Women of the Night

Kenji Mizoguchi
1948

In a struggling and shamed postwar Japan, Kenji Mizoguchi illuminates the hardships that drive his nation's women onto nighttime streets, and the dangers of this desperate life. Unlike the culturally-loaded world of "Sisters of the Gion" (1936), the genteel traditions, costumes, and courtesies are replaced with the hardscrabble realities of syphilis, defilement, and unwanted pregnancies. Sisters Fusako and Natsuko are reunited after suffering their fare share of wartime heartbreak in the form of dead parents, dead offspring, and forced rape at the hands of soldiers. The girls try and stick to the straight and narrow despite these scars, but are pushed over the edge after one-too-many emotional disappointments. While not a true noir, the picture borrows some of the genre's touches with a nifty jailbreak from lady prison, angry hooker street beatdowns, and the downfall of a seedy drug-dealing businessman. Mizoguchi gets a lot of mileage out of the skin trade, but the sisters are left with short shrift in character development - Fusako's transformation from innocent to bad girl is too quick, and the seemingly steely Natsuko devolves into victimhood at the drop of a hat. I couldn't help but feel this picture predicted or inspired some of Seijun Suzuki's output, particularly in the angry unrepentant whores ("Gate of Flesh" 1964) and the squalid semi-surrealistic finale complete with a hefty dose of Christian imagery.