La donna della retata

Kinuyo Tanaka works in an office, where she has caught the attention of the boss' son. She means to take him for a bundle, because after office hours, she's the moll of Joji Oka, a washed-up boxer and gangster. However, when Sumiko Mizukubo, a nice, old-fashioned shop girl, asks Joji to let her brother, Koji Mitsui out of their gang, the two lovers see a vision of a decent life. Is it beyond their reach?

This movie gives the impression that Ozu was trying to shoot a movie half in the style of Joseph von Sternberg and half in the stye of Frank Borzage -- what would happen if George Bancroft in THUNDERBOLT met a Janet Gaynor character? Visually, it's very Germanic, with lots of half-lit faces and many tracking shots, nothing at all like the style Ozu would adopt after the War. The set design is typical for Ozu in this period, with lots of American posters on the walls.

It has often been stated (which is a slovenly way to not have to cite sources) that Film Noir arose from filtering German expressionism through French Poetic Realism and American Pulp Mystery. Although it did not begin to take shape until the late 1930s, nor flower until the mid-1940s, there's an interesting early sideline in this movie, complete with a femme fatale who leads people to their doom -- who is a nice girl!

As this started I realised that it was a silent film and noted later that even though I have seen many of Ozu's films, never the silent ones of which there are at least twenty, but never even other Japanese silents. This is a wonderfully clear blu-ray from BFI and the photography splendid. I understand that Ozu loved the gangsters but I have to say that although in the gym is well shot but the boxers we never see them fighting and although all the men wear their fedoras and coats there is never any great action. We also have the girls, the gangster's moll and the good girl working in a shop, she wants her brother to leave the gang, she tries to get the gang boss to influence him and she falls in love with him. It is interesting but even though it is trying to be American, with all the posters and signage and the wisecracking and gun-toting it is really still very Japanese.

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.

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.

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. (