Bruce Loeb on Piano

(Yogoto no yume, a.k.a. Every Night Dreams, Each Night I Dream). Nightly Dreams has been called Naruse's most visually audacious work; it is also an early statement of the director's cardinal theme of a woman trapped and betrayed by weak or corrupt men. A young woman, Omitsu, abandoned by her husband, is forced to work as a harbor prostitute to support her young child. When the husband returns, contrite and full of promises, the couple look forward briefly to a semblance of normal family life. But times are hard, no one is hiring, and the family fragments once again, this time more tragically. A virtuoso display of camera movement, unusual angles, and startling montage, Every Night Dreams also features an early instance of an actress (Sumiko Kurishima) prodded to greatness by Naruse's directing.

• Written by Tadao Ikeda. Photographed by Suketaro Inokai. With Sumiko Kurishima, Teruko Kojima, Tatsuo Saito. (64 mins, Silent with Japanese intertitles and English subtitles, B&W, 35mm, A Collection of National Film Center, The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, permission Janus/Criterion Collection)

Preceded by:

Flunky, Work Hard!

Mikio Naruse (Japan, 1931)



(Koshiben ganbare, a.k.a. Little Man, Do Your Best, Ode to a Salesman). In its deftly observed portrait of lower-middle-class suburban family life, Flunky, Work Hard! is reminiscent of Ozu's 1932 classic I Was Born, But . . . but with a keener edge of desperation. The lighthearted satire of competing insurance salesmen veers abruptly into tragedy when word arrives that a child has been hit by a train. As Phillip Lopate wrote, "This pattern of slapstick taking a sudden tearjerker turn was very popular with Japanese audiences at the time. What seems surprising, as with some of Ozu's early silents, is the rather wild ’show-off' style—quick cutting, weird camera angles, multiple dissolves . . . so different from Naruse's later work. But we can already see the same interest in people at the end of their monetary rope, the same humanism, the same atmospheric accuracy and—heretical as this may sound—the same propensity for humor."



• Written by Naruse. Photographed by Mitsuo Miura. With Isamu Yamaguchi, Tomoko Naniwa, Seiichi Kato. (38 mins, Silent with Japanese intertitles and English subtitles, B&W, 35mm, A Collection of National Film Center, The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, permission Janus/Criterion Collection)



• (Total running time: 102 mins)