Kinuyo Tanaka lost her husband during the bombings at the end of the War. Two years ago she married Ken Uehara. They own a mews in a part of Tokyo where the rains flood the ground. They live on the ground floor of one of the building, and rent out the other houses, and the top floor to two tenants in two apartments: Hideko Takamine and Hiroshi Akutagawa. It's a noisy neighborhood from dawn to dusk, what with drums banging and radios blaring. It's distinguished -- in the minds of the occupants, because from the viewpoints of the neighbors, Tokyo seems to have three industrial chimneys. Go elsewhere in the city, and the number varies from one to an unlikely four. The married couple have the sort of quarrels that married couples have, but they are happy, until a baby who cries constantly, adding to the mews' constant noise, is left in their apartment. A note explains that Miss Tanaka's first husband left the baby, because she is his wife, after all, and so the baby is hers.
Heinosuke Gosho's tragic comedy about babies, justice, courtship, and the unreliability of people in general weaves its erratic course between tears and laughter in a surprising fashion. It's a great cast and everyone knows you have to play a comedy like this straight. Miss Tanaka fills her character full of sly and shy grimaces; Uehara is bombastic, Takamine is charming and Akutagawa is an idealistic idiot. Other people fill out this movie with eccentric characters who add the confusion and plot and the ending settles the matter of exactly how many chimneys there are.
