Akasen chitai (Street of Shame) (1956)
Average Rating: 6.6/10
Reviews Counted: 11
Fresh: 9 | Rotten: 2
No consensus yet.
Average Rating: N/A
Critic Reviews: 4
Fresh: 3 | Rotten: 1
liked it
Average Rating: 3.9/5
User Ratings: 467
Movie Info
Kenji Mizoguchi's final film was on one of his favorite subjects: prostitutes. After a spate of universally lauded period pieces, Mizoguchi returned to the socially conscious dramas that he made famous in the 1930s. Here, as in Osaka Elegy (1936), he offered a scathing critique of society's hypocrisies and exploitative treatment of women, without the sort of transcendence seen in Life of Oharu (1952). This gritty drama of six working girls in one brothel in Tokyo's Yoshiwara red-light district
Mar 18, 1956 Wide
Oct 21, 2008
Criterion Collection
Cast
-
Machiko Kyo
Mickey -
Aiko Mimasu
Yumeko -
Daisuke Katô
Police Officer -
-
Eitaro Shindo
Kurazo Taya -
Kumeko Urabe
Otane -
Ayako Wakao
Yasumi -
Toranosuke Ogawa
Mickey's Father -
Sadako Sawamura
Tatsuko Taya
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All Critics (11) | Top Critics (4) | Fresh (9) | Rotten (2) | DVD (2)
Of all the films about prostitution, Kenji Mizoguchi's Street of Shame, made in 1956 at the end of his career, is perhaps the greatest.
The settings are a far removed from the medieval landscapes of Ugetsu or The Life of Oharu, but Mizoguchi's focus on the plight of his women characters is as intent and heart-rending as ever.
Top CriticThe late Kenji Mizoguchi, who directed Ugetsu, failed to show as much imagination in this one as in that one.
Well worth seeing, if only as a challenge.
Renowned for his masterful tales of women oppressed, Mizoguchi offers stinging condemnation of a Japanese tradition stretching back hundreds of years.
The film's cinematography utilizes an unusual technique for a Mizoguchi film, the close-up, whereby the camera gets steadily closer to each protagonist as the various causes of their downfall to prostitution are revealed.
one of the great virtues in this tale of vice [is] its studied ambivalence towards organised prostitution, at a time when Japanese attitudes towards the trade were radically shifting.
A moving study about a group of prostitutes in Tokyo's Yoshiwara red-light district.
Street of Shame is one last, devastating look at how life's cruelties are especially hard on women in Japan.
Audience Reviews for Akasen chitai (Street of Shame)
Super Reviewer
[font=Century Gothic][/font]
[font=Century Gothic]Directed by Kenji Mizoguchi, "Street of Shame" is a bleak examination of prostitution in postwar Japan. The conclusion here is that outlawing it will not do anyone much good(and it has not anywhere else for that matter) because the underlying causes are found in the ruins of the economy. And it does seem that all of the women carry a huge debt around their necks and that in a extremely lean job market as this, this may be the only possible recourse. While this may seem desperate on their parts, the alternative is far, far worse.[/font]
Super Reviewer
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Foreign Titles
- Street of Shame (Akasen chitai) (DE)
- Street of Shame (Akasen chitai) (UK)
