Kenji Mizoguchi is often referred to as a director of "women's pictures", thanks to his sympathetic female characters and the passionate way in which he told women's stories. Never has this been more clear than in Street of Shame, his hymn to the economic uncertainty of post-war Japan and the silent victims of the war's barbarism: the women who have been left behind. In post-war Japan, the government has waged an annual campaign to ban prostitution, but due to the uncertainty and devastation of the new economic climate, it is a tragic and ignoble reality that women have turned to the streets for financial survival. At an establishment called Dreamland the joyless lives and faded dreams of five women intersect. But as the momentum of the anti-prostitution bill starts to build up speed, the women find their allegiances tested by economic necessity and personal conscience.

Special Features:
Audio commentary by Ross Gibson, Professor of Contemporary Arts, Sydney College of the Arts, University of Sydney, Insert article by Dr Barbara Hartley, Head of School, Senior Lecturer in Japanese Studies, University of Tasmania