The little shop that Hideko Takamine and her husband, Keiju Kobayashi, run on a side street in the town is doing poorly. There's too much competition from the stores on the main street, just around the corner. They plan to open a cafe on the vacant lot next door, but his mother, Yôko Sugi, seems to insist on misunderstanding, and money is tight because they've just married off a daughter of the house. Nonetheless, they persist, and have just arranged a loan with old friend and banker Toshiro Mifune, when the elder brother, Minoru Chiaki, returns from Tokyo. His company has collapsed, and he has no place to take his wife and young daughter. As Kobayashi and Miss Takamine try to figure out how to get their cafe off the ground, Chiaki announces that he wants to open a cafe on the other side of the tracks, and everyone insists that they lend him the money. Things go from bad to worse....
Mikio Naruse, as I have mentioned in other reviews, made movies about how families deal with crises, and how they work, instead of the smoothly-running families in Ozu's movies. Here, things get pretty dire, and it looks like everything is breaking down. No one gives a rap about what Miss Takamine wants or needs, at least in the house; Mifune, and his sister are bright, cheery, and helpful, while her family is silent around Miss Takamine. Chiaki disappears with 200,000 yen and Kobayashi goes off to a mountain resort with a geisha. Can this family survive, and should it?
It's another fine movie from Naruse, but it's just too depressing.
