Women of the Night

Startling, forceful tale of women descending into a life of prostitution in post-war Osaka. Kinuyo Tanaka, who would play the lost mother of the protagonists in Sansho the Bailiff, stars as a woman who lost both her husband and son to illness long after the war has ended. When her younger sister, Sanae Takasugi, steals the man she's having an affair with, she joins the streetwalkers. Mizoguchi was heavily influenced by Italian Neorealism here, and most of it was filmed in the ruined streets of Osaka. It's blunt as Hell, and arguably exploitative. Mizoguchi disowned it later in his career. The two best sequences in the film, one where a group of prostitutes denudes a young rape victim, and the final one where Tanaka comes to the rescue of the same girl when another group of prostitutes is attacking her, are the seeds that would spawn Seijun Suzuki's Gate of Flesh. That's definitely a compliment, in my book. That final sequence in particular, despite more than a little heavy-handedness (it takes place in a burnt-out church), is one of the most emotionally draining in the director's career.

Fusako Owada, a young woman in postwar Japan, is the mistress of a notorious drug dealer. Fusako's tenuous grasp on meaningful life is shaken when she learns that her lover is having an affair with her sister.

This film is generally dismissed as one of Mizoguchi's "lesser" films, and has been called a "good melodrama" -- something of a backhanded compliment. I like to think it was a bit more than that.

Aside from the drug aspect and the sister relationship, just the mistress status alone is worth examining. This is a very emotional part, as can be seen when the secretary asks if her boss really likes her. He gives a response along the lines of "I will try to be more affectionate." She is craving real love, and he is only acting the part...

Kenji Mizoguchi is arguably the greatest Japanese film-maker ever and it is truly a pity, therefore, that this is only the fifth film of his I have watched; luckily, the host of the Italian TV programme which showed WOMEN OF THE NIGHT promised that they will be screening a few more of his films in the near future. In any case, even if I found precious little reading material on the film, that same host dubbed it a "masterpiece" and a French review I found on the Internet said that it was "absolutely unmissable"! Having now watched it, I can verify that it was no idle praise.

Mizoguchi is well-known for being a feminist director and his extensive filmography is full of studies of downtrodden Japanase women of both contemporary and past eras. This happens to be the first bona-fide "women's picture" of his I have watched and even if it may be a notch less appealing than his very best films, UGETSU (1953) and SANSHO THE BAILIFF (1954), it is nevertheless an exceptionally well-made and moving film with a typically strong central performance from Mizoguchi regular Kinuyo Tanaka. Besides, Mizoguchi's remarkably unsentimental outlook ensures that facile answers to the questions raised are kept well at bay but without rendering the film unnecessarily depressing or bleak.

The plot deals with three post-WWII women (from the middle-aged Tanaka to a teenage acquaintance of hers) who all gradually and unwillingly turn to prostitution to make ends meet. The "women of the night" are depicted as being either cynical and bitter (like Tanaka who, despite being infected with disease, still keeps on prostituting herself so as to carry out her revenge on all manhood after being betrayed by her employer/lover), nymphomaniacs (who usually take out their own frustrations on the newer 'recruits') or, worse still, disease-ridden yet pregnant (like Tanaka's younger sister). The kindly doctors who shelter the loose women when in labor are ultimately powerless to prevent them from going back to plying their dangerous trade once they have delivered their usually stillborn children. The devastating final sequence (superbly executed through Mizoguchi's peerless mise-en-scene) portrays just such an occurrence in which Tanaka literally tries to beat some sense into her sister when she joins her on the streets once more, at which point the rest of the prostitutes either vent their anger on the two for scaring off potential customers with all the commotion or take the sisters' side for seeking a way out of their profession.

Three disparate women end up selling themselves to survive in a bleak post-war Osaka. Like a number of Mizoguchi's films, 'Women of the Night' is a harsh commentary about the conditions and behaviours that many women were forced to endure in pre- and post-war Japanese society. The film is not particularly nuanced, and the director delivers his message with a heavy and unsubtle hand as the women's lives rapidly go from bad to worse to horrible (one of the women, desperate for money, tentatively approaches a sleezy procuress and the next time we encounter her, she's a tough, diseased, street-walking junkie). Despite the occasional weaknesses in pacing and character development, there are some devastating scenes, notably when a young run-away, intrigued by the 'glamorous lifestyle' of a dance-hall hostess, discovers just how mean the mean-streets of Osaka can be. The ending of the film is weaker than the build-up - the final scenes of the prostitutes fighting on a set that appears to be the ruined shell of a church with intact stain-glass windows (featuring the Virgin no less) are artificial, overly melodramatic, and a bit trite. Mizoguchi 'wears his heart on his sleeve' in his films about the travails of Japanese women but he has done so better in other films, such as 'Sisters of the Gion' (1936), 'The Life of Oharu' (1952) or 'Street of Shame' (1956). Watched with English subtitles.

I had seen this movie back when I was a kid, in the 1960's. Thought it was great. Today, though, I can see why I liked it so much back then, but how the acting is actually pretty bad, and the story is pretty inconsistent with actual history. Never the less, it was a nice trip into nostalgia for a Saturday afternoon. Just don't expect too much.