夜の女たち (aka Women Of The Night) (1948)

A war widow (Kinuyo Tanaka), a dance hall hostess (Sanae Takasugi) and a runaway teenager (Tomie Tsunoda) all fall prey to prostitution (not the semi-glamorous geisha kind, we're talking streetwalking) or at the very least exploitation by the male sex. Directed by Kenji Mizoguchi, the film is somewhat of a disappointment. He's done other films on women using their bodies to sustain themselves but this one lacks finesse. It's not just that it's lurid and borderline exploitative but that it's near hysterical in the way it portrays the lives of its three protagonists. The movie comes across as one of those overbearing and overly dramatic "teaching" films you show to impressionable girls ("See this? This is what will happen to you if you go all the way with a boy! You'll get syphilis and pregnant and end up living and dying in the streets!") The actresses don't even get a chance to develop characters. Poor Kinuyo Tanaka goes from decent if naive secretary one minute to syphilis ridden whore the next with no stops in-between. Still, there's no denying it's a compelling watch even with its over the top hysterical tone. I suppose some will see a feminist statement in this film. I just found it rather ludicrous.