Tadashi Imai was active in Japan's Communist Party at the time of this film about the exploitation of workers. Made in 1951, it was “one of the first major examples of the postwar Italian influence, the direction being patterned after De Sica's in Bicycle Thief. The story, about the struggle of day laborers to achieve dignity and a standard of living above the starvation level, was persuasively presented....
“One can always recognize something of the truth in (Imai's) work. He tries to avoid black-and-white characterizations and never once believes that workers are the fountainhead of all wisdom....” --Joseph L. Anderson & Donald Richie, “The Japanese Film”