Filmmaker Kaneto Shindo (Onibaba, Kuroneko) Dies Aged 100

Various tributes are expected to be held.

Kaneto Shindo, a prolific, much-honored scripter and helmer of films including “The Naked Island,” “Onibaba” and 2010’s WWII drama “Postcard,” died on Tuesday of age-related causes. He was 100.

Born in Hiroshima, Shindo joined the now extinct Shinko Kinema studio in 1934 as an apprentice film developer. The following year he moved with the studio to Tokyo, where he learned scriptwriting and worked on the set of legendary helmer Kenji Mizoguchi. In 1943 Shindo was drafted into the Imperial Navy and became one of six in his 100-man unit to survive the war, an experience that became an inspiration for “Postcard.”

After the war, Shindo wrote scripts for helmer Kozaburo Yoshimura at the Shochiku studio. Their long collaboration was successful critically and commercially, but both men, discontent with the strictures of the studio system, left Shochiku in 1950 and founded Kindai Eiga Kyokai. This pioneering indie production house was to be Shindo’s professional base for the next six decades.

Shindo debuted as a helmer in 1951 with the autobiographical drama “The Story of a Beloved Wife,” starring Nobuko Otowa, a talented young thesp who was to become his lover, wife and muse, appearing in many of his pics until her death of liver cancer in 1994.

Shindo first gained international recognition for “Children of Hiroshima,” a drama set in Shindo’s atom-bombed hometown. It preemed at Cannes in 1953, and following this success, Shindo continued to examine contemporary social issues in his work, including the Continue reading…

 

Kuroneko (Courtesy of Eureka! Entertainment)

 

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