The Ditch

Nobuko Otowa wanders into the shack shared by Taiji Tonoyama and Jûkichi Uno in a crazy-quilt warren at the edge of an industrial town. The two men are out on strike, and they're broke because they no sooner get money than they gamble it away. Miss Otowa has escaped from.... probably a brothel. She seems mad and stupid and she hasn't eaten in three days, nor washed in ten. She remembers she has a thousand yen, gives it to them. She takes over their life with her mad schemes, her street walking to raise money for them, and urges a raucous cheer for the other inhabitants of the warren, which the owner intends to tear down to build a motorcycle race track. Everyone seems at least a little mad and ill-regarded, even by their fellow slum creatures.

Miss Otowa offers a performance which strips away all signs of beauty and the normative behavior that the Japanese cherish. Kaneto Shindô, who wrote and directed this movie, seems have written a message film: we should all care for each of her, all be a bit chivalrous, all cheer each other on. Yet, by putting this message in the mouth of this mad, stupid creature, he seems to have rendered it equally foolish; when we cry over the dead, it's too late to do anything for them.

Dobu is a hard movie to classify. Part screwball comedy, part social commentary and part tragedy, the movie is all over the place. There is not much plot, but little there is is about two gamblers who live in a shanty town and take in a homeless, and possibly crazy, woman. Everyone in the shanty town is a little offbeat, and the community alternatively look after and exploit her. Will she truly fit in there or is this just another stop in her tragic life? Nobuko Otowa is mostly pretty good as Tsuru but sometimes she over plays her. The rest of the cast are clearly having fun playing various types of lowlifes. Entertaining and worth a watch if you can find it.