Twilight Saloon - 1955

Takes place in one place, a beer hall, over the course of one evening. Uchida employs this concentration of setting and time to fashion a microcosm for a group portrait of Japan. One by one, the regulars of the bar appear: the pianist who dreams of becoming a composer but has disappeared from the music world after a knifing; a stripper who had planned to be a ballet dancer; an elderly painter trying to make a living at pachinko, and who rues his art having been used for militarist propaganda during the war; a young waitress considering elopement; a colonel turned real estate broker who attempts to rouse the crowd in military song until he realizes the tune has been transformed by marchers in the street into a leftist chant. The "twilight" is more than just a time of day; here, it is a state of being, a suspension between past and present, between the camaraderie of the saloon and the harsh world outside.

94min
1955
Released
Trakio rating0.0/10
IMDB rating7.7/10

Cast

Isamu Kosugi profile pictureIsamu KosugiMoichiro Umeda
Jun Tatara profile pictureJun TataraTetsuo Kumishima
Hitomi Nozoe profile pictureHitomi NozoeYuki Noguchi
Minoru Takada profile pictureMinoru TakadaRyusuke Nakakoji
Ken Utsui profile pictureKen UtsuiMasumi
Ureo Egawa profile pictureUreo EgawaYamaguchi

About Twilight Saloon

Twilight Saloon Overview

Takes place in one place, a beer hall, over the course of one evening. Uchida employs this concentration of setting and time to fashion a microcosm for a group portrait of Japan. One by one, the regulars of the bar appear: the pianist who dreams of becoming a composer but has disappeared from the music world after a knifing; a stripper who had planned to be a ballet dancer; an elderly painter trying to make a living at pachinko, and who rues his art having been used for militarist propaganda during the war; a young waitress considering elopement; a colonel turned real estate broker who attempts to rouse the crowd in military song until he realizes the tune has been transformed by marchers in the street into a leftist chant. The "twilight" is more than just a time of day; here, it is a state of being, a suspension between past and present, between the camaraderie of the saloon and the harsh world outside.

Runtime: 94min

Extra details

Original Title: たそがれ酒場
Original Language: Japanese
Directed By: Tomu Uchida
Production Companies
Shintoho Company