Kiiroi karasu (Yellow Crow/Behold Thy Son). 1957. Japan. Directed by Heinosuke Gosho. Screenplay by Keiji Hasebe, Kennosuke Tateoka, Shigeko Yuki. With Chikage Awashima, Yûnosuke Itô, Kinuyo Tanaka. 35mm. In Japanese; English subtitles. 104 min.
One of the most beautiful and underappreciated color films of the 1950s, Yellow Crow describes a nine-year-old boy’s distress when the father he never knew returns from a POW camp and threatens the blissfully intimate and possessive bond he shares with his mother. The tension between parents and children—and between tradition and modernity—was a popular theme of Japanese working-class melodramas of the 1930s (including Heinosuke Gosho’s own Woman in the Mist), and became even more acute after Japan’s defeat in war led to a spiritless and broken nation. 35mm print from Japan Foundation, New York; courtesy Shochiku