Oboroyo no onna (Woman in the Mist). 1936. Japan. Directed by Heinosuke Gosho. Screenplay by Tadao Ikeda. With Takeshi Sakamoto, Toshio Iizuka, Chôko Iida, Shin Tokudaiji. 35mm. In Japanese; English subtitles. 111 min.
Set in the boisterous working-class area of Shitamachi in downtown Tokyo, Heinosuke Gosho’s touching drama of deferred dreams centers on a disillusioned, wayward law student who impregnates a former bar hostess, and the well-intentioned uncle who, in a bid to keep it a secret from his mother, only makes things worse. Together with Ozu and his mentor Yasujirō Shimazu (represented in this series with The Older Brother and His Younger Sister), Gosho specialized in humanist melodramas of the lower-middle class known as shomin-geki. Moving effortlessly between comedy and pathos in the manner of Charlie Chaplin and Ernst Lubitsch—but with a style all his own—Gosho specialized in what the scholar Donald Richie would call the “haiku-like construction” of his relatively brief shots. 35mm print from Japan Foundation, New York; courtesy Shochiku