Japanese director Kohei Oguri had to skirt the mainstream industry to revive one of Japan's most unique contributions to the postwar cinema, the shomin-geki genre of Ozu, Naruse and others, which takes as its subject the quiet reality of ordinary lower-middle-class life. Oguri's independent production rapidly won universal acclaim and was nominated for an Oscar in 1982. Set in 1956 Osaka, near the mouth of the Aji River, and shot in crisp black and white, the film views, through the eyes of a nine-year-old child, Nobuo, the demoralization and economic depression that linger years after the war. The son and only light in the life of a troubled war veteran who runs a modest riverside eatery, Nobuo watches and absorbs the small struggles and emotional tragedies of the adults around him. He is initiated into the hypocrisies of adult behavior when he befriends Kiichi, the son of an outcast family living in a dilapidated houseboat, whose unspoken secret--that his mother is a prostitute--eventually puts an impossible strain on the friendship. Critic Andrew Sarris writes, “Muddy River reveals from its very first frame to its last the beauties of artful composition often attributed to the national genius of Japan...(but which) cannot be considered a typical product of the contemporary Japanese film industry.... The delicate rituals and heart-rending tensions of childhood friendship are explored here with an emotional intensity one had forgotten even existed on the screen.”