Kobayashi. I’ve had the chance now to watch three of the four most highly touted films by Masaki Kobayashi– hardly exhaustive (painfully- I regret I haven’t been able to catch his 10-hour The Human Condition film yet). Still, his extremely impressive trio of films during the 1960’s is enough to land him on this list. Harakari is flat-out brilliant- and the main reason he’s on this list but there isn’t a massive drop-off with The Samurai Rebellion and Kwaidan. He’s certainly an auteur. Kobayashi took full advantage of the frame – full canvas – the 2.35 : 1 ratio in either Tohoscope (Samurai Rebellion, Kwaidan) or Grandscope (Harakari).
Best film: Harakiri . A masterful work. Kobayashi would obstruct the frame (a forest here, fan in one example). The careful construction of the wide frame (magnificently used in the duel) is matched by the intricate design of the narrative- a pleasure to watch and study.

among the greatest images of Harakiri

from Harakiri as well- certainly prefers to shoot in medium long to long shots – stunning
total archiveable films: 3
top 100 films: 0
top 500 films: 0
top 100 films of the decade: 1 (Harikara)

The careful construction of the wide frame (magnificently used in the duel) here in Harakiri
most overrated: Nothing here. Harakiri is #684 on the TSPDT and I’m a little higher on it- it just misses my top 500. The TSPDT consensus puts Kwaidan at #845 and that feels very close to the correct placement as well. Nothing else for Kobayashi in the top 2000.
most underrated : Samurai Rebellion does not land in the TSPDT consensus top 2000 and this is, undoubtedly, a mistake or oversight.
- It’s the 3rd archiveable (and very remarkable) film I’ve seen from Kobayashi—we have Harakiri in 1962 and Kwaidan in 1964
- From the opening credits you know this is an artistic work—we have multiple shots of gorgeous architectural structures- straight lines (I believe of the Lord’s opulent house). The patterns almost like a Saul Bass credit sequence
- Mifune is brilliant in the lead- he is so defeated (self admittedly “henpecked”) in the beginning- it’s a slow burn film and a slow burn performance for Mifune. He keeps it internal for the first 90 minutes (roughly ¾ of the film) as does Kobayashi with the violence. Mifune is bearing slowing worn down by the lords (higher classes), his wife, it’s almost like the Michael Douglas falling down “enough is enough” sort of thing
- Again for the most part it’s a domestic film- not an action film until the final barrage
- It’s a statement on classes. I guess Kobayashi was a conscientious objector in the Army (I believe during WW2 which is hard to imagine in Japan) so many of his films, this certainly, have the metaphor of defying unjust orders. It’s a personal battle here of the classes and what is right— insubordination
- Not many- but early on there are some disorienting unintentional jump cut editing transitions
- It’s intelligent and procedural—it’s going to challenge the patience of action fans—and the action, when we do finally get to it is realistic and matter of fact. It’s not romanticized—it’s as reluctant as the characters who really don’t want to fight
- Haven’t placed it yet but there’s a reoccurring shot of the entrance of Mifune’s house I like
- On both Ebert’s “great movies” collection and the criterion—probably a sign this is a pretty good film
- Turning point in the narrative—90 minutes in he says “I’ve never felt more alive” as he makes a stand (and basically decides to die/fight)
- One of the best segments in the film is a freeze frame montage during a flashback when Yoko Tsukasa (playing Ichi Sasahara) tells her husband a story. I wish the technique was repeated elsewhere.
- Places like a western for sure—another samurai western though this is a deeper film closer to the Anthony Mann psychological westerns or some of the anti-hero hombre Martin Ritt-type—though this has a showdown at the end that has to make you think of Leone— it is a gorgeous final showdown (see pic)—the camera is active throughout the battle and we have some great angled shots. It also repeated a shot (film form) from the very opening when the two characters (then they were friends or co-workers at least) were testing weapons (Mifune is a weapons dealer basically)—there is such reverence and respect between these two reluctant warriors
- It’s an ambitious final 20 minutes- very sad—well choreographed

it is a gorgeous final showdown in Samurai Rebellion
gem I want to spotlight : Kwaidan. Wes Anderson or Tarkovsky-like design of the world (in fact one shot here looks like Stalker and the other The Fantastic Mr. Fox and this predates both of course). These are hand-painted sets—what masterful mise-en-scene— splendid dioramas.

Kwaidan. Wes Anderson or Tarkovsky-like design of the world (in fact one shot here looks like Stalker (above) and the other The Fantastic Mr. Fox (below) and this predates both of course.

These are hand-painted sets—what masterful mise-en-scene— splendid dioramas
stylistic innovations/traits:
- Wide frames—2.35 : 1 – the Japanese equivalent of Cinemascope- 1960’s filmmaking separating from itself from television
- Procedurals, structure very important to him – both in the frame and the narrative
- The use of freeze-frame, obstructing the frame on occasion and creative use of angles

creative use of angles in Harakiri
- Working in action/samurai and horror both
- Long running times—Kwaidan is over 3 hours, and nothing that I’ve seen under 2 hours. I haven’t caught it yet but he has a 10 hour film The Human Condition
- Meticulous set construction or location-scouting detail (and again- captured in full effect with the wide frame)

great museum-quality art photography in Harakiri– obstructing the frame — gorgeously designed
top 10
- Harakiri
- Samurai Rebellion
- Kwaidan
By year and grades
1962- Harakiri | MS |
1964- Kwaidan | HR |
1967- Samurai Rebellion | MS |
*MP is Masterpiece- top 1-3 quality of the year film
MS is Must-see- top 5-6 quality of the year film
HR is Highly Recommend- top 10 quality of the year film
R is Recommend- outside the top 10 of the year quality film but still in the archives
What about Pedro Costa ? Do you plan a study of him ?
@Cinephile- good stuff- Costa is already on my short list to study soon. Thank you. Keep’em coming.
@Cinephile, D’you like Costa? What do you think about his films? I have seen his films.
Recently I have been seeing a lot of Portuguese language movies and I have been liking a lot them.
Azman– Yes, I admire Costa for his unique and challenging narratives but also for his lighting, atmosphere and masterful compositions. How about you, did you like his films? You mention that you’ve liked many Portuguese films but not Costa’s specifically.
@cinephile I admire Costa movies.
Recently I was actually watching many Brazilian/Portuguese movies so that’s how I discovered Costa.
Some of my best Portuguese language movies I have seen recently are:
City of God
In Vandas room
Horse Money
Central Station
@Cinephile What are some of your favorite Portuguese language movies and favorite Costa movies?
@Azman– I don’t think I’ve seen a “big” masterpiece from Portugal so I don’t have many favorites from there. City of God and Central Station are indeed amazing.
As for favorite Costa Films, I think his latest two films, Horse Money and Vitalina Varela are his best, although I’m not 100% sure since I’ve seen those two more recently and I need a rewatch of something like In Vanda’s Room or Colossal Youth.
What do you think about The Human Condition trilogy? Other sites. eg. Letterboxd has all 3 in the top 50 of all time.
@Harry – I have not taken the plunge yet on The Human Condition- I want to. Been very impressed with the others I’ve seen from Kobayashi. http://thecinemaarchives.com/2020/07/07/the-206th-best-director-of-all-time-masaki-kobayashi/ . Top 50 huh? I don’t doubt you on the letterboxd list but the consensus doesn’t have it in the top 2000 actually http://www.theyshootpictures.com/gf1000_all1000films_table.php
Interesting that’s the only list (letterboxd) that holds them in that high regard. Haven’t seen them either but look forward to future writing on them when you do watch them.
Letterboxd users can be iffy at times; I’ll cite the example of Portrait of a Lady on Fire rated higher than Citizen Kane here.
@Zane I just checked and I think that top 250 is not good.
Malick, John Ford, von Trier, Cronenberg, Jarmusch, Herzog, De Palma, Gilliam, Eastwood, Iñárritu, Stone, Aronofsky, Hawks, Woody Allen, Godard, Altman …. have a combined 0 movies in the top 250 and that just isn’t right.
Not the best look for a film ranking site when you are missing that much
Hey, I saw Kobayashi’s 9 hour The Human Condition film in December and wanted to talk about it on here. I think it’s quite an exceptional work of art and I’ll try to avoid going in too deeply on the film’s plot to avoid significant spoilers but there’s only so far I can go with that before I just write nothing at all.
Tatsuya Nakadai, one of the greatest actors of all time, is unforgettable in his performance as the pacifist Kaji which takes place over 9 hours of film. We spend a huge amount of time with him during which he showcases virtually every emotion a human can express; he changes so much from film to film and it takes an actor of his caliber to make it as believable as he does. The first thing we see Nakadai doing in the film is presenting a report to the Imperial Japanese authorities in the early 1940s about the proper treatment of prisoners in labor camps, and immediately this gives him the ire of the Japanese authorities who are determined to work said prisoners until they are just bones and skin (and probably dead) for their resources. So, to punish him, they give him command of a labor camp and tell him to put his theories in practice, whilst setting up every angle they can to watch him fail.
Over the course of this film, Kobayashi and Nakadai excellently portray Kaji’s descent from a hopeful idealist throughout the first film, to a hardened, focused, serious, more realistic soldier in the second film following his activities at the work camp in the first, to his final loss of belief in the goodness of humanity in the third film after journeying through hell, and well, not quite back. We watch as he’s forced to abandon his principles as a humanist, whipping prisoners after disobeying his commands and destroying his morals by allowing them to consort with prostitutes at the prodding of the military police, and as a pacifist by violently resisting the Soviet onslaught into Manchuria by leading a suicide attack against a Russian tank division (though it’s in the second film so he and his men succeed) at the end of World War II, and the effect that coming to the realization that the world is a much harsher place than he imagined in the beginning has on Kaji psychologically, to the point that not once but four or five times he is forced by circumstance to kill his Japanese brothers to save himself and those he loves, having in the past indirectly led to the deaths of some of the few friends he made at the hands of his superiors, which cast a shadow over him so great he found it hard to forgive himself.
Kaji is isolated and alone for much of the film. He deeply loves his wife, and often thinks about her when forced to do great evils at the work camp and the memories of his simpler life as a better man, and upon imagining his pain in being forced to fight in the war she comes to visit him at boot camp, which is actually allowed by his commanding officer due to his being the best soldier in his unit. In the third film, having lost hope of anything else in the world with his experiences fighting the Soviets, he has given up his efforts to cleanse the world of its more vicious elements (though he never stops helping every civilian he comes across) and only the thought of returning to her arms drives him forward.
That being said, he is not completely alone. The great So Yamamura (Tokyo Story, Princess Yang Kwei-Fei), here in No Greater Love as a military officer and Kaji’s second-in-command at the labor camp, gives a very effective performance as Kaji’s foil, one of the few military officers who is a humanist like Kaji is yet has the life’s worth of experience that Kaji does not have at first and is able to straighten out some of his more explicitly leftist impulses to keep a working relationship with the more genocidally-inclined officers. They’re sort of a von Sydow and Bjornstrand from The Seventh Seal, I like to imagine. The scene at the end of the film where they describe their great admiration for eachother and how much they taught eachother (Nakadai how Yamamura hardened him and Yamamura how Nakadai reminded him of the goodness of people) is so emotionally touching. In Road to Eternity, he is mostly dismissed as a Red (communist) by his fellow soldiers who blindly believe that Japan will vanquish all its enemies with a single sword swipe, but still strikes up a friendship with the runt of his unit, bullied like Kaji by all the older soldiers (actually Road to Eternity clearly inspired Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket and I don’t mean because the first half of it takes place in a barracks; it goes further than that but I won’t say why so you guys can all find out yourselves) and makes a connection in a military hospital with a young nurse, who he nearly steps into an affair with and another like-minded soldier in a wonderful segment. In the final film, A Soldier’s Prayer, he and one other soldier, Terada, a private in the unit he commanded who he had an antagonistic relationship with in Road to Eternity before their bonding together in battle with the Soviets, lead a group of pilgrim soldiers and civilians out of Soviet-occupied Manchuria, yet despite being fully surrounded by people just like him for the first time, and even meeting old friends from his past, he has already lost so much to this ungodly war that it is no solace to him. Especially, after finding himself in bad positions he had put others in in the past (whether willingly or unwillingly) in both the latter two installments he drives further to the brink as he finds he has no one to help him as he could not be there to help those others he had hurt.
The first film, No Greater Love, is the weakest of the three stylistically I think but it is still a wonderful piece of art. The editing and Dutch angles during the prisoner execution scene near the end as Kaji is forced to watch make for terrorizing cinema and you also have the repeating foreground-background shot throughout the whole 3 hour length where the foreground changes repeatedly but in the background you have long lines of Chinese laborers walking down jagged paths in the camp sort of like the jagged path shot in Abbas Kiarostami’s Where is the Friend’s House? (I believe Drake has a screenshot of it on Kiarostami’s page). This shot is also visible on the front cover of the Criterion release of the film. The conjoining conspiracies by the prisoners to escape the labor camp and the Japanese officers, who eventually become aware of the plot, to let it happen and pin the failure on the despised Nakadai and Yamamura, make for an electric narrative that never fails at being interesting and intense cinema. There’s a huge cast of supporting actors from other famous Japanese films of the era (often taken from, of course, Kurosawa, Ozu and Mizoguchi’s films) and Kaji has to juggle all of these personalities at once and is given ample time to do so over the long runtime. Kobayashi of course includes visual motifs throughout the film (and the other 2) as well such as the use of barbed wire to signify imprisonment (felt by Kaji as much as the prisoners). It’s very well-shot but has an utterly fatal flaw at the end where a prostitute is angry at Kaji for failing to save her boyfriend, a laborer, despite her pleading with him for his life, and as the film ends and Kaji walks off into the sunset with his wife the prostitute just keeps running after them screaming names at him and throwing dirt at him and it’s just such a terrible way to end the film. I cannot emphasize how much I hate this ending enough and all Kobayashi had to do to fix it was remove the woman from the ending and it helps the film a great deal.
The second film, Road to Eternity, is rated lower than No Greater Love on both Letterboxd and TSPDT but I believe it to be a slightly stronger film (I don’t believe this is because I had the advantage of seeing how Kaji changes from the first film here either, I genuinely believe it to be artistically superior). Kobayashi used compositions of bodies clearly inspired by Kurosawa in the first film, but in the next film, Kaji now being in the IJA (Imperial Japanese Army) and with the further emplacement of military discipline around him, these compositions become ever stronger; there are so many shots where a character is shot walking down a line of men separating him from the camera (blocking) or shots looking down a street with a never-ending line of men down it, among other similar compositions, and they are done with even greater style than No Greater Love. The training segments in the film where Kaji is beaten down by so many fellow soldiers who should be his brothers but aren’t are harrowing to witness and culminate ingeniously when he takes out his frustration on one of the only friends he made in the boot camp, who is not nearly as good a soldier as he, and the friend receives a brutal punishment for failing a training exercise as a result. The camp also involves a second subplot between Kaji and another “Red,” Shinjo, who plans to desert to the Soviet Union, and asks Kaji to come with him. After these two subplots merge incredibly in a manner I won’t reveal, Kaji heads to the front and here the film loses its way a little as there are just so many long segments, not bad ones but inferior to the previous segments I feel, of him fighting off some of the more jingoistic soldiers in a nearby unit who inflict harsh punishments on Kaji’s men for their poor discipline for such a long time. The ending, however, is an absolute whopper in comparison to No Greater Love’s; the first battle scene in the whole of The Human Condition after about 5-6 hours as Kaji is ordered by his superiors to launch a sucide attack against Soviet tanks, in an ingenious flurry of editing (I almost don’t even want to describe the scene just so you can experience it completely freshly when it happens), gunfire, and explosions as he and his men hopelessly fight the far better-equipped Russian forces and Kaji is forced to make some tough choices with little time to waste in order to secure his survival and that of his men in the fight, ending with a particularly fateful decision by Kaji that changes his life forever. It’s quite a spectacular final act and far better than the ending of the first film.
The third film, A Soldier’s Prayer, is the best of the trilogy and it is not close. Kaji has faced squalid labor conditions, opposition from Japanese officials, and fierce military training, but it is not until facing true, genuine warfare that he starts to truly lose it. This film is really the story of Kaji’s effort to escape Manchuria back to Japan with a small army of Manchurian settler Japanese civilian refugees and IJA deserters and is a series of epic battle set-pieces that go on for hours (I mean that in a good way) as he gets involved in constant warfare with Chinese and Korean partisans, Soviet troops, and even fellow Japanese forces still fighting the bad fight. We delve deeply into Kaji’s headspace in this film, to a greater extent than in Kobayashi’s previous installments and there are a number of long segments watching Kaji walk in Dutch angle tracking shots that are quite visually special as he appears to be collapsing under the pressure of taking care of all of these people in this harsh environment. Kaji no longer tries to negotiate here; outside of when conversing with Japanese soldiers he encounters, Kaji shoots first then talks, realizing now that when at war, that is the only course of action you can fully rely on. We even get freeze-frames here from Kobayashi as Kaji recalls the horrors of the past films that he failed to act to prevent, the fact of which comes back to devastate him in his most difficult hour here in A Soldier’s Prayer. There is a similar relationship to that in the first film between Kaji and the soldier he met at the hospital in Road to Eternity with that soldier playing sort of the Yamamura role like in the first film. We note Kaji’s transformation over the films here as he is almost disgusted at the idea of burying some Chinese he killed after they killed a prostitute who was a member of his party, to which Tange, his friend, is shocked to see Kaji forget the humanity of his enemies. There’s a fantastic flashback montage as we watch the slow, agonizing death of a soldier Kaji was close to and the exploration of the blurry line between necessary action and war crime is explored to no end throughout the film. The editing between the closeups of Kaji and his unit of men as they listen to the Soviet soldiers nearby singing Katyusha is another excellent montage segment. There are sections of the film perhaps tread on Mikhail Kalatozov’s Letter Never Sent but that does not change that this is still an amazing and absorbing work, and easily artistically the strongest of the 3 films. The ending, which, in this case, I will not start to describe, is masterpiece material and truly an all-timer, and a hell of a cap to 3 of the most engaging hours in cinema. This film is the most outright declaration of Kobayashi’s worldview of any of his films, he himself having been a pacifist IJA soldier in WW2 which caused him to make this film in an effort to tell his story of the war from a perspective often forgotten in historical studies of Imperial Japan. I will say this though, that Kaji ends up in much the same place as he started the full 9-hour film, even if his position may be drastically different.
I did not watch all 3 in one day, this film is 9 hours long so instead I watched them all in sequential days. I do not yet believe it to be Apocalypse Now, but it proves that Coppola’s masterpiece is not entirely unapproachable when it comes to the bottom line of adapting war with cinema, and it firmly established Masaki Kobayashi as one of the finest directors of Japanese art cinema (even if he wasn’t quite Kurosawa), and brought to the world one of its finest actors in Tatsuya Nakadai. I find it pretty hard to grade on an all-time level because of how unwieldy it is in terms of its length (not criticizing the length, it’s all great cinema but ranking a 9-hour film alongside a bunch of 90-minute films make it more difficult) but still it keeps your eyes glued to the screen as you unearth the contents of this momentously epic film.
@Zane- thank you for sharing this- a film I have been putting off for far too long. I hope to tackle it soon- great work here
It was supposed to come with a Minnelli retrospective but I lost steam after writing about Lust for Life, Gigi, Home from the Hill and The Bad and the Beautiful. I may be able to convince myself to push out some of the other films if I have any time now that I’m not on a break anymore and maybe when I do I might post them.
I should probably post the ratings at least:
1944: Meet Me in St. Louis – MS (#5)
1945: The Clock – MS (#6)
1951: An American in Paris – HR/MS (#7)
1952: The Bad and the Beautiful – HR (#9)
1953: The Band Wagon – MP (#3)
1956: Lust for Life – R leaning R/HR (#11)
1956: Tea and Sympathy – MP (#2) (The only Minnelli film to achieve at least a 4.0 average rating on Letterboxd, all the others are lower)
1958: Gigi – HR (#10)
1958: Some Came Running – MP (#1)
1960: Home From the Hill – HR/MS (#8)
1962: Two Weeks in Another Town – MS (#4) (I even watched this one a second time because I was so blown away by how good it was despite its abysmal Letterboxd average – a very poor 3.4 which is about the border between R and the junkyard – and even after 2 viewings I’m still not positive it isn’t a MP it’s so close in my opinion)
@Zane – Hey, have you posted your thoughts on Minnelli somewhere? Would love to read it.
@Zane – Thanks! Great read that makes me want to conquer this beast.)
@Mad Mike – It’s surely worth the watch! Hell of a film. I was a bit daunted when I was getting ready to watch it because of the scale of it but I’m glad I did. Now I just have to watch Satantango and Berlin Alexanderplatz 🙂
Do you think you’ll be able to watch The Human Condition by the time the Top 1000 is complete?
@Zane- not entirely sure yet. I hope so.
Just watched the inheritance (1962) from kobayashi and it was pretty good. Similar to kurosawas bad sleep well or high and low which is different for kobayashi… probably a HR/MS on first viewing for me. You shud check it out if you can find it (and the human condition if u havent 😉)
@Big chungus- Thank you for sending this- I’m adding it to the queue
Just finished The Human Condition. Counting it as one ten-hour film and it’s a pretty big masterpiece.
– Countless gorgeous long-shots that would blow David Lean away (and this is before Lawrence of Arabia of course).
– The widescreen format is a great choice. Kobayashi is always careful to use the full space and places much of his effort into excellent blocking and mise en scene arrangements.
– The narrative is just devasting, bleak and absolutely earns the runtime lent to it. Tatsuya Nakadai is like a von Trier protagonist in this, constantly dealing with the most unfortunate events. He is excellent in this across the ten hours and if someone wanted to agree his work here is the single greatest male performance, I would not mind.
– Staggering amounts of extras in many scenes (especially in some of the great long shots)
– Great natural lighting, either silhouettes of figures or sun beaming down through trees in the forest section.
– They are used sparingly but some impactful close ups too
Among the best films of the 50s and 60s (not sure which year to count it towards).
– Should mention the ending is also an all timer.
My ranking of Kobayashi’s films that I’ve seen:
1. The Human Condition MP
(Part 1- MS/MP
Part 2- MP
Part 3- MP)
2. Harakiri MS/MP
3. Samurai Rebellion MS
4. Kwaidan MS
Oh man, this guy is gonna skyrocket once you watch The human condition trilogy, and deservedly so. I don’t think I could leave him out of the top 100.
In my personal opinion this is a Top 50 Director. Overshadowed by Kurosawa, Ozu & Mizoguchi but a master in his own way. Style plus with great depth to his storytelling.
@Drake – So after your recent Kobayashi study is Harakiri still his best film. I think it is one the best samurai film ever made. What grades did you gave to the Human Condition films?
@Alt Mash- I have put together some good notes for the Kobayashi page update – but will not be updating it until I update the rest of the director pages. There is a big facelift coming for this page of course.
@Drake – is the schedule to finish off the male actors over the next 40-80 days, then drop the top 1000 then do the directors list?
@Harry- That’s the plan – What films do I need to prioritize before the top 1000 update Harry?
@Drake – I am honored you would ask
This is what I think deserves more looks.
A Brighter Summer Day – Edward Yang
Yi Yi – Edward Yang
Providence – Alain Resnais
Tess – Roman Polanski
Man of The West – Anthony Mann
Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter… and Spring – Kim Ki Duk
Drowning by Numbers – Peter Greenaway
I think you should really try and give some WKW another go, it doesn’t seem right seeing Fallen Angels and Happy Together as R grades on the WKW page.
I mentioned it last night of course but I think going back into The Sacrifice after a Bergman study will be the best possible way to appreciate it fully.
@Harry- Thank you- I’ll get to as much as I can. I was going to just do an entire Tarkovsky thing this fall/winter – but we’ll see on the timing.
@Drake – exciting, I’m planning on viewing Andrei Rublev again for a third time soon. Maybe this next study will be the one where Mirror really gets to click for you.