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This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

Ok... Let's be honest. It cannot be the best movie but is quite enjoyable. The movie has the potential to develop a great plot for future movies

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

After being rejected for marriage by her lover, a prostitute named "Harumi" (Yumiko Nogawa) travels to a military outpost deep inside Manchuria to work in a brothel servicing soldiers in the Imperial Japanese Army during World War II. While there she meets an officer by the name of "Narita" (Isao Tamagawa) who treats her with contempt but is also quite possessive. Not long afterward she meets his orderly "Shinkichi Mikami" (Tamio Kawaji) who she quickly falls in love with. Unfortunately, Mikami is hesitant at first to return her affections because he knows that would make Narita furious. Meanwhile, the war rages on all around them. Now what I liked about this movie was the manner in which it showed the dark side of war. However, that also proved to be a weakness of sorts because at times it got too bleak. Likewise, the over-acting, typical of many Japanese movies, was a bit too much at times as well. In any case, although it's clearly a work of fiction there were some scenes which were based on historical experiences by the writer and because of that I found this to an interesting movie from an historical perspective. All things considered then, I rate it as slightly above average.

Presumably one of the "movies that didn't make sense" that led Nikkatsu Studios to promptly fire Suzuki after BRANDED TO KILL, in the process turning him into an icon of artistic defiance that inspired may, STORY OF A PROSTITUTE is at the same time a war melodrama, a rather conventional love story that you could see come out from Hollywood in the 50's, but also a Seijun Suzuki film. A genre director who slaved away from b-movie to b-movie working from scripts that had little difference from one to the next, Suzuki developed, out of artistic frustration with the trappings of cookie cutter studio film-making, an irreverent visual grammar which existed for its own pleasure. In his own way, perhaps unwittingly, he was making New Wave before most.Here we find both facets of his work, a crowdpleasing genre film and a sumptuous celebration of a visual cinema. But unlike stuff like TOKYO DRIFTER, or indeed Branded to Kill, films that often appeared to be little more than empty exercises in stylish bravura where the only reward possible for the viewer was a confirmation of Suzuki's bold, audacious approach, Story has a dramatic heart. The director approaches the love story between Mirakami, an orderly to an abusive adjutant who is brainwashed to docile acceptance of military authority, and Harumi, a passionate prostitute working a Japanese camp somewhere in Manchuria in the days of WWII, with sincerity and honesty.In the same time he punctuates the main plot with set-pieces that truly dazzle with their inventiveness. Harumi running through a shellshocked battlefield to an injured Mirakami; Harumi's fantasy of Mirakami rushing in slow-motion through a white-washed scene to save her from the abusive officer. All this filmed in stark black and white, with fast tracking shots around walls and behind wooden panels, beautiful exterior shots of Manchurian landscapes which dwarf the figures walking them, intricate framing in depth and poignant symbolic touches that give an almost existential air to proceedings.

No, not perfectly awful (that would rate a 1), but bad enough. I can't understand all the ooh's and ah's about what's no more than B-movie trash. Some good lighting, well-composed frames (along with, sad to say, some overly artsy ones), and nice camera movement can't disguise a bad script. The good-girl-prostitute-in love is laughably unrealistic; her supposed motivation, set at the beginning, and her desire to have sex with just about everyone in revenge for the man who spurned her is ridiculous, as is her love for the one soldier who can't tolerate her; the villain's snarling is out of the most overacted silent films; and the patriotic soldier (I won't give away what happens to him) who is supposed to help convey an anti- war theme is clunky. Want anti-war? Try All Quiet on the Western Front, Grand Illusion, and Cross of Iron! As for the title prostitute, it's the sort of nonsense men used to write about women, prostitutes and others; probably still do, but I no longer read it. The DVD's Japanese critic who talks about the film and director said that 90% is what the studio wanted from the director and 10% is the originality the director provided. I'll take his word for that, but 10% isn't enough to make gold from trash. Hmm. Maybe I should have given it a 1 after all.

Most likely the closest Suzuki ever got to making a prestige film. It probably wasn't viewed as such at the time, as it was a remake of a movie called Escape at Dawn that was generally considered a classic at the time (it was scripted by Akira Kurosawa and directed by Senkichi Taniguchi in 1950). Story of a Prostitute seemed like a much more lurid version of the older film. Both were anti-war pictures, but Escape at Dawn was romantic and tragic. Story of a Prostitute is harsh and cynical. Its scenes are often comic, which clashes with the standard view of war. In an interview on the new Criterion disc, Suzuki, a veteran himself, says that he found a lot of black humor and absurdity in his wartime experience. All three of WWII-themed films I've seen from him, which cover the pre-war (Fighting Elegy), the actual war (Story of a Prostitute), and post-war (Gate of Flesh) periods all incorporate some level of absurd, black comedy. The three films actually make a good trilogy (the rest I've seen are all yakuza or crime films). Story of a Prostitute is a very powerful anti-war film, though it is lurid and not nearly as powerful as something like, say, Kobayashi's The Human Condition. Yumiko Nogawa, who also starred in Gate of Flesh, gives a fantastic performance. But it is, as usual, Suzuki's supreme visual skills – in black and white in this instance – that make the film a stunning and memorable experience. His artistic imagination in cinematographic matters is nearly unsurpassed in the entire realm of cinema.