SAT JUL 25, 2026 1:00 PM TRAVELLING ACTORS $10.00 (member) ; $15.00 (general admission) Ticket prices include a $2.00 online booking fee. Los Feliz 3 | 35mm print courtesy of National Film Archive of Japan Series co-presented by The Japan Foundation, Los Angeles and The Yanai Initiative for Globalizing Japanese Humanities ‘Mikio Naruse: An American Cinematheque Retrospective’
ABOUT THE FILM: In Japanese with English subtitles. Naruse harbored a special affection for this rural farce starring the great comic actor Kamatari Fujiwara, familiar to American audiences as the cravenly cynical peasant Manzo in Kurosawa’s SEVEN SAMURAI. As written by Naruse himself, Hyoroku (Fujiwara), a lowly member of a backwoods kabuki troupe, brings buffoonish pomposity to his role as the front legs of the act’s puppet horse. When a drunken patron falls on the horse’s head, the company replaces it with the real McCoy, unceremoniously demoting Hyoroku and his sidekick Senpei to stable boys. Tinged with nostalgia for a pre-modern popular art and vanishing provincial folkways, Naruse’s film conjures a timeless aura as if to ward off the distant reality of war. FORMAT: 35mm DISTRIBUTOR: Toho COUNTRY: Japan