Image-wise an exact replica of a 1950s Hollywood melodrama but without the sub-text of someone like Sirk - thus the picture feels more like a 1940s Hollywood melodrama, very successful and always fascinating to see Japan (especially Tokyo) in the fifties.
A graduate is told by her dying grandmother that her mother isn't her mother. She goes to the family home where she's made to be a servant - she doesn't mind at all but deals with her 'family' (cold, horrible mother, jealous, bitchy sister, indifferent older brother) as 'cheerfully' as she can, attracting the attention of a young man from a wealthy business background. But she's on a hunt for her real mother, aided by her former teacher, a young man who she's always fancied. Then it turns out he has a girlfriend who's a model (though she isn't). Great scenes like the fight between her and her little brother, after which they are best friends, and the sensei having dinner with his former class, all of whom want to marry him. Screenplay by Yoshio Shirasaka.
Ayako Wakao is the girl, with Keizo Kawasaki, Kenji Suawara, Ryuji Shinagawa, Yuko Yashio.
Wakao is a big deal in Japan where she's starred in several other films by Yasuzo Masumura (A Woman's Testament), and those of Kon Ichikawa (Princess from the Moon), Kenji Mizoguchi (A Geisha, Street of Shame) and Yasujiro Ozu (Floating Weeds). Further reading here. Consider me a new fan.
Cinematography by Michio Takahashi.
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