The Carmen films confirm Kinoshita as a humorist and a bitter social satirist of the postwar mentality. Carmen's Pure Love again stars Hideko Takamine as the naive stripper devoted to her art, and now to a playboy artist as well. Kinoshita again paints a "rogues' gallery" of postwar types, casting about amid the rampant confusion of values that he sees as characterizing the early fifties in Japan-patriotism confused with democracy, sophistication with downright philistinism. Kinoshita makes his comic points visually-through bizarre camera angles and movements that highlight the absurdity of his subjects-but makes them barbed, nonetheless. "Kinoshita's satire was neither indirect nor clouded by innuendos....By placing himself in the position of the victim instead of pitying her, Kinoshita achieved a genuine artistic sublimation of his resentment" (Tadao Sato, Currents in Japanese Cinema).