Nagisa Oshima-Ai to kibo no machi ('Street of Love and Hope') (1959)

A poor boy bccomes friends with a rich girl. He has a pigeon which he sells, but since it is a homing pigeon, he can actually sell it over and over agian. The bird becomes the symbol of his friendship for the girl as well, but in the end she has her brother shoot and kill it. This directorial debut of Oshima Nagisa immediately established the young filmmaker as the leader of the Japanese New Chinema in the sixties. The unsentimental and harshrealistic style was vastly different from the melodramatic traditional of Shochiku Company, the studio who financed the film, at the time. Oshima suggesteed that there no compromise between the rich and the poor and class distinctions are closely linked to criminal tendencies. DVD Asian




Oshima Nagisa best known in the west for either his erotic film _The Realm of the Senses_ or the homosexual samurai drama _Gohatto_ began his career as a director with this film that just clocks in over one hour. As with his films _The Catch_ and _Death by Hanging_, _Street of Love and Hope_ concerns itself with the lives of people at the margins of society. People put outside the mainstream. In this film the viewer is introduced to the poor junior high student Masao and the struggles he faces just to help his family survive. (http://imdb.com/title/tt0052540/usercomments)




Masao seems to have the entire world against him. His father is dead, his mother is sick, and his little sister has a mental handicap and spends most of her days playing or drawing pictures of dead animals. Masao is a bright boy, but is torn between going to high school or getting a real job in order to support his family. He wants to get a job, but his mother is determined that he needs to go on to high school so that he can get a better job later on. Masao does all that he can do to make a little money for his family, including selling his younger sister's, Yasue's, pet pigeons. However, the selling of the pigeons is a bit of a scam because they, if they can get away, return to Masao's home. Therefore he can sell them over and over again. Masao is against it, but his mother insists that they have to do it in order to survive. (http://imdb.com/title/tt0052540/usercomments)




Masao's life suddenly changes one day when a rich girl named Kyoko purchases his pigeons for her younger brother. Kyoko seems to take a shine to the poor boy and because of this Masao's teacher Akiyama-sensei asks the girl if she can ask her father, who is the president of a company who makes electronics, if he can give Masao a job. (http://imdb.com/title/tt0052540/usercomments)



Oshima's first film does a wonderful job portraying the lives of those left behind when Japan's economy was on the upswing. It shows the thick glass walls of class distinction and the true difficulty of both sides being able to come to terms with each other. (http://imdb.com/title/tt0052540/usercomments)