Street of Shame

Street of Shame (Akasen chitai, 1956) is Kenji Mizoguchi's drama, and you can watch it online on iFILM. It unfolds inside a Tokyo brothel called Dreamland in the Yoshiwara district, while parliament argues over a bill that would outlaw prostitution.

Mizoguchi keeps his camera on five women and the very different reasons each one stays. One is saving to escape. One supports a sick husband and a baby. One clings to a grown son who is ashamed of her, while the hard-eyed young woman played by Ayako Wakao works the clients as pure business and refuses to pretend otherwise. The ban the newspapers shout about is no liberation for them — it threatens to leave them jobless and exposed to arrest. The director neither scolds nor pities; he lays out an economy that has left these women almost no other door.

This was the master's final film, released the year he died, and it stands among the peaks of 1950s Japanese cinema — some say it nudged the real anti-prostitution law passed a year later. It's for viewers who love Mizoguchi and Ozu and social drama with no sentimentality. Stream Street of Shame (1956) online on iFILM.