Considered one of the finest late Naruses and a model of film biography, A Wanderer’s Notebook features remarkable performances by Hideko Takamine – Phillip Lopate calls it “probably her greatest performance” – and Kinuyo Tanaka as mother and daughter living from hand to mouth in Twenties Tokyo. Based on the life and career of Fumiko Hayashi, the novelist whose work Naruse adapted to the screen several times, A Wanderer’s Notebook traces her bitter struggle for literary recognition in the first half of the twentieth century – her affairs with feckless men, the jobs she took to survive (peddler, waitress, bar maid), and her arduous, often humiliating attempts to get published in a male-dominated culture.
Tokiko
A single mother from the country raising a 6th grade boy comes to Tokyo, leaves the boy to live with his uncle's family, runs a struggling grocery store, and works a local inn. The boy befriends a girl, the daughter of the innkeeper...
A woman and her daughter are in love with the same man, a chef at the restaurant that the mother manages. He is slightly crippled from frostbite in his years in Siberian labor camps and considers himself "already dead."
一人の男が銃剣で刺殺されるという事件が起こった。犯人を追いつめたものの、男の姿は密室から忽然と消えうせていた。事件を追う桐岡記者は、物質転送を研究する仁木博士が、犠牲者と犯人・須藤を繋ぐカギであることを知る。犠牲者を含む大西たちは、14年前、須藤と仁木博士を生き埋めにしていたのだった……。
Suspense drama about a married salaryman whose affair with one of his co-workers is compromised when, returning from a clandestine meeting with his lover, he runs into a neighbor who is later accused of murder. Questioned by police about the neighbor, and blackmailed by his lover's neighbor, the salaryman's lies lead him on a path to destruction.
夫を亡くした圭子は、外国人マスターが経営する銀座のバー“ライラック”の雇われマダムだった。よく店に来ていた利権屋の美濃部が、かつて圭子の下で働いていたユリに店を持たせ、そちらへ頻繁に出入りしているようだ。マスターからはユリのように体を張って売り上げを回復させろと言われてしまう。ある日、狂言自殺をするつもりだったユリが本当に死亡した。葬儀の席で圭子は美濃部に食ってかかるが、血を吐いて倒れてしまう。酒の飲み過ぎで胃潰瘍にかかっていたのだ。やがて圭子は客に体を許すようになるが、その度に裏切られてしまう。
Explicit drama about a young woman who becomes involved with a group of college students who play "spin-the-bottle" and the women must make love or strip. The woman, Junko, becomes involved with Makoto, leader of the gang, becomes pregnant, has an abortion, then gets involved with an architect.
