Hijôsen no onna

Josef von Sternberg doesn't get as much mention as Frank Borzage or Ernst Lubitsch as an early Ozu influence, but those familiar with the dense arrangement of objects onscreen in Sternberg films may see the resemblance in both early and late Ozu films. This moody, expressionist pre-noir potboiler exhibits plenty of inspired clutter (most memorably the RCA Victor dog) and stylistic fluorishes (tracking shots, pull shots, and memorable use of shadow) as it tells the story of a gangster and his good-girl-gone-bad moll (Kinuyo Tanaka) as they experience an spiritual awakening through the good graces of an innocent girl. Redemption seems to be a recurring motif in Ozu's gangster movies (WALK CHEEFULLY, THAT NIGHT'S WIFE), and one wonders if bad guy heroes turning themselves in is a convention of the genre or indicative of Ozu's feelings about the criminal life he was assigned to depict. Whatever the case, the climax (involving the single gunshot fired in the entire existing Ozu canon) is as suspenseful and emotionally powerful as anything Ozu filmed.

A gangster tries to find redemption with the inadvertent help of an innocent shop girl and his jealous girlfriend will do anything to keep him.

Who knew there was the Japanese jazz scene, with men hanging out, smoking cigarettes and dressing like hoodlums -- it all seems so American, much like Ozu's "Walk Cheerfully" made Japanese gangsters circa 1930 look American. Maybe the "American gangster" is not such a strictly American thing after all.

Of Ozu's silent crime films, this is the one that seems to be the most well known. At least, it is the only one that actually has a Wikipedia page (as of May 2015). This period needs more examination. There is more to world cinema in the 1930s than what most of us take for granted.

I've enjoyed few silent films as much as this wonderful gangster movie from none other than Yasujiro Ozu, best known for his brilliantly ponderous family dramas of the talkie era. The silent films of Ozu, whose sound films are considered so very "eastern" by western viewers, are eye-brow raisingly informed by Hollywood aesthetics. Indeed, some of his early crime films such as this one, perhaps invented important aspects of what would become known as Hollywood genre tropes. A tale of the intimate lives and feelings of seemingly hardened underworld denizens, Dragnet Girl discovers the world of Noir years before John Huston in Maltese Falcon or, for that matter, Marcel Carne in Le Jour se Leve, walked on that ground. And while Dragnet Girl precedes the films that were to be labeled Noir, it also in many ways transcends them. For Ozu has no use for the dreary fatalism that would characterize the American, German or French crime film. For these characters, these criminals, are not simplistically doomed. Their paths are shaped more by their feelings for each other than their violation of any moral code. This makes the narrative truly unpredictable and moving.

A gangster with feelings, mirrored in the young boxer who is eager to drop out of school to join the gang: boyish impertinence and bravado in this part, a recalcitrant code of honor among thieves, the common tropes of the gangster film.

The boxer's quiet, unassuming sister, mirrored in the gangster's moll who gradually opts out of the glamorous life in favor of true happiness: deep female selfless intuition, enduring, indomitable caring.

The four of them are intertwined in a dance between many different faces for the one life - all of them fit but some make you agonize. The whole plays out like a response to Sternberg's Underworld, a prototypical gangster film that culminated in a similarly sacrificial denouement. As is common with these films, having experienced the thrills of an outcast life, we're meant to leave the theater rehabilitated into common social mind.

This is fine and the film generally slick and efficient, but I want to direct your attention to these specifics.

• one is the shot of a chrome plate from inside a moving car, that reflects distortions of the surrounding world as the car speeds ahead. This encapsulates both cinematic eye and internal mind, modern and anxious, that give rise both to events depicted and the type of film that frames them.

• the other is the series of static shots that end the film, with cops signaling each to each that the chase is over and departing and the quiet interior of the empty house greeting the first morning light. Now Ozu's journey is from superficial Western adoration (except for the sister everyone is dressed in western garb here, the brother has taken up boxing, the whole recalls Western film above all) onto a discovery of a contemplative Japanese heart. The transition is vividly exemplified here: from the neon marquees of tumultuous movie night into the stillness of morning. We'll see a lot more of this in the future.

The story follows four characters: Tokiko (Kinuyo Tanaka), a gang moll who works a legit job as a secretary at a large firm so that she can get extra cash from the company's president's son, money that she uses to keep Joji (Joji Oka), a former boxer turned minor criminal gang boss. When young hothead Hiroshi (Koji Mitsui) joins the gang, his nice-girl sister Kazuko (Sumiko Mizukubo) implores Joji to help set her brother back on the right track. Joji starts to fall for Kazuko, which causes Tokiko a lot of grief and sets her on an unpredictable path.

This is Ozu's most technically accomplished film to date, even if he is still making them in the silent format. His camerawork and use of evocative shadowing are notable. Tanaka gives a splendid performance as a complicated character making rash decisions that only make sense coming from someone who is desperately vulnerable. Ozu continues to place American movie posters in his settings, this time featuring some from The Champ and All Quiet On the Western Front. Sharp-eyed viewers may notice Ozu regular Chishu Ryu in a small bit as a cop. Recommended. (