An assertively angry film, Osaka Elegy was deliberately intended as a social and cultural bombshell in the increasingly militarist Japan of 1936. It marked the start of a lifelong collaboration with the screenwriter Yoda Yoshikata and made Mizoguchi the most famous director in Japan. Although it uses the old name of Osaka (“Naniwa”) in its Japanese title, it’s set in the present and is burningly topical. Yamada plays Ayako, a company telephone operator, who becomes the kept woman of her boss, Asai. Ayako’s earnings need to cover her father’s drinking bills and her brother’s school fees, although neither thanks her for her efforts. She pins her hopes on eloping with her fiancé and steals money to pay for it, but when that plan falls apart there’s nothing left for her but what she calls “delinquency.” The punchy, confrontational ending is more like Sam Fuller than the usual Mizoguchi.