Every Night Dreams

Director: Mikio Naruse

1933 / 65min / 35mm

Fending for herself and her young son by serving sailors in a harbor-side bar, abandoned mother Omitsu (Sumiko Kurishima) sees only further suffering ahead when her charismatic ne’er-do-well husband, Mizuhara (Saito Tatsuo, an Ozu regular), reappears begging her forgiveness, but is ultimately helpless to resist his blandishments and her neighbors’ sermons on the subject of forgiveness. The kinetic camerawork here belongs to Naruse’s silent period, but in other regards Every-Night Dreams—with its keen documentation of the dismal realities of economic uncertainty and its tale of the inevitable triumph of inherent weaknesses of character over the will to self-improvement—is perhaps the Naruse silent that most clearly anticipates the mature masterpieces ahead.

35mm print courtesy of the National Film Archive of Japan

One screening only!

Live piano accompaniment by Makia Matsumura on Sunday, December 7th