Hello, my name is Justin the Clue, and I'm here today with Will Sloan, and you're listening to

the Important Cinema Club. And today, we are talking about Hideo Gosha, one of the great samurai filmmakers.

And when I say that, I don't mean he was a samurai, is that he made a lot of

samurai films. Well, thank you. We're off to a good start. Yes, Japan Month continues on the

Important Cinema Club podcast. This is the second of four. And it's the second week in row

where we're talking about a filmmaker who I knew nothing about going in. You probably didn't

even hear his name before, right?

No, but I've seen certain titles.

I'd seen Sword of the Beast as a title.

I'd seen Three Outlaw Samurai as a title.

When you're talking about Hideo Gosha's filmography, a lot of it is available,

but the ones that are really easily streamable and criterion are very odd ones.

They're all from late period when he kind of switched his style to a much calmer and classier one

that won Japanese Academy Awards.

It is interesting, isn't it?

You know, you look back on mid-century art house filmmaking and you realize how much of it got

kind of reduced, at least in

the popular Western perception to just a couple of names.

Like from Japan, for so many years, it was basically Kurosawa and everyone else.

And then in the 70s, Ozu started to become a bit known.

You also have Mizaguchi, who made his films.

Those are like the three, I feel, out of Japan that like the art house

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