Shortly after the end of WW2, in the days leading up to a vote in the Diet on whether to outlaw prostitution in Japan, five very different women work in Dreamland, a Tokyo brothel. Like many of Kenji Mizoguchi 's dramas, much of the film is about the status of women and about their power, pf lack of it, to control their own lives. Each of the five women has a different reason for working the streets and for at least three of them, there appears to be no other option and the question of how they, and the people that they support, will survive if the government bans their profession is central to their story. On a number of occasions, the owners of the brothel justify their business as offering a social service that the government has failed to provide and, well obviously self-serving, their arguments cannot easily be dismissed. The paralleling stories, cast, script* and cinematography are all very good. Like the women's lives, the film has some joyful moments, but in general, is bleak and sad. The ending is searing. A film well worth watching and both the production's background as well as the times and cultural shifts that it depicts are well worth reading about. *Watched with English sub-titles.
Review of Street of Shame
