Every-Night Dreams

In Depression-era Tokyo, Omitsu raises her son Fumio alone, working at a bar near the harbour. The husband who walked out on her years earlier turns up one day, out of work, contrite and wanting to move back in. Mikio Naruse does not turn that return into a reconciliation. Where the woman’s money comes from, the fact that the boy does not know his father, and the man’s failure to find work all pile up inside the same cramped house. The film looks at what people with no options do to each other rather than searching for someone to blame, and it takes nobody’s side. Made at Shochiku at the end of the silent era, it is among the most discussed of Naruse’s early works, with Sumiko Kurishima in the lead.