Sumiko Kurishima

In the formally ravishing Every-Night Dreams, set in the dockside neighborhoods of Tokyo, a single mother works tirelessly as a Ginza bar hostess to ensure a better life for her young son—until her long-lost husband returns.Read More »

Shiro Toyada is known for his literary adaptations and this is an early adaptation of Fumiko Hayashi’s work, the second after Sotoji Kimura’s A Wanderer’s Notebook from three years ealier. Like Toyoda’s later 50s masterpieces it features strong minded woman and weak, feckless men.

Crybaby Apprentice tells of four sisters, the eldest, the widowed Sadako, has a failed businessman as a lover and two children, eleven year old Keikichi and his younger sister. The boy’s sullen demeanour gets on “uncle’s” nerves and after moving in to save money he threatens to move out again. During the course of the film Keikichi is passed from one sister to the next, unwanted either as a nuisance or through poverty.Read More »

Synopsis:
An affluent medical professor, Komiya, and his bossy wife, Tokio, are to look after Setsuko, their high-spirited niece from Osaka. Setsuko is a liberated woman who does what she wants, including smoking, even though she is a minor. On Saturday, the professor does not feel like going to his weekend golf game, but his wife packs him off anyway. So he leaves his bag at the apartment of his student Okada, and goes to a bar with a friend. Setsuko traces him there, and insists that he take her to a geisha house. When she gets rather tipsy, the professor calls Okada to take her home, while he sleeps at Okada’s. The wife becomes suspicious of Setsuko when she sees Okada bringing her home, and also of her husband when she discovers that he did not go golfing.Read More »