Flunky, Work Hard!
(Koshiben Gambare)
The earliest extant Naruse film is this short, bittersweet comedy, one of several he made during this period about the lives of the lower-middle class white-collar workers. Here, the “flunky” is an insurance agent who courts a rich family in an attempt to make a sale while his own, uninsured son suffers a serious accident. Audie Bock writes, “A little melodrama that reveals many of the themes Naruse would develop in his later work. The affectionate look at the lower-middle classes...and its touches of slapstick interspersed with serious drama of economic class differences, compare very favorably with the films of Yasujiro Ozu of the same era.”