Humanity and Paper Balloons

Sadao Yamanaka's 1937 film takes place in a poor quarter of Edo. An unemployed ronin who is no swordsman waits for work from his late father's former master, while the barber on the same street plans to abduct a pawnbroker's daughter to recover his standing. The film inverts the heroic pattern of the samurai story: no sword is used here, no debt is paid and nobody saves anyone. The street scenes build in detail a community whose neighbours both protect and gossip about one another, and the opening and closing are tied together to give a sense of a cycle. Yamanaka was conscripted on the day the film opened and died at the front the following year, aged twenty-eight; only three of his films survive. Who it's for: viewers who like classical Japanese cinema and films that break their genre. Who it's not for: anyone expecting an action-filled samurai picture; the story is hopeless and there is no fighting.