2018, 1:30 p.m.

MoMA, Floor T2, Theater 2

The Roy and Niuta Titus Theater 2
Fri, Apr 13, 2018, 4:30 p.m.

MoMA, Floor T2, Theater 2

The Roy and Niuta Titus Theater 2

Licensing

If you would like to reproduce an image of a work of art in MoMA’s collection, or an image of a MoMA publication or archival material (including installation views, checklists, and press releases), please contact Art Resource (publication in North America) or Scala Archives (publication in all other geographic locations).

MoMA licenses archival audio and select out of copyright film clips from our film collection. At this time, MoMA produced video cannot be licensed by MoMA/Scala. All requests to license archival audio or out of copyright film clips should be addressed to Scala Archives at [email protected]. Motion picture film stills cannot be licensed by MoMA/Scala. For access to motion picture film stills for research purposes, please contact the Film Study Center at [email protected]. For more information about film loans and our Circulating Film and Video Library, please visit https://www.moma.org/research-and-learning/circulating-film.

If you would like to reproduce text from a MoMA publication, please email [email protected]. If you would like to publish text from MoMA’s archival materials, please fill out this permission form and send to [email protected].