So Yamamura is the grieving observer of the failure of his children's marriages. His daughter has left her husband and brought home two children; and his son is cheating on Setsuko Hara with a mistress and a girl friend. He comes to realize that the fruit doesn't fall far from the tree.

Mikio Naruse is sometimes viewed as a backup to Ozu. It is true they had much the same career path, becoming directors in the late silent era, directing a wide variety of movies in the 1930s , but becoming known for women's movies in the 1950s. However, while Ozu's movies documented endurance, Naruse was more concerned with the tragedy of failure, its roots and effects. His camera work is less stylized -- or perhaps, to my eye, more western. In the face of a changing Japan, his characters do not apologize and endure; they weep and change.

What makes this movie particularly telling is that the characters at the heart of this tragedy -- the son and daughter-in-law -- are not the focus of this movie. It's Yamamura who is the movie's focus and he who learns he is the cause of the tragedy. In the end, we are offered hope for the children; they will live and perhaps be happy again; for Yamamura there is nothing but exile from life.

The businessman Ogata Shingo (Sô Yamamura) works with his son Shuichi (Ken Uehara),who is his secretary, and they live together in the suburb with their wives Yasuko (Teruko Nagaoka) and Kikuko (Setsuko Hara) respectively. Shuichi has a love affair and has a loveless marriage with Kikuko. Yasuko has dedicated her entire life to her family but Shingo married her only because her older sister had died. Kikuko is the pride and joy of Shingo and they are close to each other.

Out of the blue, Shingo and Yasuko's daughter Fusako (Chieko Nakakita) leaves her husband and arrives at Shingo's home with her two children. Shingo investigates and finds the address of Shuichi's lover. Meanwhile Kikuko goes to the hospital and Shingo learns that she was pregnant but decided to abort her child.

"Yama no oto" is a movie about forbidden love based on the novel of Yasumari Kawabata and directed by Mikio Naruse that uses the favorite theme of Ozu – the family drama - and similar locations. The story is based on the patriarch Shingo, a man that has married his wife without loving her but also respected her along their lives. He feels a forbidden love with his sister-in-law Kikuko, a woman that is apparently submissive working as a servant at home, but strong enough to abort her child to avoid keeping her loveless marriage with her husband. Fusako is Shingo's estranged daughter that is also strong enough to leave her husband and move with her children to her parents' home. This women behavior is unusual in Japanese movies from these years. My vote is eight.

Title (Brazil): "O Som da Montanha" ("The Sound of the Mountain")

There are some foreign films so steeped in their culture that as an American who knows the world only through movies, I find myself thoroughly puzzles. Sound of the Mountain is one of those movies.

The story is simple enough. A man bonds with his daughter-in-law, and is upset by the way she's treated by his odious son.

But constantly through the movie I felt like I was just missing something. Someone makes a comment and then the woman turns her head in a way to suggest something significant has happened. The man spends time talking about when someone mispronounces a word and I can't figure out why that's interesting.

I can see there is a concept of proper behavior but I can't quite find its outlines. A lot is left unsaid and I'm not sure what is meant.

I just felt kind of lost.

It's not a problem I have with all Japanese movies. I love Kurosawa, after all.

I'm not giving this a star rating because I don't feel qualified to judge this movie. It is well filmed and looks very nice, the acting is quite good, and the final scene is lovely and touching, yet I did not, for the most part, enjoy it, and if I were to give a star rating based on my subjective experience I would give it a 6 at best.