"Koshiben Ganbare" by Mikio Naruse is a Japanese short film also known as "Little Man, Do Your Best" or "Flunky, Work Hard!" in English. Although in some ways it's a comedy, it's really more a slice of life film showing how some folks were living in the countryside back in 1931.
This is the story of a very timid insurance salesman. He isn't doing particularly well at his job and he has two additional problems which make all this worse. First, his wife nags him to work harder. Second, his son has gotten into a lot of fights with the neighbor kids and he's afraid his son will cost him sales. After all, who wants to buy insurance from the father of the neighborhood bully. But neither problem really is as it seems. The wife, though nagging at times, does seem to be a good wife and mother. And, the boy is fighting...but he is provoked into it and is only standing up for himself. So how does all this work out? See the film.
I look at this short as more a glimpse into Japan and the people of the country back in the 30s. While much of history focuses on Japanese militarism during this time, it's also interesting just to see normal folks going about their lives like they do in this cute film.
By the way, the story was filmed very well with some very nice camerawork. Too bad the final couple minutes of the story are seriously degraded and you focus on this instead of how great the picture originally looked.
