Spring Bell

Spring Bell (1985)

春の鐘

Rokuheita Narumi is fascinated by oriental art and works as the director of the Saho Art Museum in Nara. His wife, Noriko, is unable to leave Tokyo, despite his wishes, and the two live separately. Feeling lonely and neglected by her husband, she immerses herself in the depraved life of the city and continues to have a loveless relationship with a doctor, Katsumori. One day, Narumi arrives in Tokyo and learns of Noriko's affair, but he cannot divorce her for the sake of their child, so he devotes himself to his work.

Date of release
1985-11-09
TMDB
7.2 / 10 (4)
Runtime
2h 10m
Genres
Romance, Drama
Director
Koreyoshi Kurahara

Casting

Interesting facts

Haru no Kane , also known as Spring Bell, is a 1985 Japanese romantic drama film directed by Koreyoshi Kurahara and written by Kôji Takada. It was adapted from a novel of the same name by Masaaki Tachihara, first published in 1978 by Shinchosha. The film's story concerns an extramarital affair and its impact on the marriage of an art museum director and his wife. It stars Kin'ya Kitaōji and Yoshiko Mita in the lead roles. Toho released Haru no Kane theatrically on November 9, 1985, in Japan. Joe Hisaishi, credited onscreen as "Yuzuru Hisaishi", composed the film's score.

Production

Cinematographer Akira Shiizuka and editor Akira Suzuki had worked with director Kurahara on his previous films Antarctica and The Glacier Fox.

The production originally cast Ken Ogata as Rokuheita and Ayumi Ishida as Noriko, but Ogata insisted on "changing the role to a male-oriented film with Narumi [Rokuheita] at the center". Creative disagreements ensued, and the pair dropped out. They were replaced by Kin’ya Kitaōji and Yoshiko Mita, respectively. Mita was persuaded when Kurahara told her, "If you don't appear in this film, I won't do this film."

Haru no Kane originally featured a nude scene with Yūko Kotegawa’s character. She was nervous about the scene, but accepted the role in order to work with Kurahara. However, during editing, Kurahara determined that the scene was too long and cut most of Kotegawa’s nudity from the film.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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