In this Depression-era melodrama a young woman, Omitsu, abandoned by her husband, is forced to work as a harbor prostitute to support her young child. When the husband returns, contrite and full of promises, the couple look forward briefly to a semblance of normal family life. But times are hard, no one is hiring, and after a series of tragedies Omitsu is back at the dock-side bar where she is a popular waitress. “In the early '30s, Naruse was hovering between Japanese and Western modes of expression and making films with a rich awareness of the social lot of his women characters.... (Night Dreams is) full of sharply etched characters; its harbor atmosphere is graphically visualized, somewhat in the manner of Sternberg's The Docks of New York” (John Gillett).