"Director: Masahiro Shinoda"

• Pale Flower (1964) (Criterion Collection) UK Only - Original title: Kawaita hana | Blu Ray | (14/03/2022) from £17.99   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  In this cool, seductive jewel of the Japanese New Wave, a yakuza, fresh out of prison, becomes entangled with a beautiful yet enigmatic gambling addict; what at first seems a redemptive relationship ends up leading him further down the criminal path. Bewitchingly shot and edited and laced with a fever-dreamlike score by Toru Takemitsu (Woman in the Dunes, Ran), this breakthrough gangster romance from Masahiro Shinoda (Samurai Spy, Double Suicide) announced an idiosyncratic major filmmaking talent. The pitch-black Pale Flower (Kawaita hana) is an unforgettable excursion into the underworld. Special Features New high-definition digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition New video interview with director Masahiro Shinoda Selected-scene audio commentary by film scholar Peter Grilli, coproducer of Music for the Movies: Toru Takemitsu Original theatrical trailer New and improved English subtitle translation PLUS: A new essay by film critic Chuck Stephens

• Silence (AKA Chinmoku) (Masters of Cinema) | DVD | (24/09/2007) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £17.99

  Adapted from the renowned novel by Shusaku Endo Masahiro Shinoda's 1971 film Silence (Chinmoku co-written with Endo) explores the violent cultural conflict amid the arrival of Jesuit missionaries in seventeenth-century Japan. Shinoda's excellent direction - coupled with a pensive score by the legendary Toru Takemitsu - gives cinematic expression to inner spiritual paradox and imbues with religious mystery a landscape that seems already sentient with wind rain and light. Two Port

• Assassination | DVD | (23/01/2006) from £27.37   |  Saving you £-7.38 (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Assassination (or Ansatsu) marked Masahiro Shinoda's first attempt at a period film and is widely considered to be his finest achievement. Previously gaining fame and status alongside Nagisa Oshima and Kiju Yoshida challenging established Japanese cinema with tales of reckless youth The Dry Lake (1960) and the seminal yakuza drama Pale Flower (1964) Shinoda graduated from Shochiku where like Shohei Imamura his grounding wa

• Gonza The Spearman | DVD | (30/08/2004) from £7.99   |  Saving you £12.00 (150.19%)   |  RRP £19.99

  A period drama adapted from the play by Monzaemon Chikamatsu (an 18th century playwright regarded as the Shakespeare of Japanese literature) telling of the tragic fate of handsome ladies man Gonza a master spearman in the Tokugawa Shogunate period. Forced to fight for his life when his repuation leads to false accusations of an affair with the daimyo's (local warlord) wife Gonza vows to clear his name. However in the process of proving his innocence love begins to take hold of th