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An early joke points up the work's modernity, a certain "Ernst Schwarz" is credited as the source of this thoroughly Japanese arrangement. The Tokyo home is comprised of a welter of objects, bottles and spinning lanterns and a rack for socks to dry, the view from the window gives a leafless tree and smokestacks. Family and "foul behaviors," the most scandalous of which can only be whispered. The typist (Yoshiko Okada) works hard to pay for the education of her brother (Ureo Egawa), the secret is that she "hosts" after hours at the nightclub. (She's seen frizzy-haired in a pool of Sternberg lighting before hopping into a dandy's limousine.) The lad's girlfriend (Kinuyo Tanaka) gets wind of this from her policeman brother (Shinyo Nara), the student can think only of his own shame, tragedy ensues. "All my efforts, rewarded with a blow." Not quite an hour long, shot on a week or so, a wealth of formal experimentation in one of Yasujiro Ozu's most striking early films. Curious juxtapositions, abrupt inserts, an unsettled camera for unsettled characters. A tea kettle foaming in close-up punctuates the angry discovery, it is cold when time comes for the confrontation. Ozu helps himself to a bit of Lubitsch for the date at the movie theater (Charles Laughton in the office from If I Had a Million fills the grainy screen), bad news are later delivered by telephone in front of a wall of clocks. "I don't think it's blind chance." The women can't quite console each other at the close, a pesky reporter (Chishu Ryu) taps one of them with a pencil until he's shown the door, "not newsworthy!" The final pan on an empty street is taken up by Resnais. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |