Women of the Night (1948)

 ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Women of the Night (1948) – K. Mizoguchi

It is rather surprising to see Kinuyo Tanaka in the role of a prostitute but the great actress easily pulls it off. She does begin the picture in a more typical role, downtrodden and then widowed wife and mother, and only later does she turn to prostitution. And now that I look back, I see that Tanaka played courtesans, geishas, and, yes, prostitutes throughout her career – the roles available to women may be few. So what is actually surprising here may be director Kenji Mizoguchi’s bluntness and the raw post-war milieu that the characters occupy (some have suggested the influence of Italian Neorealism). Mizoguchi was never one to shy away from showing men’s cruelty to women and their reactions to it: often stoic and determined and, in this case, vitriolic, as Tanaka’s Fusako seeks to spread syphilis to all men as revenge for the callous way she was cast aside by her boss in favour of her younger sister (this is after her husband and baby son died). There is a lot of melodrama along the way before we get to what may have been intended as an uplifting finale but which can’t easily wipe away the awfulness we have seen to that point. This is not the only film to document the social and economic problems of Japan at this time (1948) but it must be one of the harshest.