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An up-angle camera tracks across a row of fedoras on hooks on a wall (one mysteriously falls by itself), another lateral scan of bustling office workers comes to rest on a dormant typewriter—it might be a Lubitsch flourish but no, it's Yasujiro Ozu laying the groundwork for his yakuza tale with enormous élan. The Japanese underworld is a brisk racket suspended between the boxing gym and the nightclub, one is a shadowy arena with blown-up slogans in English ("The manly art of self-defense!"), the other is a smoky hall with beach décor (tuxedoed hoods scuffle behind scrims while molls lounge under parasols). The hoodlum (Joji Oka) is a washed-up pugilist, his flame (Kinuyo Tanaka) strolls into the locker room wearing satin gown and elbow-length gloves, the young fighter (Koji Mitsui) wants in on the gang. A solitary spot of kimono-clad traditionalism in the westernized milieu, the boy's virtuous sister (Sumiko Mizukubo) runs into the gangster at a records store (classical music is "too decent," he insists) and promptly sees through his tough-guy veneer. As the quartet moves toward the inevitable redemptive collision, the director flexes his various sides: Ozu the gagman includes a pair of skinny henchmen rhythmically skulking down the street (and then rhythmically fleeing at the sight of a policeman), Ozu the try-anything novice gets a fish-eye effect by reflecting the city off the shiny chrome of a getaway car, Ozu the contemplative imagesmith ponders close-ups of a dinner grown cold and a suitcase containing a criminal's life. Kurosawa's Drunken Angel continues the inquiry in the jitterbugging postwar swamp. With Yumeko Aizome, Yoshio Takayama, Koji Kaga, and Ryu Chishu. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |