This moving film about the force of familial obligations in a patriarchal household during the Taisho period is a triumph of visual expression working against plot expectations. Young Gen (Keiko Kishi) is manipulated by her stepmother (Kinuyo Tanaka), a coldhearted devotee of Christ, into the role of servant and surrogate mother to her troubled brother; meanwhile a revered father sits at his writing table, occasionally putting pen to paper. The girl enters womanhood too exhausted to assume a life of her own. Her Brother was a great success in Japan; audiences loved it for its nostalgic view of a woman's steadfast devotion (augmented by Kazuo Miyagawa's deliberately faded color imagery), but Ichikawa's every frame argues against this melodramatic reading. As always his exhilarating use of widescreen is to brilliantly direct our attention where he wants it, and what this film's architecture reveals is the opposite of familial devotion.