Which Version?

There are two films with almost identical titles. "Ballad of Narayama" was directed by Keisuke Kinoshita in 1958. "The Ballad of Narayama" was directed by Shôhei Imamura in 1983. Often when there are identical titles one version is clearly better (or at least far more accessible) than the other. But not this time; both are worthy films. One merited a Criterion restoration and re-release as a "classic" in 2012; the other won the Palme D'Or at Cannes. Both present their original Japanese soundtracks, and both offer good English subtitles.

Availability of the earlier version may be somewhat restricted; the only commercially available DVD of the 1958 version is likely that Criterion restoration. The 1983 version is more readily available. In fact, depending on your source, the 1983 version may be the only one listed so it's not even apparent another version exists at all.

The 1958 version is based on the novel "Narayama Bushiko" written a couple years earlier by Shichirô Fukazawa. The 1983 version is based on both that novel and the slightly earlier collection of stories "The Men of Tohoku" by the same author about the same characters in the same village.

The 1958 version marries Kabuki and film. I particularly noticed the Kabuki stylistic influence in four areas: First, very dramatic lighting shifts (usually completely unrealistic, sometimes to the point of invisibility) are often used to change scenes, introduce (or exit) characters, or focus attention. Second, there is a solo Japanese musical soundtrack throughout much of the film, sometimes just instrumental and sometimes also a voice. The lyrics sung by the voice often provide a sort of commentary, similar to how a "voiceover" might function in a more conventional film. Third, there's often a fairly obvious (in fact what we might call a "shameless") connection between external scenery and internal psychological states - for example seeing a landscape bathed in "heavy mist" tells us the characters are "confused" (if we haven't already figured that out). And fourth, sometimes actions are extended far beyond what would be "realistic" to allow the characters to fully express their internal states - think of a fairly silly "death scene" on the English stage and you'll get the picture.

It's shot entirely on sound stages. The sets are extremely elaborate (including even running creeks), so sometimes the lack of depth and the painted background are the only significant clues we're not on location.

As the whole film is about carrying away old people, the psychological ramifications of that tradition are explored from many different angles. If you were to somehow take out everything that wasn't directly related to the rules about old people, there wouldn't be much left.

The 1983 version is more a sequence of vignettes, often with the connections between them becoming clear only later. Although in addition to sharing the same book source, it's clearly influenced by the earlier film, yet it's by no means a simple "remake". While a few scenes are almost identical, many are completely different. There is a great deal of nature photography. In fact one comment is there's so much nature photography that if you pulled out all those scenes you'd have enough for a short documentary. Reproduction is a constant theme, so that if you took out all the "humping" scenes, either of people or of animals or of both, the film would be noticeably shorter.

While the theme of carrying away old people still gets significant coverage, so do other stories centered on the "yakko" ("extra" people allowed to live and work but not allowed to marry or head a household).

The 1958 version seems somewhat less accessible to non-Japanese audiences, is more psychologically concentrated, and shows its "theater" (in this case Kabuki) stage roots. The 1983 version tries very hard to be universally accessible (I've never seen a movie with two simultaneous subtitle tracks before, one for dialog translation and the other for cultural references). Its dialog seems less roundabout (but that may simply be the style of the subtitles). And it's more "realistic", with characters moving at normal speeds in recognizable landscapes, and dramatic lighting shifts restricted to a couple supernatural references rather than occurring all the time. While the 1958 version probably requires more focused attention by non-Japanese viewers, I ultimately found it very slightly more rewarding.