Dobu

Nobuko Otowa wanders into the shack shared by Taiji Tonoyama and Jûkichi Uno in a crazy-quilt warren at the edge of an industrial town. The two men are out on strike, and they're broke because they no sooner get money than they gamble it away. Miss Otowa has escaped from.... probably a brothel. She seems mad and stupid and she hasn't eaten in three days, nor washed in ten. She remembers she has a thousand yen, gives it to them. She takes over their life with her mad schemes, her street walking to raise money for them, and urges a raucous cheer for the other inhabitants of the warren, which the owner intends to tear down to build a motorcycle race track. Everyone seems at least a little mad and ill-regarded, even by their fellow slum creatures.

Miss Otowa offers a performance which strips away all signs of beauty and the normative behavior that the Japanese cherish. Kaneto Shindô, who wrote and directed this movie, seems have written a message film: we should all care for each of her, all be a bit chivalrous, all cheer each other on. Yet, by putting this message in the mouth of this mad, stupid creature, he seems to have rendered it equally foolish; when we cry over the dead, it's too late to do anything for them.