Kinuyo Tanaka (1909–1977) acted in over 250 films, worked with Japan’s great auteurs, and became so popular her name was even used in titles. The revelation of Film at Lincoln Center’s upcoming Tanaka retrospective, however, is the six movies she herself directed between 1953 and 1962. Japan’s second woman filmmaker after Tazuko Sakane, Tanaka delineated women’s endurance and self-definition in the postwar era through images of breathtaking delicacy. Her 1960 melodrama Forever a Woman, based on the life of the tanka poet Fumiko Nakajō, harnesses deep-focus photography as it depicts the dying heroine’s sexual catharsis and the rebirth of her muse. In one playful shot, Fumiko (Yumej Tsukioka) is framed by a TV-size aperture as she bathes while recovering from a double mastectomy. Looking over her shoulder through the “window,” Fumiko teases her widowed friend Kinuko (Yōko Sugi), who’s placed in the audience’s position. “Actually, I always wanted to bathe where your husband bathed,” Fumiko says, her smile not a taunt but a gesture of feminine solidarity. Kinuko stays with Fumiko to the end. Women caring for other women is central to Tanaka’s stunning films. —Graham Fuller