A down-and-out opera company, which does oompah versions of Schuman operas, is falling apart. Their leading man walks out because the audience heckles him, and Mieko Takamine is 'sold' by her landlords to a rich gangster. It's up to Ken Uehara to make order out of the chaos, which he does very poorly; he wants Miss Takamine himself, and she him, but of course both are too shy to make an advance.
Yasujirô Shimazu's movie about a small-town company of performers is dirty and a bit gritty, with the theater next to a shooting gallery, and everyone knowing everyone else. It's a story of a part of Japan outside the usual Tokyo setting for such stories, the sort of movie, half travelogue, half romance, that he was directing at the time. Because of the aimlessness of the characters, the plot proceeds in a desultory fashion; because the opera company is third rate, the performances are almost comic. The characters take everything very seriously, though. It is, after all, their lives. Is it what they want to do with them?
