Japanese Girls at the Harbor

There's a lovely air to Shimizu's sensitive filmmaking, but it's not as easy to care about his characters.

Decent story with some great directing, editing and camera work, however the story seemed to drag. This would've been better as a 50 minute film.

With his effective use of location photography and neat array of camera tricks, there's an undeniable elegance to Shimizu's filmmaking style, as he ably creates a mournful ambience not only from the melancholy narrative but also his subtle implications of Japanese tradition being gradually chipped away by the encroaching influence of the West. The story itself is overly simplistic and slow-moving though, so much so that it feels twice as long as its 70 minute runtime.

The melodrama is too simple and rushed to land effectively, but my god, what extraordinary visual grace. The pleasantly composed open-air photography, the rhythmic and inventive editing. It's masterclass filmmaking, eloquent and expressive, which makes the subpar scripting a little easier to swallow.

A fine little story from Hiroshi Shimizu about friendship, love and turns in life. Hardly a original story, but very typical of Japanese cinema at the time with a girl disgracing herself by becoming a geisha woman. It's nicely done and Shimizu uses the sliding sideways shots a lot to give it some life.

Pleasant style, crap story.

More like a Mizoguchi film than the other Shimizu I've seen, about a young woman whose jealousy drives her towards geishadom. It's not particularly compelling subject matter, but the characters are quite well-drawn and the film has a lovely lyrical quality. The use of fades and axial cuts is intriguing. A few of the scene changes feel a bit abrupt, though, as if there should be a little more connecting tissue.