Director: Sadao Yamanaka

The film: Eureka Video has released some excellent DVDs this year on its new Masters of Cinema (MoC) label, with some of the best representing the otherwise overlooked output of Japanese directors such as Kaneto Shindo (The Naked Island, Kuroneko) and Hiroshi Teshigahara (The Face of Another, Pitfall). The most unexpected addition to the MoC catalogue, however, is a little-known pre-war filmmaker, Sadao Yamanaka.

Yamanaka made 23 films in his seven-year career, but only three are still known to exist. Of these, Humanity and Paper Balloons (1937) is considered his finest achievement. Yamanaka was unwillingly drafted into the army on the day it premiered in Tokyo, and he died of dysentery in China the next year, at the age of 29.

Although his surviving body of work is small, Japanese film scholars still rate Yamanaka alongside the likes of Akira Kurosawa, Yasujiro Ozu, and Kenji Mizoguchi.

The story of Humanity and Paper Balloons takes place in 18th-century Edo (now Tokyo), and is set in a run- down alleyway occupied by outcasts and miscreants - a hairdresser and an unemployed samurai among them. The hairdresser involves the samurai in the kidnapping of a rich merchant's daughter, with terrible results for both.

All the main characters were played by actors from a socialist theatre group (Zenshin-za) and their obvious familiarity with one another is visible in a wonderful piece of ensemble playing, reminiscent of Kurosawa's The Lower Depths (1957).

As with Ozu, Yamanaka's appeal lies in the moods he creates, the fluidity of his storytelling, and in the strength of his images.

Yamanaka's death has been described as Japanese cinema's greatest loss, and he's often compared to the French filmmaker Jean Vigo, who died at the same age, three years earlier. Writing in the booklet that accompanies this DVD, Japanese director Aoyama Shinji laments: 'If he had survived, the world might have respected him more deeply than Kenji Mizoguchi; might have loved him more greatly than Ozu Yasujiro; might have marvelled at his films more than those of Akira Kurosawa.'

The extras: Extra features are lacking. A couple of interviews with Japanese film scholars and a commentary would have made for interesting viewing, but the only extra is about a dozen promotional stills.

Eureka has supplied the background information in the form of a 24-page booklet that features three essays and an article written by Yamanaka in 1935 for a Japanese film magazine. On the last page is a reproduction of his will, the final lines of which read: 'Lastly, I say to my friends: Please make good movies.'