Japanese director Sadao Yamanaka made 24 films in his short seven year career. He was a key figure in establishing Japanese period films, along with fellow cinema giants Ozu, Mizoguchi and Naruse. When World War II came, he was drafted into the Imperial Army, and tragically lost his life in 1938 at the age of 28. After the war ravaged key cities in Japan, most of his films were destroyed or lost, and now only three survive (in near-complete forms). God bless Masters of Cinema, the UK's answer to America's Criterion Collection, for remastering and re- introducing this forgotten gem to the world and giving it a DVD release, following years of obscurity.

The film focuses on a poor area of Tokyo in the late 18th century, where the penniless ronin Unno (Chojuro Kawarasaki) lives amongst the lower classes, struggling to find work. He is desperate to hand a letter written by his late father to the local gang boss, who repeatedly snubs and undermines him. The town is already in shock and mourning following the third suicide in recent weeks, so hairdresser Shinza (Kan'emon Nakamura) throws a party to boost the spirits of the local samurai, yet finds himself falling foul of the local gang for holding an unauthorised gambling party in their territory.

For all the usual gentle beauty of Japanese cinema of the period that is so prominent here, Humanity and Paper Balloons is shockingly pessimistic. The film begins and ends with suicide, and that feeling of unavoidable tragedy prevails throughout the film, as we see samurai reduced to desperate and begging hangers-on. Yamanaka makes clear his opinion of society in feudal Japan, portraying it as a rather savage and hopeless place to exist for the lower classes. Perhaps Yamanaka foresaw Japan's ill-fated siding with the Nazi's which saw Japanese society obliterated by fire-bombings and nuclear weapons. Yet it still manages to be humorous in that typical kooky Japanese way, in the same vein of some of Kurosawa's lighter films. Given this was Yamanake's final film before he went off to fight the war, it seems a fitting exit to a short career, yet tragic given that (judging from this) Yamanaka could have gone on to become a giant in his field. A slight, yet powerful film.

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Humanity and Paper Balloons is one of the earliest Japanese Toho movies, off the top of my head I believe either the 3rd or 4th.

It is set in the slums of Japan during a time of great poverty and tells the intertwined tales of hairdresser who keeps getting in trouble with the local criminals for arranging gambling nights and the son of a samurai who falls afoul of the same people.

The characters are light hearted and make for a sweet little movie, but it's overtones are very bleak as you'd likely expect.

Though much of the film is hard to appreciate due to this being a very different world we live in, it's remarkably made for it's time and has a hard hitting finale that stays with you.

Hardly groundbreaking and with very mixed tones, but a likeable piece regardless.

The Good:

Very memorable visuals

Great finale

The Bad:

Very mixed tones

Things I Learnt From This Movie:

Mens dancing in 1930's Japan needs to catch on in the west!

I can't take people seriously with those haircuts!

The last film of its young director Sadao Yamanaka - who died the following year at just 28 years of age while serving with the Japanese army in China; actually, this film's R2 DVD release some years ago under Eureka's "Masters Of Cinema" label was the first I have ever heard of him at all (although this same film was subsequently shown on late-night Italian TV). HUMANITY AND PAPER BALLOONS concerns the lives of the inhabitants of a slum tenement and is, by necessity, reminiscent of Akira Kurosawa's later Japanese transposition of Maxim Gorky's THE LOWER DEPTHS (1957). The main protagonists are a married, alcoholic ronin seeking repeatedly but vainly to be employed by an ex-protégé (now wealthy) of his father's and a wily crook who takes revenge on his tormentor (for keeping a gambling joint) by kidnapping the latter's intended. The film - which starts and ends with a suicide – is very sensitively handled throughout, belying Yamanka's youth and revealing him to be as much a forgotten master Japanese film-maker as Tomu Uchida (which I also experienced for the first time earlier this year after my equally recent discovery of him). There have been rumors online of this film being in the pipeline for a future Criterion DVD release but, in spite of its undeniable artistic merits, personally I am satisfied with the edition currently available.