The film consists of a series of tightly interlinked vignettes, the most sustained of which details the story of a man and a woman who are passionately in love. Their attempts to consummate their passion are constantly thwarted, by their families, by the Church and bourgeois society in general.

Father of nine children cannot find a job. Despite their aspirations, the children are encouraged by both parents to hold down menial jobs and contribute to the family expenses. Eventually ...@

Lucien Bourrache, a good looking non-commissioned officer at the Spahis, is used to charm many women. He met Madeleine Courtois at Cannes. She is beautiful and lives in luxury. He lends her a large amount of money, which she loses gambling. Then she drops him. But Lucien is now in love, and once demobilized, he goes to Paris to find her again. But he's not so sexy without his uniform, and Madeleine and him do not belong to the same milieu.

Mr. Tsurujiro is a Japanese folk singer assisted by Ms. Tsuruhachi on the shamisen. The pair is popular, but he often nitpicks her music and so they split. She marries a benefactor, but after a joint show, feels music is above marriage.

In his review of Feminine Melancholy in Kinema Junpo, critic Mizumachi Seiji praises Irie's performance as the best of her talkie career. However, he is very critical of the film itself, which he sees as a typical story of a woman in an unhappy marriage. He is not sympathetic toward the heroine's patient suffering and describes the nagging mother-in-law as a "hackneyed theme." Naruse's detailed "documentation" of Hiroko's role in the household is dismissed as a "manneristic obsession," and Mizumachi suggests that the director is hiding behind "the shadow of the materials." Most severely, he criticizes Naruse for "abandoning his authority as an auteur" by resorting to "shinpa-tragedy," which is seen as a capitulation to a form that has "wielded a powerful hold over the imagination of the masses." Although Mizumachi notes that Naruse has probed into "the deepest recess of the female psyche," he doesn't recognize this as the film's achievement, perhaps because he is looking for something else from the director. His review reveals the difficulties Naruse faced in maintaining his "auteur status" while moving with the tides of popular culture. For Mizumachi, the character of Yoko is the most typical Naruse heroine, perhaps because she is dragged down by her delinquent lover; however, in retrospect, it is evident that Hiroko's tenacious survival of adverse circumstances looks forward to Naruse's postwar heroines.

Kanji is a poor peasant widower who struggles to earn a living for his daughter and himself and to pay off his father-in-law's debts.

"The Dancing Girl of Izu" tells of the story between a young male student who is touring the Izu Peninsula and a family of traveling dancers he meets there, including their youngest girl. The student finds the naïve girl attractive even though he eventually has to part with the family after spending memorable time together.

Esther Blodgett is just another starry-eyed farm kid trying to break into the movies. Waitressing at a Hollywood party, she catches the eye of her idol Norman Maine, is sent for a screen test, and before long attains stardom as newly minted Vicki Lester. She and Norman marry, though his career soon dwindles to nothing due to his chronic alcoholism.

1932 film by Yasujiro Ozu

电气厂工头小郑和小袁租住于小学教员刘先生的旧洋房的二楼，焦大毛与养女燕姑住三楼，刘先生自住一楼。燕姑包办了小郑和小袁的饭，三人间产生了三角恋爱。因燕姑不肯与一富商往来，焦大毛毒打燕姑，小郑让燕姑躲进自己的房间。小袁听得小郑熟睡，便欲对燕姑非礼。小郑惊醒，与小袁争斗，刘先生、焦大毛相继惊动，小郑抢出燕姑远走他乡。小袁千方百计找到小郑，二人大打出手被捕入狱。抗战爆发，二人提前出狱参军，小袁不幸牺牲……

A boy steals a knife from an old samurai, unaware of its value, setting off a strange chain of events.

Kimiko, a Tokyo white-collar working girl, lives with her serious, intellectual, haiku-writing mother. Kimiko seeks to marry her boyfriend but needs her absent father to act as the go-between and negotiate the marriage. Kimiko travels and finds her father living with a second family.

Fujio is beautiful, talented, well-heeled, and engaged to up-and-coming diplomat Munechika. She has promised him a gold watch, a family heirloom, as an emblem of their engagement. However, she becomes enamoured with Ono, a student employed to tutor her in English, who is attracted by her beauty and wealth. Ono himself is bound by an engagement to Sayoko, daughter of his mentor, Professor Inoue.

杨乃凡（阮玲玉 饰）是含着金汤匙出生的千金大小姐，却爱上了一文不名的普通大学生李祖义。这段门不当户不对的感情是注定没有结果的，在家族的压力之下，杨乃凡离开了李祖义，嫁给了名为黄大任的男子，并且生下了两个孩子。 一次偶然中，杨乃凡和李祖义重逢了，意外的邂逅让两人心中并没有完全熄灭的爱情的火苗死灰复燃，很快就一发不可收拾。杨乃凡抛弃了家庭，决定和李祖义私奔。私奔后的两人在乡间过着诗情画意的生活，然而盘缠很快就见了底，李祖义不得不搬回了城里，想要寻找一份能够养家糊口的工作。然而，这是何等的不易，最终，李祖义在郁郁寡欢中离世了。

Naive and idealistic Jefferson Smith, leader of the Boy Rangers, is appointed to the United States Senate by the puppet governor of his state. He soon discovers, upon going to Washington, many shortcomings of the political process as his earnest goal of a national boys' camp leads to a conflict with the state political boss.

This short documentary by Ozu was intended to present the artistry of kabuki dancer Kikugoro Onoe IV to both Japanese and foreign audiences. A voice-over narration introduces Kikugoro as well as the dance he performs in the film's second half, in which a young girl is transformed into a resplendent lion (the imagery of which apparently inspired Jean Cocteau as he conceived his own BEAUTY AND THE BEAST). Watching Kikugoro imitate the gestures of a demure maiden you see how he deserved his fame. Ozu shoots the performance in three simple set-ups: a roving frontal shot of the performers on stage, an angled shot from the side of the stage, and an angled longshot that acknowledges the presence of the audience in a way that is unmistakably Ozu.

1934 film by Jean Vigo

1939 film by Jean Renoir

1937 film by Jean Renoir

A geisha in the Gion district of Kyoto feels obliged to help her lover when he asks to stay with her after going bankrupt and leaving his wife. However, her younger sister opposes this, thinking that they should both find wealthy patrons to support them.