The dark side of Yasuzo Masumura, in A Wife Confesses, combines the pessimistic observations of film noir with the sensuality which Masumura would pursue further in later films. A Wife Confesses is an early film to deal openly with a woman's feelings about sex. It is credited with launching Ayako Wakao's career; seen today, her performance still amazes with its extraordinary focus and intensity. She portrays a young widow standing trial for the murder of her husband in a mountaineering accident. Flashbacks within flashbacks recreate her bitterly unhappy marriage to a brutish older man and her love for his young colleague, Koda (Hiroshi Kawaguchi). Thus is her emotional life rawly exposed to judge, jury and curious public. Masumura's unflattering portrait of this invasive society is captured from behind posts, in looming angles and with hidden cameras. Within an unusually complex narrative structure, Wakao beautifully develops contradictory desires in her heroine--her lust to live and her wish to die--and somehow makes them one. Audie Bock writes, "Masumura explores feminine psychology with unusual objectivity...The ethical issue of self-sacrifice versus self-preservation, clearly spelled out in the film, remains a problem of the wife's role in Japan. (Wakao's character) is modern in making public her instinctive grab for her own happiness, traditional in her self-destruction when she fails to attain it."