Akasen Chitai / Street Of Shame (1956) :
Brief Review -
A Classic Good Bye note from legend Mizoguchi with an Annihilationistical thought of Prostitution being a Social Work. This film goes down in history books as one of the most gutsy film ever made in Japanese Cinema because of daring attempt to showcase the positive side of filthy content like Prostitution. We all look at prostitutes as who*** but they are all woman afterall. They all are mothers, wives, daughters and sisters of someone and doesn't do this work willingly. It's a jammed situation which leaves them with no alternate choice and Street Of Shame perfectly brings that conviction in the writing by using refrences from Japanese Society where Women can't earn good in corporate world and therefore had to walk on this shameful Street. The best point made from the film is, finally somebody tried to call this absurdity normal and acceptable even though it would never become so. One character in the film who runs the brothel continuously says this dialogue that 'We are like social workers'. At first it looked rubbish but after some time i started believing this horrible thought and almost accepted it by the end. Street Of Shame is story of various prostitutes of different age groups working at a brothel and struggling against the livelihood. There is nothing more to the story, it's a compilation of personal lives of those prostitutes where each and every actress plays the role with the heart and the body. The screenplay is highly engaging and short runtime is worths every minute of it. This was the last film of Kenji Mizogichi and i must say that the legend said good bye to the cinema world in grand style. His framework nuances and skills in this film are same as his previous classics but the seriousness of the content was much higher this time. It will take years for others to match this Classic with this concept.
RATING - 8/10*
By - #samthebestest.
A Classic Good Bye note from legend Mizoguchi with an Annihilationistical thought of Prostitution being a Social Work. This film goes down in history books as one of the most gutsy film ever made in Japanese Cinema because of daring attempt to showcase the positive side of filthy content like Prostitution. We all look at prostitutes as who*** but they are all woman afterall. They all are mothers, wives, daughters and sisters of someone and doesn't do this work willingly. It's a jammed situation which leaves them with no alternate choice and Street Of Shame perfectly brings that conviction in the writing by using refrences from Japanese Society where Women can't earn good in corporate world and therefore had to walk on this shameful Street. The best point made from the film is, finally somebody tried to call this absurdity normal and acceptable even though it would never become so. One character in the film who runs the brothel continuously says this dialogue that 'We are like social workers'. At first it looked rubbish but after some time i started believing this horrible thought and almost accepted it by the end. Street Of Shame is story of various prostitutes of different age groups working at a brothel and struggling against the livelihood. There is nothing more to the story, it's a compilation of personal lives of those prostitutes where each and every actress plays the role with the heart and the body. The screenplay is highly engaging and short runtime is worths every minute of it. This was the last film of Kenji Mizogichi and i must say that the legend said good bye to the cinema world in grand style. His framework nuances and skills in this film are same as his previous classics but the seriousness of the content was much higher this time. It will take years for others to match this Classic with this concept.
RATING - 8/10*
By - #samthebestest.