The Ballad of Narayama (1958 film)

The Ballad of Narayama (Narayama-bushi Ko)
The Original Japanese Poster.
Directed by	Keisuke Kinoshita
Produced by	Masaharu Kokaji, Ryuzo Otani
Written by	Keisuke Kinoshita
Based on	Men of Tohoku by Shichirō Fukazawa
Starring	Kinuyo Tanaka, Teiji Takahashi, Yuuko Mochizuki
Music by	Chuji Kinoshita, Matsunosuke Nozawa
Cinematography	Hiroyuki Kusuda
Edited by	Yoshi Sugihara
Production company	Shochiku
Distributed by	Shochiku (Japan)
Release date	June 1, 1958
Running time	98 minutes
Country	Japan
Language	Japanese

The Ballad of Narayama (楢山節考, Narayama-bushi Kō^?) is a 1958 Japanese period film directed by Keisuke Kinoshita and based on the 1956 novella of the same name by Shichirō Fukazawa. The film explores the legendary practice of obasute, in which elderly people were carried to a mountain and abandoned to die.

Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times rated the film a maximum 4 stars, and added it to his Great Movies list in 2013, making it the final film he added to the list before his death. In a June 1961 review in The New York Times, A.H. Weiler called the film "an odd and colorful evocation of Japan's past that is only occasionally striking"; "It is stylized and occasionally graphic fare in the manner of the Kabuki Theatre, which is realistically staged, but decidedly strange to Western tastes."

The film won three Mainichi Film Awards, including Best Film; it was submitted as the Japanese entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 31st Academy Awards, but was not chosen as one of the five nominees.

During the 2012 Cannes Film Festival, a digitally restored version of the film was screened out of competition, as part of the festival's Cannes Classics selections.