Mizoguchi's last completed film presents portraits of five prostitutes in abrothel called Dreamland in the Yoshiwara district of Tokyo. The women are in"the life" for a variety of reasons-including one would-be bride whofinds that being a whore might be preferable to being enslaved to a husband.Peter Morris calls the film "a realistic and violent study of the femininecondition°.In it, Mizoguchi seems to be seeking a new style, more detailed andaccumulative, which will allow him to reveal the underlying moral attitudes of asociety which creates 'red-light districts' and the people who inhabit them.Despite the intrusive melodramatic incidents, the film remains a penetratingsocial analysis (and) the acting is excellent." A box-office success at atime when prostitution was being debated in the Japanese Diet, it is said thatthe film contributed to the 1958 anti-prostitution ruling.