Much ado about a necklace - short film based on the story "The String of Pearls"

Based on a 1956 television feature on Japan’s national network, NHK, this is one of Uchida’s rarest films. A socially conscious drama with a contemporary backdrop, Dotanba focuses on the attempts to rescue a group of trapped miners. The title is a figure of speech — (essentially “last minute” or “eleventh hour”) — that refers to a situation of peril. The film boasts a script co-written by Uchida and Akira Kurosawa’s frequent screenwriter, Shinobu Hashimoto, and stars Kurosawa’s frequent star Takashi Shimura.

An inventor has just developed an extraordinary machine, a disintegrating ray and thought detector. He experiences it one evening on a group of relatives, including his fiancée, and it seems to turn into a tragedy: he is found lifeless, apparently poisoned. A man calling himself a police officer begins to investigate.