Made available on Blu-ray by the Criterion Collection, Kinoshita's highly stylized exploration of the Narayama story is a deliciously stunning exploration of the possibilities of colour, and has some of the most inventive use of transition in film.
You might be familiar with the far more explicit and naturalistic film version of the same story from 1983, made by Shôhei Imamura, and knowledge of that film greatly enhanced my viewing of this. These two films are worlds apart, in fact so much that it feels that Imamura's film openly converses with this, since its theatricality seems to almost provoke the kind of hyper-naturalism inherent in the Imamura. Another film that enriches this is Kinugasa's "Jigokumon" ("Gates of Hell", 1953), available on Region B Blu-ray courtesy of the Masters of Cinema, and soon to be released by Criterion, as well.
I didn't know much of Kinoshita before this, only the biographical information concerning his relationship with Masaki Kobayashi, who served as his apprentice and whose film "Harakiri" (1962) Kinoshita openly disliked (he reversed his opinion later). I think it's somewhat ironic since Kobayashi's use of lighting certainly finds a compeer here, and I think this definitely encouraged "Kwaidan" (1964) to go to the lengths it did.
