Twenty Four Eyes [Criterion Collection]

"This gentle, sensitive Japanese drama features Hideko Takamine as a schoolteacher who begins her long career in 1927. The film follows the woman's progress through World War II and also traces the individual destinies of her first 12 pupils. The emphasis is on the maintenance of traditional Japanese values in the face of an increasingly militaristic government and how the effort to remain loyal to those values affects the teacher, her husband, and her students. As everyone grows older, ide...