Ani to sono imoto (An Older Brother and His Younger Sister). 1939. Japan. Written and directed by Yasujirō Shimazu. With Reikichi Kawamura, Michiko Kuwano, Kuniko Miyake. 35mm. In Japanese; English subtitles. 101 min.
Together with Yasujirō Ozu, Yasujirō Shimazu was a pioneer of the genre for which Shochiku would become most famous, shomin-geki, comical and bittersweet tales of the lower-middle class that delighted Japanese moviegoers by making their seemingly ordinary lives worthy of the big screen. Shimazu’s best films, as Alexander Jacoby observes, “employed a subtle social criticism…. [A]nd An Older Brother and His Younger Sister, probably his masterpiece, displayed clear feminist sympathies in its treatment of the heroine’s rejection of a marriage proposal and satirized the unfriendly world of Tokyo business.” 35mm print from Japan Foundation, New York; courtesy Shochiku