An Inn At Osaka

Born in 1902, director Gosho Heinosuke began his career as a film director in 1925, and by 1927 critics were already praising his films as evincing a distinctive and artistic sensibility, a master of understated and bittersweet comedies of life. Introducing his work to Western audiences, J. L. Anderson and Donald Richie noted that to many Japanese critics Gosho-ism was a definable style, meaning "something that makes you laugh and cry at the same time." An Inn at Osaka, rarely seen outside Japan, follows the story of an insurance company executive from Tokyo, Mr. Mito, who is demoted to the Osaka office. He takes a room at a small inn and tries to rebuild his life. Notable for its exquisite framing and cinematography, An Inn at Osaka allows its complicated plotlines to disappear behind the minutiae of penury and humiliation that Mito and others suffer during the post-war economic and social reconstruction (1954, 121m).