Street Without End

This silent Japanese melodrama from Shochiku and director Mikio Naruse is about a young waitress Sugiko (Setsuko Shinobu) with a bright future. The day after her boyfriend proposes marriage, she's also offered a contract with a film studio to become a movie star. These wonderful options are both lost when she's accidentally hit by a car. The vehicle belongs to rich guy Hiroshi (Hikaru Yamanouchi), and he feels personally responsible, even if it was his chauffeur driving. He makes sure that Sugiko gets all the medical care she needs, while also falling in love with her, but his status-conscious mother and sister disapprove.

This fits firmly in the "women's picture" weepie genre that Naruse specialized in during the sound era (this would be his final silent film). Shinobu is good as the pure-at-heart Sugiko who gets driven to the emotional edge through no fault of her own. There's a subplot about Sugiko's former roommate becoming a film star, and her relationship with a struggling artist, that doesn't really add to the proceedings, and the film could have been tightened up with its omission. There are a few clever filming tricks used, such as a car crash being depicted not by the vehicle being shown wrecked, but rather having the personal effects of the car's occupants shown falling down a cliff in close-up.