Now available for the first time with English subtitles, Kurosawa's second feature is a documentary-like treatment of women in a wartime lens factory; both a “national policy” assignment and his own original story, accounting for the balance between its very Japanese sense of team play, wartime subordination of the personal to the national goal and Kurosawa's own characteristic belief in the individual. Soon after the film, the lead actress married Kurosawa.

The Most Beautiful (Ichiban utsukushiku) is repeated on Monday, April 9.