Hogaraka ni ayume

A genuine rarity, an Ozu gangster movie, in which a conman falls for one of his targets, achieving redemption through love in a way that is highly reminiscent of Frank Borzage's tales of romantic salvation. Ozu achieves a variety of moods, from the playful hand signals and spontaneous dance routines that gangsters use to greet each other, to the passion of not only romantic love but fraternal devotion between the conman and his best buddy, resulting in one of his most macho movies as well as one of his most tender. Incidentally, Ozu gives a lot of visual time in this film to close-up shots of people's feet, a motif I don't quite understand in its relation to the movie but is certainly striking.

George Fox, the founder of the Society of Friends -- better known as the Quakers -- wrote:

"Be patterns, be examples in all countries, places, islands, nations wherever you come; that your carriage and life may preach among all sorts of people, and to them; then you will come to walk cheerfully over the world, answering that of God in everyone; whereby in them you may be a blessing, and make the witness of God in them to bless you."

and from that text, Yasujiro took this sermonizing movie. It's the story of a gangster who falls in love with a nice girl, and she with him. When she finds out what he does, however, she tells him that unless he reforms, she will never see him again. He quits the underworld, and gets a job as a window washer, but his old buddies want him to come in on a job....

Looking at Ozu's post-war movies, it's hard to picture his pre-war output. His camera is in almost constant motion. His characters wear modern clothes and travel by car, and Japanese society is not struggling to maintain its balance and traditional values, under siege by international forces. His characters seek to learn what they can from the outside world, whether they be from movie posters on the wall, or radical Western theologian. Given that Ozu was making a modern drama in an essentially Western medium, this has an inner logic. Yet the rather straightforward and optimistic attitude of this movie rings false. His stronger works in this era were more complicated, more darkly humorous, almost sardonic in their attitude when happy, and bleak when tragic.

The performances are fine, particularly that of Hisao Yoshitani as the protagonist's pugnacious and loyal friend. However, the optimism of Japanese society in this era turned out to be arrogance, and the easy answers of this movie a chimera.

Kenji is a small thief who likes drinking and fighting. When he falls in love with sweet and simple Yazue, and she finds out what kind of guy he really is, she leaves him 'until he becomes an honest person'.

George Fox wrote: "Be patterns, be examples in all countries, places, islands, nations wherever you come; that your carriage and life may preach among all sorts of people, and to them; then you will come to walk cheerfully over the world, answering that of God in everyone; whereby in them you may be a blessing, and make the witness of God in them to bless you." How does that quote relate to the film? I am not entirely sure, though it seems to be the source of the title. Perhaps there is a deeper message. Regardless, Ozu made twenty-six movies in his first five years as a director (including this one), and this is a solid film. Who knew that Japan had American-style gangsters in the 1930s?

I don't know if I'm being too harsh on these early Yasujiro Ozu films, but they just haven't really been doing the job for me. I don't think the really early ones are anywhere close in quality to his later ones, and it's also hard to draw many comparisons between his very early films and those later ones.

Watching a filmmaker's early stuff can be rewarding, even if the films are flawed, if you can watch their style take shape... but in 1929/1930, I feel maybe it was still at least a few years away from happening for Ozu. I might try one more of his films from this era before going back to his later period; could well be worth watching a filmography like this backwards, who knows.

An interesting film where Ozu is still working towards his later skills. The gangster scenes are wholly unreal- a never-land out of Hollywood films where gangsters play golf and billiards and pick pockets or hold up people now and then- certainly we don't see them making enough to keep them in the style to which they appear accustomed. The most interesting aspect is that the demure and innocent heroine and her family are the only unwesternised characters in the film: they live in a traditional house, wear traditional clothes- indeed, in contrast to her criminal rival for Ken's love, she even uses a Japanese-character type-writer in the office they work in.