The Whole Family Works (はたらく一家), Mikio Naruse, 1939

The Whole Family Works, Mikio Naruses adaptation of a Sunao Tokunaga novel, feels more of a piece with the writer, directors quietly observant and psychologically charged later work. For the Narusefamiliar, it is an anomaly only in its placement within his filmographyindeed, this could be a film made by the elder, stasisminded Naruse momentarily inhabiting, through a metaphysical twist of fate, his stylistically exuberant younger self. Set in depressionera Japan around the time of the SinoJapanese War (which the director evokes, during a brief dream sequence, by dissolving between childrens war games and actual adult warfare), The Whole Family Works gently observes a family coming apart at the seams. Ishimura (Musei Tokugawa) is the jobless father of nine children.