Ginza Cosmetics, January 19
© 1951 Kokusai Hoei Co., Ltd.

(Ginza gesho, a.k.a. Light and Darkness of Ginza). Based on his own observations of Ginza life, Naruse made Tokyo's famed entertainment quarter a site for a classic study of a woman approaching middle age, treated with a subtle emotional quality and nuance that were typical of both Naruse and his star, Kinuyo Tanaka. She portrays a bar hostess, struggling to support a small child and still protecting her ne'er-do-well ex from his own failures. She allows herself to hook up with a rich patron only to repulse his sexual advances; a dream of escape with a young man who talks poetry similarly ends in nothing, thanks to the Sirkian intervention of her gap-toothed son. As in every Naruse film, there is home base (here, as often, a small backstreet) and there is the public sphere, teeming with its lonely types and brassy molls, its streets and cafes where a woman's life is, literally, negotiated.

—Judy Bloch

• Written by Matsuo Kishi, from a novel by Yuichiro Inoue. Photographed by Akira Mimura. With Kinuyo Tanaka, Yoshiho Nishikubo, Ranko Hanai, Yoshio Kosugi. (87 mins, B&W, 16mm, Courtesy of The Japan Foundation, permission Kokusai Hoei)