Unending Advance

Directed by Tomu Uchida

With Isamu Kosugi, Hisako Takihana, Yukiko Todoroki, Ureo Egawa and Akihiko Katayama

One of Uchida’s early sound films, Unending Advance is based on a curious story by Yasujiro Ozu, in which an examination of the quotidian problems of a middle-aged salaryman and his family segues into an idyllic dream of an implausible future. The surviving print, although incomplete, offers an essential glimpse into Uchida’s prewar period, when he was associated more with realist dramas than with the period films that dominated his work after the war.