Street Without End

Star Rating: ★★★★

A pretty dull and lifeless story a woman who tries to figure out what she wants in life.

A fairly standard piece of work from Mikio Naruse and hardly one that made much of an impression. It's typically Japanese being subtle in it's social critique, but in this one we don't really get too deep into the personalities for a climax strong enough to got much out of it. This ended up being Naruse's final film for Shochiku so he might have been unmotivated. Not that Naruse work touched on the same quality as Ozu did at the same studio while there.

Naruse's final silent is a step backwards, but we'll cut him a little slack since he didn't really want to do this script. A rather simple and broad commentary on class, not a whole lot of nuance here. Sugiko is really the only character with much depth to her, and even she doesn't run that deep. But we do see further enhancement of a visual style, with some interesting transitions and a number of cutaways to life buzzing around the Ginza, perhaps suggesting alternate paths for Sugiko.

"The mélo becomes mythic thanks to Naruse's expert sense of montage." - Keith Uhlich