No Regrets for Our Youth

1946 [JAPANESE]

Action / Drama

14
Rotten Tomatoes Critics - Rotten 72% · 6 reviews
Rotten Tomatoes Audience - Upright 72% · 500 ratings
IMDb Rating 7.1/10 10 4373 4.4K

student protest kyoto, japan 1930s flower arrangements

Plot summary

After her anti-fascist professor father is dismissed, Yukie navigates love, political repression, and wartime upheaval—ultimately forging her own path in pre- and post-WWII Japan.

Director

Akira Kurosawa Photo
Akira Kurosawa

Top cast

Akitake Kôno Photo
Akitake Kôno as Itokawa
Setsuko Hara Photo
Setsuko Hara as Yukie Yagihara
Taizô Fukami Photo
Taizô Fukami as Minister of Education
Eiko Miyoshi Photo
Eiko Miyoshi as Madame Yagihara, the prodessor's wife
720p.BluRay 1080p.BluRay
1017.53 MB
968*720
Japanese 2.0
NR
Subtitles us   fr  
23.976 fps
1 hr 50 min
Seeds 2
1.84 GB
1440*1072
Japanese 2.0
NR
Subtitles us   fr  
23.976 fps
1 hr 50 min
Seeds 13

Movie Reviews

Reviewed by MissSimonetta 8 / 10

Beautiful and socially conscious coming of age story

NO REGRETS FOR OUR YOUTH is quite different from the period pieces that made Kurosawa famous in the 1950s and 1960s. Set during WWII, the movie follows Yukie, the spoiled daughter of a liberal professor. She lives an enchanted, comfortable life, yet she is also keenly aware that her life is empty. The thought of following a conventional path (marriage to a steady breadwinner, children) bores her. She is drawn to a social activist named Noge, whose life on the edges of society is dangerous but seemingly thrilling-- and from there, she is taken from her gilded bourgeois life and thrown into the world to find a way to live her life consciously and with purpose.Kurosawa's oeuvre is generally chided for being too male-focused, but in Yukie, his only female protagonist, he gives us one of his finest heroes. Her transformation over the course of the movie is brilliantly played by Setsuko Hara. Her mannerisms and expressions allow her character to age credibly, more so than other movies I can think of where the audience watches a character age over many years. Yukie is idealistic, but also practical and steadfast.As a film, NO REGRETS is executed with flair: Kurosawa has yet to develop his own signature style fully at this point in his career. I found a lot of debt to Soviet and European art cinema on display here, especially in the montages. He is not yet the master filmmaker he would become, but this is an astonishing early effort, heartfelt and assured. But it would be a shame to only see this movie as a stepping stone towards better things, for it is a fine piece of work in its own right.
Reviewed by gavin6942 7 / 10

PostwarKurosawa

The daughter (Setsuko Hara) of a politically disgraced university professor (Denjiro Okochi) struggles to find a place for herself in love and life, in the uncertain world of Japan leading into WWII.One character was inspired by the real-life Hotsumi Ozaki, who assisted the famous Soviet spy Richard Sorge and so became the only Japanese citizen to suffer the death penalty for treason during World War II. It is this aspect that makes the film particularly interesting, as it reflects on the role Japan played in the world from 1933-1945.The film as a whole is interesting for being made so soon after World War II. Clearly the budget and production value is limited, but you might expect a country ravaged by war would be too busy with other things to make movies. Not so when you have a man named Kurosawa.
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