Street Without End (Mikio Naruse, 1934)

Setsuko Shinobu in Street Without End

Cast: Setsuko Shinobu, Akio Isono, Hikaru Yamanouchi, Nobuko Wakaba, Ayako Katsuragi, Shin'ichi Himori, Chiyoko Katori, Ichiro Yuki. Screenplay: Jitsuzo Ikeda, Komatsu Kitamura. Cinematography: Suketaro Inokai. Set designer: Jokichi Shu. 

The titular street of Street Without End is located in the bustling Ginza district of Tokyo, where Sugiko (Setsuko Shinobu) works as a waitress. One of the most fascinating elements of Mikio Naruse's film is its documentation of the Ginza, now famous as a teeming, neon-lighted network of streets, in the 1930s, images of which constitute both the beginning and the end of the film. In between these shots of the crowded streets, we follow Sugiko's story as she almost marries the man she loves, almost becomes a movie star, loses her first love and her chance at stardom when she's struck by a car, marries the wealthy driver of the car, and suffers from the class snobbery of her sister- and mother-in-law. By the end of the film, she's back working as a waitress. A classic "woman's picture" melodrama, it was made in service of Naruse's concern about the weight of tradition and history that burdens the lives of Japan's women. It was Naruse's last silent film, and you can see him striving toward sound, which was late coming to the Japanese film industry. It is, for example, almost too chopped up by intertitles, as if Naruse were longing for audible dialogue. But Naruse surrounds his heroine with a gallery of well-drawn characters, overcoming the limitations of silent melodrama by making the people in it believable.