In a somber tone, the film depicted the huge gap between the middle class and the poor. An impoverished young man ekes out a livelihood by selling pigeons, but he cheats his customers with the birds orientation instinct. Unwilling to go on like this, he gives up studying and goes to work in a factory. However, his past misdemeanour is discovered by the factory owner's son, and he subsequently gets fired. A young girl who bought a pigeon from him also refuses to forgive him and even resorts to shooting the bird. This directorial debut of Oshima Nagisa immediately established the young filmmaker as the leader of the Japanese New Cinema in the sixties. The unsentimental and harshrealistic style was vastly different from the melodramatic traditional of Shochiku Company, the studio who financed the film, at the time. Oshima suggesteed that there no compromise between the rich and the poor and class distinctions are closely linked to criminal tendencies.


Subs srt: Portuguese / English / French