The Woman of Rumour is a contemporary drama which marks the end of Mizoguchi's fruitful, 14-film collaboration with the great actress Kinuyo Tanaka. (The subject of rumours themselves, Mizoguchi and Tanaka were purported to have been involved in a long-term love affair, and apparently had a major falling-out around this time. She is said to have rebuffed his proposals of marriage; he was accused of trying to prevent her from directing her first film.) Tanaka stars as Hatsuko, the proprietor of a prosperous Kyoto brothel. She sends off her daughter, Yukiko, to Tokyo to get a proper education. When a suitor rejects her because of her mother's unsavoury occupation, Yukiko attempts suicide. She returns home to Kyoto, where further complications ensue when mother and daughter fall in love with the same man. The film gives the impression of a director who has rummaged through all the styles of expression and arrived at the most subtly exquisite, minimalist ways of expressing his deepest, most complex sentiments