When the only child of the widow Kuniko (Hideko Takamine) is killed in a hit-and-run accident, an elaborate cover-up ensues to protect the driver--the wife of Kakinuma, a car manufacturing executive--from punishment and place the blame on her chauffeur. Kuniko, her life destroyed, accepts an out-of-court settlement, but when she learns of the true killer, becomes obsessed with exacting revenge on the entire Kakinuma family. Hit and Run, based on a script by Takamine's husband Zenzo Matsuyama, is at once more political and more garish than the typical Naruse melodrama. Kuniko's plight and her increasing hysteria are inextricably connected to two important contemporary social issues--the dangerous automobile (such accidents were rampant in the '60s), and the legal impunity of the reckless rich. Here politics, not “life itself,” are to blame for the human condition.