Curiosidades

The credits indicate that the script was based on an original work by a foreign writer with a name that sounds like "Winzart Monet", but it is actually a gag name, derived from "without money".

This movie is one of the last prewar films featuring the actress Yoshiko Okada. In addition to Yasujirô Ozu, with whom she made three films, Okada acted in important films with Mikio Naruse, Hiroshi Shimizu and Yasujirô Shimazu. A theater, as well as film actress, Okada fell in love with a well-known stage director, the Communist Ryûichi Sugimoto, though both were married to others, at a time when Japan was becoming increasing fascist. In early January, 1938, the pair managed to enter the Soviet Union together, seeking political and artistic freedom. Unfortunately, their arrival coincided with a government crackdown on Japanese nationals living in the USSR, even those who professed to be leftists. Both Okada and Sugimoto were captured and tortured. He then was executed, and she was sent to a gulag for 10 years. Upon release, she survived partly through translation work. She eventually was allowed to direct theater again, and in 1962, she even co-directed a Soviet film, 10000 malchikov (1962) (with Boris Buneev). In the mid-1970s, Okada, now in her seventies, was allowed to return to Japan, where she resumed her career as an elderly character actress. In the mid-1980s, during the time of perestroika, she returned to the Soviet Union and died there at the age of 89 in 1992.