Minato No Nihon Musume (aka Japanese Girls At The Harbor) (1933)

Set in the harbor town of Yokohama, two teenage girls (Michiko Oikawa, Yukiko Inoue) find their friendship strained by the appearance of a fast living boy (Ureo Egawa) whom both find attractive. Tragedy occurs when one of the girls (Oikawa) shoots another girl (Ranko Sawa) over the boy. Jump several years later and Inoue and Egawa are married and Oikawa is working as prostitute but fate isn't through with them yet. Based on the novel by Toma Kitabayashi and directed by Hiroshi Shimizu. Although by 1933, sound films were the norm in the U.S., silent movies still had a hold in Japanese cinema. Shimizu's silent drama is a lovely and impassioned melodrama dealing with four individuals who are victims of circumstance whose lives don't work out the way they foresaw it. Do they accept their fate or fight it? A highlight of Japanese silent film. With Tatsuo Saito as the failed painter in love with Oikawa.