A Town of Love and Hope (1959) User Reviews

A/K/A Street of Love and Hope

[mollytinkers · 7/10 · 15 December 2021]

I caught this on TCM in December of 2021. Researching the film online proved frustrating. The title has several translations, including Street of Hope and Love. According to trivia, the director wanted to title the film The Boy Who Sold His Pigeon but was overruled by the film studio's executives.

Don't let its taut running time fool you: this film contains multiple layers of thought-provoking elements in a small package. It's well written. The cast does a fine job. The direction is very good, as is the cinematography and art direction, especially the location scouting. If I were to make one critique, it would be that the music didn't particularly seem fitting at times.

The basic story is about a teenage girl from a wealthy family who wants to help a poor boy by hooking him up with a job opportunity. To describe more would be to give away spoilers. It's important to know up front that it's not an uplifting film. One bit of trivia I learned, assuming it's true, is that the studio suspended the director for six months once they learned the movie was not the feel-good family film they were expecting.

Class Warfare

[boblipton · 7/10 · 11 October 2020]

Hiroshi Fujikawa has a scam of selling his sister's pet pigeons, knowing they will fly back if they get the chance. He's done it before and expects to do it again. His family is desperately poor. His mother is a shoe shine, but is sick and cannot work, and welfare does not pay enough for them to live on. His mother wants him to go to high school, and his teacher, Kakuko Chino, understands her desire and their plight.

Fujikawa has sold the pigeons this time to Yuki Tominaga. Her younger brother is sick, and never likes the gifts she brings, When Miss Chino finds out about the pigeon scam, she explains to Miss Tominaga, who tries to get Fujikawa a job at her father's company. Her elder brother, Fumio Watanabe, begins a courtship with Miss Chino.

Nagisa Ôshima's first movie as a director is an overt and strident study of class warfare in the new Japan of rich businessmen and the poverty stricken. set in the industrial sections of Tokyo. Although I thought the ending a bit over the top, it's a cleanly written and performed movie with something to say.

town of love and hope

[mossgrymk · 7/10 · 3 January 2022]

Pretty good study of class division in Japan, circa 1959. I was especially pleased that the film's title turns out to be ironic. Less pleased with the general air of stolidity and humorlessness that you often find in Japanese art house cinema (Ozu notably excepted). Could have used more of the sardonic female shoeshine workers and less of the extremely dull love story sub plot involving the dedicated high school teacher, a character on whom you can usually count in films to be a bore, and the young CEO. B minus.

Pigeon Feathers

[Meganeguard · 25 December 2004]

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.

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.

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.

Kyoko and Masao's relationship goes well at first as well as Akiyama-sensei's relationship with Kyoko's older brother Yuji. However, always near the surface is the fact that Masao is poor. After Yuji learns that Masao has sold the pigeons several times, Kyoko and Masao's relationship is in danger.

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.