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"Upstanding women should not stay out past dark," a billboard in hell. (Rossellini runs parallel with Germany Year Zero.) Osaka the après-guerre junkyard, surviving means you sell your clothes or you sell yourself, so learns the widow (Kinuyo Tanaka). People return from the war to burned homes and dead loved ones, the protagonist's sister (Sanae Takasugi) turns "dance hostess" at the Hollywood Club. The two split over the attentions of a businessman who dabbles in opium (Mitsuo Nagata), and meet again at a refuge for sick prostitutes, solidarity is a relative thing. "I hate you, but I hate men even more." A landscape of pure despair, a blistering act of commiseration from Kenji Mizoguchi. The streetwalkers are a raucous bunch ("The syphilis has gone to your brain" is a typical crack), ferocious as jackals when spotting a neophyte and with little use for preaching. (A proselytizer gassing about "the beauty of chastity" gets the razzing reception she deserves: "Sorry if our impurity offends you!") The black market hides behind respectable fronts, children wither before they're born, the heroine dangles cigarettes moments after crawling past barbed wire. Meanwhile, the young runaway (Tomie Tsunoda) is scooped up at the train station by a sharpie posing as a student, swiftly fleeced and deflowered and left to fend for herself. "It's kind of romantic." Sojourn at "The House of Light," lashings at the ruined cathedral, shadows limping behind the stained-glass Madonna. "Planning to go straight? If so, we'll give you a little farewell present." Street of Shame is Mizoguchi's meditative reassessment, Gate of Flesh is Suzuki's kaleidoscopic derangement. With Minpei Tomimoto, Umeko Obayashi, Kumeko Urabe, Kimie Hayashi, Hiroshi Aoyama, Kenzo Tanaka, and Kikue Mori. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |