Trains, like boats, snake through Kinoshita's screenscapes as carriers of memory and destiny. In Distant Clouds, a young man, Ryoichi (Keiji Sata) disembarks at his hometown for a short visit before being sent away to a new job. A dinner toast--"Are we to be happy or sad?"--sets the tone for an elegant, stylishly melancholy love story between Ryoichi and Keizo (Hideko Takamine), a young widow with whom he attempts to revive a former passion. But Keizo, her desires suppressed by years of living with her late husband's family, hears the buzz of local scandal-mongers in their mountain village-turned Peyton Place. Kinoshita exploits the setting of the old castle town of Takayama to beautiful effect in an ironic and sometimes wrenching meeting of the old and the new--of costume ceremonies and hip fifties jazz, of processions and cars, of close architectural framing that suddenly gives way to a long-shot of a burgeoning metropolis, of "false sentimentality" that ages women before their time.