Three Sisters with Maiden Hearts

Tokyo’s Asakusa district—by night a hub of theater and music, by day a maze of activity—typified the spirit and flavor of the city in the 1930s. Mikio Naruse’s adaptation of a Yasunari Kawabata novel paints a beautifully angled and varied portrait of Asakusa before introducing three daughters of an indifferent mother, trying variously to break away into love and stage careers. In his first sound film, Naruse uses incidental music constantly. But the great story of this film remains visual: Naruse’s natural framing devices, so beautiful in themselves, provide the layers inherent in a story of three very different women captured in one moment in time.