Naruse admired Sotoji Kimura's 1936 film Older Brother, Younger Sister (PFA, February) as well as Saisei Muroo's original story (which was filmed a third time in 1976 by Tadashi Imai as Ino and Mon). Naruse's excellent 1953 version features fine performances by two actors, Machiko Kyo and Masayuki Mori, who are usually associated with Mizoguchi's Ugetsu and Kurosawa's Rashomon. The story, set in a rural village outside of Tokyo, is a dark drama of obsessive family relationships marked by both violence and tenderness. Mon, the eldest daughter of an authoritarian father who has come into hard times, moves to Tokyo to earn a living. When she returns home pregnant, her brother Inokichi's rage sends her back to the city where she takes up the life of a streetwalker. Meanwhile, the scandal dashes the youngest sister San's simple hopes of marrying a local noodle-shop owner. Probably Naruse's most violent film, emotionally and physically, it nevertheless remains, like the others, relatively plotless, its focus more on stasis than movement. As Anderson and Richie write in The Japanese Film: “Looking at the later, and best films, one is struck again and again by the dark negation of Naruse's world. Older Brother, Younger Sister presents a family trapped by its own construction, each member unable to move because of the others.”